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- Reviews: Currents (2026)
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- An Acting Lesson: John Wayne and the “Reality of the Doing”
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- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Hamlet
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- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Hamlet
- Dave on Review: The Chronology of Water (2025)
- Biff Dorsey on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Hamlet
- sheila on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
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Tag Archives: Spain
“I should like to make even the most ordinary spectator feel that he is not living in the best of all possible worlds.” – Luis Buñuel
Today is Luis Buñuel’s birthday! From Luis Buñuel’s autobiography My Last Sigh: Connoisseurs who like their martinis very dry suggest simply allowing a ray of sunlight to shine through a bottle of Noilly Prat before it hits the bottle of … Continue reading
2025 Books Read
I ended last year with a flurry of Oscar Wilde’s short stories, declaring I’d read all the plays in 2025. I mean, there were only five, sadly, due to the homophobic violence of his own society. I know these plays … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Austria, books read, Charles Lamb, children's books, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Czeslaw Milosz, David Lynch, Dubravka Ugrešić, England, essays, fiction, France, Frankenstein, Germany, Guillermo del Toro, Hungary, Ireland, Jane Austen, Janet Malcolm, John Keats, Lord Byron, Mark Danielewski, Mary Gaitskill, Mary Shelley, Matthew Arnold, Memoirs, nonfiction, Oscar Wilde, poetry, Poland, politics, Rebecca West, Roald Dahl, Robert Kaplan, Robert Louis Stevenson, Russia, sci-fi, Scotland, scripts, Spain, The Beatles, Twin Peaks, William Shakespeare, Yugoslavia
12 Comments
For Liberties: What Was Good About 2024? (in film)
Over at Liberties: my top 20 films of 2024. Tis the season for end-of-year lists. I tend to switch them up, depending on the outlet, because I don’t get attached to my lists. But those are the stand-outs. (Thanks to … Continue reading
Posted in Movies
Tagged England, India, Iranian film, Ireland, Italy, Mohammad Rasoulof, Palestine, Poland, Radu Jude, Romania, Spain, women directors
2 Comments
Orwell’s “nightmare world”
From George Orwell’s essential essay “Looking Back on the Spanish War”, where he reflects on all the lies and falsifications of that essential conflict, the rehearsal for Hitler-Stalin and all the monstrousness that followed. (It is the Spanish civil war … Continue reading
December 2023/January-February 2024 Viewing Diary
The Golden Bachelor Watched – in great hilarity – with Karen and Allison during a raucous sleepover, and Carol pulled up on FaceTime. So we could watch together. The whole thing is so ridiculous. Maestro (2023; d. Bradley Cooper) I … Continue reading
Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies, Television
Tagged Al Pacino, Aline MacMahon, biopic, Charlie Chaplin, Chile, Denmark, documentary, drama, dystopia, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Juliette Binoche, Kazuo Ishiguro, literary adaptation, Michael Mann, North Korea, Paul Schrader, Pre-Code, Radu Jude, Ray Milland, Richard Pryor, Romania, romantic comedy, sci-fi, short films, Sidney Poitier, silent films, Spain, Sylvia Sidney, Tana French, true crime, William Wellman, Wim Wenders, women directors
41 Comments
2023 National Society of Film Critics Awards
I was voted into the National Society of Film Critics this year and we had our voting meeting today. The group is nationwide so there were groups in LA, a group in New York, and people Zooming in from Chicago, … Continue reading
Posted in Movies
Tagged drama, England, France, Jean-Luc Godard, Martin Scorsese, romantic drama, Spain, women directors
2 Comments
Review: Society of the Snow (2024)
First review of 2024: A review of Society of the Snow, the latest filmed version of the Andes plane crash in 1972.