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- 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- “I don’t represent anything.” — Liz Phair
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- “Some syllables are swords.” — Metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan
- “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
- “All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.” — Charlie Chaplin
- “As a cinematographer, I was always attracted to stories that have the potential to be told with as few words as possible.” — Reed Morano
- “Even though I’m writing about very dark material, it still feels like an escape hatch.” — Olivia Laing
- “It’s just one of the mysteries of filmmaking that sometimes you do something that you don’t even think it’s important, then it turns out to be.” — Lili Horvát
- “Ballet taught me to stay close to style and tone. Literature taught me to be concerned about the moral life.” — Joan Acocella
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Tag Archives: Vietnam
April 2022 Viewing Diary
When I first got the Raging Bull gig, I began a re-watch of all the Scorsese-De Niro movies – at least the ones clustered around that period. I grew up on these films. These movies were huge to me as … Continue reading
Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies, Television
Tagged Anjelica Huston, biopic, Brian De Palma, Canada, Christopher Walken, comedy, Dana Andrews, documentary, drama, Elia Kazan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, France, historical drama, Italy, Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, Joan Didion, John Cazale, Liza Minnelli, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, Mickey Rourke, musicals, Ray Milland, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Robert Mitchum, romantic drama, Russia, sci-fi, Tuesday Weld, Ukraine, Vietnam, women directors, WWII
12 Comments
December 2020 Viewing Diary
I hope you like The X-Files. Look forward to hearing from fans of the show. The past couple of months have been heart-wrenching for my family. It will continue to be so. We are struggling under the weight of the … Continue reading
Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies, Television
Tagged animation, Aubrey Plaza, biopic, children's movies, Citizen Kane, Cliff Bole, comedy, David Fincher, David Nutter, documentary, England, Kim Manners, Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich, romantic comedy, romantic drama, sci-fi, South Korea, Supernatural, Vietnam, What's Up Doc, women directors, X-Files
13 Comments
R.I.P. Michael Herr
War journalist and screenwriter Michael Herr has died at the age of 76. His Dispatches, the classic of war journalism and so influential you can’t even measure it, is on most Best Nonfiction Books of All Time worth their salt. … Continue reading
2015 Books Read
Even I am impressed with how much I read this year. Along the course of the year, occasionally I’d think to myself, “Good job, Sheila, with your Self-Imposed Reading Plan!” I’ve read a lot of new novels (not really my … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Alexander Hamilton, Baseball A Literary Anthology, books read, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Marlowe, Edvard Radzinsky, Elvis Presley, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Hannah Arendt, Hunter S. Thompson, Ireland, J.D. Salinger, Jeanette Winterson, Jincy Willett, Joan Didion, John Banville, John Wayne, Joshua Ferris, Lorrie Moore, Machiavelli, Margaret Atwood, Norman Rush, Patricia Highsmith, Paul Zindel, Rasputin, Rebecca West, Ron Chernow, Russia, science, Seamus Heaney, Vietnam, W.H. Auden, William Shakespeare, William Styron
22 Comments
My Favorite Films of 2014
My Top 10 (more in-depth commentary, and other writer’s choices over at Rogerebert.com): 1. Beyond the Lights, directed by Gina Prince-Blythewood. 2. Boyhood, directed by Richard Linklater. Review here. 3. Closed Curtain, directed by Jafar Panahi. Review here. 4. Force … Continue reading
Posted in Movies
Tagged Australia, Bong Joon-Ho, Denmark, documentary, France, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Germany, Iranian film, Jafar Panahi, Jean-Luc Godard, Jim Jarmusch, Josephine Decker, Kristen Stewart, Kristen Wiig, Lars von Trier, Paul Thomas Anderson, Poland, Richard Linklater, South Korea, Sweden, Vietnam, Wes Anderson, Zac Efron
35 Comments
Daughter From Danang (2002); directed by Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco
Nominated for an Oscar, Daughter From Danang is one of the most emotionally harrowing documentaries I’ve ever seen. Halfway through I started to get a very very bad feeling. Something was approaching, something unforeseen, something completely unexpected. You could feel … Continue reading
Thank You To All Who Serve
I took this photo on Veterans Day, 2008, after watching an outdoor concert given by the USMC band in NYC. “They carried USO stationery and pencils and pens. They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal flares, spools of wire, … Continue reading
Matt Zoller Seitz and I Discuss Nancy Savoca’s Dogfight
Dogfight, written by Bob Comfort, and directed by Nancy Savoca, stars Lili Taylor as Rose Fenny, a shy frumpy waitress living in San Francisco in 1963, dreaming of being a folk singer, and River Phoenix, at his very best, as … Continue reading
Viva Vietnam
Ann Margret entertaining US troops in Vietnam, 1966.
The Books: “The Things They Carried’ (Tim O’Brien)
Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction: The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien. Fiction? Journalism? Reportage? Memoir? Do we really care? I don’t. But lots of people seem to reallllllly care about those labels. As we have seen time and time … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged fiction, James Frey, Ryszard Kapuściński, The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien, Vietnam, war
16 Comments