There isn’t a woman alive who has not pasted a shiny smiling face on her monster body at some point. Spoilers, sweetie… Peg and I had the benefit of an empty theatre to ourselves so we could comment to one another with impunity in the midst of things — like that absolutely brilliant Vertigo music…
Category: reviews
Anaïs Nin by Louis Andriessen
When looking for one thing you often find another: I came across this DVD of a theatre piece I did not know at all from 2010. I have been enamoured of Nin since coming across her diaries as a teenager. All part of the thread of surrealism that runs through my life, from Alice onwards,…
Ripley on the ‘flix
I had equal parts of anticipation and dread for this new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith‘s The Talented Mr Ripley especially as it was by schmaltzy Spielberg’s pal who wrote Schindler’s List and the film Hannibal. I take it all back: he read the book — or rather books as it became clear. Even better, he…
Quarry by Jane White
Quarry Jane White (Boiler House Press: Recovered Books 2023) FULL REVIEW HERE! I was fortunate to be pointed toward this 1967 novel by Anne Billson, who wrote the introduction to this new edition. It’s a wonderful example of the flexibility of the crime genre. White employs familiar tropes to unfamiliar ends, brings in the mythic…
Review: Tár
I ran off to watch this on an afternoon when I was feeling poorly and annoyed and irritated. I didn’t know it was three hours long. When my ass in the chair told me it had really been more than two hours I checked my phone. So it’s not that it dragged at all. It…
Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros
DEEP LISTENING: THE STORY OF PAULINE OLIVEROS I will not even pretend to any objectivity about this film: I contributed to the fundraising and to my considerable surprise, I am ever-so-briefly in it during one of the Deep Listening workshops at RPI. Discovering Oliveros and her concept of Deep Listening transformed my life-long fascination with…
Review: Moonage Daydream
Thanks to Peg for wrangling the tickets and my students for relinquishing me a few minutes early so I could fly from Albany to Catskill for the screening at the Community Theatre, which is a lovely venue. There were even Bowie-themed doughnuts. Director Brett Morgan sent a short introductory video which conveyed how special this…
Review: Loving Highsmith (2022)
I meant to go to Film Forum on Saturday to see a screening of this with a Q&A after with the director Eva Vitija and Megan Abbott, but alas something I ate on Friday made it inadvisable, so checking the Zeitgeist website I found it was playing down in Newburgh. I had never been to…
Carmilla (2019)
I feel perpetually late to the party on just about everything these days; mirroring real life I suppose as I am always late to any party (because who wants to be first? Unless it’s a good friend and then I get there early to make sure I can talk to them before the party starts…
The Falcon Takes Over (1942)
A loose adaptation of Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely with George Sanders as the Falcon instead of Marlowe, which more or less means the same plot but instead of Marlowe muttering we have Sanders kissing all the girls — almost literally! And he swans about in his white tie and tails about which I’ve no complaint….