doin’ my thing: If you saw Pixar’s “Inside Out,” you may remember the charming short cartoon that played before the film. “Lava” features a shaggy old volcano in the middle of the ocean. He’s surrounded by happy couples: Two gulls arc overhead, two fish leap in the water. But he sings miserably all day about how he longs for “someone to lava.” In despair he sinks to the ocean floor — but lo! A lady volcano (a much younger and... Read more
beautiful: February 2 is Candlemas, the Feast of the Purification, so here’s a medieval Candlemas carol. Revertere, revertere, The queen of bliss and of beauty. Behold what life that we run in, Frail to fall and ever like to sin Through our enemy’s enticing; Therefore we sing and cry to thee: Revertere, revertere, The queen of bliss and of beauty. more! and why not follow Eleanor Parker on Twitter? Read more
Shortly after I submitted my 2015 horror round-up aka every Halloween is self-parody Halloween, I found myself thinking, You know, maybe I only think contemporary indie horror doesn’t do enough male vulnerability because I still haven’t seen Creep. Now I’ve seen Creep and boy howdy, I was right. This is a truly skin-crawly, high-tension film about the increasingly uncomfortable relationship between Josef and the younger man, Aaron, whom he hires to film him for a day. We know the title... Read more
Mic.com quotes Ron Belgau and Wesley Hill, who may already be familiar to my readers; but to me the most poignant and powerful lines were from Seth Crocker, whom I’ve read now and then but tbh haven’t followed as closely: Seth Crocker, 28, is also a celibate gay Christian. A blogger for Building Bridges in War Zones, Crocker referred to his decision to abstain from sex as a “personal thing,” which stems from his belief that being in a relationship... Read more
Teenage me would be so obnoxious right now: The album was created in conjunction with a museum exhibition staged in London. Travels to Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Washington, D.C. with photographer/filmmaker Seamus Murphy inspired the songs, and titles include “River Anacostia” and “Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln.” The compositions coincided with a poetry book, The Hollow of The Hand. more Read more
at the University Bookman: Eve Tushnet’s self-published debut novel Amends is at full gallop out of the gate: J. Malachi MacCool was born in Berkeley, California, in the last decade of the Cold War, to parents who deserved better. He had a dilapidated body and a face like the last days of the Raj: jowly, discredited, eager for the final defeat.[…] His favorite term of praise was “civilizational,” and he lived by the creed, “Alcoholism is what raises man above... Read more
every Halloween is self-parody Halloween: Last night I watched The Final Girls, Todd Strauss-Schulson’s 2015 slasher parody about mourning. It’s charming, touching, and mostly successful—and a great example of the reasons 2015 specifically and the ’10s generally have been such great years for horror fans. 2015 was just a cornucopia of bloody fruit: the lush Gothic fantasy of Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, David Cronenberg’s nihilistic satire/poignant ghost story Maps to the Stars, and Jemaine Clement and Taika Watiti’s vampire... Read more
life lessons: …The first option, the win-the-lotto option, was jam a coat hanger down in the grease trap and see if it’s a plastic bag blocking it or something. (One time I found some sorry asshole’s underwear in a situation like that, but that’s a different story.) But it wasn’t. And it was now three minutes later and the restaurant wasn’t any less packed and there was shit water creeping up, so I did what you do if you want... Read more
Let’s start with an op-ed in the Gotham Gazette showing how easy it is to camouflage increased punishment and surveillance as “support services”: “More Evidence Punitive NYPD Youth Programs Fail”: This week the New York Times revealed the content of an internal NYPD report showing that a much lauded juvenile crime program doesn’t work. It’s yet another example of misguided punitive policing, offering little by way of actual progress. Originally developed under the title “Juvenile Robbery Intervention Program” (J-RIP), it... Read more
I saw Carol, the Todd Haynes/Patricia Highsmith ‘5os lesbian drama, at the tail end of last year. I haven’t written about it until now because it was so jagged–parts really worked, although I wasn’t sure I wanted them to, and the remainder was so off-putting that I just didn’t feel like talking about it. But writing that review of Rat Bohemia helped me figure out why the film didn’t work for me: It’s really two movies, set in two entirely... Read more
Eve Tushnet
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