Hello from February

Everything I watched and read last month

February was historically cold so I spent much of it indoors reading or watching things. I also got to see the beautiful Caspar David Fredrich show at the MET! Seeing Wanderer above the Sea of Fog in person was like seeing a celebrity!

Books:

(I’m just now realising that all the books I read this month start with the letter ‘E’. Odd.)

At my first book club of the year, I declared that my era of being generous and finding something to love in every book was over. I was going to be a hater from then on. Either I’m discovering that it’s harder to be a hater than I thought, or I have impeccable taste because I found myself giving all 3 of these books 5 stars on Goodreads.

1. The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk - This was a book club book suggested by my friend Anshika. I was absolutely over the moon at the pick because it is set in a TB sanatorium. For those who might not know, I had TB a few years ago and have made it the most annoying part of my personality and sense of humor since. I recovered and now I have 'constant TB fun fact disease’. Anyway, though I enjoyed the background of coughing blood into hankies, this book is more about gender than TB. It is a lot of sitting around a dining table drinking strong, homemade liquor and talking about how women are inferior. The subtitle is “A health resort horror story” and though the mood is more creepy fairy tail than a horror story, I did have to avoid reading while I was alone in the house. In retrospect, it was a slow book but while I was reading it, I found it perfectly paced. The writing is lush and the setting so vivid that you can really only read so much of it at a time.

2. Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad - I read this for the Book Club Bar book club hosted by the amazing Liv Stratman. It is about a Palestinian British actress who visits her sister in Haifa and becomes involved in a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. It isn’t overly didactic or self-serious (as books about tHE rOle oF ARt tend to be). We get a lot of the quotidian problems and practices involved in putting on a show (which I loved) and a lot of the logistics and inconveniences of trying to do this in this specific corner of the world. There’s a lot of sitting in the car for and shuttling across checkpoints but these bits of the book don’t feel tedious. I thought this was a perfect premise beautifully executed.

3. Educated by Tara Westover - Okay, I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but I had never read this incredibly buzzy memoir before. My first gig this year was to illustrate a portrait for a personal anecdote for The New Yorker. I can’t remember if the draft had a writer’s name but the sample spread with the illustration placed into the issue said ‘Tara Westover’. The rest of the text was all placeholder text and in the past, these sample layouts have had placeholder writer’s names too so I assumed that Tara Westover was just a famous author they were using as a placeholder for the piece. Fast forward to last month when the piece went out and I realized I had my drawing sitting next to a rare personal essay from the actual Tara Westover. Crazy. I picked up her book from the library the next day and then compulsively read it over a day and a half. I don’t think I’ve read anyone talk about their own experiences with such clarity. Her story is extraordinary and as a reader, you want a neat dealing out of blame for all the hardship involved she approaches the story with a great deal of empathy towards all parties involved. What results is an account of a family who failed their children (and often each other) as a result of their own wounded ways of engaging with the world.

Shows:

• Naruto ep 1-50 - I’m trying desperately to get back into anime and have got it into my head that I need to stop fooling around and tackle the two big ones: Naruto and One Piece (why? I do not have a good answer). For about 20 episodes I thought this was the most juvenile crap ever. I continued only because of the encouragement of a couple of friends and the fact that I have a hard time dropping something once I’ve started it. It only took a couple of episodes after my initial 20 episode slog to get into the momentum of it. I spent many freezing cold evenings in bed with takeout, blowing through 10 episodes at a stretch. I’m afraid I’ll only be able to give you an opinion on this when I’m actually all the way through

• Severance S2 (Obviously) - I leave every episode thinking it was the best episode of television I’ve seen. I hope the show really is as tightly plotted as it seems because if this one pulls a LOST I don’t think I could recover. (There’s only room for one fuck-up show in my life. I rewatch LOST every couple of years)

• The White Lotus S3 - It is getting harder to buy that people are happily flocking to this hotel chain after what I have to assume is one PR disaster after another. I agree with the consensus that this season is fun, just a little slow. The White Lotus is at its best when it’s making us stew in the distance between the hotel and the community it’s in, which is why I thought S2 was its weakest and why S3 feels like a refocusing in my opinion.

• Mo S1 - Sometimes Netflix still throws up gems like this. This is about a family of Palestinian refugees endlessly waiting for their asylum case to go through. Most of the time it is a very funny show. The rest of the time it is devastating. I loved it.

• Pulling S1 - Nothing to say, sometimes I need a little fix of Sharon Horgan.

Movies:

• Hairy Tail (Iranian) - My friend Anshika and I caught this as part of the Iranian Film Festival here in New York. This is one of the most delightful things I’ve ever watched. I generally find the Wes Anderson approach to aesthetics a little contrived, I think the problem is I can’t conceive of what he’s going for/trying to evoke. That was until I watched this movie. It is operating within such a tight and specific aesthetic framework while still allowing its characters to be people (something I think Wes Anderson movies lack!). It is hilarious and so charming. I don’t know how to recommend this because I’m not sure its on any streaming service but if you have the opportunity to watch it I’d jump.

• The Substance - Demi Moore should have won the Oscar for this gross, weird movie. The production design is so tight. Like Hairy Tale, we see only a few locations and objects but these are meticulously designed. The production design is generally very slick and stylish which made up for how gross the body horror was. I watched this over the course of a whole day because I had to keep taking breaks. Conceptually, this isn’t a complicated movie but I ultimately think that’s a good thing. I think there’s merit in exploring an unoriginal idea sincerely or thoroughly.

• The Idea of You - I know this is not a popular opinion but I loved this movie. I think people are being extra critical because the main character is older than your typical rom-com heroine but I think this movie is no less entertaining/ good than a good rom-com. In fact, I think there’s a little more care/ attention given to the push and pull between the relationship and the individuals involved. I also see it as a good thing that this reads like fanfiction (some of my favourite stories are fanfiction! No I won’t tell you which ones!).

• Babygirl - My All Fours loving book club was excited about this movie so I watched it but I hated it. This is a movie about things happening to people, rather than people doing things and I find that completely uninteresting.

• 21 Jump Street - My boyfriend had this mentioned to him at a party we were both at, realised I had never seen it and so marched us both home to watch. I enjoyed it immensely while watching but haven’t thought about it since. I actually forgot I watched it while making a list for this wrap up. Sorry

  Shantanu

• Ghost in the Shell - I loved this movie, but I didn’t realize I’d been avoiding the deep, uncomfortable feeling that Angel’s Egg (also by Mamoru Oshii) gave me for over 10 years until I watched the final part of this movie set in the abandoned natural history museum. This is another film that deals with an old/unoriginal idea but approaches it with attention to detail and sincerity. The animation is incredibly beautiful as well. I had to rewind parts of this movie because the backgrounds were so stunning that I kept getting distracted for several minutes. 

• Tank Girl - Such a weird movie. Has a lot of heart but I’m not sure I loved it. There were parts of the world-building that had a strange amount of attention to detail but the whole movie ultimately fits too loosely together for me to have loved it.

• A Real Pain - I loved this movie but I’m told by my hard-to-please roommate Phiroze that I am generously assuming a level of self-awareness in the filmmaking that doesn’t actually exist. Keiran Culkin is not a supporting character.

• Good Luck to You Leo Grande - After hearing that I didn’t like Babygirl, my friend Anoushka kindly invited me over to watch this. The tone is very Great Exotic Marigold Hotel (I really don’t know how else to describe this very specific, family-friendly, charming British movie vibe) but it takes what appears to be a popular premise right now and asks “Okay, but how would that actually go for most people?”. Loved!

• The Disciple - Most of this movie was the second showing on the movie night where we watched Tank Girl. This is a very beautifully put-together movie that’s quite slow and very disheartening. Its about realizing very slowly that you don’t have what it takes to meet your own expectations in the discipline you love. Yikes.