#Memoire 63

[themaeve]

AHHHHHH! NEW CASE STUDY OF VANITAS CHAPTER! ITS BACK!

Oh yeah that's right we were in the midst of this Dham arc.

Well time for some all too relatable pain as Dante and Johann have to deal with being questioned and assaulted by THE LITERAL CHURCH

The chapter was really good. Like, it fucking hurt to read, but it was so good. Having dealt with mostly just Roland the human Golden Retriever and Olivier his dog-handler, and of course everyone's favorite traumatized murder baby Astolfo, it was different to see these Chaseurs as the cold and calculating killers they are. It wasn't over the top, it was simple "We are gonna hurt you and maybe kill you cause we can, whether you tell us what we want to know is irrelevant. No one here will stop us, and as long as no one knows, we won't get in any trouble for it."

Like, "Oh yeah, these guys ARE terrifying assholes, I forgot."

But the dialogue about the Dhams really hits this chapter.

"They're a real eyesore"

"They dress like they're advertising themselves as Dhams"

"Dhams should make like Dhams and live in the shadows, holding their breath"

And then Dante's internal thoughts, the fleeting hope that someone will come to help,

"Who exactly is someone"

"Who'd show up for us?"

"This world treats us like it can't even see us."

And he goes for the gun in his jacket... God it fucking hits. I say it every time, but so much dialogue in this manga can just have the names of things and people swapped out and you could believe it applies to so many marginalized groups. It feels more authentic than a lot of manga and stories I read. Don't know why. That's just probably my queer ass reading too much into these chapters as my own experiences, but fuck. I won't lie that I felt the connection with Dante keeping his gun in the same inner jacket pocket I keep my knife in my jacket. The same jacket with pins that people say I'm "advertising as queer" with. Johann fucking pleading for Dante not to draw his gun cause he knows his partner is gonna die if he tries. That these church goons are looking for an excuse to pin them as the aggressors so they can execute them.

And right as shit is about to happen, Domi shows up. DOMI!!!!!!!

Perfect way for Domi to start making up for her casual prejudice against Dante and Johann earlier. Domi sticks her neck out for them, against 2 FUCKING CHASSEUR PALADINS OF THE CHURCH! Like, yeah Domi is fucking awesome and powerful and an influential vampire noble, but 2 Paladins? They could kill her if things go wrong. But my girl is still here sticking her neck out for Dante and Johann. Congrats Domi, you have a chance to use your Vampire noble privilege to finally be the Dham ally you thought you were.

I love it. I love this manga so much.

[briebysabs]

Ngl Johann mad sus in this chapter.

Johann you a little chill rn. “Oh he’s just trying to be rational.” He wasn’t rational when Vanitas held Dante at knifepoint.

This situation is even worse than that imo so what we doing?

If Johann is Spider does Gano even know? I doubt the mask had ever come off and I think it’ll be hilarious if when they meet again with Ruthven, Johann nearly chokes him to death for hurting Dante. And Gano is flabbergasted he’s been working with a dham this whole time.

Btw am I the only one that think Ogier’s worse than Gano? I mean I don’t hate either of them with passion, mochijun can write an asshole.

But Ogier is the one who snuck scissors to a 9-year old who lost his whole family, smiling while suggesting to off himself.

That’s worse than anything Gano can do imo.

[liesweliveby]

going to scream

[asogikazumas]

memoire 63 - Quelqu'un

[defjux]

64 of my favorite Hip Hop releases of 2024 Anything outside of the top 20-30 the order doesn't really matter much, but I think all of these releases are dope and worth your time. I'll post another list soon with the rest of my favorite albums from this year in other genres, but the hip hop list is tradition for me at this point. Hopefully there's something new here for you to enjoy. I'm sure there's a few releases that went under the radar for me, so if anyone has suggestions i'm all ears. As always, the album titles below will have the bandcamp link/spotify url as a hyperlink if either are available. Oh yeah, feel free to let me know what your favorite albums of the year were, i'd like to know - any genre, it doesn't have to just be hip hop. Peace. Chart with Album Titles included

1. ELUCID - REVELATOR 2. Ka - The Thief Next To Jesus 3. AKAI SOLO - DREAMDROPDRAGON 4. Mach-Hammy - #RICHAXXHAITIAN 5. Cavalier - Different Type Time 6. The Fortunate Ones (Anwar HighSigh & Dr. Quandary) - RESIN 7. Armand Hammer - BLK LBL 8. Kenny Segal & K-The-I??? - Genuine Dexterity 9. ShrapKnel - Nobody Planning To Leave 10. Sunmundi & klwn cat - Lived and Born 11. Nakama - EMBERGO_ 12. Lee Scott - To Tame A Dead Horse 13. Dead Players - Faster Than the Speed of Death 14. Oliver The 2nd & Heather Grey - Desert Camo 15. Navy Blue - Memoirs in Armour 16. Nuse Tyrant - Juxtaposed Echoes 17. Phiik & Lungs - Carrot Season 18. Nickelus F - MMCHT 19. DJ Muggs & Raz Fresco - The Eternal Now 20. Joshua Virtue - Black Box: JOSHUA IS DEAD

21. Duncecap & Steel Tipped Dove - The Need To Know 22. Jak Tripper - The Wild Dark 23. Mary Sue - Voice Memos From A Winter In China 24. Midnight Sons - Money Has No Owners 25. Revival Season - Golden Age Of Self Snitching 26. JPEGMAFIA - I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU 27. Boldy James & Conductor Williams - Across The Tracks 28. Sasco - The Hottest Year on Record 29. yungmorpheus - WAKING UP AND CHOOSING VIOLENCE 30. Hester Valentine - Valenta 31. Deca & Deal. - Bough 32. Serengeti - KDIV 33. Mavi - Shadowbox 34. cunabear - What Dollar$ Can't Buy You 35. Rap Man Gavin & postureless - Memories, Dreams, Reflections 36. Sadistik & Maulskull - Oblivion Theater 37. Oddisee - And Yet Still 38. Roc Marciano - MARCIOLOGY 39. Noveliss & Hir-O - Cyberpunk Rhapsody 40. Tyler, the Creator - Chromakopia 41. Rich Jones & SINAI. - Sour Dub 42. Freddie Gibbs - You Only Die 1nce 43. Vince Staples - Dark Times 44. Javi Darko - DEATH OF AN IMMORTAL 45. bromethugzine - THUG ZINE issue 002: WORLD-SPIRIT 46. Teller Bank$ & Ed Glorious - The Pride & Glory 47. Nxworries - WHY LAWD? 48. Cavalier & Quelle Chris - Death Tape 2 49. R.A.P. Ferreira - The First Fist to Make Contact When We Dap 50. Lupe Fiasco - Samurai 51. Lt Headtrip X Bloodmoney Perez - EMBLEMS 52. Chuck Strangers - A Forsaken Lover's Plea 53. Daniel Son & Futurewave - BUSHMAN BODEGA 54. MIKE & Tony Seltzer - Pinball 55. Kendrick Lamar - GNX 56. Estee Nack - SYSTEMATICALLY WE WERE NEVER FREE 57. Ja'king the Divine - Children of the Scorned 58. Big Flowers x Messiah Musik - Save The Bees 59. Shape - Midnight Geometry 60. Sleep Sinatra & bloomcycle - Memory(ummm…) 61. Skyzoo - Keep Me Company 62. Common & Pete Rock - The Auditorium, Vol. 1 63. NAHreally & The Expert - BLIP 64. IMP - Idle Hands

[mindblowingscience]

The first female space commander will be featured in a new documentary. The story of retired NASA astronaut Eileen Collins will be retold in "Spacewoman," a documentary coming in 2025 based on Collins' memoir "Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars" (Arcade, 2021) co-written with space historian Jonathan Ward. Collins, who flew four times in space, served as pilot on two space shuttle missions (STS-63 and STS-84 in February 1995 and May 1997, respectively) and commander of crew on another two spaceflights (STS-93 in July 1999, and STS-114 in July to August 2005).

Continue Reading.

[seeinganewlight]

2024 books read

2024 goal: 150 books

january: 1 - heartstopper vol. 1 → alice oseman (reread) 2 - heartstopper vol. 2 → alice oseman (reread) 3 - heartstopper vol. 3 → alice oseman (reread) 4 - heartstopper vol. 4 → alice oseman (reread) 5 - heartstopper vol. 5 → alice oseman 6 - a fragile enchantment → allison saft 7 - some shall break → ellie marney (audiobook) 8 - only if you're lucky → stacy willingham (arc) 9 - over my dead body: a witchy graphic novel → sweeney boo 10 - notes on an execution → danya kukafka (physical & audiobook) 11 - murder on the orient express → agatha christie (reread) 12 - our wives under the sea → julia armfield (physical & audiobook) 13 - the invocations → krystal sutherland (arc) 14 - red string theory → lauren kung jessen 15 - the breakup tour → emily wibberley & austin siegemund-broka (arc) 16 - the name drop → susan lee 17 - the secret of the old clock → carolyn keene (reread) 18 - bright young women → jessica knoll (audiobook) 19 - last call at the local → sarah grunder ruiz (audiobook) 20 - no one can know → kate alice marshall

february: 21 - worst wingman ever → abby jimenez 22 - drop, cover, and hold on → jasmine guillory 23 - with any luck → ashley poston 24 - the atlas six → olivie blake (reread, audiobook) 25 - that's not my name → megan lally 26 - not here to stay friends → kaitlyn hill 27 - this golden state → marit weisenberg 28 - today tonight tomorrow → rachel lynn solomon (reread, annotation) 29 - past present future → rachel lynn solomon (arc, annotation) 30 - the atlas paradox → olivie blake (reread, audiobook) 31 - the guest list → lucy foley (audiobook) 32 - in the market for murder → t.e. kinsey (audiobook) 33 - the neighbor favor → kristina forest 34 - in the mix → mandy gonzalez 35 - everyone in my family has killed someone → benjamin stevenson 36 - the seven year slip → ashley poston 37 - veronica ruiz breaks the bank → elle cosimano (audiobook) 38 - finlay donovan rolls the dice → elle cosimano (audiobook) 39 - the simmonds house kills → meaghan dwyer (arc)

march: 40 - the mysterious case of the alperton angels → janice hallett 41 - the book of cold cases → simone st. james 42 - what the river knows → isabel ibañez (audiobook) 43 - cut loose! → ali stroker & stacy davidowitz 44 - how i'll kill you → ren destefano 45 - the reappearance of rachel price → holly jackson (arc) 46 - when no one is watching → alyssa cole (audiobook) 47 - outofshapeworthlessloser: a memoir of figure skating, f*cking up, and figuring it out → gracie gold (audiobook) 48 - julius caesar → william shakespeare (rerad, audiobook) 49 - the family plot → megan collins (audiobook) 50 - if we were villains → m.l. rio (reread) 51 - alone with you in the ether → olivie blake (physical & audiobook) 52 - disappearance at devil's rock → paul tremblay (audiobook)

april: 53 - shakespeare: romeo and juliet graphic novel → martin powell & eva cabrera 54 - shakespeare: macbeth graphic novel → martin powell & f. daniel perez 55 - shakespeare: julius caesar graphic novel → carl bown & eduardo garcia 56 - shakespeare: a midsummer night's dream graphic novel → nel yomtov & berenice muniz 57 - twelfth knight → alexene farol follmuth (arc) 58 - kill for me, kill for you → steve cavanagh 59 - murder road → simone st. james 60 - everyone on this train is a suspect → benjamin stevenson 61 - listen for the lie → amy tintera 62 - king cheer → molly horton booth, stephanie kate strohm, jamie green 63 - twelfth night (musical adaptation) → kwame kwei-armah & shaina taub 64 - in juliet's garden → judy elliot mcdonald 65 - fat ham → james ijames 66 - death by shakespeare → philip l. nicholas, jr 67 - a good girl's guide to murder → holly jackson (reread) 68 - good girl, bad blood → holly jackson (reread) 69 - as good as dead → holly jackson (reread) 70 - dark corners → megan goldin (audiobook) 71 - the one that got away with murder → trish lundy (audiobook) 72 - funny story → emily henry 73 - imogen says nothing → aditi brennan kapil 74 - people we meet on vacation → emily henry (audiobook, reread)

may: 75 - episode thirteen → craig dilouie 76 - the girls i've been → tess sharpe (reread) 77 - the girl in question → tess sharpe (arc) 78 - wild about you → kaitlyn hill (arc) 79 - just for the summer → abby jimenez 80 - my best friend's exorcism → grady hendrix 81 - second first date → rachel lynn solomon 82 - the ballad of darcy & russell → morgan matson 83 - the good, the bad, and the aunties → jesse q. sutanto (audiobook) 84 - truly, madly, deeply → alexandria bellefleur 85 - your blood, my bones → kelly andrew 86 - amy & roger's epic detour → morgan matson (reread) 87 - romancing mister bridgerton → julia quinn (reread) 88 - the viscount who loved me → julia quinn (reread) 89 - bittersweet in the hollow → kate pearsall 90 - to sir phillip, with love → julia quinn (reread) 91 - when he was wicked → julia quinn (reread) 92 - it's in his kiss → julia quinn (reread) 93 - on the way to the wedding → julia quinn (audiobook, reread) 94 - emma → jane austen (audiobook, reread)

june: 95 - first lie wins → ashley elston 96 - we got the beat → jenna miller 97 - firekeeper's daughter → angeline boulley 98 - chlorine → jade song (audiobook) 99 - what stalks among us → sarah hollowell 100 - hollow fires → samira ahmed (audiobook) 101 - part of your world → abby jimenez 102 - the road trip → beth o'leary 103 - yours truly → abby jimenez 104 - finally fitz → marisa kanter 105 - the last love song → kalie holford

july: 106 - dead girls walking → sami ellis (audiobook) 107 - home is where the bodies are → jeneva rose 108 - we used to live here → marcus kliewer 109 - the children on the hill → jennifer mcmahon (audiobook) 110 - what moves the dead → t. kingfisher 111 - my throat an open grave → tori bovalino 112 - dashed → amanda quain (arc) 113 - asking for a friend → kara h.l. chen (arc) 114 - beach read → emily henry (reread, audiobook) 115 - book lovers → emily henry (reread, audiobook) 116 - happy place → emily henry (reread, audiobook) 117 - you have a match → emma lord (reread, annotation) 118 - bonnie & clyde musical script → ivan menchell (reread) 119 - such charming liars → karen m. mcmanus (arc) 120 - she left → stacie grey (audiobook) 121 - let the games begin → rufaro faith mazarura (audiobook) 122 - death at morning house → maureen johnson (arc)

august: 123 - cleat cute → meryl wilsner (audiobook) 124 - i wish you would → eva des lauriers 125 - the break-up pact → emma lord (arc) 126 - water for elephants → sara gruen 127 - when you get the chance → emma lord (reread, annotation) 128 - come out, come out → natalie c. parker (arc) 129 - my lady jane → cynthia hand, brodi ashton, jodi meadows 130 - the lies of alma blackwell → amanda glaze (arc)

september: 131 - the spare room → andra bartz 132 - late bloomer → mazey eddings (audiobook) 133 - savor it → tarah dewitt (audiobook) 134 - triple sec → t.j. alexander (audiobook) 135 - the skeleton key → erin kelly 136 - the examiner → janice hallett (arc) 137 - the dark we know → wen-yi lee (audiobook) 138 - pretty girls → karin slaughter 139 - a good girl's guide to murder → holly jackson (reread, annotation) 140 - lady macbeth → ava reid 141 - the pumpkin spice café → laurie gilmore 142 - the main character → jaclyn goldis (audiobook) 143 - queen macbeth → val mcdermid (arc) 144 - the cinnamon bun bookstore → laurie gilmore (audiobook)

october: 145 - midnight on beacon street → emily ruth verona (audiobook) 146 - make me a mixtape → jennifer whiteford (arc) 147 - haunt sweet home → sarah pinsker 148 - graveyard shift → m.l. rio 149 - the bitter end → alexa donne (arc) 150 - morbidly yours → ivy fairbanks 151 - someone in the attic → andrea mara 152 - a new lease on death → olivia blacke (arc) 153 - the christmas tree farm → laurie gilmore 154 - staged → elle cosimano 155 - the reunion dinner → jesse q. sutanto 156 - a crime of fashion → emma rosenblum 157 - the nosy neighbor → nita prose 158 - one lucky subscriber → kellye garrett 159 - a classic case → alicia thompson 160 - interview with the vampire → anne rice (audiobook) 161 - horror movie → paul tremblay (audiobook) 162 - everything is poison → joy mccullough (arc) 163 - romeo and juliet → william shakespeare (reread) 164 - no place left to hide → megan lally (arc) 165 - macbeth → william shakespeare (reread)

november: 166 - dinner for vampires → bethany joy lenz (audiobook) 167 - make the season bright → ashley herring blake 168 - a bánh mì for two → trinity nguyen (audiobook) 169 - merriment and mayhem → alexandria bellefleur 170 - a novel love story → ashley poston 171 - guilt and ginataan → mia p. manansala

december: 172 - looking for smoke → k.a. cobell (audiobook) 173 - seven lively suspects → katy watson 174 - the rival → emma lord (arc) 175 - a lively midwinder murder → katy watson 176 - the cheerleaders → kara thomas (rerad, audiobook) 177 - the champions → kara thomas (audiobook) 178 - a guide to the dark → meriam metou (audiobook)

[bobbiesquares]

Marisha wore the Autumn Memoir Skater Dress by Rogue + Wolf at The Legend of Vox Machina Fantastic Fest event on 9/23/2024! The dress is available in sizes XS-3XL for $55 - $63 and is available through the brand’s website.

Links to original photo and dress website will be added in the reblog!

[adambadeau]

Happy Birthday, Mr. Badeau!

Born 1831 in New York City, Adam Badeau was a prolific author, theatre critic, and Union soldier who served on General U. S. Grant’s staff as a brevet lieutenant colonel from 1864-1869, when he left the army due to the lingering effects of a severe injury at the Siege of Port Hudson.

Badeau aided his close friend General Grant in writing not only a biography of his life but, toward the end of Grant’s life, his memoirs. That is, until they quarreled and eventually he was dismissed.

Badeau published his works in the New York Sunday Times under the pen name “The Vagabond”, also the title of his published 1859 work. He died in 1895 at 63 years old and was buried in New Jersey.

the most speculative idea about Adam Badeau is not about his many accomplishments or works, nor his friendship with General Grant, but rather, his alleged homosexuality. Badeau was said to have had liaisons with fellow Union soldiers- and the greatest actor of the day and “100 Nights’ Hamlet”, Edwin Booth.

Booth and Badeau were extremely close in the years leading up to the Civil War. They frequently wrote to and about each other, and Adam helped keep Edwin from drinking, especially after the death of the actor’s first wife, Mary Devlin. In The Vagabond, Badeau writes about his “Night With the Booths”, where he and Booth are looking through Edwin’s fathers’ old things. Badeau recalls Edwin reading to him until Adam fell asleep on his shoulder, where they remained. Their relationship was strong during the early 1860’s & 1870’s.

Adam Badeau’s sexuality has been explored by many a historian and Civil War buff, as well as various pieces of media, including the musical Tyrants. He is most well remembered for his relationship with Booth, a charming story, indeed, but Badeau’s good character and talented work, as well as his role in the war effort, are not to be forgotten.

[retracexcviii]

vnc chapter day

GG joker posted this wonderful cover of the chapter on Twitter, I love it.

[heyho-simonrussellbeale]

Having played parts from Prospero to Stalin, Hamlet and now the poet AE Housman, Simon Russell Beale is convinced he has one of the best jobs in the world. Why? Every new role offers a new area for intellectual investigation, not least when he gets to take on the logical arguments and ‘linguistic fireworks’ of one of his friend Tom Stoppard’s plays, he tells Fergus Morgan

You cannot complete acting – but if you could, Simon Russell Beale would be coming close. Over a three-decade career, he has taken on dozens of classic roles in canonical plays: Konstantin in The Seagull, Ferdinand in The Duchess of Malfi, Oswald in Ghosts, Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, the title characters of Edward II, John Gabriel Borkman and Uncle Vanya, and loads more.

And, when it comes to Shakespeare, there are few parts the 63-year-old has not played. Hamlet? Tick. King Lear? Tick. Macbeth? Tick. Richard II and Richard III? Tick, tick. Benedick, Iago, Malvolio, Leontes? Tick, tick, tick, tick. Falstaff and Prospero? Tick, tick.

With a theatrical résumé as comprehensive as that, where does Russell Beale go next? In a recent interview with the Telegraph to mark the release of A Piece of Work, the memoir he “slightly sheepishly” wrote, the actor said he would be keen on playing Cleopatra. Why not? It would not be his first foray into gender-swapped Shakespeare: he played both Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Desdemona in Othello as a schoolboy.

“Unfortunately, I wasn’t being serious,” Russell Beale says. “I was being facetious, although I did see Mark Rylance do it 20 years ago and it was sensational. It is one of the great parts, but I don’t think that would work. It would probably be too scary for the audience.

“I would love to do Falstaff on stage as I’ve only done that on film,” he continues. “I would like to do another King Lear. I wasn’t particularly happy with my Macbeth, so I’d quite like to do that again one day. I’m getting a bit old now, though, so it has become slightly difficult. Perhaps one day I should try my hand at directing. I don’t know, really.”

Before he has a go at directing, or revisits Lear, or has a stab at Cleopatra, Russell Beale will be playing poet AE Housman in Blanche McIntyre’s revival of Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love at Hampstead Theatre in north London. Our interview is taking place via Zoom, with Russell Beale – black jumper, big beard – sat in an office somewhere inside the Swiss Cottage venue.

“There’s a very good novel here about Booth, the man who assassinated Lincoln,” Russell Beale remarks, browsing the bookshelves in front of him. “Anyway, nice to meet you.”

Russell Beale’s pre-interview bookshelf inspection confirms what he subsequently says about his character, about his approach to playing parts and about his professional motivations. He is, first and foremost, driven by an insatiable intellectual curiosity. He once described acting as “three-dimensional literary criticism”.

“I have one of the best jobs in the world, really,” he says. “Every single project potentially offers a new area of study. I know that sounds sort of dry, but if someone says: ‘I’d like you to do a play about a poet in the late 19th century who also happened to be the greatest classical scholar of his time,’ I think: ‘Wow.’ And, for a very short period of time, I get to become a bit of an expert on AE Housman.

“Or take Samuel Foote,” he continues, referencing the 18th-century actor and title character of Ian Kelly’s play Mr Foote’s Other Leg, which he played at Hampstead in 2015. “Doctor Johnson called Foote the most famous man in England, but I’d never heard of him. Now I could tell you all about him – where he lived, how he was arrested for sodomy and the legal case that followed. That sort of intellectual buzz is, I think, the most interesting thing of all about acting.”

Different jobs have different intellectual appeals, says Russell Beale. Some plays are stimulating for their historical subject matter. Shakespearean work is all about “digging around in this incredibly complicated, malleable script to find the emotional life of a character”. Other projects are attractive on a conceptual level, he says, like Joe Hill-Gibbins’ drastically cut, fast-forwarded staging of Richard II at London’s Almeida Theatre in 2018.

“I was far too old to play Richard II,” Russell Beale says. “I’d sort of assumed that was one part I would never do. Then along came this director who wanted to do it in a completely different way. It was incredibly cut down. It was staged straight-through with all the other characters milling around on stage. That was the challenge there.”

From screen to Stoppard

Where, then, does Russell Beale’s work in film and television fit in, beyond boosting his bank balance? His screen CV is not as formidable as his theatrical résumé, but it still encompasses Armando Iannucci’s comedy The Death of Stalin, the latest series of HBO’s blockbuster House of the Dragon, and the forthcoming Downton Abbey film.

“I suppose I just do that for fun, although I do have an interest in how those projects work,” Russell Beale says. “Take House of the Dragon. I remember wondering how they physically achieve a show like that. That was intriguing to me. I thought: ‘How the hell do you do a great big castle in a thunderstorm?’ It was this huge set with water literally cascading down the walls. The sheer skill was extraordinary. That was fascinating.”

If any writer could satisfy Russell Beale’s voracious intellectual appetite, it is Stoppard, whose plays frequently dazzle with their virtuosic use of history and intertextuality. Think of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, his existential 1966 riff on Hamlet that echoes Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Or 1972’s metaphysical murder-mystery Jumpers, perhaps the most philosophically and athletically gymnastic play ever written.

Those Stoppard plays are the only two that Russell Beale has performed in until now. He played Guildenstern at the National Theatre in 1995, having previously performed in the play as a teenager, then took on the lead role in Jumpers – the philosopher George Moore – at the same venue in 2003. That production transferred to New York, and provided Russell Beale’s Broadway debut. The New York Times critic Ben Brantley hailed a “dazzling” performance of “sharp inventiveness and peerless emotional depth”.

“I’ve only done two Stoppard plays, but I’ve always been quite fierce in defending him against accusations of being over-intellectualised,” Russell Beale says. “Stoppard is intellectual, of course. He plays intellectual games. But what Stoppard always comes down to is people feeling passionate about something, usually another person. That, I think, is fundamentally the most important thing about his writing.

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is about two men who are lost in a world they don’t understand,” he continues. “Jumpers is about trying to cling on to a broken marriage. I saw The Real Thing recently at the Old Vic, which I saw with the great Stephen Dillane a couple of decades ago. That play is more directly about love than anything else.”

Playing with words

The Invention of Love, which premiered at the National in 1997, begins in the afterlife. Housman, dead at 77 in 1936, stands on the bank of the mythical river Styx, preparing to board a ferry. The play then unfolds through Housman’s memories of his time studying classics at the University of Oxford, with the older Housman – played by Russell Beale – interacting with his younger self, played by Matthew Tennyson. At the heart of its fizzing academic ideas is Housman’s unrequited love for fellow scholar Moses Jackson.

“The play is very complicated,” says Russell Beale. “This morning, we were rehearsing this very elaborate scene with all these 19th-century academics playing croquet. Stoppard ties in so many references to Victorian cultural icons like Jerome K Jerome and Henry Liddell and Lewis Carroll, too. Everyone has these great arias about philosophy and art.

“Underneath that, though, it is about an old man remembering his love for another man,” Russell Beale continues. “It is about a particular event in their lives, a rowing trip on the river when they were both at Oxford. It is about memory. It is about what you do with a love like that. It is about what a love like that means at the end of your life.”

The “incredible enjoyable” challenge of performing the play, says Russell Beale, is really getting to grips with its intellectual complexities and “linguistic fireworks” – as is the case with most Stoppard plays. If you can master the tongue-twisting dialogue and head-scratching arguments, he says, then the profoundly emotional core of the drama will come.

“Years ago, I remember the actor John Wood, who was one of the great language magicians, talking about Bernard Shaw,” Russell Beale says. “Now, I don’t particularly like Bernard Shaw, but Wood said that if you observe all the punctuations that Bernard Shaw set down as indications of when to breathe and so on, he does the work for you. “It is sort of like that with Stoppard,” Russell Beale continues.

“It is like a technical exercise. You have to end the sentence when it ends and make sure you give yourself gaps to breathe. And then it is about the clarity of the argument. The play does explore emotion. The word ‘love’ is in the title, after all. But performing it is not an emotional thing. It is more about a series of arguments. If you can get the grammatical, syntactical construction of the sentences, and then the actual logic of the argument, then you are on your way.”

It helps, says Russell Beale, that director McIntyre read classics at Oxford herself.

“My God, she does know what she is talking about,” he says. “I have no idea what I’m talking about when it comes to Latin or Greek, but she does have that string to her bow.”

The admiration is mutual. Via email, McIntyre says that she finds Russell Beale “extraordinary”.

“I think he is our greatest living Stoppardian actor,” she writes. “The wit and depth of feeling he brings to the character are breathtaking. It’s a privilege to watch him work.”

It helps, too, that Russell Beale is friends with Stoppard, who turned 87 this year. In fact, he adds, he received a first-hand insight into the playwright’s process of putting The Invention of Love together nearly 30 years ago when performing at the National. “I met Tom, I think, when we did Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,” Russell Beale says. “My memory is that he was writing, or thinking about writing, The Invention of Love at the time, because I remember he gave me a lift home once because he was driving in the same direction, and he started talking about Oscar Wilde and Housman on the way.

“I’ve known Tom for years now,” Russell Beale adds. “He was in last week, actually. He was on great form. He likes revisiting his plays, I think. He reads the script very intently, as if he is rediscovering it. It is rather lovely to see him do that. It’s quite moving, actually.”

Russell Beale was born in Penang in what was then Malaya – now Malaysia – in January 1961, one of six children of military physician Peter Beale, who would later become the British Army’s surgeon general, and his wife Julia, who was also a doctor. He was sent to boarding school, first at St Paul’s Cathedral School, where he was a chorister, then at Bristol’s Clifton College.

It was there that Russell Beale first discovered his love for performance, both theatrical and musical – he is an accomplished pianist, oboist and singer, and frequently presents radio and television shows about classical music. He has often credited a stern English teacher called Brian Worthington with instilling in him that respect for intellectual rigour and academic curiosity.

He went on to study English at the University of Cambridge, where he threw himself into student drama and made friends with Tilda Swinton, then trained at Guildhall, initially as a singer before switching to acting, graduating in 1983.

He started his professional career at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, but his big break came two years later with a role in Women Beware Women at London’s Royal Court, alongside a young Gary Oldman. It was not until 1991, however, five years into his long relationship with the Royal Shakespeare Company, that Russell Beale felt like he could fully express himself on stage, when he was cast as Konstantin in a production of Chekhov’s The Seagull staged by the company’s director Terry Hands.

“Until then, I’d done a lot of comic parts,” Russell Beale says. “That was the first time somebody said: ‘No, you can do something serious. You can play someone with an emotional life that is serious.’ Terry did it deliberately, I think. He thought: ‘Here’s this guy who is being typecast and I’m going to cast him against type.’ And that changed my life. It led to people suggesting I do Hamlet and other stuff. I am enormously grateful to him.”

It was Hands, too, who forged one of the great collaborations of Russell Beale’s career, with director Sam Mendes. The pair first worked together at the RSC in the 1990s on productions of Troilus and Cressida, Richard III and The Tempest, then at the National Theatre on Othello in 1997 and, at the Donmar Warehouse, King Lear in 2014 and Twelfth Night in 2002, as well as on the globe-trotting production of The Lehman Trilogy in 2019.

“Sam and I have been doing stuff together for 30 years and it was Terry that put us together,” Russell Beale says. “Sam actually called me when Terry died in 2020. I was in the dressing room for The Lehman Trilogy in New York. He was very emotional. He told me Terry had died and that he was the one who had originally put us together. Terry was the one who said to Sam: ‘I think you’d like that actor over there.’”

There is an alternate reality in which Hands never cast Russell Beale as Konstantin in The Seagull and Russell Beale continued working as a comic actor. He would no doubt have been successful – witness his hilarious turn as spymaster Lavrenti Beria in The Death of Stalin – but he would not have plumbed the remarkable depths he has in this world.

What makes him stand out as an actor – and what has earned him countless accolades, including three Olivier awards, two BAFTAs, a Tony and a knighthood – is his ability to incarnate familiar characters in unexpected ways. He has played the majority of the most famous roles in the classical canon, but his interpretations are always invested with a distinct air of isolation or awkwardness. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he has frequently approached those roles at an unconventional age.

“In retrospect, my career sort of looks like this marvellous plan, but it wasn’t,” he says. “It was all an accident. I’ve done all the parts at the wrong age. I was a very old Hamlet and a very old Benedick, and a very young Richard III and a very old Richard III.”

Empathy with outsiders

Nicholas Hytner, another director with whom Russell Beale has a long relationship, having starred in his stagings of The Alchemist, Much Ado About Nothing and Collaborators at the National Theatre in 2006, 2007 and 2011 respectively, and, more recently his versions of A Christmas Carol and John Gabriel Borkman at the Bridge Theatre in 2020 and 2022, has said of Russell Beale: “He has extraordinary empathy with outsiders, the wounded, the foolish, the warped and the lonely. He hears their music and can sing it.”

“What did he say?” asks Russell Beale. “I’ve not heard that before. That is the most beautiful, lovely thing to say. And yes, I’m always excited by those characters. The most interesting parts are those that are looking in from the outside or confused about their position. I don’t know what that says about me. I’ve never interrogated it. I refuse to.” 

If Russell Beale does not interrogate his own interest in playing isolated, uncomfortable characters on stage, does he ever interrogate theatre’s wider role in society? “That’s a very interesting question,” he says. “I suppose it is always in the back of your mind. Perhaps theatre is a bit of a sideshow now, although Wicked has just been turned into a film, for God’s sake. The biggest movie of the year started as a theatre show. Perhaps theatre only has a relevance when it is adapted into a medium now.

“No, I don’t think that, actually,” he adds. “That implies it is all about numbers, that something is only important if a lot of people see it. I don’t believe that. I still believe theatre has weight and relevance. I suppose I would fall back on the Tom Stoppard argument in The Invention of Love: ‘There is no little too little to be worth having.’”

[lemonlyman-dotcom]

My 2024 TBR List So Far

I only read nine books in 2023 😭 compared to 51 in ‘22 and 63 in ‘21 I have fallen. I beg of you, my tumblr fam, please hold me accountable.

Does anybody have recommendations for books I should read in 2024? I try to read mostly books by female-identifying & BIPOC authors, and I am making it a goal this year to read more books by LGBTQ+ authors with a specific emphasis on trans authors. I enjoy magical realism & historical fiction (not sci-fi) and some of my favorite authors are Zadie Smith, Isabel Allende, Gabriel García Márquez, Brit Bennet, Susan Abulhawa, Yaa Gyasi. I also enjoy non-fiction like Joan Didion and Ross Gay’s essays, Samir’s Habib’s memoir about growing up queer in a Muslim family, Qian Julie Wang’s Beautiful Country destroyed me and I always love a good music memoir!

Tagging a few folks below the cut who I think have similar tastes to me, but I will take recommendations from anybody please!!!

Please help @welcometololaland (I know you share my love for GGM!), @never-blooms @ladytessa74 @chicgeekgirl89 @freneticfloetry @alrightbuckaroo @basilsunrise (music book recs?) @carlos-in-glasses (essays? Poetry that won’t put me to sleep 😂) @guardian-angle22 (my dog, I know you’ve got some recs for me), @lightningboltreader (some beach reads?), @liminalmemories21 (historical fiction?) @orchidscript (historical fiction??) @paperstorm (HISTORICAL FICTION???) @thisbuildinghasfeelings @tailoredshirt @theghostofashton (did I see you read like 50 books this year?) @carlos-tk (👀)

[magicaltear]

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34 Emma – Jane Austen 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal – Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

As found in the original post I saw by @macrolit

My total: 43/100

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: May 16, 2024

In his memoir Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens considered “why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring”. Many of us in the west have grown complacent, assuming that the horrors of the Holocaust would prevent this ancient prejudice from re-emerging. But as the conflict between Israel and Hamas escalates, few of us can be in any doubt that antisemitism has once again goose-stepped into the spotlight.

Of course, criticism of the Israeli government and its military strategy is entirely legitimate. So too is our profound concern for the innocents of Gaza and the many thousands of non-combatants who are losing their lives. But there is no denying the explicit anti-Jewish hatred that has accompanied these discussions in certain quarters. Criticise Israel all you like, but don’t try to tell me that Monday night’s daubing of the Shoah memorial in Paris with handprints of red paint was anything other than antisemitic.

Social media has opened our eyes to the prevalence of such sentiments. The other day I posted a link to my Substack piece about the Eurovision Song Contest on that hellsite now known as X. My focus in the article was on the narcissism of the “non-binary” performers, but one feminist activist decided to make it all about Israel. Underneath my post, she added an image of Eden Golan, the Israeli entry to the competition, with bloodstains photoshopped onto her dress. She went on to dismiss the victims of the October 7 pogrom as “silly ravers” and to blame the massacre on the IDF. Whatever else one might say about such views, it is clearly evidence of a complete absence of basic humanity.

This is sadly not uncommon. Recently we have seen protesters openly supporting Hamas, or even praising its acts of barbarism. A new poll has found that 63% of students currently protesting at US universities have at least some sympathy for Hamas. There have been overtly antisemitic statements, and Jews have been harassed on campus. It has been reported that at Columbia University, one protester cried out “We are Hamas” while another shouted at a group of Jewish students: “The 7 October is about to be every fucking day for you. You ready?” These are the very people who have spent the last few years calling anyone who dissents even slightly from their worldview a “fascist”, and yet they are blind to actual fascism when it emerges within their own ranks.

All of this has taken me by surprise, which perhaps reveals the extent of my naivety. Antisemitism is nothing new, and has assumed myriad and outlandish forms over the centuries. Our own country has not been immune; Jews were deported from England in 1290, only to be readmitted in 1656. Before then, only those who had converted to Christianity were allowed to remain; specially, they were able to reside at the Domus Conversorum in London, established by Henry III in 1232. Anti-Jewish sentiments were reignited by a plot to poison Elizabeth I in 1594, which was blamed on her physician Roderigo Lopes, a Portuguese man of Jewish ancestry who was executed for treason. This is the context in which the forced conversion of Shylock at the end of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice ought to be understood.

Unpleasant myths about Jews have abounded throughout history, some of which still linger in Islamic regimes and the darker crannies of the internet where neo-Nazis gather to wallow in their bile. The poisoning of wells by Jews was thought to have initiated the Black Death epidemic in 1348. This notion was still pervasive by the time Christopher Marlowe wrote his play The Jew of Malta in 1589 (consider Barabas’s mass extermination of an entire convent of nuns by means of “a precious powder”, or his boastful claim: “Sometimes I go about and poison wells”).

The hate-filled fantasies didn’t end there. The seventeenth-century preacher Thomas Calvert speculated that male Jews menstruated and murdered Christian infants to replenish their blood. In a 1656 pamphlet addressing the question of readmission, the puritan polemicist William Prynne stated that “Jews almost every year crucify one child, to the injury and contumely of Jesus”.

Those who have been paying attention will have noticed new forms of these blood libels recurring online in recent months, with many activists claiming that Israel is specifically targeting children in the conflict. For whatever reason, many opponents of the war cannot resist veering into antisemitic tropes. Most examples are coming from those who identify as “left-wing” and “progressive”, which just goes to show how antisemitism is not specific to any one political mindset. Its tendency to rematerialise in unexpected guises means that we ought to be eternally vigilant. I had never been able to grasp how Holocaust denial could be so widespread in the face of such unequivocal evidence. But having heard so many denials of the October 7 massacre, including scepticism from prominent left-wing commentators over whether rapes actually took place, I can see that such revisionism is more common than I assumed.

The unique horror of the Holocaust shows us that human civilisation might at any point collapse into the abyss. In Anthony Burgess’s novel Earthly Powers, the narrator Ken Toomey witnesses the immediate aftermath at Buchenwald, what he describes at the “lowest point in human history”. His newfound sense of humankind’s capacity for evil leads him to conclude that we cannot possibly have been created by God. This is the essence of despair.

The novelist Mervyn Peake was one of the first to see Bergen-Belsen after its liberation by allied forces. He visited the camp in the role of a war artist, and what he saw there haunted him forever. His final novel Titus Alone is a fragmentary and bleak affair, a consequence partly of his degenerative illness, but also of his psychological need to reckon with the evil he had glimpsed. It appears in the novel in the form of the “factory”, a chilling place of shadows and death, where identical faces stare out of countless windows and macabre scientific experiments are conducted within its walls.

One of Peake’s sketches from Belsen depicts a young girl, looking directly at the artist as she lies dying from consumption.

As he drew the girl, Peake was overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness and self-reproach. In the final stanza of his poem “The Consumptive. Belsen, 1945”, he tried to make sense of his feelings:

Her agony slides through me: am I glass That grief can find no grip Save for a moment when the quivering lip And the coughing weaker than the broken wing That, fluttering, shakes the life from a small bird Caught me as in a nightmare? Nightmares pass; The image blurs and the quick razor-edge Of anger dulls, and pity dulls. O God, That grief so glibly slides! The little badge On either cheek was gathered from her blood: Those coughs were her last words. They had no weight Save that through them was made articulate Earth’s desolation on the alien bed. Though I be glass, it shall not be betrayed, That last weak cough of her small, trembling head.

As Peake sketches the girl he struggles with the sheer futility of it all. He is troubled that his pity is fleeting, that even in the moment he is too focused on his task and not on the human being who lies dying before him. But is this really a lack of empathy, or a natural human reaction to the knowledge that there is nothing he can do to remedy the cruelties of the world?

The evil of the Holocaust serves as a reminder of what can happen when fascism prevails. We cannot afford to be complacent while antisemitism is on the rise and supposed progressives are cheering on those who openly wish to eliminate an entire race of people. If nothing else, we should do our utmost to ensure that the lessons of history are not forgotten.

[deadpresidents]

I stopped procrastinating and am finally reading Grant's autobiography. A few chapters in, I'm surprised by how readable and relatable they are. Having been raised on Mark Twain, how much influence did he have over the final version? Or are we reading most of Grant's original words?

The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (BOOK | KINDLE) really is a great book. It's not always easy to read things written in the 19th Century because the rhythm of the writing is usually so much more formal than we are used to now. But Grant's Memoirs flow really well, and I think anybody interested in the era should have Grant's book at the top of their reading list. I'd especially recommend checking out the annotated edition released in 2017 by Belknap Press/Harvard University Press (that's the version I linked at the beginning of the paragraph). But the beauty of Grant's book is that you don't need annotations because the prose is so clear and easy to read.

As for the authorship, there have been rumors about the part that Mark Twain played in the writing of the book ever since the book was finished literally a few days before Grant died in 1885. And the flames were also fanned by Grant's former military aide Adam Badeau who helped Grant in the early stages of the writing process and was bitter about not getting paid more money, so he also claimed to be Grant's ghostwriter. But while Twain did help with some editing, his major role was in getting the book published in the best way to ensure that Grant's family would benefit financially from its publication. Grant wrote the book because he was broke and dying, and he wanted to make sure his family was going to be okay. Twain didn't think the contract that Grant was about to sign with a publisher to write the book was fair and felt that Grant could make significantly more money selling the book via a subscription service (the original deal was supposed to net Grant 10% of the royalties; Twain's deal guaranteed Grant 70% of the royalties). So the most significant part that Twain played was in regard to the finances, which again was the reason why Grant was writing the book in the first place.

Twain definitely helped Grant with proofreading and literary advice throughout the writing process, but Grant had started writing the book before Twain was involved and had already been writing articles about his Civil War experiences for magazines and serials for a few years. There is a unique voice to Grant's writing style and I think it is clearly recognizable, especially in comparison to how other public figures wrote at the time. So, it's definitely Grant's book. Plus, the Library of Congress still has the original manuscript of Grant's Memoirs (alongside all of his other papers and correspondence) and every page of the book was handwritten by Grant.

•One of my favorite photos in Presidential history is this one of a gravely ill Ulysses S. Grant, who by this point could no longer speak because of the throat cancer that was killing him (he had to write notes to communicate with his family and his doctors), feverishly writing to finish his book at his cottage on Mount McGregor in the Adirondacks of New York:

The photo was taken on June 27, 1885. Grant finished writing his Memoirs on July 19, 1885. Four days later, on July 23, 1885, he died at the age of 63.

[tilbageidanmark]

MOVIES I WATCHED THIS WEEK #212:

3 WITH NEW CRUSH ZHOU DONGYU:

🍿 THE BREAKING ICE, my 3rd wistful gem by Singaporean Anthony Chen, and the coldest film of the year. A sweet, melancholic love triangle a-la-'Jules and Jim', but taking place in a northern Chinese provincial town, right on the border to North Korea. It's a place so frozen that the people are shut down emotionally and can't express themselves with words either. Young, beautiful Zhou Dongyu is a lonely tour guide, and like her, each of the two boys are depressed to the point of near-suicide. We don't know what ails them so profoundly, and until the end of the adventurous, drunk weekend they spontaneously decided to spend together, we are not sure if they'll be able to discover how to break out of their icy states. 9/10. (Screenshot Above).

I picked this one out of David Ehrlich's annual video countdown, THE 25 BEST FILMS OF 2024. So far I've only seen 7 movies from his list, but I had planned on watching 8 more from there. We'll see...

🍿 "We would have had everything in the end.... Just not each other..."

US AND THEM (2018) took place in another northern town where the temperatures are well below freezing point. It's a standard 'Harry Meets Sally'-type rom-com, that lasts about 12 years, but one that doesn't end up happy. A sentimental tear-jerker about a young couple that doesn't make it, as much as you hope they will. They are struggling poor, they keep meeting for Chinese New Year as they take the train to go back to their village, and it's so sad, and she keeps crying, and she's so gorgeous. 💯 score on Rotten Tomatoes. 7/10. [*Female Director*]

🍿 In BETTER DAYS (2019) the 27-yo Zhou Dongyu plays a tiny teenager who's severely bullied as she studies hard for the arduous university exam. A good-looking street thug protects her from the bullying and the two get entangled in a heap of trouble. It was major catnip for Young Adult melodrama fans, and became a huge success in China, as both actors are super popular there. It was also extremely sentimental, and heart-breaking tragic. A total cry-fest with everybody shedding tears most of their screen time. I'm sorry, but I loved it too (for my own personal reasons).

🍿

"I can't be happy sober".

THE OUTRUN, (2023), a Scottish drama and my 12th film with phenomenal actress and gorgeous woman Saoirse Ronan. A tour de force performance about a tortured alcoholic on her journey from addiction to recovery, while isolated on the northern, harsh and wind-swept islands of Orkney. 8/10. [*Female Director*]

🍿

HORATIO'S DRIVE: AMERICA'S FIRST ROAD TRIP (2003) is one of Ken Burns 'smaller' epics, but one which is no less exhilarating. It tells of an ex-dentist who entered an impulsive $50 bet in 1903 that he will drive from San Francisco to New York City in a 'horseless carriage', one of them newfangled "Automobiles". He made the trip in 63 days, thus becoming the first person to complete a coast-to-coast Road Trip. Exactly 100 years after the first Lewis & Clark expedition, his audacious journey too was full of unimaginable obstacles.

With the soothing voices of narrators Keith David and Tom Hanks, and with a cameo of my old favorite writer William Least Heat-Moon! A fantastic story I never heard before! 9/10.

🍿

MY LAST 2 FROM AUSTRALIAN ADAM ELLIOT:

🍿 "His pension barely paid for his wheelchair batteries..."

MEMOIR OF A SNAIL, his newest tragic stop-motion animation, very much in his usual fatalistic vain, telling improbable, fantastical stories about damaged, unlucky people. This time, it's the orphaned twins who get separated after their parents die, and all the misfortunes and calamities that befall them. There's abuse, alcoholism, cleft lip, hoarding, swinging, fat fetishism, pyromania, a masturbating judge, Alzheimer's and dozen afflictions like these. Sarah Snook is the voice of Grace Pudel. Elliot has a voice like no other filmmaker. 8/10.

🍿 HUMAN BEHAVIOURAL CASE STUDIES. SERIES ONE (1996) was his very first, very short animated attempt at introducing weird characters to the world.

🍿

SLEUTH, Joseph L. Mankiewicz final film, a mystery caper from 1972, and his second-highest score on Letterboxd (after 'All about eve'). It's an old-fashioned, theatrical, Agatha Christie-type two-hander with clever Laurence Olivier and even cleverer Michael Caine. Olivier is an older crime fiction author, and the younger Caine is his wife's lover, and they battle it out to a cat-and-mouse game of thrills and deceit. It opens outside an English manor with a maze, as fancy as the one in 'The Shining'. There's themes of humiliation, class conflict and impotence.

🍿

ROY SCHEIDER X 2:

🍿 First watch: Paul Schrader's highly acclaimed Japanese biopic MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS. The life and feverish dramas of boundary-breaking and narcissist author, self-loathing homosexual, sado-masochist bad boy and right wing nationalist, who committed a controversial public Sepukku in 1971. Life as fiction.

Paul Schrader still maintains an active Letterboxd account. His latest entry re-tells a forgotten David Lynch anecdote.

🍿 SMILES (1964) was John G. Avildsen's first film, as well as Roy Scheider's first role. NYU student Marty Scorcese worked as an assistant. I found it on the YouTube channel that Avildsen maintained until he died.

🍿

MY FIRST 2 BY NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI:

🍿 THE ROCKING HORSEMEN (1992) is the movie with his highest score (Even more than 'Hausu'). A wholesome coming-of-age story about 4 high-school friends who form a Rock and roll band in a small Japanese town in 1965, after hearing 'Pipeline' by 'The Ventures'. As nostalgic as 'That thing you do', but innocent all the way through. I was surprised at how effortlessly charming it was.

🍿 AN EATER (1963) starts as a grotesque, wordless meditation about food. A waitress observes her customers munch, slurp and chew. But then she faints, and the macabre story turns into a disgusting body horror, as the restaurant chef turns into a surgeon and he operates on her while she's still conscious. He pulls her organs for the patrons to continue eating...

🍿

FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT is a 2024 German documentary about "The Day The Clown Cried", Jerry Lewis' unthinkable 'Holocaust Clown' film. I saw the 39 min. version of the unfinished THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED and I was not unhappy that it was never finished (I hate most films about the holocaust, and especially comedies). This standard documentary is long and exhaustive, but the Wikipedia article about it tells the story of its plagued production and mysterious disappearance better.

🍿

Another meta-holocaust study, Jesse Eisenberg's highly-acclaimed A REAL PAIN, filled with Chopin piano score from beginning to end. It's about two mismatched Jewish cousins who are visiting their grandma's Poland, and who keep clashing about the difference in the way they each express their pains and buried burdens. Eisenberg's nervous cringiness is never too pleasant to watch, but the main focus here is on Kieran Culkin. He plays an anxious, (maybe-bipolar) and charming drifter, with unfiltered mood swings, and overwhelming depression, a person who feels things deeply but who can't control his social interactions. In the end, I found the relationship slight and not exceptionally illuminating.

🍿

LEBANESE RADICAL FILMMAKER HEINY SROUR X 2:

🍿 THE HOUR OF LIBERATION HAS ARRIVED (1974) was an anti-colonialist documentary about the struggle of the oppressed people of Oman against the cruel colonialist power of the British Empire and their appointed, corrupt sheiks. Strong feminist liberation movement with communist/Leninist philosophy. Primitive people left for dead, taking arms for the first time for power, for water, food, roads, medicine and education. Down with imperialism! Long live the revolution!

🍿 "The rich are fed on doves and chicken - and we are sick of fava beans. Even fava beans are sick of us".

THE SINGING SHEIK was a portrait of an Egyptian blind singer, who was famous for his songs of resistance and revolution, for which he was constantly prosecuted and imprisoned for. If you like traditional Arabic music.[*Female Director*]

🍿

I wish I had stumbled upon campy THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW in 1975 as a confused bisexual teen instead. I'm sure that the transgressive parody, kitschy hedonism and joyous cross-dressing would have make so much more sense then. As it is, Tim Curry in torn tights and Susan Sarandon in white lingerie were indeed hot. The rest of the weirdos and the freaks kind of flew over my head. "Hot Patootie – Bless My Soul".

🍿

PETER FOLDÉS X 2:

🍿 He was a Hungarian-British artist. His Oscar-nominated LA FAIM (HUNGER) (1974) was one of the very first computer-animated films to be developed, by NFB of Canada. A grotesque nightmare of an office worker who descends into gluttony and greed, becoming obese in the process. Very unsettling.

🍿 A SHORT VISION was a merciless poem about the complete annihilation of the world, through a nuclear bomb. It was animated to look like Picasso's Guernica, and offered zero consolation. Strangely, it was shown on The Ed Sullivan show in 1956, twice!

🍿

And so, I "had to" watch the Hungarian RUBEN BRANDT, COLLECTOR again, for the 3rd time in a week! It's that good. It's interesting that no romance is developed between Mimi the art thief and Kowalski the detective, or Brandt the art-shrink. Recommended again. ♻️.

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"Bunjs of Shteel"

I had the impression that I liked Nancy Meyers female-gazed screwball rom-coms in general, but actually it's only 'The Intern' which I've seen half a dozen times, and to a lesser degree, 'The Parent Trap'. The others are just Nora Ephron-lite, glossy upper-middle-class, Wealth-porn fantasies. Case in Point, WHAT WOMEN WANT. Creepy, pre-racist, male chauvinist pig Mel Gibson is no Don Draper, until a freak supernatural accident turns him into a sexual superman. The gender rolls on display here are very, very outdated. Bonus points for Marisa Tomei as the sexy barista, and Judy Greer as the invisible 'Girl in glasses'. First re-watch in 25 years♻️. 2/10. [*Female Director*]

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THIS WEEK'S SHORTS:

🍿 Another first watch: Disney's very first Silly Symphony THE SKELETON DANCE from 1929. Animated by Ub Iwerks. Spooky!

🍿 KRAKATOA won the 3rd "Academy Award for Best Short Subject" in 1933. It's a well-done documentary about a volcano eruption "between Java and Sumatra". Only a fragment remained.

🍿 CITY OF WAX won the same award the following year. Similarly, it was an excellent educational documentary, about "BEES!", using what must have been then a revolutionary tech of extreme close-up.

🍿 AN OPTICAL POEM (1938), an abstract animation done with two dimensional shapes, visualizes Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Created by artist Oskar Fischinger who was also commissioned to do the Bach's Toccata section in Fantasia.

🍿 BEDTIME FOR SNIFFLES, a sweet, classic Chuck Jones cartoon from 1940, about a mouse who tries to stay awake on Christmas night. Perpetuating the Santa Clause myth.

🍿 I watched THE THINKING MOLECULES OF TITAN (2014) because it was written by Patrick Wang. It is based on an unfinished science-fiction story that Roger Ebert started writing on his death-bed. But it was terrible, poorly-staged and poorly-acted. 1/10.

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(ALL MY FILM REVIEWS - HERE).