Hello, friends. I hope you are well.
When people find out what I do for a living, they usually have some follow-up question locked and loaded, and over the years I’ve gotten used to answering a few of the same ones over and over again. One is usually “how do you pick which movies to review?” Another is “what’s your favorite movie of all time?” And frequently, I’m asked this question: “How many movies do you watch in a week?”
The answer is that it varies. Sometimes it’s two. Sometimes it’s a lot more. And for the last six weeks, I’ve been in the “lot more” period, between popping up to Toronto during the festival for a few days and then taking the subway up to Lincoln Center nearly every day for about the last month for the New York Film Festival. Plus, there are non-festival movies to see and review. I just counted, and since September 1 I have seen 59 movies — even wilder when I consider that at least four of those run between 3.5 and 6 hours long.
Anyhow, the New York Film Festival has just concluded for me, and while the last 80 or so days of the year will also be intense (every movie that wants awards comes out before December 31, and it’s top-ten list season too), all this recent extra-helping festival watching means I’ve set myself up to have more time to write and think about the movies as they’re released, and to do my best work. Which is the whole point of being a movie critic.
Meanwhile, I am heading back into the classroom, sort of. This weekend marks the start of two short workshops I’m teaching at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, one on learning to write from Joan Didion’s craft and one on the review as creative writing. Both classes are full (hooray!), and to my delight the rosters included some former students of mine, alongside many new-to-me people. I am both happy to be back in a classroom for the first time since May 2023, and glad to have a chance to get my teaching chops back before I teach in my old graduate program at NYU in the spring.
The spring! Oh man. I have also spent the last couple of weeks talking with my publisher about a book tour (!), coinciding with the release of my next book, We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine, on March 11. I will actually be in some cities in the weeks following that are not mine, as well as your friendly local bookstore Zoom (and, of course, in my own city too). We’re still in the throes of planning, but stay tuned! I’m quite excited to be with a publisher that’s so supportive of the book.
And of course, if you’re so inclined, please please do pre-order the book on the platform or through the bookstore of your choice. You may be tired of hearing this, but pre-orders help authors more than anything else. Good pre-order numbers help prompt bookstores to stock the book and promote it, and it does help with sales lists and other good things. Plus then you’ll have it on Day 1 (or sometimes a little sooner).
Some things I have cooked
I’ll be honest and say that this year has been pretty disorienting. I had so much upheaval and change last year — having to move, watching an academic position I’d poured myself into just disappear, and even shifting from one (good) media job to another (great) media job, plus family stuff and friend stuff, plus I turned 40 — that I’ve felt kind of dislocated. All of those changes, in the end, are very good; my job is good, my new apartment is still chaos but also good, 40 is good, all of it’s good. But I’ve felt a bit like a dried-up leaf skittering across the path, uncertain of where I’m going or where I am supposed to go.
Some of that is starting to settle, and next year looks, if very busy, also very exciting. But recently I realized part of the issue: owing to some apartment work that has stretched on forever and ever, we haven’t been able to have people over for dinner parties and celebrations. And if you know me, you know how much I thrive on those gatherings. (I did write an entire book about dinner parties.)
More than that, I love to cook; it is the activity that makes me feel most centered and in myself. We’re not quite ready for company yet, but I was ready to make some delicious autumn food.
All of that is a lengthy preamble to say that I moved some stuff around and have been cooking a little more recently, and it’s very therapeutic. Here are some things I made and loved:
This delicious wild rice and soy salad with sesame ginger dressing, from NYT Cooking.
Sheet-pan chicken thighs with apple and fennel, also from NYT Cooking.
My favorite recipe for baked chicken breasts, the only one that results in perfectly juicy and delicious boneless skinless breasts.
Braised chuck roast — oh dear, I don’t have a recipe. Okay. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees (I did this in a Breville smart oven). Cut a 2-5lb chuck roast into three pieces and brown them on all sides in a heavy oven-safe pot, in a tablespoon of melted butter. Remove the roast from the pot, then add about 5 cloves of chopped garlic and half a diced onion. Saute until they’re nearly see-through, then add roughly 1.5 cups of chopped carrots (I just chopped up some baby carrots), a box of sliced button mushrooms, some salt, and some rosemary and thyme (a couple sprigs of fresh is best). Cook for a minute, then pour in about 1/2 c of red wine and 2 cups of broth. Put the roast on top — it should be mostly submerged but not entirely — and put the top on. Place the whole thing in the oven, and in 3 hours you will have a very good roast. If you want, take the top off after 3 hours and put it back in for a half hour, which will cook down the liquid and result in a yummy sauce. (But you also don’t really have to do that.) This is good on its own or with mashed potatoes or noodles or roasted veggies of all kinds or, I presume, on a roll for sandwich yet, though I haven’t tried that.
I also made a chicken soup, which I feel like everyone knows how to make. There are one zillion recipes out there. I’ll only say that I don’t put rice or noodles in mine unless I am adding them the day I eat it, because I tend to put it all in Mason jars in the fridge and eat slowly, and those can disintegrate.
Some things I have written
This is six weeks’ worth of stuff, sorry! I’ll be better in the future.
A notebook on the (movie) apocalypse, for our megasized Fall Preview.
A notebook on why the original Danish Speak No Evil is far superior to the recent remake.
A notebook on the epic documentaries of the New York Film Festival and some of my frustrations with festivals and documentaries more generally.
Reviews of My First Film, The Goldman Case, My Old Ass, A Different Man, The Substance, Apartment 7A, Sleep, The Outrun, It’s What’s Inside, Piece By Piece (aka the Lego Pharrell Williams doc), and Lonely Planet.
Columns on documentaries about oysters, the human cost of the border crisis, the costume designer Patricia Field, two old friends on a revealing road trip, America’s food systems (guided by Ruth Reichl), and the women in their 60s, 70s, and 80s in Korea who dive without breathing gear for seafood.
An audio roundtable with my colleagues Jason Zinoman and Margaret Lyons on hatewatching. We argue, it’s fun.
i am going to make this roast next week. bless you for a short recipe with gobs of text that isn't about the recipe.