The whole thing in one
Just compressing it all
I started out doing three free posts per week in this newsletter, which worked well during the early days of this pandemic. But I’m staring down a few things: (a) a very confusing and hectic fall movie season, which is wild at the best of times but even more baffling right now, as you might imagine; (b) an extremely packed fall semester; and (c) both a book that’s now under contract and a proposal for another one I’m trying to get out the door before classes begin so my agent can begin shopping it around.
All that said, I think it’s to everyone’s advantage if I plan for one post, with everything I would have spread among three. Look for it every Tuesday!
Seth Rogen in An American Pickle, which is on HBO Max and very sweet.
And here are some things:
I love Ben Dreyer’s book Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. I mean, of course I do; it’s a brilliant, funny, actually interesting book about syntax, grammar, and usage that is also thoroughly correct. (Strunk & White, standby of college instructors for decades, explains the passive voice incorrectly, which is inexcusable.) The publisher has released a companion card game (called STET!, which I find very funny), and some fairly famous people are playing it via Zoom for charity on Wednesday, which is the kind of intensely nerdy event I live for. You can RSVP for it here.
I wrote something on the new film She Dies Tomorrow (which hit on-demand digital platforms, like iTunes and Amazon Prime Video, on Friday), mortality, dancing fevers, mass psychosis, and so on last week. I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out, so if you’d like to read it, here it is.
Among the books I’m currently reading is Zadie Smith’s very slender and small collection of pandemic essays, Intimations, which she wrote just a few months ago. (I love her, and I hate her.) Anyhow, it’s kicking my writing brain into gear.
One of the most tremendous documentarians I’ve ever had the good fortune to encounter, Mehrdad Oskouei, is currently having a (digital) retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image. You can see his films by buying a “ticket” at their site. Oskouei has been chronicling the lives of people, mostly teenagers, in Tehran, with three of the four films shot in juvenile prisons. They are startling, revelatory films about life in his country as well as the nature of guilt, friendship, existence, depression, and a lot more. I highly recommend checking them out; you can buy a series pass to all four for $20, or they’re available a la carte.
If you have HBO Max, you might enjoy An American Pickle, which is light and a little silly but has a good heart. Seth Rogen stars as both a guy named Ben and his own great-grandfather Herschel, who fell into a vat of pickle juice and woke up 80 years later, perfectly preserved. (It’s based on Simon Rich’s 2013 serialized New Yorker story “Sell Out,” which you can read in four parts.) I wrote just a little about it in my weekly recommendations column last week.
You may enjoy our most recent podcast episode, on The Exorcist. We had a special guest. (Just our friend Jason, not, like, Pazuzu.)