Looking for something to watch this weekend? Got Hulu Plus? Well, start working your way through the veritable treasure trove that is the Criterion Collection. And don’t worry. If you’re as overwhelmed by the selection as I am, this top ten list by filmmaker Dean Peterson can serve as a great guide. Also, for what it’s worth, I’m partial to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev.
Get Your Popcorn Ready. The Criterion Collection Hits Hulu Plus.
Documenting Death
"Maurice Sendak drew his partner Eugene after he died, as he had drawn his family members when they were dying. The moment is one he was compelled to capture, pin down, understand, see. Where many— maybe most—people look away, he wanted to render. He was very wrapped up in the goodbye, the flight, the loss; it was almost Victorian, to be so deeply entranced with the moment of death, the instinct to preserve or document it. It’s also the artist’s impulse: to turn something terrible into art, to take something you are terrified of and heartbroken by and make it into something else. For the time it takes to draw what is in front of you, you are not helpless or a bystander or bereft: You are doing your job." On Maurice Sendak and the art of death.
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The Singer’s Gun on the Indie Next Highlights List
Congratulations to our very own Emily St. John Mandel, whose second novel, The Singer's Gun, is included, along with 19 other books, in the 2010 Indie Next List Highlights. Jason Hafer of Wolfgang Books says: "The Singer's Gun is a taut, restrained book with a quick hook and a long pull. It is a moving and mysterious work, wholly authentic."
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Flotsam and Jetsam
Check out some of the good stuff floating around:A bookstore on a boat at The CS MonitorSimilarties between David Mitchell's Number9Dream and Cloud Atlas at Conversational Reading.Tingle Alley discovers that Zadie Smith's hubby Nick Laird may be getting preferential treatment in the book pages.Aelfred of Dunwoody Recalls a Viking Incursion at Wal-Mart, 848 AD. You can't really beat this.
Poet Laureate (Again)
"Her exchanges with Americans in small towns and rural communities are inspiring an appreciation of poetry and history – and remind us that poetry has value for all of our lives." The Library of Congress appointed Tracy K. Smith to a second term as the 22nd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2018-2019. For her second term, Smith edited an anthology called American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time, which will be published by Graywolf Press in association with the Library of Congress. Pair with: our review of Smith's memoir, Ordinary Light.
Up Next, Ice-Nine
Cat's Cradle's Felix Hoenikker would be so proud: Stanford scientists have found a way to make a dense, extraterrestrial ice called Ice VII (via The Rumpus). See also: "2 B R 0 2 B", a "lost" Vonnegut story that first appeared in the sci-fi journal Worlds of If in January 1962.
Lovely Soprano
In the current Broadway production of Twelfth Night, Mark Rylance plays Olivia, a role which sees him plaster his face in white makeup and style his hair into a “pouf like a charcoal brioche.” Rylance, the first artistic director of the Globe Theatre in London, projects such a palpable “air of distracted grief” in his performance that “the carapace of theatricality evaporates,” Charles Isherwood writes. The Times theater critic also highlights the work of John Douglas Thompson and Harriet Walter.
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The Billionaire is Dead…
At long last, a viable alternative to Mike Bloomberg and Bill Thompson has entered the NYC mayoral race. This candidate's "zero tolerance anti-hipster policy" is certainly worth a look.