A Year in Reading: Sonya Chung
I started 2021 distressed like everyone on the planet, but also coping with heartbreak. Enough, I decided. I’m tired. I picked up bell hooks, because I needed Feminism-with-a-capital-F
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Stop Filming Us: Interrogating and Inverting the Western Gaze
Some people think it's the worst film ever made; for others it's an eye-opening film that changes the way they think about development aid or stereotypes.
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Pandemic Life by the Numbers: The Golden Five
Slow it down, pause, take a moment. It's just five minutes, but you begin to see—the meaningfulness of small increments.
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Parenting During a Pandemic
The combination of having both mild and fatal connections to this virus has been illuminating. We have decided to stay as isolated as possible.
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By Myself but Keeping Company with Lauren Bacall
Herein lies Bacall’s secret to a full and meaningful life: She was always in it for the love, the experience, the richness; the aliveness of the here and now, the people who animate the work.
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Bon Courage: ‘The Good Wife’ Qua Middlebrow Novel
We are fickle—impossible to please, hungry for work that will stimulate and nourish our intellect just so. Enter the dramatic TV series.
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She Cared Enough to Take It As Far as She Could: The Millions Interviews Rob Garver
Pauline was really not a film critic; she was a writer whose subject was the movies. She gave all of herself to it—her knowledge, experience, and talent.
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A Year in Reading: Sonya Chung
As someone who’s been at this books thing “professionally” for a while, I confess I really, really need books to prove to me why they need to exist.
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An American in Afghanistan: The Millions Interviews James Longley
The function of documentary—at least when I make one—is to augment our vision, understanding, and knowledge of the real world.
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If You Haven’t Seen ‘Billions’ Yet, You Should
There’s more to it than the least common denominators of the prestige drama: it's demonstrated the adaptability of a live organism evolving with our times.
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Feelin’ Good: What ‘Green Book’ Got Wrong and ‘Period’ Gets Right
Who made the film, what is the frame, who are the protagonists, what is supposed to “feel good” and why?
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Does Size Matter? A Conversation with Three Filmmakers
I am first and foremost a storyteller. Short films or feature-length films are just various sizes of a blank canvas.
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A Year in Reading: Sonya Chung
Without a doubt, when it comes to adventures in gorgeous and transformative literature, better (much better) late than never.
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Summer Playlist: Beyond the Cyclical
With time, you can find your star’s brilliance, settle down and straighten the wheel; you can dig deeper for the patience you didn’t have before.
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A Year in Reading: Sonya Chung
Nothing, not even cultural evolution, can stamp out beautiful writing.
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We Are All The Same; Our Fates Are Not: On Matthew Weiner’s ‘Heather, the Totality’
One can imagine an editor asking the author to go easier on the reader, provide signals or chapter breaks that allow for full stops and restarts. I like to imagine Weiner refusing absolutely.
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Find Your Lane, Stay Ready: The Millions Interviews Cole Lavalais
Those workshops were night blind. Anything featuring black people, they reacted as if they needed a seeing-eye dog or special guide to walk them through it. It was really frustrating and tiring. The things I needed them to focus on — plot, point of view, setting — you know, the elements of fiction — came second to their need to know about the “type” of people I was writing about, or the “type” of place.
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