Strangers, by Belle Burden (Dial). This engrossing memoir of divorce, by a former corporate lawyer who hails from two of America’s wealthiest families, begins in March, 2020, at the start of Covid lockdown, on the day Burden learns that her husband of two decades has been having an affair. The following morning, he tells her, … Read more
In “The Copywriter,” by Daniel Poppick, a poet searches for meaning in the grindset.
What did you make of the President and Melania? And what’s different about filming a movie in the White House or on Air Force One? Well, the film we were doing was actually a documentary. The organization was highly impressive because, on Inauguration Day, we had something like twelve crews all around town. Once they … Read more
Six days later, he gives another performance, in Washington, D.C., in Room 226 of the Old House Office Building on Capitol Hill. Senator John Wood, of Ku Klux Klan progeny, then shepherd of the HUAC, had invited him to testify about the “communist infiltration of minority groups,” seemingly evidenced by the interest that Black American … Read more
I want to start with Recife, the setting for this film. How does your home town fit into the history of filmmaking in Brazil? A hundred years ago, in the silent era, just before sound came, a small group of filmmakers in Recife collaborated to make thirteen feature-length films. Only six survived. The media has … Read more
Doyers Street is a one-block strip in Chinatown that starts off perpendicular to the Bowery and then curves ninety degrees, like a lowercase “r,” to terminate against the bustle of Pell Street. A notorious battleground for gang fights in the early nineteen-hundreds, it has, in recent decades, scrubbed out the bloodstains and redefined itself as … Read more
I encountered a version of this phenomenon on the first morning of my first Sundance. Trying to find my way around festival headquarters, I ran into a colleague from Variety, my employer at the time, who blurted out the news that Fox Searchlight Pictures had just bought “Little Miss Sunshine” for a whopping ten and … Read more
“Hello, I’m Josh Safdie. I’m the co-writer, co-editor, and director of “Marty Supreme.” This is when the dream is very much alive during the first act, and we’re seeing Marty in the role that he sees himself. And I talked to Timmy about what it means to be winning. And I said, I need that … Read more
The Australian singer-songwriter Hatchie has steadily built a little dream-pop world suspended between the synth music of Kylie Minogue and the washed-out guitars of the Cocteau Twins. Following stints in a few Brisbane indie bands, in 2017, Harriette Pilbeam uploaded the song “Try” to the website of the radio station Triple J under her family … Read more
Anchored by Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling’s superb performances, the British director Harry Lighton’s feature début brightens the bleak novel it’s based on.