10 April 2020

“One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.”

Apr 11

This Week

How are we doing this week? I started fighting off a sinus infection about mid-week so I’m moving a little slowly. The bright side is I have no plans to cancel and I can comfortably continue to watch a gazillion movies.

As a note, I’m posting steadily over at Tumblr these days, including a lot of short films I’m watching, so feel free to stop by if you are so inclined. I just realized my Tumblr was blocked from anyone not logged into Tumblr, so I fixed that and it’s now freely available.

Over there, I wrote a bit about my favorite alternative radio station when I was a teenager finding a new life online.

I also restarted my daily (more or less) tarot cards, if that’s your sort of thing.

antiheroinetarot

Today’s card: the Three of Swords. Living in the world will break your heart. That’s just the way it is. If it doesn’t, you’re missing something important. You need the breaks as much as the healing. Feel them fully and let them pass through. What is broken can be mended. What can’t be mended can be adapted.

April 6, 2020

Links

A pandemic is not a war (and other consequences of male inferiority).

Twin Peaks at 30.

MoMA’s guides on how to take in film.

Four Bong Joon Ho films, including Parasite, are now on Hulu, so here’s a guide to the director’s deeper cuts. (My favorite is probably Mother, for the record.)

Letterboxd has put together a list of all the new-release films you can now watch online to support independent movie theaters. Links are in each film’s notes.

For those who imbibe: a list of the best alcohol delivery services.

Appreciating America’s post office murals. Note for Chicagoans: if you haven’t, visit (when you can safely do so again) the post office on the corner of Irving Park and Southport. It has a tremendous Chicago mural from this time.

The Art Institute of Chicago put together some writing prompts inspired by art in their collection.

Reading/Watching/Listening

The Death of Stalin is now on Netflix and what a time for bleak, dry political humor, eh? (But seriously it’s funny and good.)

On a more earnest note, I just started watching the sitcom Kim’s Convenience about a Korean-Canadian family and it’s super funny and sweet. Four seasons available on Netflix.

I haven’t been listening much to podcasts over the winter, for no particular reason, but lately I’ve been working my way through the back catalog of Switchblade Sisters, a podcast featuring discussions of genre films with women filmmakers. It’s well worth digging into.