This Week
Hello, newsletter friends. How are we doing? Have you stretched recently? Drank some water? Taken a walk? Stopped for a moment to listen to the wind in the trees or the traffic on the street or the blood in the veins? Any or all are recommended activities.
If you would like to listen to a podcast, the second episode of Quiet Little Horrors is out and available for your listening pleasure. In it we discuss Carnival of Souls, a slice of indie 60s existential horror populated by the specters of patriarchy and the ghouls of conformity. If you haven’t seen this film, it’s streaming freely on Amazon Prime, but you can get a lovely remastered version, plus special features, on the Criterion Channel. This is a film I enjoy a lot and I’m glad we got to talk about it so early in the podcast.
By the way, we have a few episodes of the podcast already in the can, so if you want a sneak peek of which films we’re discussing for future episodes, you can take a look at our ongoing Letterboxd list. We’re also open to feedback and film suggestions at hello@quietlittlehorrors.com.
Paid subscribers: Watch for July’s essay soon.
By the way: This week we learned that Stevie Nicks wants you to become a spiritual warrior. Your path is clear.
Links
“Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘brand’ is the subject of frequent coverage; it’s rare that powerful white men are understood as having built brands; they just have careers.” Rebecca Traister on the poison of male incivility.
The future of true crime will have to be different.
Why New Zealanders marched in the streets for Black Lives Matter.
Finding room for Black hope, Black justice and Black love in noir fiction.
Farewell to the last one standing from old Hollywood, Olivia de Havilland.
The world through Bonnie Parker’s eyes.
Video games are a to-do list you play. Finally, someone explained the appeal to me.
Why the song “The Girl from Ipanema” is weirder than you thought. This video is on the long side, but covers everything from the history of bossanova, American cultural imperialism and how choices like keys indicate “authenticity,” not to mention a detailed breakdown of the music that is particularly educational if you’re like me who knows next to nothing about how music works.
And just to follow it up: Sarah Vaughan singing “The Boy from Ipanema.”
Hey, remember reading in public?
Hey, remember writing in public?
Reading/Watching/Listening
If you know anything about me and anything about Relic, you might anticipate this recommendation. Slow burn psychological horror revolving around generations of women could not possibly be more up my alley, and Relic is a fine example of it: rich, inventive and surprisingly emotional. It led me to look up director Natalie Erika James’s short films, Creswick:
and Drum Wave:
both of which are available online and worth watching.
I’m a little late to this, but Disclosure (Netflix), a documentary of trans representation in media, is excellent and worth making time for.
I keep listening to Graceland this week. I don’t know. Some times are just like that.
I hope you’ve figured out something that works for you, whatever it is.
Love,
Jen
Connections
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Essay archive: http://modernadventuress.com/
Website: http://jenmyers.net
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Email: hello@jenmyers.net
Post: P.O. Box 13114 Chicago, IL 60613
This week’s quote is from Paul Simon’s “Under African Skies.”