Movies in 2026 86

 

perfectly a strangeness, (Alison McAlpine, 2024)

In the same collection the introduced me to Kleber Mendonca Filho, I found  Alison McAlpine's wonderful fifteen-minute film, perfectly a strangeness. It's an Oscar nominated documentary that follows three donkeys as the walk around an observatory hidden away in the Chilean desert. Absolutely delightful. And I love this screen during the final credits: "starring Palomo and Ruperto and Palaye." It reminds you how insignificant humans are in the big picture.

Writing and Why Beppe Was Right

 I've been reading quite a bit of Italian literature recently, which may be part of an unconscious transition to our upcoming life in Italy.  One of the novels I read was Beppe Fenoglio's A Private Affair, which I liked quite a bit. In the introduction I felt a definite sense of communion with Fenoglio's comment on his writing: "I write for a great many reasons . . . but certainly not for fun." I'm in the process of putting final gloss on my Epics manuscript, and am also sending around proposals to publishers, with my goal to have the entire five-hundred page tome finished (obviously, it will be altered and amended when/if I find a publisher) by the time I teach my last class at Champlain. That will give me the summer to begin to transition to other projects, get back to the gym, and start packing. Beppe's words jumped out at me because I really don't like writing, I mean, I do and I don't. Like most writers, researching and pursuing mad flights of fancy is a ton of fun, but grinding your way through endless revisions is pretty tortuous. Having said all that, I do like it now in a way that I thought that I never would - and this is helping me get my mind around the thought of retirement, because I can now imagine a different and meaningful world when I'm no longer teaching. Still, groan, Beppe is spot on. It's exhausting and lonely and it completely eats away at your self-esteem. Groan.

Movies in 2026 85

 

Bacurau, (Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles, 2019)

Once again, the Criterion Channel delivers. Tucked away in a collection dedicated to Academy Award nominated films and directors, I found three films by Kleber Mendonca Filho. I watched the 2019 film Bacurau (which Mendonca co-directed with Juliano Dornelles). Somehow, once again I blame my criminally limited Hoosier education, I had never seen the film nor heard of the director. Shameful. I described the film, which I loved, as one part Gabriel Garcia Marquez and one part Hostel and one part John Carpenter.  It was riveting, at times funny and endearing and frightening, and also subversive as well. It's set in the small town of Bacurau in the backwaters of Brazil, and the strange series of events that occur after the death of Carmelita, the town's matriarch. There are wonderful performances from Barbara Colen (as Teresa, Carmelita's granddaughter, who was supposed to be back to the village for the funeral), Thomas Aquino (as Pacote, Teresa's ex-lover and a leader in the village), and Silvero Pereria (as Lunga, a local revolutionary) - along with Sonia Braga (as Domingas, a local doctor, who, when she's not drinking, is very friendly) and Udo Keir (as Michael, in a very villainous role, even by Udo Keir standards). It's very much a commentary on colonialism, but also on the Brazilian politicians who happily support it for a price. Highly recommended.

The Boy at 38

 As if I needed more bookmarks to emphasize my age, I experienced another one the night - although in this case it was a joyous one. On Thursday Janet and I took my son and his wife Ali out to celebrate his 38th birthday. On his card I thanked him for giving me my all-time favorite day, but also another 13,878 days that made me almost as happy. I am so proud of the man he's become, compassionate and responsible.

The only downside to the evening was ordering Cincinnati Chili at the Langdon Street Tavern. They got the pasta part right, but clearly didn't get the rest of the memo in regards to the unique spices. However, my Mom made chili the same way for years, it was the go-to meal for Monday night to fuel watching Monday Night Football.

Movies in 2026 84

 

How to Shoot a Ghost, (Charlie Kaufman, 2025)

One of the many, many beautiful things about the Criterion Channel is that you never know what you're going to stumble across. Yes, there's the huge collection of Bergman and Ozu and Fellini films which are always there for the viewing, but then there are the monthly collections that come and go (or which are the ones, like Japanese film noir, that so popular that they don't leave), and you are introduced to new directors and genres and films all the time. Last night I watched Charlie Kaufman's 2025 short feature, How to Shoot a Ghost, which featured Jessie Buckley and Josef Akiki as spirits wandering aimlessly throughout Athens. I tend to like Kaufman more as a screenwriter than as a director, and this was no exception, although I did like the film and would definitely recommend it. When I drop dead I hope that I get to haunt someplace interesting - maybe if I can spend the rest of eternity spectrally roaming around Lisbon I might actually learn the language.

Bookmarks

 One of my (many) peculiarities is my willingness (joy) at using literally anything as a bookmark. Janet is much more likely to gather up free bookmarks at bookstores (like the motherlode we picked up yesterday afternoon at Bear Pond Bookstore in Montpelier), whereas I'll make use of just about anything; favorites would include: foreign currency, tickets to get into the Taj Mahal, plane tickets, etc. Yesterday I was putting a final gloss on my Ramayana chapter when the following restaurant receipt fell out of my copy of the Ayodhyakanda. I suppose, as I fast approach a major bookmark, that is my retirement, it would make sense that I found it oddly moving. An Indian epic definitely deserved an Indian receipt.

That's from the March 2020 trip to India, which will forever be known as the COVID trip, when the college irresponsibly sent us off on an international flight as the COVID pandemic was hitting (mainly because the administration wouldn't take my advice to cancel the trip and reimburse the money to the students; instead, they wanted me to cancel it, be the bad guy, and not give any money back).

The receipt was from late in the week, as we made our way back from Rajasthan to Delhi. I couldn't remember where we had stopped, although when I sent this picture to my friend and co-conspirator Steve, and he remembered the restaurant. The outside does look familiar.

Movies in 2026 83

 

Tiny Furniture, (Lena Dunham, 2010)

And here's another film which sat in my queue forever - and, for that matter, I think actually, back in the day, arrived as a Netflix DVD before being returned unwatched: Lena Dunham's 2010 film Tiny Furniture. It stars Lena Dunham his mother Laurie Simmons, and her sister Grace Dunham (with the latter two playing, appropriately enough, her mother and sister). It's often compared to an early Woody Allen movie, with the appropriate wink at the audience when one of the characters, Jed (Alex Karpovsky), is continually reading Without Feathers. I liked it a lot, although I wonder if the explosion of praise might have been a bit overdone, and partially related to her writing and directing it at the precocious age of twenty-four. Still, I shouldn't downplay it simply because she never topped it later.