Movies in 2026 3

 

Girl with Hyacinths, (Hasse Ekman, 1950)

The Criterion Channel, the gift that never stops giving. Seriously, if it ever went out of business - or was intellectually gutted after some corporate buyout - I'd have to pull a Mr. Zipski and run amuck with a meat cleaver. This month they're featuring four films in a collection entitled Nordic Noir. I don't know if the films are truly film noir, at least in the classic definition (often Criterion will tack the Noir designation on collections because, well, we all love film noir), but they definitely seem to fit in the sense of dark films based around deeply flawed characters with troubling, vague endings. The first one we watched was Hasse Ekman's Girl with Hyacinths, which I absolutely loved. Apparently Ingmar Bergman loved it as well. It's the story of the suicide of Dagmar Brink, beautifully played by Eva Henning (who was also in Elvira Madigan, which I saw a couple years ago - and now definitely need to watch again). The story is driven, in class film noir flashback style, by her two neighbors, Anders Wikner (Ulf Palme) and his wife Britt (Birgit Tengroth), who try to figure out why she killed herself. They interview a number of people, including a tortured painter, Elias Korner (played subtly by Anders Ek). Not to give too much of the plot away, but it has become a classic of Queer cinema, and the ending raises more questions than answering them, and is just about perfect. Highly recommended. I'm looking forward to the rest of the Nordic Noir collection, sadly only three left. If I were not retiring I think I'd teach a class on global film noir, focusing on the subtle cultural differences which make these different national versions. 

Movies in 2026 2

 

The Joke, (Jaromil Jires, 1969)

I always tell people that having the Criterion Channel is like continually taking a film course. In fact, it should probably come with graduate credit. As I've doubtless discussed, my Japanese film noir class grew out of a Criterion Channel collection. I mean, who knew? Another collection that I discovered, and which has remained consistently popular (many collections come and go, but some are so popular that they always hang around - like the Japanese film noir collection), is Czech New Wave. The films are extraordinary, and I'm probably going to use three or four of them as the core of my upcoming Images of Fascism class. I just finished rewatching Jaromil Jires's The Joke. Years ago I read the Milan Kundera novel that is its inspiration, and loved it, but it was only through the kindness of the Criterion Channel that I had the pleasure of seeing Jires's cinematic vision. It's one of the last films of the Czech New Wave (which, truthfully, I like better than the far more famous French New Wave), and is another brilliant condemnation  of authoritarianism (in this case, communist). Josef Somr (who also starred in the brilliant Closely Watched Trains, which will also be featured in my class this spring) plays Ludvig Jahn, who, when he was young, is vanished from university and the party because of a joke he had shared with his girlfriend in a postcard. Years later he tries to get revenge, albeit a tawdry one, by seducing the wife of one of the students who had voted him out, with unexpected results. It's a wonderful film. Highly recommended.

I Think I Know Where This Is Headed

 Yesterday, I guess to ring out the old year, Janet binge watched a nature series on big cats (lions, leopards, cheetahs) in Africa. This inspired her to dig out my Namibia and Botswana travel guide, which she leafed through while watching. Later she had me show her every picture that I had taken on my Namibia trip. In turn, this led to research on flights from Palermo to Windhoek - and guided tours in Namibia and Botswana - and concluded with her astonishment/pleasure in figuring out that Namibia is in the same time zone as Sicily (no jet lag!). I think WE ALL KNOW where this is headed.

Janet was fixated/charmed/amazed at the number of wild beasties that you saw just out roaming, such as these zebra who were galloping down the road.

It Just Never Ends

 Yesterday one of my late Christmas presents arrived, a sweet Montreal Alouettes jersey. I had my old-fashioned souvenir Alouettes jersey (which features the plucky Alouette, and which you can see featured in any old blog post about a Montreal game outing - and which always received praise at the games). Janet determined that I should go ahead and finish out my acquisition of all the CFL team jerseys, because, well, we're running out of time. The last one should arrive in a few days, and then I'll be prepared to visit any CFL game and not look like a rube. Great gifts from my lovely wife.

This is a great jersey. The more traditional Alouettes jersey sort of looks like an old school New England Patriots jersey, but I like version better.

Sure, Pringle is a CFL Hall of Famer (as recounted in an earlier blog post), but this is also the number of days left that I have to be on campus at Champlain (which means I should wear it on the first day of class).

The rendering of CFL in French is just one of the many reasons why the CFL is better.

Movies in 2026 1

 

Lost in America, (Albert Brooks, 1985)

OK, so I've finished the Year of Books and have started the Year of Movies. Of course, every year is a year of books and a year of movies, but I liked last year's experiment where I recorded all the books I read. This inspired me to designate 2026 as the Year of Movies, and I'll take the same approach. This morning I watched Albert Brooks's Lost in America, which I hadn't seen in forty years or maybe had never seen in its entirety. Considering where Janet and I are personally, and where America is on the macro level, it just seemed like a really good choice to start off this year of transition. Now, I just need to remember to not pass through Las Vegas so that Janet doesn't pull a Julie Haggerty and gamble away our next egg. The film is very funny, but also works as a not too subtle critique of the Reagan years. It's featured in a great collection on the Criterion Channel this month. Highly recommended.