Parerga

Mar 25, 2021 — In With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together, an autobiography cowritten by legendary creative and life partners Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Dee tells the story of working as a screenwriter on 1968’s Uptight. It’s a brief account, about...

Oct 26, 2020 — A handful of journals offer welcome diversion in anxious times.

Sep 4, 2020 — The festival opens with a winning oddity from Greece and an Italian time-hopping family drama.

Jun 10, 2020 — Years ago I took a seminar on movie stars led by the writer Wayne Koestenbaum, a glittering episode that closed out a rather colorless stint in graduate school. The syllabus was replete with inspired double bills⁠—Deleuze on Leibniz + Lana...

May 22, 2020 — Walking, like breathing, is something we do without thinking, an activity so common that pedestrian has as its second meaning uninspired, ordinary, dull. But when this action appears in a movie, it is revealed as more than the original mode...

Feb 28, 2020 — Flashbacks Had Jörn Donner been born anywhere other than Finland, he would have been world-famous. As it was, he dominated the Finnish cultural scene for several decades. Prolific writer, film critic, director, and producer, as well as a politician and...

Jan 8, 2020 — A major retrospective at the Cinémathèque française has us turning to writing by Peter Wollen, Gilberto Perez, and Jonathan Rosenbaum.

Sep 17, 2019 — Also this month: Hollywood stars writing and reading and a novel that reimagines the intertwined lives of Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, and Leni Riefenstahl.

Jun 19, 2019 — To mark the anniversary, editors are highlighting some of her best work while critics and acolytes measure her impact.

Mar 21, 2019 — As Quentin Tarantino releases the first trailer for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the Cannes lineup guessing game is on.