I’ve basically been hibernating all year (all three weeks of it) so it was just the best to have some friends in town last weekend. We did what we like to do when we’re all together, which is to say: we trekked to a special grocery store then spent all day cooking a huge meal. In this case, the particulars were: Patel Brothers, up on Devon, where we re-upped on ghee, grabbed bundles of methi and curry leaves, and munched on crinkly bags of masala mix chips. For dinner we made : Rao’s showstopping and (lol why do I do this to myself) labor-intensive lamb biryani, a simple and creamy saag paneer, Izzi and Kayla tackled Madhur Jaffrey’s chapati (with guidance from Chetna) and a tomato curry from Pushpesh Pant. I also presented the final result of my weeks-in-the-making lime pickle (so spicy it was pretty much inedible, I take full responsibility; I used Raghavan Iyer’s recipe and he has never steered me wrong). I made my World Famous (let’s see if this sticks, would love to get famous, maybe turn it into a career, who knows) banana cream pie and Alli made frothy gin smashes with the leftover egg whites. It was too much food. It rocked.
If you’re new here, subscribe! If you’re old here, share!
Alli picked a classic for us the other night, one neither of us had seen: Michele Antonioni’s 1964 RED DESERT. My friend openly lusts after Monica Vitti so I kind of thought this movie would be really fun and sexy, I don’t know, maybe some kicking around on the Italian seaside, some Milanese fashion, who knows. Spoiler: it’s not! It is the opposite of fun and sexy. Vitti stars as Giuliana, who has not quite been herself since a vague accident. Her husband runs an industrial plant, pumping out who knows what chemicals into the air. His colleague Corrado, played by Richard Harris (as in, OG Dumbledore Richard Harris), arrives to the scene and pursues Giuliana, and, in doing so, bears witness to her unraveling. While upsetting and bleak in content, the filmmaking is brilliant. A jarring interlude exposes how imaginary hope can feel against oppressing industrialization, fascism, and malaise. A classic for a reason.
Watch if you like: climate anxiety, pandemic anxiety, smog, Todd Haynes’s SAFE
Streaming on The Criterion Channel
We tried to round out our Alfred Hitchcock filmography with MARNIE. It was okay? Not really the fun suspense and thrills and psychology I like in my Hitchcock. There’s a line I love in THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (dir. Baumbach, 2005); Jeff Daniels’s character is telling his son, played by Jesse Eisenberg, that his school-assigned book, “A Tale of Two Cities,” is “minor Dickens.” The dry snobbishness always made me laugh and sometimes I give myself a giggle when I dismiss art by geniuses. In this instance, I found myself calling MARNIE “minor Hitchcock.” Me! Acting like I know better than the master of suspense! Who am I kidding. I didn’t love the movie, but it’s still Hitchcock, so at the end of the day, how bad can it be? It also gave Al and me the gift of going down the Tippi Hedren rabbit hole. Did you know she lives with lions? Well, she does. And there’s photos to prove it.
Watch if you like: sexless BDSM narratives, melodrama, seeing Sean Connery play anyone besides Bond
Streaming on Amazon, Apple TV, Criterion Channel
If you sit down for a movie and you see the names “Powell & Pressburger” on the title card you can be pretty sure you’re in for a good time. Last year we watched their flamboyant and maximalist TALES OF HOFFMAN with Sammy and Ella and later the delicious naughty nun flick BLACK NARCISSUS. Both fun and hardcore and visionary, explosions of color and theatricality. THE RED SHOES (1948…!), which we watched a couple weeks ago, is in the same brilliant wheelhouse. P&P serve us heaping piles of backstage intrigue, technicolor costumes, and sweeping song and dance. A bit more of a traditional love story here than in their other films, and as such I think the whole thing is more accessible than the rest of their oeuvre.
Watch if you like: the THEAtre, the Met Gala, BLACK SWAN, but found the whole thing a bit too dark
Streaming on The Criterion Channel
Sammy picked out a “wild card” movie for us, and boy was it! In a series of vignettes, 2014’s A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH AND THOUGHT ABOUT EXISTENCE depicts a world in grey tones (not unlike RED DESERT’s, in fact). Humanity is on the brink, everyone is lonely and depressed, no one knows how to connect with each other and all attempts are humiliating and misguided. In the primary running thread, two novelty toy salesmen try unsuccessfully to sell their wares, including a rubber mask called Uncle One Tooth (“A new product we have a lot of faith in.”), and process their own hopelessness along the way. It’s cruelty expressed through banality. Some later sequences are especially upsetting, and I’d proffer a content warning regarding one depiction of racial genocide.
Watch if you like: “I Think You Should Leave,” but wish it were a tragedy, clowning shows at fringe festivals, Ruben Östlund
Streaming on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Vudu, Apple TV
Other than that we watched the episode of RHONY where Sonja sprinkles her dog’s ashes in the Hudson <3
There’s literally no incentive to do so, but share and subscribe!
Love,
Nina
awesome!