Excited to share my first essay for @awfjorg.bsky.social - about one of my favorite films from 2024 - Dahomey, by Mati Diop - and the role of restitution in redressing the wrongs of the past. awfj.org/female-gaze/...

I suspect many of us have “consent” on the brain, esp as some are puzzled by the seeming consent NG’s victims seemed to extend even after he obv dispensed with it as a criteria for anything (that’s misstating it - there was nothing to dispense with - he just took what he wanted).

It’s finally happened - I agree with Richard Brody. The Empty Ambition of “The Brutalist” www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Stellar. Tho baffling this book made it into the world (or not - famous dad, low entry fee, but really now).

I think this is real, absolutely do not tell me if it is not.

One of unexpected delights of this year - perverse funny sweet and oh so South Florida - in exactly the way Carl Hiaasen intended, no small feat. Killer cast, stellar writing. Manatees and insurance scams, murder and Vince Vaughan reciting Edith Wharton, it’s all there. youtu.be/RokJ4M2UjNc

Wrote this a few years ago and actually feels worthy of reprisal every year - Thanksgiving in popular culture provides so much more space to explore a whole host of themes than really any other holiday or other portraits of family & friend reunions.

Agreed - I blame the trailer biz for making me think this was going to be cloying “quirky & poignant” Oscar bait but it’s so deftly done and beautifully written and directed. A truly great film.

Will never not be thrilled by Sargent. He and Odilon Redon make pilgrimages to The Clarke feel essential (and Turner and Homer but the Sargents!) The Art Dealer Who Wanted to Be Art www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

The big dig before the big pack. Moving sucks but for a non-hoarder like me this is some solid college aged gold. No idea why I still have it.

Post election running into folks and not being able not to answer the question How Are You like a normal person but also trying not to get into it, my stock answer, “I’m good, the world is crazy.”