The four excellent classical albums that accompanied my weekend writing and editing

A lovely book by one of the foremost poets of Brazil’s counterculture, a counterpoint to concretism from Tropicalia, author of poems filled with joy and playfulness. Salomāo also co-wrote one of my favorite songs, Vapor barato, and as viceminister of culture he sought to make the book a basic right

3 AM with the radio lectures on Blaise Pascal by French critic Antoine Compagnon, someone who calls himself “a child of the democratization of culture.” Intended as radio shows, it builds on Pascal’s dialectic with Montaigne to bring the epicurean spirit of the essayist back into the order of faith

Aidan Zamiri’s The Moment, an uneven but fun metamockumentary, depicting talented people swallowed alive by vampiric capitalism and the untalented leeches that control infrastructures of artistic work, plus an Alexander Skarsgard performance for the ages. In theaters.

Overnight treat, a creative memoir essay of avant-garde spirit, exploring race, aesthetics and the evolving relationship of a literary classic from the child’s encounter with a pedagogical figure to the poet reader dealing with his legacy. Superbly translated by the prolific Selma Ancira.

David Borenstein and Pasha Talankin’s Mr. Nobody Against Putin, a bravely filmed documentary by a teacher who shows the authoritarian takeover of curriculum and the militarization of the school, with events that will sound familiar to teachers in the US. In Kino Film Collection.

New translation of Thomas Bernhard’s early short stories. You can see his evolution from a late Finis Austriae style mediated by Dostoyevsky to the intense, compulsive voice of his transformative literary prosody. A good introduction to his work before delving into the heart of his darkness.

Good read early today, interestingly another book about the border between civilization and nature, this one in the Colombian tradition of La vorágine. Fantastic prose, good thrilling intensity.

The first truly great Mexican music album of 2026 is out, from the alt-rock band Hello Seahorse! Truly at the top of their powers, perhaps their best work so far.

UVA friends! Next week I am visiting you for two events I will be giving a talk on “The Utopia of the Humanities and the Right to Culture” on Thursday 13, and a book seminar on Taco on the 14th. I’m honored to be joined on Friday by Chef Victor Albisu of Taco Bamba fame. Registration required.

A beautiful short novel imagining Ovid in his Black Sea exile, engaging with people he sees as barbarians and adopting a feral child raised by deer. A great novel of the line between nature and culture, masterful in its work with space, narrated as a letter to the future.

Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, a nostalgic piece of Americana full of nerdy references, with a perfect Ethan Hawke and an excellent Margaret Qualley, minor in good ways, though perhaps too enamored of its slice of the past. In Blu-Ray.

In the post-birthday melancholia I thought about my top 12 albums. The ones I really love and mean something. One from last year replacing one that means a bit less now. I guess they say something about my age and affects 1/3

Audrey Diwan’s Emmanuelle, a remake of the 1970s classic erotic film is a textbook case of a prudish aesthetic that is unable to understand the countercultures of the past rendering instead a hollow surface aestheticism (with echo of Wong Kar-Wai), unable to transgress or have any bite. In HBO Max.

Today I’m 47. I like my 40s over my 30s and my 30s over my 20s so aging still feels good. Since I did precious Japanese dinner last night, I went full US neoliberalism today, at Ruth Chris following a Sam Raimi movie.

Sam Raimi’s Send Help, the kind of excellent popcorn movie of which I wish there were more, impeccably made with great work in pacing and sound and a totally stellar Rachel McAdams delivering a role that would have suffer with a lesser actress. In theaters.

Chris Stuckmann’s Shelby Oaks, a solid horror film departing from the found footage genre and extending across other horror registers. In Blu-Ray disc.

I do not cease to be stunned that Dusapin, age 33, has written four brilliant novels with uncanny command of the narration of the unsaid and of the feelings that are palpable but cannot always land in language. Her style is growing in sophistication and depth.

Radu Jude’s Dracula, a 3-hour, 14-films-in-1 marathonic romp on the cheapening on culture when it becomes content and IP, and the first major film to posit an aesthetic engagement with AI slop, laden with the usual ruthless satire and shameless vulgarity. In VOD.

Author @isanchezprado.bsky.social challenged the definition of the taco in “Taco” in this @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social interview. Listen here: https://bit.ly/4ae5EZD 📚💙 #FoodSky #LiteraryStudies @bloomsburylit.bsky.social

Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day, a very good entry in the “recreating an interview” genre, shot and choreographed with great precision, and led by a brilliant Ben Wishaw and a perfect Rebecca Hall. In the Criterion Channel.

Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Anne Lee, a curious film about mystic religiosity with not much interest in its subject, hollow, a surface made of an overkill of brilliantly choreographed scenes of rhythmic worship and a linear, dull dramatic structure. In theaters.

Quentin Dupieux’s The Piano Accident, a pitch-black absurdist comedy on the moral bankruptcy of influencer culture, minimalistic and theatrical, worth for the bravura performance of Adele Exarchopoulos, the boldest in her very bold career. In MUBI

Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister, a gory feminist body horror take on Cinderella, centering on the violence of the idea of beauty and the patriarchal standards set on women by the canon of Western stories, very well made and not for the faint of heart. In Hulu

Noah Baumbach ‘s Jay Kelly,impeccable and uninteresting, with Clooney being Clooney and Adam Sandler killing it, a surprisingly earnest film by a cynical director, invested in a melancholic take on a lost Hollywood masculinity that feels as outdated in fiction as it is in reality. In Netflix.

Eva Victor’s Sorry Baby, a brilliant, thoughtful movie about dealing with assault, pitch perfect in all of its narrative and aesthetic decisions, masterful in depth and deadpan. Victor’s direction, screenplay and performance are exceptionally good. A must-watch. In HBO Max.

Essentially a 2:30 infomercial for the streaming of races, Joseph Kosinski’s F1 is, like Top Gun, a nostalgic take on a boring form of masculinity at the level of protagonist and form, a boatload of cinematic resources at the service of chest thumping and flatness. In Apple TV+

Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, perhaps the first great movie about the dehumanization surrounding the AI stage of labor precarization, the second adaptation of Donald Westlake’s The Axe, building on Costa-Gavras’s 2005 version, not Park’s best but at the top of 2025 cinema. In theaters.

Today in the New Books Network! In this link or in your favorite podcast app! newbooksnetwork.com/taco

Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language, a deadpan absurdist jewel imagining a Winnipeg in which Farsi is the first language, an homage to Kiarostami in dialogue with Guy Maddin, Roy Anderson and Tati. Amazing cinematography. In Blu-Ray.

Nia DaCosta’s The Bone Temple is a reflective, observed film somewhat dissonant from a kinetic franchise, an enjoyable transition film that is better directed than scripted, announcing a potentially good sequel to come. In theaters

Hippocampus Magazine published this interview with me on the writing methods and craft behind my book Taco. Thank you to Hillary Moses Mohaupt for reaching out and conducting it. Link in threaded post

Incredible novel about the road and the desert that is also an incredible novel about the translation of the first novel, full of illuminating images and pinnacles of prose. Loved it.

4K double feature, Bernard Rose’s 1992 Candyman, circling around urban segregation and racial difference, and Nia DaCosta’s 2021 version, a sequel, on gentrification and the BLM moment.

3 AM, after reading the final book of my beloved Julian Barnes, one of the writers that made me love literature, a book about rememoration, illness and narrative, with Proust as a northern star, a late-style beauty in which the writer diminished by illness and age remains lucid and insightful

Arrow’s 4K of Renny Harlin’s The Long Kiss Goodnight, a fabulous action film led by a badass Geena Davis, underappreciated as many female led films of the 90s are, and a precursor to the Bourne movies and all the special skill films that redefined action movies in the aughts.

January releases trickling in

Fernando Frias de la Parra’s Depeche Mode M, a concert film intertwined with a film essay on Mexico’s relationship to death, arguing that the band’s enormous popularity in the country is due to the interesection of the band’s style with the nation’s aesthetic and inclinations. In Netflix.

New 4K UHD edition of Satoshi Kon’s first film, Perfect Blue, an anime of madness and celebrity in the first years of the internet, and one of the inspirations for Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan.

I just taught a thrilling and exhausting three hour class in which I introduced the idea of “media theory” followed by an extensive close reading of excepts of three of Benjamin’s essays: Experience and poverty, The Storyteller and A Short History of Photography. Made me excited for the semester

Solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Minneapolis.

Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April, one of the most riveting films I’ve ever seen about reproductive justice, centered on a doctor in the rural part of the Republic of Georgia accused of negligence after a baby dies in birth. In Canadian MUBI, later this year in the US.

Not a fan of late Rushdie but I like this book, the three novellas at the core are ingenious and beautifully written even if he cannot always escape his schematic and pedagogical inclinations and the short stories that bookend the collection are very precise and well crafted.

Mexican poetry for early 2025

Dominga Sotomayor’s Limpia replaces the judicial aspects in Zeran’s novel for an observed if a bit dull portrayal of the ineludible gaps of class and the contained rage and repression in service labor. In Netflix.

I wrote this a week and a half ago and certainly did not anticipate the timing, but the first of my three yearly recaps is here if anyone is interested and has the bandwidth. I am doing books and films later this month.

Ximena and Eduardo Lecuona’s No me sigas, Blumhouse’s first Mexican production, blending the story of an influencer in a haunted house with elements from 1970s local horror. In Hulu