Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious, a thrilling and masterful kung-fu justice thriller featuring a ballet of absolutely astounding fight choreography, woven through the righteous bromance of its charismatic leads, the kind of excellent action film we expect from Hong Kong cinema. In theaters

I am very, very happy with the news that Julian Barnes, one of the finest writers in the English language and a personal favorite, of whom I have read all of his books, some of them multiple times, has won the Princess of Asturias Award www.euronews.com/culture/2026...

Imagine if Tech or Finance allowed their story to be told in the mainstream press almost exclusively by people who hated them. This is what Education has chosen, in large part because it is saboteurs from Finance and Tech who have been doing the choosing.

One of the joys of moving to central New York will be to hang out more often with the great @mattseybold.bsky.social , and today I got a preview over Thai food!

Kane Parson’s Backrooms, equal parts Twilight Zone and 90s 3D dungeon video game, excellent in aesthetics, score and atmospherics, capaciously led by Eljiofor and Reinsve, a bit gimmicky but very good overall. In theaters.

A mesmerizing work of cultural history centered on Varían Fry, a journalist who helped 2000 Jewish and Anti-Nazi people flee from Vichy France, and the lives of many people he helped: Hannah Arendt, Andre Breton, Franz Werfel, Alma Mahler, etc. All narrated like a thriller. Highly recommended

Whenever somebody tells you the analog education movement is just conventional fear of new technology, please remind them we have been having the debate about computing in schools for more than half a century, the terms have barely changed, & most of us have tried EVERYTHING at one time or another.

My little travel library

Criterion’s Blu-Ray release of new media genius Shu Lea Cheang’s 1994 Fresh Kill, a badass cyberpunk queer is ecofeminist fable featuring a pantheon of experimental artists from the 90s, in the intersection between late nuclear paranoia, environmental racism and the rise of hacktivism

They are about to be packed with everything else but I’m still excited by my bookstore pickup.

I’m spending my weekend in the highway but I’m sharing this from a Buc-ee’s www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

He enseñado muchas de los grandes escritores de este periodo tantas veces a través de los años y este libro sin duda será una de las más grandes contribuciones a los que nos interesamos en esta época—seamos “mexicanistas” o no

Kensuke Sonomura’s Ghost Killer, a fun action comedy on a college girl who gets possessed by a dead hitman while navigating the world of Japan’s misogyny and the underworld of crime. In 4K disc.

May film arrivals

Very good novel, dense, imaginative, demanding, brilliantly structured novel of parallel stories narrated counter-chronologically, in dialogue with Leonora Carrington, highly recommended. English edition, also written by Jufresa, coming out in a couple of months.

Curry Barker’s Obsession absolutely earns its vitality and word of mouth with a very well-done minimalistic film with spot-on details laying out the horror of the gap between the relationships we wish to have and our actual connections and feelings. In theaters

In better news, it is just stunning how much excellent work has come out recently on the longue durée of Nahua and Maya cultures. This stuff is 🔥, you could almost build a whole clsss based on these

"The decline of books—of their value, ubiquity, or availability—is the decline of the effort to push ideas into circulation and make knowledge matter." yalereview.org/article/shei...

Most (all?) things @isanchezprado.bsky.social writes reward settling in with, cup of coffee or tea in hand. This one is especially wise. Great shout out to @mattseybold.bsky.social 's American Vandal, too. #teampopeleo - no Babel A Year of Teaching Analogically open.substack.com/pub/ignacios...

"My students taught me that they are terrified of the deskilling they are experiencing in real time & the relief they feel in an analogical space as the rest of the world forces them into technology." Read this careful reflection by @isanchezprado.bsky.social on his notebook assignment leisurely...

Good morning! I published this post in my newsletter, on my notebook assignment, my diagnosis on where we stand in relation to AI and EdTech and my view of the role of humanities classes in all of this. Link: ignaciosanchezprado.substack.com/p/a-year-of-...

Jia Zhangke’s The World, a stunning masterpiece on the contrast between hypercapitalism and globalization in contemporary China and the precarious lives of migrant workers in the early aughts. In The Criterion Channel.

Seven Mexican films released in Blu-Ray or DVD this month by VCI.

Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters, a riotous work of socialist surrealism, putting class struggle, logistics and popular front politics into form, fire cast, masterful art direction, excellent soundtrack by the Tune-Yards, best US film of the year so far. In theaters

Morning read, a gorgeous oneiric novel told from the story of a girl whose father got consumed by the myth of nature, exceptionally well written and delivered in a gorgeous hardcover edition, for fans of folk horror and skeptics of nature writing.

Late night Friday of a busy week in the comforting company of Nerval’s Aurelia, the link between Goethe and Schiller with Proust and Breton, a Traumnovelle of urban texture preceding Schnitzler by decades

Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail, a visually brilliant fable in the backlands of a dystopian, authoritarian Brazil in which the elderly are sent off to a “colony,” centered on a woman who escapes this faith through the undercommons. In theaters

2001-2026. As I move to a new stage, I have been looking back at this work, which encompasses my five years in Pitt and my twenty years in WashU, all projects with challenges and joys. They give me a lot personally and professionally and I hope each one of them finds readers who value them

I am very happy to receive Teaching the Mexican Revolution. Published by the MLA Options for Teaching series, the book includes contributions by colleagues from a diversity of institutions, from community colleges to R1 and even a text from India.

Criterion’s 4K disc of Luis Buñuel ‘s Viridiana gives us a superb restoration although they didn’t add any special features beyond what was created for their 2006 DVD.

A masterful novel about the purgatory of deportation, resisting realism and melodrama through an uncompromising style that is both baroque and fluid, an expectedly brilliant book somewhere in between the legacies of Juan Rulfo and Daniel Sada

Olivier Assayas’ The Wizard of the Kremlin, a heady, perhaps too impeccable historical thriller on the rise of Putin designed around a fictional power-behind-the-throne Rasputin as narrator, and adaptation co-written with Emmanuel Carrere. In theaters.

Assorted book arrivals: nonfiction, fiction & poetry, classics and a little box from Spain

Sunday night candy

I published the speech I read during the Latiné Student Celebration in my newsletter. If you wish to read it, link is in the photo

A morning with Edgardo Cozarinsky: his brilliant short variations on Joseph Roth’s life and his posthumous nouvelle where the Rothian protagonist is lost in a world narrated through Cozarinsky’s cinematic relationship to plot and space.

Friendly reminder — Individual faculty can do this by opting out. I did this semester. I assigned books, gave paper handouts in class, and put nothing on canvas save the syllabus. The result? Better engagement and a better grade average. www.chronicle.com/article/kill...

A beautiful elegiac novel and a personal journey haunted by Cesare Pavese. Really wonderful Saturday read.

Truly exceptional novel narrated in poetic stream of consciousness about a woman that, using an ancient Albanian law, renounces sex and womanhood this acquiring the rights of a man. One of the most mesmerizing works of fiction I’ve read in a while

New Blu-Ray edition of Olivier Assayas’ Boarding Gate, a compelling if uneven eurothriller built around logistics and finance, in the European and Chinese underbellies of global capital. Extra points for Kim Gordon in a small supporting role.

François Ozon’s The Stranger, a faithful and visually wonderful take on Camus, with echoes of Carne and Duvivier and accents on the imperial and racial logics, conducting wonderful work through silence in the first half, and perhaps overdoing the interior monologue on the second half. in theaters

Paquetito desde España

Johnnie To’s Romancing in Thin Air, a lovely melodramedy, atypical in the canon of one of the great masters of Hong Kong action, with a screenplay that grows into a deepening emotional direction, carried by the perfect performances of its magnetic protagonists. In Blu-Ray.

Billie Eilish and James Cameron’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, The Tour, an impressive concert film stunningly shot in 3D, delivering both her amazing performances and a very good focus on her fandom. In theaters.

Pete Ohs’ Erupcja, a film about the inability to commit to love, located in between US mumblecore and the French New Wave, shot in handheld and with Linklater-Style collaborative dialogue, a bit half baked but enjoyable. In theaters.