We have gotten used to retrospectives showing terrible behaviors and scandals, but there is little of that here, other than a marriage troubled by absence, and the implication that Henson was so driven that he may have worked himself to death at 53, a loss for us all.
Pixelborn was created by Bulgarian software engineer Pavel Kolev, entirely on his own. People have loved it in the way they love Disney characters and stories—which is to say wildly—and it had 50,000 users last fall. However, using Disney “intellectual property,” as the lawyers like to say, was always inviting trouble.
What am I seeing?, I have wondered as the names, dates, events, and sensory impressions pile up. By coincidence I found the film “Zerograd” this week, the Soviet entry for Best Foreign Language Film for the Academy Awards in 1989.
The letter was V-Mail, as it was called, for corresponding with service members overseas then. It was strict in its single-sheet economy, as letters were photographed then shipped on microfilm and printed on the other end. Add the need for operational security, and the handwritten letter has a pinched but personable tone.
When I saw the full lots, I knew reports of the death of the book had been greatly exaggerated.
This documentary lets Eco eternally stalk his prey of a desired volume in his beautifully utilitarian library. But most of the film exists to let him continue to express a fierce belief in print culture.
Dempsey’s website claims “[b]oth artists share a studio” near Chicago’s Loop, but as with so many things, this is a goof. John Dempsey and Billy Tokyo live and work in the same mind. In broad strokes, the difference between the styles of John Dempsey and Billy Tokyo is that Dempsey’s paintings are abstract—arcs and loops given depth by layered media—and Billy Tokyo’s are figurative (“but ‘Pop-py,’” Dempsey insisted) with distorted settings.
Quentin Tarantino’s most identifiable feature as a writer-director is his characters’ talking, talking, talking, often followed by violence triggered not by the talking, really, but by accident, coincidence, or stupidity.
Strong feelings shaded yesterday’s total solar eclipse in North America, ranging from worries about terrorism against big crowds gathered in rural areas, where first-responders would be overwhelmed, to fervent hopes for the rapture.
Fans of Martin’s will be rewarded for watching more than three hours of documentary about his life. What emerges is a portrait of an anxious introvert acting like an extreme extrovert for fun and profit.
Children grow up, go to school, get jobs, may have their own families, and at some point usually stop getting gifts from magical beings. But it is not that the magic does not exist. It is that the children themselves have become part of the great, benevolent cartel of nurturers of warmth and plenty.
The word “stories” was used often at the annual NABIP Capitol Conference, held in the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, February 25-28, 2024. I went because I have my own stories of frustration with health care, and because I am interested when someone seems ready to try to make things better in the largely incomprehensible and vaguely menacing system we all rely on.