February 2025 Listopia

The best of what I read, watched, heard - sorrynotsorry!

Yep, yep, it’s gonna be a long post. But maybe you’ll forgive me these once a month roundups since they will be full of good stuff to read, watch, and hear!

MOVIES

The Academy Awards are Sunday, March 2. Back in my 20s and 30s I liked to watch the red carpet pre-show, with all the glamour and stars showing off their finery, and the awards themselves, before the acceptance speeches became a platform to school the plebes on social issues. Now I find it all predictable and not so entertaining when I dip in just to see, so I haven’t watched the entire show in many years. I am still interested to see what wins best picture, best actor/actress, best supporting, best director, and best cinematography but that’s easily findable after the show. I rarely watch all the nominated movies but, usually, I see some. This year I’ve seen 3 1/4 so here are my thoughts.

Emelia Perez - this is the 1/4. Not because of the controversy - I don’t care about that, she’s entitled to her opinions - but because I generally don’t care for musicals. I gave it a go but after thirty minutes in I wasn’t interested. Like books, I only allow a certain amount of time to pique my interest before I quit.

Conclave - Wonderful cinematography. Visually it was rich and satisfying - especially some of the more stylized shots (one in particular that I loved. ) The actors were all wonderful and convincing in the roles they played. I do think some of the characters were stereotyped: the conservative cardinal, the liberal cardinal, the Black cardinal. But I wasn’t surprised by it and they all did good jobs with the material they were given. I thought Isabella Rossilini was exceptional in her small role and I hope she wins. My biggest disappointment was that I guessed early in the movie who would end up Pope, as I’m sure many did. I thought the “twist” at the end was gratuitous.

The Substance - Nope. I get what this movie is supposed to be saying about women’s bodies and the male gaze but it’s just too grotesque for me and has too many holes in the story to be even remotely believable. I must have some element of believability in my scifi/horror. This review is pretty much my opinion, too. (Has major spoilers.)

Anora - My favorite of this group, it was exciting to watch with never a single dull moment. Great characters, great acting from every actor, great story, interesting cinematography, an unpredictable and emotionally exciting ending. Mikey Madison deserves to win Best Actress and Anora deserves Best Picture. I watched Mikey in all the seasons of Better Things and knew she was going places. Sean Baker deserves Best Director for this thrilling roller coaster of a film. I would add for anyone who doesn’t know that this film centers around a sex worker so, yeah, lots of that.

If you’re interested in a good run-down of all the nominated movies, I recommend listening to Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s second annual Oscar Preview podcast on his Substack, here.

The only other movie I watched this month that I gave 5 stars, besides Anora, was a rewatch of The Sting. I hadn’t watched it since the 80s and had forgotten how good it really is.

TV SERIES

The Night Agent Season 2 on Netflix - Lots of action, some of it unbelievable, but never dull. A good series for an adrenaline rush.

Live to 100: Seccrets of the Blue Zones, a Netflix documentary - The life habits of centenarians from around the world. Totally fascinating and I intend to watch this again.

Lioness Season 1 on Paramount + - Love this series with Zoe Saldana who is ah-mazing in her role. So much intrique, lots of action, but also many, many poignant family and life moments. So well acted and directed. I’m looking forward to starting season 2.

The Burning Girls on Paramount + and the Roku Channel - Man, is this series creepy. It time jumps between the 1500s, 1980s, and 2023. Well acted and a story you can get into. If you like light horror and the supernatural, you’ll love this.

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Love this photo by Louella Lester. Check out more of her gorgeous photography on her Instagram.

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Books

So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan

Irish writer Claire Keegan was my February readapalooza and, yes, I read Antartica last month so I only have two more of her books to go. Claire is now a member of my holy grail of contemporary women fiction writers - the other three being Donna Tartt, Elizabeth Strout, and Elena Ferrante. I devoured all four of Claire’s books, three of which are short story collections. Small Things Like These is a novella that features activity within a Magdalene Laundry, a subject I’m interested in but had no idea had a part in this book. It’s a stunning story and I’m looking forward to watching the movie. Every page, every sentence in every Keegan book is luminous. How does she do it?

In nonfiction, I finally read Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon with much highlighting and underlining and amen-ing! If you find yourself in a slump as a creative, read this book! Read it anyway because it’s full of advice, exercises, and optimism along with good old common sense. Love this book and love his Substack.

Outstanding reading in online litmags:

“Song” by Donna Obeid in Milk Candy Review - this tiny, compact tribute is a gut punch, something I rarely say. I wish people, especially American women, talked more about this issue and less about memes for the Gulf of Mexico.

They did it with great flair and with colors, with the mingling of greens and golds and reds like the crowns of the queens. They did it locked inside tiny stifling closets. And in the hills where they hid from the men who didn’t know what to do with song.

“Everything is Made From Dreams” by Sam Rasnake in Magazine1 - I have adored Sam’s work for a good many years and this is a great example why.

The world? Ours? We hide it from everyone – even from our own hearts – in a last shot at self-preservation, maybe. Its mountains and hollows, its rivers and rock faces we swallow. The birds in the woods are dessert. The tracks scattered in the night are our desires. We smile and say we could live here. We’re smug in our contented ways, and never budge if we don’t want to.

“Dear Y2K” by Jennifer K. Sweeney in Swwim Every Day - I think everyone who experienced the mad rumors that swirled around Y2K, and the madness that has followed, will appreciate this poem. I think it’s one of the best poems I’ve ever read.

Did you see it all coming in your lines of legacy code,

how the unraveling would be so slow we might
just miss it, doom-scrolling and doordashing,
rage-tweeting, masked and shutdown, 20/20, right
into a pandemic no one thought to be scared of?

“This is Happening” by Shome Dasgupta in Pithead Chapel - beautiful, lyric writing connecting music and memories of his brother, Shome takes us with him on a nostalgic drive.

During this spit of time while I drive, a myriad of flashbacks waver, I’m thinking about playing in the golden grass and gleam of the front yard, with my brother, plucking carrot flowers and putting them behind our ears like we were forest creatures. I’m thinking of how ten or so years later, when I was a teenager in high school, my brother introduced me to Neutral Milk Hotel, and driving around listening to “King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. One” on repeat, or in my room, at my desk, in a daze from such harmonious blends of instrument and lyrics.

Also by Shome, this gorgeous poetic tribute, A Louisiana Sestina in New Verse Review.

You—once a ghost, a myth, creating your own rougarou in a flooded history.

Now alive, in peace with river palettes—a spectral hazed statue standing still

among electric wires and power surges. Perhaps, one winter, a cold sunrise

when you evaporated into my mind, fiery and furious, leaving a field rabbit

to nibble on your remnants and debris. A rural Sistine Chapel of folklore skin,

where we danced in sunflower ant piles—castles of reverberations and ripples.

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Church Goin Mule’s art is whimsical and inspirational and I just love it. See more of her art on her Instagram.

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“The Archivist” by Kristina Garvin in Pithead Chapel - another beautiful, lyric piece that tells us about Kristina’s personal journey through the 80s and 90s, including many moments and events we all remember.

We’ve been practicing nostalgia since before we could drive. What we remember, together: Baby Jessica in the well. Baby Jessica out of the well. How easy it was warp to the eighth level of Super Mario Bros., and impossible to save the princess. How Ceaușescu’s eyes, wide and unsurprised, stared at us from the newspaper’s front page, ruining Christmas, if Christmas had been a thing to ruin. How Kurt Loder on MTV always seemed so uncomfortably plain. How he seemed less so one day, with the urgent bulletin that Kurt Cobain had shot himself.

“A Spy of a Certain Age” by Nina Miller in The Hooghly Review - reading this was a welcome bit of fun and what a well-crafted piece it is.

Brandi was supposed to seduce Marco, his idiot son, and get information on the terror cells his father was funding on American soil. We could follow the flow of guns traveling in and out of warehouses, but we couldn’t pin them on the Gallo family. Now that our cover was blown, we were both goners. It was up to me to clean up.

And two lovely micros by Francine Witte in Peatsmoke Journal. Y’all, writing very compressed prose is hard but Francine has a talent for it that reads like magic.

The air is easy and lemonade. But most important, you. Without my brain, forgotten. I am gauze and whiteblow, a float of me.

MUSIC & PODCASTS

Ronit Plank talks with Sari Botton - I enjoyed hearing about Sari’s background and publishing experiences. Lots of good writing and publishing advice, too. Ronit is a great interviewer. I highly recommend her podcast.

After listening to documentarian Ky Dickens on Joe Rogan…..

I began listening to her podcast, The Telepathy Tapes. The first episode centers on a non speaking autistic girl and how she communicates including “seeing” what her mother is thinking. This is mind blowing stuff.

I’ve been listening to Tab Benoit’s latest album, I Hear Thunder, and it is fire. Highly recommend if you like Blues and Swamp Pop.

Finally, we’re all missing the great Roberta Flack who died this month. She was a part of my musical teen years and I’ll never forget her smooth, sweet voice.