BALLERINA (Lee Chung-hyun, 2023)

(****+ / *****): Few phrases inspire an automatic watch like "Korean revenge film" and BALLERINA is one of my recent tops: tight, taut, crowd-pleasing revenge story with great performances across the board – especially lead Jeon Jong-seo as Ok-ju (in a rather Michael-Caine-in-GET-CARTER-infused turn) – and narrative twists (one in particular being a fantastic subversion of the "hunt from the bottom up" fare) that jolt what can be – in less imaginative hands – a fairly rote genre with pathos and unpredictability.

Reading Rushdie’s KNIFE (it’s brilliant), and, as with every time I read Rushdie – quality of the work being immaterial – I’m overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy and jealousy, not just as a writer but as a person. No other writer does that or even comes close: intriguing yet nettlesome.

Monthly-release approach to writing fiction has given me what I needed (a defined timetable and a desire to find out what happens) to bring the once-MainFictionThing I threw out to make way for the monthly Fictions back from the bin (at least in this early stage) as the second and third of the Fictions. The first release is still rolling out in Sunday morning's edition of MacroParentheticals, with the former MainFictionThing being released in two parts in June and July. Think this might become the default approach: a two-parter followed a single, unrelated fiction before the next. Feels right.

DON'T LOOK NOW (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)

(**** / *****): Had this one on the Criterion list for too long and avoided it mostly because, while I love Donald Sutherland, my mother's penchant for claiming that my asshole stepfather looked like him (he didn't) made me avoid almost all Donald Sutherland films for the last 30 years and I couldn’t bring myself to click on the cover still of Sutherland here. But they're dead - my mother and stepfather, not Sutherland, thankfully - now and here I am, having overcome my avoidance tics and watched: Great film, but in that “wow what an amazing achievement Great” manner, not in the "spoke to me deeply on an emotional level Great.” Excellent performances across the board, amazing editing, beautiful cinematography (DON'T LOOK NOW is to Venice as THE THIRD MAN is to Vienna?) – but destined to be filed in my "respect (and I do, deeply) more than love and have no interest in seeing again" shelf. But hey, exposure therapy FTW.

"emphasis on cult"

Stewart nails it. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.