Liminal Space (Dec 22-Jan 4) Recommendations
I'm still re-watching Heated Rivalry for some joy in these times.
I watched and read a lot over the December holidays. But mostly I re-watched and proselytized for Heated Rivalry, photoshoots, interviews, edits, reels, memes and think pieces over and over. I’m once again asking you to watch it. But there were some other things I enjoyed and lots I’m looking forward to escaping with in January and beyond. And for no particular reason at all, I thought I’d share some reading suggestions in this dangerous time of dying Empire (the US).
Things I’m Looking Forward to in January:
January 8th: Season 2 of The Pitt (HBO) begins
January 11th: Season 2 of The Night Manager (Prime) begins (after 9 years!)
January 14th: Season 2 of Hijack (Apple) begins
January 21st: Season 2 of Drops of Gold (Apple) begins (after 3 years)
January 28th: Season 3 of Shrinking (Apple) begins
January 29th: Season 4 of Bridgerton (Netflix) Part 1
Recommendations
Movie: Homebound (Netflix): Homebound is India’s Academy Awards entry and an account of migrant workers stranded in the sudden COVID lockdown inspired by Basharat Peer’s July 2020 New York Times essay, which was inspired by this photograph that went viral that year:
At its center are two friends, one Muslim, one Dalit (formerly known as Untouchable Caste), whose desperate journey home from the city after the COVID lockdown is about deep friendship and care, AND a reckoning with the country’s entrenched caste and class hierarchies and religious bias. The movie starts a few years before COVID when the two friends are applying to join the police force, and we see how identity (caste, religion, class) decisively determines who is protected, who is ignored, and who is left to fend for themselves, all replicated in extremes when COVID came.
This was not an easy watch, but I am so glad I made the space and hope you will too. Homebound holds up a mirror not just to India, but to any society with foundational fractures and how pressure exacerbates it all.
Movie: Sorry, Baby (HBO): I loved this quiet, intense movie, written and directed by the star Eva Victor. I laughed and was angry, and I was moved. The movie leaps back and forth through a professor’s life before and after a “bad thing”, as she calls it, happened. The movie is about how life keeps unfolding around pain. The film uses humor the way survivors often do - as a way to live with what happened, not to escape it, and the friendship she has is the core center of this survival. Naomi Ackie plays her best friend and, as always, is excellent.
Movie: Knives Out: Wake up Dead Man (Netflix): I really enjoyed the third Knives Out adventure; a good who done it, funny, and a great ensemble cast with Daniel Craig back as Detective Benoit Blanc. Andrew Scott, Josh O’Connor and Glenn Close were standouts in the ensemble this time, but a blink-and-you-might-miss-it cameo from Bridget Everett (of fave Somebody Somewhere) was quite moving.
Documentary: It’s Never Over: Jeff Buckley (HBO): I wasn’t hip enough to follow Buckley while he was alive. I really knew just one song: his haunting, beautiful version of “Hallelujah,” a track that’s lived on my regular playlist for years. I also knew that he died in my hometown of Memphis. I came to this documentary for another reason: one of my brilliant friends Stacy Goldate was one of its editors. You hear his voice first and then watch a young artist wrestle with legacy, longing, and promise.
Movie: The Best You Can (Netflix): I’ll be honest, I had no idea what this was about but when I learned that real life partners of almost 40 years, and perennial favorites of this Gen Xer, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, were starring in their first joint project in over 20 years, I was of course going to watch it. And I was rewarded with a funny, sweet and moving reflection on aging, parenting, and connection.
Documentary: The Perfect Neighbor (Netflix): This Netflix documentary doesn’t tell you what happened like most true crime out there, it lets you watch a neighborhood unravel via law enforcement cameras: a dispute over children playing in a field escalates and the result is a fatal shooting. It exposes the legal and social backdrop, from “stand your ground” laws to the way fear and prejudice becomes justification. The director, Geeta Gandbhir, did an amazing job of pulling together all the body cam footage and telling this very horrible, very American story.