73: New Beginnings

Last week I wrote about the end of the Seeing & Believing podcast, and about the fact that Kevin and I are launching a new version of Seeing & Believing in newsletter form. We're trading off writing responsibilities every other week, which means additional flexibility; if only one of us can make it to a press screening for a movie we're both interested in, we'll still be able to cover it for the newsletter. We'll also have the freedom to go exploring a little; we can devote more time to independent releases and the movies that interest us without feeling a strong obligation to cover every blockbuster.

This does mean that, effective now, I'm writing two newsletters every other week. I have no plans to abandon this one; it's been good writing discipline to have a regular output, and it's been helpful for me to keep track of everything I've written or talked about on podcasts in the "What I wrote/talked about" sections. I'm grateful that there are people out there who read what I write every weekend.

But the change of pace–and medium–at Seeing & Believing is going to mean a cascading change over here, too. My longer movie reviews, which I've been running occasionally here, will live over at Seeing & Believing moving forward, where I'll benefit from Kevin's editorial eye. (I reserve the right to run capsule reviews in the "What I've watched" section below, especially in off weeks.) This newsletter will likely branch out a little more in terms of subject matter. I'd like to keep using it as a tool to puzzle through the things I can't stop thinking about, whether that's books or a piece of art or the work I'm doing in my garden. I've written about all of these things here before, but I'm giving myself the permission to let this place grow a little shaggier, and perhaps a little looser. If that interests you, welcome, and thank you for joining me. Let's go flip some rocks over together and see what we can find.

What I watched:

My husband and I went to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon this past week in 35mm. It screened at Doc Films, the film society at the University of Chicago, which programs each night of the week differently: retrospectives, the cinema of a specific place, different genres, surprising themes. This quarter's lineup is going to be legendary: pre-noir gangster movies, an Ang Lee retrospective, a series about false preachers, and a series about mad love stories, to name a few. I'll be living at Doc for the next nine weeks.

What I'm reading:

I mentioned last week that I'd picked up Babel by R.F. Kuang. Right after I wrote that newsletter, I got the notification that my hold on American Prometheus (Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the book that inspired Christopher Nolan's biopic) had just come in from the library. Infinite Jest summer may be over, but I can't escape the 500+ page tomes, it seems. I don't think I'll be able to get away with procrastinating on American Prometheus, though. I'm sure there are still enough holds on the book that I won't be able to renew it.

I am also of course reading the Seeing & Believing newsletter! Kevin is kicking us off this weekend with a manifesto of sorts: what we're about, and how we're about it, in the spirit of a new iteration of a well-established venture. There's still time to subscribe if you'd like that issue fresh in your inbox when it goes out.