Sometimes...

...you just feel like Tallullah Bankhead.

When "Friends of Friends" Is Cooler Than You Thought

Le Douanier is the painter Henri Rousseau, dismissed by many during his lifetime as a naïve, "primitive" painter. He changed modern painting forever and is now treasured for precisely those qualities.

Read, Read, Read Part II

I am currently reading for my comprehensive exams, which means that I spend pretty much every free moment I have (when I am not doing P90X, of course) reading.

I post about this because I literally have nothing else about which I can post and because this consumes all of my time. Since my last post about this, I have read:
Cherríe L. Moraga's Loving in the War Years: Lo Que Nunca Pasó por Sus Labios
Rachilde's Madame la Mort and Other Plays
Alfred Jarry's The Ubu Plays
as well as his Exploits & Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician
František Deák's Symbolist Theater: the Formation of an Avant-garde

And I have about 100 pages left in Edward W. Saïd's Orientalism, which is dense and rich and angry (not to mention totally and completely brilliant), and, therefore, not the easiest reading in the world. I keep breaking it up with the silliness of Jarry.

Quick and Dirty Non-English-Language Film List

I made this quick and dirty list for my friend Matt who is trying to see more films in languages other than English. Some of these come from as early as the 1950s and some are really recent, but I have restricted myself to one film per country. They are in no particular order:

Germany: Werner Herzog - Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Czechoslovakia: Jiří Menzel - Closely Watched Trains
South Africa: Gavin Hood - Tsotsi
Canada: Denys Arcand - Jesus of Montréal
China: Zhang Yimou - Raise the Red Lantern
Italy: Marco Bellocchio - Fists in the Pocket
Denmark: Thomas Vinterberg - The Celebration
Korea: Kim Ki-duk - Spring Summer Autumn Winter ... and Spring
Poland: Krzysztof Kieślowski - Three Colors: Blue
Sweden: Ingmar Bergman - Fanny and Alexander
Brazil: Fernando Meirelles - City of God
Japan: Kon Ichikawa - The Burmese Harp
Belgium: Dardenne Brothers - The Son
Spain: Pedro Almodóvar - All About My Mother
India: Satyajit Ray - Pather Panchali: Song of the Little Road
France: Jean-Pierre Melville - Le Samouraï

Making a list like this means leaving off so many good movies, but I figure these are all must-sees. Have you seen them all? If not, consider putting one in your Netflix queue today. You will not be sorry; I promise.

Read, Read, Read

I am currently working on my reading lists for my comprehensive exams. This means that I spend as much of my free time as I can bear reading.

So far, i.e. since May 1st, I have read:
Haskell M. Block's Mallarmé and the Symbolist Drama
Daniel Gerould's anthology Symbolist Drama
John A. Henderson's The First Avant-garde (1887-1894)
Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth
and
Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities

It should go without saying that I am really not reading quickly enough. If I am going to be ready to go in the Fall I need to get on this.

Scholar Spotlight

I contributed to this quarter's ATHE News (the newsletter of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education). The piece is an interview with playwright, director, and teacher Jon Fraser.

You can read the piece here.