Engineer's Daughter

input january 2021

Books

The Gimmicks - Chris McCormick

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America - Marcia Chatelain

 

Movies

Time - Garrett Bradley

The Greatest Showman - Michael Gracey

Finding Christa - Camille Billops and James Hatch

Suzanne, Suzanne - Camille Billops and James Hatch

Older Women and Love - Camille Billops and James Hatch

Take Your Bags - Camille Billops and James Hatch

The KKK Boutique Ain't Just Rednecks - Camille Billops and James Hatch

A String of Pearls - Camille Billops and James Hatch

Boyz n the Hood - John Singleton

Soul - Pete Docter

A Clockwork Orange - Stanley Kubrick

Ernest & Celestine - Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, and Benjamin Renner

Monsoon Wedding - Mira Nair

 

Streaming

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Community

Jeopardy!

input december 2020

Books

Abigail - Magda Szabó

Disability Visibility - Alice Wong, editor

Homie - Danez Smith

Optic Nerve - María Gainza

The Heap - Sean Adams

 

Movies

Easy A - Will Gluck

Raging Bull - Martin Scorsese

Four Women - Julie Dash

Diary of an African Nun - Julie Dash

Illusions - Julie Dash

Praise House - Julie Dash

Standing at the Scratch Line - Julie Dash

The Lady from Shanghai - Orson Welles

Fruitvale Station - Ryan Coogler

Yentl - Barbra Streisand

The Prince of Tides - Barbra Streisand

The Mirror Has Two Faces - Barbra Streisand

Little Big Man - Arthur Penn

Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions - Taylor Swift

Loving - Jeff Nichols

The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye - Marie Losier

Cassandro, the Exotico! - Marie Losier

12 Years a Slave - Steve McQueen

Howard - Don Hahn

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan - Martin Scorsese

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum - Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta

Marianne and Juliane - Margarethe von Trotta

Rosa Luxemburg - Margarethe von Trotta

Vision: From the Life of Hildegard of Bingen - Margarethe von Trotta

Hannah Arendt - Margarethe von Trotta

Chicken Run - Nick Park, Peter Lord

 

Streaming

Teenage Bounty Hunters

Outlander

The Good Place

 

Virtual Theater

The Light at Shotgun Players

Holiday Sauce...Pandemic! at the Curran

Whatever Happened To Bianca Del Rio?

input november 2020

Books

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir - Anna Wiener

A Bookshop in Berlin - Françoise Frenkel

Life with Picasso - Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake

Having and Being Had - Eula Biss

 

Movies

Romance - Catherine Breillat

Fat Girl - Catherine Breillat

Bluebeard - Catherine Breillat

The Sleeping Beauty - Catherine Breillat

Abuse of Desire - Catherine Breillat

Demon - Marcin Wrona

Diane - Kent Jones

Fargo - Ethan Coen & Joel Coen

Clouds - Justin Baldoni

Old Boyfriends - Joan Tewkesbury

Dolemite Is My Name - Craig Brewer

Chocolat - Claire Denis

No Fear, No Die - Claire Denis

Nenette and Boni - Claire Denis

Beau travail - Claire Denis

Towards Mathilde - Claire Denis

35 Shots of Rum - Claire Denis

White Material - Claire Denis

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure - Tim Burton

The Assassin - Hou Hsiao-hsien

Welcome II the Terrordome - Ngozi Onwurah

Dick Johnson Is Dead - Kirsten Johnson

Romeo + Juliet - Baz Luhrmann

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Milos Forman

Werewolf - Ashley McKenzie

Almost Famous - Cameron Crowe

 

Streaming

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts

The Queen's Gambit

The Mandalorian

Chapelle's Show

The Right Stuff

Greenleaf

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

 

Virtual Theater

American Dreams at Marin Theatre Company

Escaped Alone at Magic Theatre

input october 2020

Books

A Dream Come True: The Collected Stories of Juan Carlos Onetti

Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos - Peter Bergen

The Bishop's Bedroom - Piero Chiara

No Room at the Morgue - Jean-Patrick Manchette

Fiebre Tropical - Juliana Lopera Delgado

 

Movies

The Assistant - Kitty Green

The Loveless - Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lynne Ramsay

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman

Atlantics - Mati Diop

The Joy of Life - Jenni Olson

The Royal Road - Jenni Olson

Force Majeure - Ruben Östlund

Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids - Jonathan Demme

The Student Nurses - Stephanie Rothman

The Velvet Vampire - Stephanie Rothman

Humanoids from the Deep - Barbara Peeters & Jimmy T. Murakami

Slumber Party Massacre - Amy Holden Jones

Suburbia - Penelope Spheeris

Portrait of a Lady on Fire - Céline Sciamma

Night of the Living Dead - George A Romero

 

Streaming

New Girl

Schitt's Creek

Lucifer

Gravity Falls

Song Exploder

The Twilight Zone

Evil

 

Virtual Theater

The Present at Geffen Playhouse

The Breath Project

input september 2020

Books

People of the City - Cyprian Ekwensi

The Fifth Season - N.K. Jemisin

One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder - Brian Doyle

The Yellow House: A Memoir - Sarah M. Broom

 

Movies

Holes - Andrew Davis

20 Feet From Stardom - Morgan Neville

If Beale Street Could Talk - Barry Jenkins

Inception - Christopher Nolan

The Bling Ring - Sofia Coppola

The Host - Bong Joon Ho

Inside Llewyn Davis - Joel and Ethan Coen

Gregory Go Boom - Janicza Bravo

Pauline Alone - Janicza Bravo

Woman in Deep - Janicza Bravo

Man Rots from the Head - Janicza Bravo

The Shawshank Redemption - Frank Darabont

La Ciénaga - Lucrecia Martel

The Headless Woman - Lucrecia Martel

Zama - Lucrecia Martel

13TH - Ava DuVernay

Meek's Cutoff - Kelly Reichardt

The One and Only Ivan - Thea Sharrock

Thank You and Good Night - Jan Oxenberg

 

Streaming

Better Call Saul

Muppets Now

Cobra Kai

Kim Possible

Seven Seconds

Schoolhouse Rock

 

Virtual Theater

Caesar Maximus at We Players

Black Voices Past and Present podcast by Steven Anthony Jones

biosphere 2 round-up

Biosphere 2 remains a fascinating experiment in sustainability, and there have been a number of worthy examinations of the project in the media recently:

• Matt Wolf's documentary Spaceship Earth details the history of how Biosphere 2 came to be.
• Michael Fox reviewed the doc for KQED Arts
• Avery Trufelman covered Biosphere 2 on her excellent podcast series about failed utopias, Nice Try! As with anything Trufelman produces the entire series is well worth your time too.
• Rebecca Reider was featured prominently on Trufelman's podcast; check out her book Dreaming the Biosphere: The Theater of All Possibilities
• And last but not least, the official Biosphere 2 website.

input august 2020

Books

Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847 -1947 - Norman Lebrecht

Don't Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language - David Shariatmadari

1919: Poems - Eve L. Ewing

Recollections of My Nonexistence - Rebecca Solnit

 

Movies

Da 5 Bloods - Spike Lee

Parasite - Bong Joon Ho

Fast Color - Julia Hart

My Twentieth Century - Ildikó Enyedi

Iron Man - Jon Favreau

The Witches - Nicolas Roeg

Palm Springs - Max Barbakow

The Farewell - Lulu Wang

Starstruck - Gillian Armstrong

Moana - Ron Clements, John Musker, Don Hall, Chris Williams

Roma - Alfonso Cuarón

Father of My Children - Mia Hansen-Løve

Goodbye First Love - Mia Hansen-Løve

Things to Come - Mia Hansen-Løve

Booksmart - Olivia Wilde

First Reformed - Paul Schrader

Ratatouille - Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava

Nightcrawler - Dan Gilroy

The Salesman - Asghar Farhadi

Rifiki - Wanuri Kahiu

Black Is King - Beyoncé, Jenn Nkiru, Blitz the Ambassador, Jake Nava

Pan's Labyrinth - Guillermo Del Toro

The Dead Zone - David Cronenberg

Sun Don't Shine - Amy Seimetz

 

Streaming

The Baby-Sitters Club

The Last Dance

Hannibal

One Day at a Time

Atlanta

Bob's Burgers

Fauda

 

Virtual Theater

One Room at Weston Playhouse

The Keep Going Song at Actors Theatre of Louisville

The Jacksonian at The New Group

the journeys of trees

 

I'm very happy to report that fave local mag Bay Nature has started their own series of online talks, and the first one earlier this week featured a wonderful conversation between editor-in-chief Victoria Schlesinger and science writer Zach St. George about his new book The Journeys of Trees. Watch the recording above, then follow the links below to buy the book and/or subscribe to Bay Nature. And next up: tidepools!

See also:

• The Journeys of Trees
• Bay Nature
• Bay Nature Talks: Tidepools

 

the science and soul of nature writing

 

The Bay Area Book Festival has gone online this year, and I was fully inspired by the above conversation with some of my fave local nature writers and illustrators. Watch the video, and then buy their beautiful books, all available from the amazing Heyday!

See more:

• Heyday Books
• How to Teach Nature Journaling by John Muir Laws and Emilie Lygren
• The Curious World of Seaweed by Josie Iselin
• The State of Water by Obi Kaufmann

input july 2020

Books

The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu

I Don't Want to Die Poor - Michael Arceneaux

A Black Women's History of the United States - Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross

Feed - Tommy Pico

Tiny Love: The Complete Stories - Larry Brown

 

Movies

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Joel and Ethan Coen

Tangerine - Sean Baker

The Vast of Night - Andrew Patterson

Between the Lines - Joan Micklin Silver

Hamilton - Thomas Kail

Frida - Julie Taymor

You Are Not I - Sara Driver

Sleepwalk - Sara Driver

When Pigs Fly - Sara Driver

The Bowery - Sara Driver

Zodiac - David Fincher

The Social Network - David Fincher

The American President - Rob Reiner

Me and You and Everyone We Know - Miranda July

The Future - Miranda July

Chi-Raq - Spike Lee

WALL-E - Andrew Stanton

The Old Guard - Gina Prince-Bythewood

The Report - Scott Z. Burns

Born in Flames - Lizzie Borden

Inside Out - Pete Docter

 

Streaming

Never Have I Ever

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Fargo

Phineas and Ferb

Russian Doll

She's Gotta Have It

Veronica Mars

 

Virtual Theater

Lungs at the Old Vic

Les Blancs at the National Theatre

The Line at the Public Theater

Richard II at the Public Theater

The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy at Theater in Quarantine