Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 42

Weekly Report Cards 12 and 13: Sometimes you just want a solid, old-fashioned narrative

Movies: Life: B (See my review) Ghost in the Shell: C. I never read the manga or saw the anime, so I did not fly into a rage over this live action adaptation by Rupert Sanders. But even I could see that casting Scarlett Johansson (so effective as a post-human character elsewhere) as a Japanese […]

Deliberate resting: Doing more by working less

When you examine the lives of history’s most creative figures, you are immediately confronted with a paradox: They organize their lives around their work, but not their days. Figures as different as Charles Dickens, Henri Poincaré, and Ingmar Bergman, working in disparate fields in different times, all shared a passion for their work, a terrific […]

Fantastic book tunnels and elevator shaft libraries

Entrance to the Yangzhou Zhongshuge bookstore in Zhen Yuan, China. See more photos at My Modern Met. Reading room at the same bookstore Studio North in Canada turns an industrial elevator shaft into a library

Road to Nowhere

I’ve always enjoyed the music choices on Noah Hawley’s shows (Listen to Fargo, Season 2.) Episode 2 of Legion opens with Syd’s cover of this cheerfully ominous Talking Heads song.

Which is the real killer: fat, sugar, or both?

Read Is Fat Killing You, or is Sugar? Recently a friend of mine was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Usually I do not care about blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels, or whatnot, and will eat whatever I want, but this news freaked me out. I’m old, so this shit now affects me. I’ve given up […]

Weekly Report Card 11: The exquisite tale of a love affair, to be devoured in one sitting

TV: Legion – A. From the showrunner of TV’s excellent Fargo, an X-Men origin story with shades of Wes Anderson. I’ll review it when I’ve finished the first season. Movie: Get Out – A Book: Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift – A. On Mothering Sunday (the religious precursor of the commercial Mother’s Day) in the […]

Life is an efficient space horror movie for people who want more Alien

They really should’ve thought of a more intriguing title because Life could mean anything. In this context it refers to the discovery of the first extraterrestrial biological entity, and its needs are more basic than phoning home. I just realized another admirable thing about E.T.—the filmmakers weren’t interested in turning it into a franchise. Life […]

We’re a three-cat household again: Welcome Jacob Howlett.

Last week a reader sent me a series of emails about this stray cat that was always waiting for him at his house. He wanted to know what he should do about the cat. If you bother to send a stranger six emails in a row about a stray cat, it means the cat already […]

Classic Sesame Street: Ronald Grump cons Oscar the Grouch into moving to Grump Tower

via BoingBoing

Roger Federer is back to be our antidepressant in a horrible world.

A few days ago he won Indian Wells for the fifth time. I’m caving in and buying an RF jacket. To start, Federer looked relatively normal when we met, and definitely Swiss: dark turtleneck sweater, crisp wool pants, black boots. Hiking is Federer’s favorite hobby (his only hobby), but snow was falling and his legs […]