Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 45

What can’t Jake Gyllenhaal do?

That is not an easy song. But he did “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls on SNL ten years ago, so he enjoys difficulty. Three people we love: Jake Gyllenhaal, Stephen Sondheim, and Cary Fukunaga, who directed this video.

Did you know Jake Gyllenhaal could sing like this?

What can’t Jake do? Three people we love: Jake Gyllenhaal, Stephen Sondheim, and Cary Fukunaga, who directed this video.

Weekly Report Card 5: If language is your weapon of choice, Arrival is a religious experience.

Movie: Arrival Cosmic wonder and bottomless sorrow are the two poles that Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival navigates, and the engines of propulsion are the eyes of Amy Adams. Arrival is a conversation between your brain and your heart. It is both epic in scale and intimate in its execution. It calls on you to consider the […]

Scorsese’s 1993 defense of Fellini explains why Trump’s immigration ban destroys the future

La Dolce Vita photo from the Criterion Collection. The issue here is not “film theory,” but cultural diversity and openness. Diversity guarantees our cultural survival. When the world is fragmenting into groups of intolerance, ignorance and hatred, film is a powerful tool to knowledge and understanding. To our shame, your article was cited at length […]

Weekly Report Card 4: Best American Science-Fiction, The Finkler Question, and A Street Cat Named Bob

Books. The Best American Science-Fiction and Fantasy 2016, edited by Karen Joy Fowler. A fine selection which I enjoyed while I was reading it, but now all I can remember is the final story, The Great Silence by Ted Chiang. The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, the Booker winner from some years ago, about three […]

18!

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One week till the next Writing Boot Camp

Oglaf on preparing the text. The world is a strange, chaotic place, and one way to deal with it is to write. Join the workshop.

The Impossible Burger tastes exactly like meat.

As a meatatarian, my main issue with vegan and vegetarian food (as long as it does not come with a lecture on how not eating animals is so much better for you and the planet in general) is that it tastes like cardboard. For a long time I’ve suspected that the ingredient that makes meat […]

Weekly Report Card 3: Carrie Fisher, Angelina Jolie, Ben Affleck and the actor as writer

Books read: The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher; A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor (on Cappadocia) I loved Carrie Fisher, first because she was my Disney princess, and then because she was a truthful writer who mined her mental health issues for comedy without belittling them. I thought reading her last book […]

In Istanbul, living in the present moment is a form of defiance.

Marzipans. All photos of Istanbul vitrines and shop displays by JZ. Candy Candied fruit A sparrow was sipping water from a half-filled glass in an Istanbul café Wednesday morning. Customers had their lunch outside, thanks to the warm weather, and chatted about the latest episode of Sherlock, screened hours after the terror attack on the […]