Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 59

The 21st French Film Fest starts today at the Greenbelt 3 and BGC Cinemas.

The annual festival is where we first saw Renoir’s Grand Illusion for the first time and became a fan of Eric Rohmer via The Baker Girl of Monceau and Summer’s Tale. Last year they had a fine selection of recent movies. Watch as many movies as you can, even the ones you know nothing about. […]

How to catcall

To call a cat: – Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. Here, kitty. – Ming ming ming muning. Sssswssswssssw. – Ao raqagon mirri klios? (If the cat speaks Old Valyrian.) – Dracarys! – So. Cleganebowl, what do you think? – Lady Stoneheart? Won’t that be too many resurrected Starks? If Drogon makes the catcalls: – You remind […]

Tobias Menzies reads from The Iliad

Today is Prince’s birthday.

Your Purpleness, we know you did not want your work uploaded on YouTube, but we need it. See how the weather provides the production design for Purple Rain.

Against Pevearsion: Which Russian translation are we supposed to read now?

Count Leo Tolstoy playing tennis. Janet Malcolm writes that the revered Tolstoy translations by Constance Garnett—”her fine English, her urgent forward-moving sentences, her feeling for words—all this was gone, replaced by writing that is like singing or piano playing by someone who is not musical.” Morson wrote these words in 1997, and would recall them […]

2 Bens play 2 Richards: Cumberbatch and Whishaw star in The Hollow Crown

Benedict Cumberbatch as the villainous Richard If it’s propaganda you want, hire a great playwright. Seize the narrative. Shakespeare wrote Richard III under the auspices of the Tudors who overthrew Richard, the last of the Plantagenets. It’s been a lasting investment in public relations. “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!” Richard cries […]

Jane Austen’s early novella Lady Susan is bitchy and hilarious

Kate Beckinsale stars in Whit Stillman’s Love and Friendship Whit Stillman makes literary movies, specifically Jane Austenesque movies, so no one is surprised that his new movie Love and Friendship is an adaptation of a Jane Austen novella, Lady Susan. If there is anything Whit Stillman fans are used to, it is waiting. Since his […]

Honor, duty, courage, Hodor.

If you have not seen last week’s episode of Game of Thrones, do not read this. Don’t even go online. Cover your eyes and ears. For the past week I have not been able to look at a door or get into an elevator without my throat tightening, such is the power of the last […]

Writing a novel vs tickling a cat

I have to finish writing a novel in three months so I’ve been in lockdown for two and a half weeks. I only allow myself out of the house twice a week for appointments and chores. So far it’s been working: I’ve written down half of it, and expect to complete the first draft well […]

The Wine Show: Getting to know the grape with Matthews Goode and Rhys

THE WINE SHOW answers the age-old question: good looks or personality? Specifically, would you rather spend time with two very attractive men with average conversational skills, or two not as attractive men who can have a hilarious conversation about nothing? Even more specifically, would you rather drive through Italy in the company of Matthew Goode […]