4 Comments

This perfectly sums up how I feel about Strickland - skilled as hell as a director and doing really interesting work, but the whole package suffers because of a real lack of feeling. Would love to see him bring in a co-writer to help, uh, humanize the algorithm a little, so to speak, because if you added 20% heart to his stuff it'd be some real best in show stuff.

Expand full comment

Given these persistent issues with Strickland joints, how amazing was Sidse Babett Knudsen's performance in Duke of Burgundy? Has any other actor managed to imbue a Strickland character with half the humanity that she brought to that role?

Expand full comment

Flux Gourmet immediately brought to mind Futurist Cooking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist_cooking), which me wrote about during last stretch of Wiki Wormholes. Futurist art movement came up with awful, awful recipes that they decided were in keeping with their artistic principles. Deep fried rose heads, salad served in music box, bowl of milk and honey with grapes and radishes illuminated by green light — Futurist cookbook perilously close to single plum suspended in perfume in man's hat from Simpsons. (They also tried to get Italy to ban pasta, because it "cause lassituide, pessimism, and lack of passion." As we all know, pasta-eating Italians famous for their lack of passion.) Personally, me will stick with balanced diet

.

.

.

.

.

OF COOKIES!!!!!!

Expand full comment
Jul 1, 2022Liked by Keith Phipps

The description of Mr. Malcolm's List as playing old songs well is very accurate, but I feel like it has some Shakespeare comedy DNA mixed in with the Austen. Elements like duplicity and revenge, as well as the servant characters and the carnage or war and other seedy parts of life, are things which in Austen would be "understood" but not brought up so frankly.

Expand full comment