Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023, ****), Brightburn (2019, **), How to Tell a Secret (2022, ****), All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White (2023, ***½), Casa Susanna (2022, ****), Labor (2023, ****½), Taylor Mac's 24-Decade History of Popular Music (2023, ****½), Smile (2022, ***), The Guest (2014, ***½)
June 30th, 2023
Not sure anybody is reading this, but just FYI, the reason there hasn't been much here for a while except Letterboxd movie review links isn't because I stopped writing anything else. It's because most of what I've written in the last year is theater/performance art material for the San Francisco Neo-Futurists.
The SF Neos are a relatively recent (10 years) offshoot of the original Chicago company that's now 35 years old, by way of the New York sister group. Pretty much everyone in Chicago knows what that is, but I haven't spent much time in Chicago and so I only found out about it when I had the great good luck to meet Dave Awl and Diana Slickman in 2005. I could see immediately that this was something I needed in my life, so it was pretty exciting when the SF group started in 2013, and I became a loyal fan to a possibly annoying degree, and unsuccessfully auditioned for them early on. More recently I did some work for them as a theater tech, and then last year I finally got my nerve up to audition again and got in. It's been pretty great, not just in general because I'd been itching to perform more after many years of not pursuing theater, but also because I specifically love this group and their work.
But, being theater, it's mostly ephemeral work. I might post some of my own short pieces online at some point, and maybe one day we'll do a big book like the ones Dave and Diana did, but right now I'm content to have a couple of them in the little anthology chapbook/zine that we publish every year. The 2022 chapbook (which also includes a bunch of little drawings I did) is available at the merch table at our shows; people in Chicago may also find one at Quimby's.
There are various comics projects that I keep working on very slowly, and this year I printed a few small zine/minicomic things, like this and this and this.
The SF Neos are a relatively recent (10 years) offshoot of the original Chicago company that's now 35 years old, by way of the New York sister group. Pretty much everyone in Chicago knows what that is, but I haven't spent much time in Chicago and so I only found out about it when I had the great good luck to meet Dave Awl and Diana Slickman in 2005. I could see immediately that this was something I needed in my life, so it was pretty exciting when the SF group started in 2013, and I became a loyal fan to a possibly annoying degree, and unsuccessfully auditioned for them early on. More recently I did some work for them as a theater tech, and then last year I finally got my nerve up to audition again and got in. It's been pretty great, not just in general because I'd been itching to perform more after many years of not pursuing theater, but also because I specifically love this group and their work.
But, being theater, it's mostly ephemeral work. I might post some of my own short pieces online at some point, and maybe one day we'll do a big book like the ones Dave and Diana did, but right now I'm content to have a couple of them in the little anthology chapbook/zine that we publish every year. The 2022 chapbook (which also includes a bunch of little drawings I did) is available at the merch table at our shows; people in Chicago may also find one at Quimby's.
There are various comics projects that I keep working on very slowly, and this year I printed a few small zine/minicomic things, like this and this and this.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023, ***), Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997, ***½), Batman & Robin (1997, **), Black Adam (2022, **½), Scenes from Under Childhood, Section One (1968, ***½), Confess, Fletch (2022, ***), Le beau mec (1979, ****), Nude on the Moon (1961, **½), Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023, ****)