Farran Smith Nehme

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Farran Smith Nehme

@selfstyledsiren.bsky.social

Film critic. Bylines at Criterion, Sight & Sound, Noir City, my own Substack, and wherever fine film geeks are found.
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Re: the horrible Alice Munro news today ... now I am thinking about JULIETA, the excellent and underseen Almodovar movie based on three short stories from "Runaway." The title character's daughter cuts off contact, abruptly and without explanation ...
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Masumura is very much my thing. I'm green with envy toward anyone who got to that retrospective. If you're interested, here's a piece I wrote about the director a few years ago:
Blind Beasts and Red Angels: Erotic Obsessions in the New Wave Gothic Films of Yasuzo Masumura — film and fishnetsfilmandfishnet.com
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Jeanne Crain models mussy hair for sultry weather. In this humidity, you have to sigh and just get on with the day.
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AI is a largely useless technology that is literally destroying the environment and tech bros continue to go all in because they want the world to burn so they can finally get use out of their apocalypse bunkers
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Thanks to a recent Criterion essay by @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social we watched Masumura’s Nakano Spy School (1966) and…wow. Bleak, beautiful and way too timely. As always, his compositions are amazing.
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And reportedly Eva Marie Saint is celebrating with extended family; they’ve flown in from all over. She takes walks, she goes to Dodgers games. A marvel of nature
No idea she was still alive, wow.
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"I turned to my husband and said, 'Oh, boy, that's a little suggestive, isn't it?' And my husband said, 'You got it, honey.' " —on first seeing the famous "train in a tunnel" ending of North by Northwest Happy 100th birthday, Eva Marie Saint.
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Must be nice to have choices
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I join a passionate discussion of the best movies of 1961 on the fun new “A Very Good Year” podcast… curating 6 double features that explore the big themes & stars of that era - Natalie Wood, Marcello Mastroianni, Haley Mills, indie & international cinema podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...
‎A Very Good Year: 1961 with Larry Karaszewski on Apple Podcastspodcasts.apple.com ‎Show A Very Good Year, Ep 1961 with Larry Karaszewski - Jun 16, 2024
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Sunday Night Serenity: Renee Adoree and puppy, 1925.
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“Based on this rationale, Gaza will never have internet,” Marwa Fatafta, a policy adviser with the digital rights group Access Now, told The Intercept. “You can’t punish the entire civilian population just because you have fears of one Palestinian faction.”
Israel Opposes Rebuilding Gaza’s Internet Access Because Terrorists Could Go Onlinetheintercept.com Israel destroyed much of Gaza’s internet infrastructure. A Saudi proposal to rebuild it was watered down after Israeli and U.S. protests.
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Absolutely perfect that google search barely works anymore, but the homepage added a "create theme with AI" button. The fuck would I do that for
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Realistic country songs: I Am A Man Of Intermittent Sorrow
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Using who or whoever when whom and whomever are called for is a forgivable sin and qualifies as English As She Is Spoke; doing it in the other direction is not.
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Almost impressed by the extent to which, as cynical as I am, AI has managed to worsen things in ways I wouldn't even have been able to imagine just five years ago.
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Whoever said Donald Sutherland wasn't a heartthrob didn't see this Canadian Pacific Air commercial in which he propositions the lens and makes you feel like he's going to personally make love to each and every tourist in a canoe. youtu.be/mZvhLp6uWqM?...
youtu.be
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Happy birthday, Nicole Kidman! 📷 Firooz Zahedi
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Bitcoin consumes about 2.5% of US electricity, about the same as all residential cooling. An article decrying *that* electricity usage as a personal moral failing would be much less tone deaf.
Interesting article to run prior to a weekend where we expect a devastating heat wave and label it as “climate solutions”
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Anouk Aimée, a French actress who excelled at portrayals of allure and caprice and starred in defining films of the 1960s including Federico’s Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” and the international romantic hit “A Man and a Woman,” died June 18 at her home in Paris. She was 92.
Anouk Aimée, enigmatic star of ‘A Man and a Woman,’ dies at 92www.washingtonpost.com She excelled at portrayals of allure and caprice, notably in Federico’s Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita,” and became a leading figure of international cinema in the 1960s.
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Ty Burr on Moroccan filmmaker Sofia Alaoui's ANIMALIA, which made a great impression on critics at Karlovy Vary last year. The film is on AppleTV for $4.99 -- I plan to watch soon: www.tyburrswatchlist.com/one-good-fil...
One Good Film: "Animalia"www.tyburrswatchlist.com Sofia Alaoui's impressive debut feature about an enigmatic and allegorical apocalypse comes to video on demand.
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Myrna Loy by Max Munn Autrey, 1931.
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