Watched and Read - August 31, 2025

 

Here’s what I watched and read last week:

Movies

Orpheus (1950). Beautiful film by Jean Cocteau. Love the story and special effects. The underworld sequences are superb and great examples of the fantastic.

Marnie (1964). I’m starting to see why a lot fans of Hitchcock like this one - at least from what I’ve been reading. This was my third time seeing it since the early 2000s and I really enjoyed it. Marnie breaking into Rutland’s safe is classic Hitchcock and great example of his commitment to pure cinema.

Topaz (1969). The first half was very good and suspenseful, especially the opening sequence. But the second half of the film was a let down. Minor film by Hitchcock.

Broken Flowers (2005). One of my favorites of Jarmusch’s. Great and subtle performance by Bill Murray. Jeffrey Wright is so funny as Winston who does the investigating for Murray. I also love the soundtrack, which I still own on CD. Slow cinema greatness!

The Majestic (2001): Nice film. Has a kind of Frank Capra vibe. I love the way Frank Darabont captures the small town of Lawson. I also enjoyed the 1950s invasion narrative that Darabont was engaging with. Nice performance from Jim Carrey.

---

TV

We started the seventh season of Little House on the Prairie. Some good episodes so far. Curious to see how the characters develop. I really like the episode that featured Madeleine Stowe.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: The first episode was a washout for me. Too much time had passed since the second season for me to remember what happened in the last episode — even with the recap. The same thing happened when I tried watching the second season of Severance — I had no idea what was going on. Overall, based on the first six episodes I’ve watched, the third season of SNW includes some questionable choices by the writers, but I’m sticking with it.

---

Books

Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light by Patrick McGilligan. Outstanding read. What a journey to read about Hitchcock’s life in film. I read Donald Spoto’s book on Hitchcock back in 2015. Now having read both books, I feel I have much better understanding of Hitch’s work. One of our greatest filmmakers.

Enjoying Right & Left by Todd McGowan. Excellent read. McGowan, as always, does a great job of explaining the concepts - focusing on the differences between belonging and nonbelonging and their relationship to enjoyment. McGowan offers lots of great examples to explain how the right and left organize enjoyment and the important role of contradiction. I love the chapter on Christmas movies and the last chapter on Heathers.

Watched and Read - August 23, 2025

 

Here’s what I watched and read last week:

Movies

I’m continuing my Jim Jarmusch marathon.

Night on Earth. Very enjoyable. The first story with Winona Ryder was my favorite.

Dead Man. I haven’t seen this since it was first released on video in 1996. The movie is starting to grow on me, but still my least favorites of Jarmusch’s.

Coffee and Cigarettes. The name says it all. A collection of stories or conversations. My favorite ones are Jack and Meg White and Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina.

Sinners. Very good horror film. Really liked that Coogler allowed us to know the characters and their world before getting into the horror.

In Time. Great premise. Loved the first part of the film. But I felt some of the acting was not good, and kind of surprising given Niccol had written and directed Gattica, which I love.

---

TV

We finished the sixth season of Little House on the Prairie. The last three episodes were classic. The sixth and second seasons, so far, are my favorite. Michael Landon has a great eye for composition. The high definition images look great on Peacock.

---

Books

Foul Play Suspected by John Wyndham. A crime novel written under the name John Beynon. I wasn’t expecting something like The Day of the Triffids or The Midwich Cuckoos, but there are some interesting topics discussed—stuff that he would later explore in his sci-fi books. I’d consider it a minor work of his, but worth checking out. The book reminded me a little of the film noir Kiss Me Deadly.

Watched and Read - August 17, 2025

 

Watched and read this past week:

Movies

Karate Kid: Legends. Enjoyable and fun. I just wished they let the story breathe a little bit.

The Life of Chuck. Nice adaptation of King’s novella. I like that Mike Flanagan continues to adapt King’s work for the screen. Both Doctor Sleep and Gerald’s Game are great interpretations of his books. Still can’t believe he pulled off Gerald’s Game!

Watched four by Jim Jarmusch. Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Mystery Train, and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. All excellent films. Love RZA’s score for Ghost Dog. Mystery Train might be my favorite of Jarmusch’s. It was sad seeing Joe Strummer. Wish he was still with us.

Everything’s Going to Be Great: Nice coming of age story. Great performance by Allison Janey.

Psycho Beach Party: Fun, but I felt it was a little too long. Cool to see Amy Adams in one of her earlier films.

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad. Still holds up and still hilarious!

---

TV

Halfway through the sixth season of Little House on the Prairie. Big improvement from the fifth season. But the two-part episode, “May We Make Them Proud,” was devastating and perhaps too much. I think Mary has been through enough.

Finishing up the latest season of Bob’s Burgers. Need more Teddy episodes!

---

Books

Todd’s McGowan’s Introduction to Jacques Lacan. Outstanding. See my post.

Jack Finney’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Excellent read. One of my favorite sci-fi films (1956 version). The 1956 version left out the section where they discuss space spores, which was one of my favorite parts of the novel.

Review - Todd McGowan's Introduction to Jacques Lacan

Todd McGowan's new book is an excellent read and important book for those who are interested in Lacan. Over the years, I have read a lot of Lacan, along with Zizek, McGowan, Copjec, etc, and this by far is one of the best introductory books with lots of great examples. 

 

I love McGowan’s interpretation of Kant and Hegel in contextualizing Lacan’s three stages. The connection between Kant’s sensibility, understanding, and reason nicely line up with Lacan’s imaginary, symbolic and the Real in the first stage of Lacan’s work. But Lacan’s middle period turns to Hegel’s dialectic with his introduction of objet a (object cause of desire). McGowan claims that objet a, which is linked to the Real, is the fundamental object and perhaps one of Lacan’s greatest contributions. 

 

 

An example is Lacan’s concept of the gaze (which should not be confused with the look). The gaze (as the visual drive) demonstrates how our unconscious desire distorts the visual plane, something we don’t recognize in the everyday, but something movies can make apparent. McGowan offers Spielberg’s Duel as a great example. Lacan's examples are paintings, such as Las Meninas (see image below). The painter is painting a couple who we think are in the mirror image, located in the far background. For Lacan, the canvas is too big to be the mirror image. The canvas embodies the gaze because it does not fit within the representational world of the painting. As McGowan explains, the canvas demonstrates a resistance toward representation. 

  

Another example is The Ambassadors (see my blog post). When we encounter the gaze, we realize how our desire distorts the visual plane. The gaze is objet a within the field of vision. Encountering the gaze exemplifies that our spectatorship is not from a transcendent standpoint but within the painting or movie itself. That's where we locate the dialectic component of Lacan's work on desire.

I agree with McGowan that Lacan is the philosopher of the subject. The subject is always a split subject, a subject that is never at home with itself because of the unconscious. Lastly, it was great to read how many of Lacan’s concepts changed throughout his three periods, particularly the Real and jouissance. Highly recommend!