"Whenever I listen to this I find myself quite overwhelmed by it. There was an interest in the '70s in that Bulgarian folk singing, the kind of singing where they sing in 2nds. One of the harmonies they use a lot is a 2nd, which is a very unusual interval, and I remember that being around and there being a great album called Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares, which is an amazing record, so I think I was aware that that part of the world had interesting music. I don't really remember how I got this one other than I bought it in France. The softness of the male voices is like softly blown flutes. If you grow up in England with the disgusting operatic tradition we have, where the men's voices have to be so manly, it makes you violently ill [laughs]. Hearing the softness of this was so touching to me. There's one section in one of these tracks that is too amazing, where the voices that are all woven together gradually separate out so that all the voices above a certain register keep on going higher and higher and the ones below keep going lower. It ends with this incredible chasm between the voices that is just startling."

"I was on a panel at NYU a few years ago with Larson and enjoyed immensely listening to him talk about his craft. I’m also a Winston Churchill junkie, having recently finished Andrew Roberts’ 800-plus-page juggernaut. But this is a Churchill largely unseen in other works. It focuses on a finite time period as Britain, the last country standing after France falls, desperately tries to not just hang on until Churchill can convince the Yanks to join the fray, but to take the fight to Hitler. Larson has drawn on new material, some just recently released, to build upon the legendary status of a man who did enough during his life to justify three lives. The only historical figure who might have rivaled him in the energy and “nine lives of a cat” persona was Theodore Roosevelt. This book will reinforce many things you might have already known about the Second World War and Churchill’s place in it. But you will also learn many new things about that man and that time period that will compel you to find out more. A thoughtful, at times part funny and horrific, and scintillating read that I would recommend to all."

"I adore Fassbinder’s work. I’ve been living in Germany for the last ten years, and I think he’s one of the biggest reasons I moved there. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is my favorite film of all time. It’s the kind of film I’d never think of making—I’d never have thought of those two protagonists as a possible couple—but it’s the most beautiful and yet political film I’ve ever seen. When I was growing up, I never thought that I’d be able to make movies, but I began to learn by discovering films that were made in a way that was very technically simple yet powerful in terms of character, which is what you see in Ali. I come from an Algerian family that emigrated to France in the seventies, so there is something about the character of Ali in particular, and the empathy that the older woman has for him, that touched me. There’s also something about the way Fassbinder depicts sadness that I love and find refreshing. I absolutely adore In a Year of 13 Moons, Fox and His Friends, and Querelle, which made me feel the world differently. I didn’t feel so alone; I felt there were other people who were like me."

"I can’t explain this movie. It’s just perfection. Sad and funny, light and heavy, full of boisterous color and nonstop singing. Probably the most romantic movie I have ever seen. Catherine Deneuve has never been so lovely. I have never been to France, but I imagine it is just like it is depicted here. Maybe I will never go so I can keep my fantasy and save myself from disappointment. Jacques Demy was a singular talent. There was never anyone like him and there never will be again. I highly recommend the entire box set of his work, but this one will always be my favorite. I remember seeing it on the big screen at the Music Box in Chicago in the early nineties and walking out on clouds while also being filled with an intense melancholy. I can’t think of a single other movie that makes me feel both of those things at the same time and has left those feelings lingering inside me twenty-plus years later. Michel Legrand’s score is, it goes without saying, iconic and magnificent. And what this movie lacks in dancing, Demy makes up for in his constant gliding camera movements. As if the dance is between the actors and his lens. Pure cinema. Perfection."

"Malle is one of my favorite directors. He flirts with genres, tries all sorts of things, travels all around the world, refuses to let go of documentary, his first love (or first milieu)—although his fiction movies are acclaimed. This film, close to his skin and past, is a strong coming-of-age work, set in France under Vichy. Often, in the middle of the day, I think of scenes from Au revoir les enfants, moments of grace like the restaurant sequence, with the mother. French officers burst into the place and ask for citizens’ papers. They find an old Jewish man dining quietly at his table and start to reprimand him, asking him if he knows how to read; the place is, of course, forbidden to “youtres,” as the young French officer says insolently. Suddenly, every patron at the restaurant starts yelling at the officers, insulting them (“Collabo!”), forcing them to leave. And then, among the clientele, German officers stand up and order them to exit the place. Strong turning point. That is exactly Malle, in there, striking again. Contrast, antagonism, emotions, brute emotions. The rest is craft and mastery. But emotions. That is what he aims for. That is what we get."