Search

Search only in certain items:

Manifesto: On Never Giving Up
Manifesto: On Never Giving Up
Bernardine Evaristo | 2021 | Biography, LGBTQ+
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I don’t know what I expected from this book, but it exceeded my expectations. It was fascinating and Evaristo really shares a lot of herself: her triumphs, her failures, her good and bad relationships. She tells us about the lesbian relationships she had through her 20’s, and talks of her relationship and marriage with her husband. Her determination to run theatre companies with and for black women, telling black womens stories.
But it’s her perseverance that stays with me well after I’ve finished the book. She really didn’t give up, no matter the circumstances.
This is well worth reading.
  
40x40

Martin Scorsese recommended Contempt (1963) in Movies (curated)

 
Contempt (1963)
Contempt (1963)
1963 | Drama, Romance
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"I used to think of Godard and Antonioni as the great modern visual artists of cinema—great colorists who composed frames the way painters composed their canvases. I still think so, but I also connect with them on the emotional level. And for me, Contempt is one of the most moving films of its era. At the time, people talked a lot about the unlikely combination of artists involved: a multilingual Carlo Ponti production of an Alberto Moravia novel, starring Brigitte Bardot, costarring Michel Piccoli and Jack Palance, set at Cinecittà and in the Casa Malaparte in Capri, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, with Fritz Lang as himself. The film itself got a little lost in the fixation on the details. It’s interesting when circumstances that seem so relevant and important at the time of a film’s release just dissolve as the years go by. I didn’t care so much about all of that background information at the time, I just responded to what I saw on the screen, but over the years Contempt has grown increasingly, almost unbearably, moving to me. It’s a shattering portrait of a marriage going wrong, and it cuts very deep, especially during the lengthy and justifiably famous scene between Piccoli and Bardot in their apartment: even if you don’t know that Godard’s own marriage to Anna Karina was coming apart at the time, you can feel it in the action, the movement of the scenes, the interactions that stretch out so painfully but majestically, like a piece of tragic music. Contempt is also a lament for a kind of cinema that was disappearing at the time, embodied by Fritz Lang and the impossible adaptation of The Odyssey that he’s directing. And it is a profound cinematic encounter with eternity, in which both the lost marriage and the cinema seem to dissolve. It’s one of the most frightening great films ever made."

Source
  
The Captain and the Theatrical
The Captain and the Theatrical
Catherine Curzon | 2019 | Contemporary, LGBTQ+, Romance
7
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
very enjoyable read
I was gifted my copy of this book, that I write a review was not required.

Ambrose Pendleton is a hero and returns home from war to his father’s meddling into his love life. Or lack thereof. Pen now faces an arranged marriage his father has brokered as part of a business deal. To get out of this marriage, Pen needs a fiancée, and who better than his long-time friend and actor, Orsini, who has a leading lady who might just fit the bill. But Pen has long held feelings for Orsini, feelings a man should not have for another. Then Orsini surprises him and throws his own feelings at Pen. Now they just need to get rid of the dreadful arranged marriage and they can be together.

For the most part, I did enjoy this. It was a little bit different and different is always good in my book, but something didn’t quite work for me, and I cannot figure out what. And I hate that I can’t!

Pen and Orsini are old friends, and Pen has crushed on Orsini for a long time. He did not know that feeling was the same for Orsini, though. With Orsini pretending to be Pen’s new bride, the pair get close, far closer than they should. I loved how it really was a bit of a slow burn for these two. It’s not overly explicit, but it doesn’t need to be for these two.

Both Pen and Orsini have a say, and I didn’t think that was going to be the case for a while, so I am glad they both were given a voice.

There was a little twist, with the missing jewels, that I did not see coming, and I thought Pen’s mother might have given the game away a time or two. I think she had them sussed, I really do!

An enjoyable way to spend and lazy Sunday evening.

3.5 stars (rounded up to four the Amazon and Goodreads)

**same worded review will appear elsewhere**