"This is, without exception, the funniest book I’ve ever read. The phrasebook scene (which I won’t delineate further in case you haven’t yet read the book and might enjoy doing so) has made me laugh every time I’ve read it, and I’ve now read it several hundred times. Macauley has a great gentleness, and though she keeps up her wry take on the absurd, she is also engaged in moral inquiry, in the attempt to know and understand what is right and what is the opposite of right."

"All this talk about bonus features has made me think we need to talk about extras! I apologize, but I’m gonna deep-dive for a sec. It’s just that the special features are such key ingredients to some of these amazing Criterion titles and have become such an essential part of my own viewing experiences. There are stunning extras in the Criterion Collection that I often think about as important additions to the history of movies. So don’t get me started, or I’m going to start blabbing about the piles of amazing extras on Barry Lyndon (which fill two Blu-rays!). Or the amazing documentaries on 8½ and Seven Samurai and Brazil. Or The Game, with its eight different audio commentaries. Or that concert film in the edition of Inside Llewyn Davis. Or every Andrea Arnold short film on Fish Tank. Or that Cronos supplement where Guillermo del Toro gives a nerdgasm tour of his bonkers house. (I told you: don’t get me started.) But I think my all-time favorite bonus feature is Charles Laughton Directs “The Night of the Hunter,” a two-and-a-half-hour documentary that has to go down as one of the most interesting behind-the-scenes films ever made. I had never even heard of this until I picked up the Night of the Hunter disc. It literally shows something that I’ve never seen before: tons of footage of a director in the midst of working with his actors during takes. While actors are performing, you hear Charles Laughton (a legendary actor directing his only film) guiding the cast through every line in basically every shot, take after take after take. It’s like being on set next to a perfectionist director while he meticulously sculpts the performances in his masterpiece. (And oh, poor Shelley Winters. “Do it again! Do it again! Less air in between! Go ahead Mitch! Look at her! Shelley, look up now and say ‘blessss ussss all.’ Yes, that’s it, Shelley!!”)"

"Nobody knows about Melanie in America really, and you know, I only just realised that she was such a big influence on me. The way she sings, absolutely. People would be like, 'What are your influences?', and they would compare me to Janis, but that's because they don't know Melanie. 'Lay Down'? It gives me chills. I got to cover that with Mark Ronson and his band, it was one of the best moments of my fucking life. 'Animal Crackers'? She's so hilarious. I have this haircut because I wanted to look like her on the cover of Gather Me. And I think one of the most beautiful songs in the fucking world, especially as someone who plays music, is 'Look What They've Done To My Song Ma'. That's one of my favourites. I love her so much. But of all her album I couldn't take Photograph off. See, I could have chosen 13 Melanie records! I just had to pick one, so I picked Photograph. 'Cyclone' is such a big song for me. I found it at a yard sale, or maybe a Good Will, but I got it second-hand and it was already really worn out and that's where I started getting really deep and I would look for her everywhere. A lot of times she was on compilations or Greatest Hits compilations, and it would be so weird, because apart from 'Brand New Key', you didn't hear her on the radio, and you'd think, where was this a hit? I would look for her everywhere. And the thing is, you had to work so hard to get a jam back then. Now you can just Google it up, but that's what started me onto Melanie, my mom singing 'Brand New Key' to me and then finding the record and going from there. Every time, if I looked hard, I would find one of her records."