Category Archives: Culture

Reading Well: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Station Eleven is delightful and complicated and a well-needed antidote to the brutal banality of much post-apocalyptic fiction. Emily St. John Mandel has posited a world where a horrifically virulent disease has wiped out something like 499 of every 500 people. … Continue reading →

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@The Movies with PopPop: The Lone Ranger (What?)

Posted on August 14, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

You may not believe this, but I’m recommending you see The Lone Ranger, a 2013 release, with Johnny Depp as in incredible Tonto. When it was first released, I had a very negative reaction to what I understood about it. … Continue reading →

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@The Movies with PopPop: Winter Sleep

Posted on August 2, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Winter Sleep is a first rate 2014 Turkish film directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, (also directed 2011’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia which I remember seeing and enjoying), loosely adapted from the Chekhov short story The Wife. The film … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: The Painter by Peter Heller

Posted on July 14, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

{This is the first in an occasional series, inspired by the concise brilliance of @TheMovies With PopPop. I am often reluctant to review books, as I don’t want to speak ill of future peers (he said, hopefully). That makes this … Continue reading →

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@The Movies with PopPop: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

Posted on July 12, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a 2014 film directed by Iranian-American Ana Lily Amirpour. The film, in black and white, and “Persian” (Farsi?), is a — ready for this — vampire, feminist, spaghetti-western influenced romance, that though … Continue reading →

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@The Movies with PopPop: Dear White People

Posted on June 25, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Dear White People is quite an interesting movie if not a great one. It’s essentially an exploration of race relations at a fictionalized elite Ivy League school — a composite I think of Ivy and near-Ivy — with its 2-3% African American … Continue reading →

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@The Movies with PopPop: Salt of the Earth

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Salt of the Earth is a remarkable documentary of the life and work of Sebastião Salgado, the Brazilian phtotodocumentarian. The film was written and directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, Sebastião’s son, and was an Academy Award nominee this … Continue reading →

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@The Movies with PopPop: Blue Jasmine

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

While Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen‘s latest film, has some funny, and even more ironic lines, it is not a comedy! It is a first rate film, that in a very Woody Allen way seriously engages issues of class and privilege, … Continue reading →

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@The Movies with PopPop: Ida

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Ida is a wonderful 2013 film, in Polish and in black and white, by the Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski. It’s a story set in the ’60s of a young novice about to take her vows. Before she does, the Mother Superior insists … Continue reading →

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@The Movies with PopPop: Mother of George

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Mother of George is a 2013 Nigerian-American film. It is filmed in and focuses on Brooklyn’s Nigerian-American community, an immigrant community large enough to retain a cultural enclave that can be all inclusive to its members, enabling them to live … Continue reading →

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