What's Going On?
Some updates, some recent reviews, and an essay out of the archives.
Hey friends. How are you doing? Have you figured out how to battle the individualistic experience of debilitating depression with the call to act beyond yourself that is as urgent as ever these days? I haven't quite figured it out myself, though I am trying to remind myself that defeat is just about the worst thing I could feel right now.
Here are a few quick updates since I've been quiet the past month:
Hand Me the Mike is still going! September was a real challenge of trying to balance high priorities while keeping the podcast running on time. It wasn't the most successful, but so we beat on. I've got episodes in the can for The End (featuring musician and writer Ross W. Berman IV), Eric Larue (featuring comedian and illustrator Whitney Wasson, creator of the zine Sober Rabbit), and Vanilla Sky (featuring Aaron Casias, co-host of Hit Factory). I'm held up on editing, but hope to resume a 1-1.5 week schedule starting Monday.
I've published some writing milestones! Somehow, miraculously, and despite feeling like a writing-blocked creative void the last month, I had a handful of pieces published, a couple of which are personal favorites. For the Chicago Reader, I published my first written director Q&A with Neo Sora, whose narrative debut HAPPYEND is one of my favorite movies of the year. It's playing at the Siskel Film Center another week is a must-see, and my conversation with Neo sets up the context of the movie and its vision of near-future Japan.
I also nearly cried when In Review Online picked up my dream essay about Michael Mann's The Insider, very likely my favorite movie of all time, and certainly one that has moved and activated me this year in particular. I write generally about why the film is so electric and arguably Mann's best, but I focus on its relationship to journalism, and especially how it exposes the limits of journalism—believing that journalism is necessary, but also challenging whether it can truly make a difference.
And I've been back on a steady review beat with the Chicago Reader (long live the Reader). The fantastic Adult Swim series Women Wearing Shoulder Pads is a real treat and just wrapped up its season—if you have not watched it yet, please get to it (all episodes are on HBO Max). This is the type of work I want to see renewed for far more than a second season. Olivier Assayas' breezy comedy Suspended Time (now available on VOD) isn't particularly novel, but it does hit on some relatable feelings that came out of the pandemic (and per my review, that also hit home as I turned 30). Most recently, I reviewed Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt, which opens in limited release today and expands wide (including to Chicago) next Friday. I'm generally a fan of Guadagnino, but After the Hunt is quite poor. That said, I haven't stopped thinking about it since seeing it, and maybe that makes it a touch successfully. I'm always up for seeing a movie I end up hating because I enjoy the challenge of dissecting why it doesn't work, and this is a prime case. I don't think the movie is worth your time (please see Sorry, Baby—which covers some similar territory with different aims—instead).
Another film that After the Hunt readily evokes (possibly and frustratingly intentional, but that's for another day) is TÁR.
My silly relationship to the movie may or may not be well-known at this point. The short story is I ran a parody account for the titular character that went viral (at least in the niche circles of cinephiles, critics, and some industry-adjacent folks).
I sometimes feel odd bringing this up because it was three years ago and I really don't want to be a person defined by a 15-minutes of fame, but I am in many ways forever indebted to the touch of success that account had—I don't think I'd be writing like I do now if not for that account. It gave me my first bylines as editors from Slate and The Boston Globe were tickled enough by the account to be interested in me as an author. Those bylines gave me credibility. I can never be sure if the early criticism and journalism that followed would've happened regardless, but even so, I also ended up with a new audience from the account who read and amplified those early pieces and have been following me as a writer since.
It was also just fun. For as toxic as the internet is, I almost never encountered negativity. It was an exercise where in between my day job assignments, I was writing little low-stakes jokes in a particular voice every day, and got to joke around with people in the goofiest of ways. It also was a movie that I did actually love for weeks before I even started the account, and to this day may be the only movie I ever fervently wrote about immediately after seeing it.
That day was three years ago today, at an early screening hosted by the Chicago International Film Festival. I went alone, and came out invigorated as many other members of the audience grumbled out of the theater. It's still a piece I'm very proud of, and as a real antithesis to After the Hunt, gets into why TÁR is quite successful at understanding power dynamics, and especially how women in positions of power operate and assimilate—all through a framework of the band-aid that appears on Lydia's finger and its relationship to Todd Field's In the Bedroom.
For this anniversary, I'm republishing this essay. I hope today I am much more than Lydia, but while life really isn't too different than it was in 2022 (at least materially), I feel so grateful for every review, essay, and reported piece.
Daniella Mazzio
Thanks for following me along all this time, no matter how much time it's been and no matter what brought you here.
Be good to each other, fight the good fight, and watch some good movies.
More soon.
xoxo
Daniella