Today’s kind of an intersticial day, so I’m revving up by sharing all the commentating and writing I did during the 2016 holidaze.
I reviewed Fences, Denzel Washington’s adaptation of the August Wilson play; Julieta, Pedro Almodóvar’s adaptation of three Alice Munro stories; Neruda, Pablo Larraín’s film about the Chilean poet and dissident; 20th Century Women, Mike Mill’s homage to his mum; All We Had, Katie Holmes’ adaptation of Annie Weatherwax’s novel; and Silence, Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel. As well, I named my top ten films and top ten adaptations, and the most creative adaptations, and spoke with Jack Rico and Mike Sargent about 2016 film on Rico’s Highly Relevant podcast, and reviewed the end of the year’s best on Talking Pictures, the NY1 show on which I appear weekly. Perhaps the piece I’m most proud of (and was the least read) is Who’s Reading Who, about the hazards of racial identification in literature —especially YA novels.
Thank you as ever for coming along on this ride, Sirenaders. Happy happy new non-Jew year!