0113: Maya Deren & Satantango

Hi. Is this just another procrastination machine? Am I just making another excuse to not do the things I literally have to do for us to stay in Paris, like, say, finishing my student courses & getting an actual job, or completing my French certificate so I can get my damned citizenship papers and not get deported back to the States just as WW fucking 3 begins?

Or is this a way to be held publicly accountable for having the discipline to have some words generated, to be able to think in more complete sentences, to complete thoughts here as anywhere when I haven't been otherwise, for whatever reason.

I'm doing my best writing right now on Letterboxd , and somewhere inside of me in a place I'd rather not think too hard about, I know it, which has encouraged me to put off studies, and instead watch movies just so I can react to them. It's rare that I watch something I don't like, even though I'm not rewatching a whole lot. I don't think I'm all that easy to please, but I'm certainly more eager these days to find something positive to say about the stuff I come into contact with.

And also, I just find it easier to like things now.

Today, I watched two shorts, one great, and the other... not awful, but it was my first two-star review in a long time. Like I said, I don't pan much.

Review of ‘At Land’ (1944)

The most (for lack of a better word) plot-driven of any Maya Deren film I've ever seen. Just wonderful imagery, and she even does some actual acting. But make no mistake, this is still Maya all the…

Review of ‘Lata’ (2020) ★★

I've been a servant, but not at anywhere near this level, and I've dealt with lots of snooty rich people, but I never pretended to be patient enough to put up with their attitude for very long. And…

Same goes for books, although that's something I only just started getting back into. I realized at the end of last year that I had watched 113 films, which was apparently an all-time high for me, but I also had read a grand total of three books.

Three.

So that scared me, and now I'm almost done my third book of 2026, a whole 50 weeks ahead of last year's schedule. I even wrote a review of the last one I finished and everything.

Review by tonyhightower - Satantango

Admittedly, I read this in preparation for watching the film at some point this year (RIP Bela...

Yes, it's a book (by a Nobel Prize winner, for what that's worth) that was later made into a classic film, but I gotta start somewhere. Also, said film is 7 1/2 hours long, so maybe I'll get to it next month.

Onward.