Ah! Another year at the movies. Just kidding. I had an old boss who would say “what a semester!” at the end of every work day. What a semester, as we say! A few housekeeping notes: We’re not doing a top ten list this year. By “we,” I mean “I.”…

Ah, another year at the movies! Who can believe it? I set zero movie-related goals for this year, and therefore, I have nothing significant to report on, statistics-wise. It was certainly another year––as they all ought to be––of me seeing more non-2019 movies than 2019 movies, but this was the…

25 movies seemed like a good number — the list is ranked, but only in the loosest, broadest sense. my top ten feel the most solid to me, in part because I wrote them and submitted them to BW/DR and now I cannot undo that. everything that happens after that is… who can say? it was not so…

I have been writing about all of the movies I watch every year for the past few years, and I always find it a fun and low stakes wind-down activity. I made it a New Years resolution to watch 100 movies in 2017. And I did that! Plus one more…

One of my New Years resolutions last year was to watch 100 movies in 2017. Ideally I wanted to do 50 older movies and 50 theatrical releases. I’m not sure my numbers are exactly as accurate as I want to be — oddly I think I saw more 2017 releases…

Classical Music Hour with Fran — My entire last week was derailed by Charli XCX’s new music video for her song “Boys.” The “Boys” video is fun about a few different levels because you can ask yourself: Which boy do I self-identify as? Which boy is my idealized self? Who would be in my own personal…

Classical Music Hour with Fran — I realized with horror midway through kneading my very first focaccia this past weekend that I had yet to cover an Italian composer for this column. (The focaccia, for what it’s worth, turned out fine.) The reason for this is twofold. First, it’s essential to know that much of my…

Classical Music Hour with Fran — Week after week, I share my preferred recordings of the pieces I write about, and more often than not, they’re recordings by the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein from the 1960s. But rarely do I go into Bernstein himself, the seminal composer, conductor, pianist, lecturer, etc. …

Classical Music Hour with Fran — I never got the opportunity to play Franz Liszt in my years as a musician. My introduction to him came through literature — through one of my favorite books when I was in high school, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens. The book details a relationship between a slightly…