Habeas Whitney
The one that got me was a torso shot. There were a bunch of them published even before she died, frantic paparazzi pictures of Whitney Houston leaving last night’s party.
Posts by: Michelle Orange
The Rumpus Interview with Megan Stack
The six years Megan Stack spent in the Middle East reporting for the LA Times began as a sort of emergency assignment and ended with Every Man In This Village Is A Liar, her indelible memoir of an education in war and war reporting.
And This Is Word For Word: The Theory of Relatability and Rethinking Justin Long’s Face
There was a night last month where I couldn’t sleep. I had to be up early for another full day of screenings and filing at the Toronto International Film Festival, but my mind was cycling through a generic course of memories and misgivings.
...moreRe-Commencement: Notes on an English Professor’s Retirement
My father knew he had a jealous daughter, and I knew he was impervious: the books—and the inner life he cultivated with tremendous discipline—would always win.
...moreA Life in 3,653 Pictures
Almost every time I’ve been home to Toronto in the past six years, and visiting with my dear friends Greg and Meredith, I hear a really great story about Meredith’s friend Jeff Harris, who’s the photo editor at Maclean’s and, from what she’s told me, a very impressive, artsy man-about-TO.
...moreHoping Things End Safely: The Rumpus Interview with Hyejin Kim
North Korean women risk their lives to escape across the border to China, where they often face lives of indentured servitude and the ever-present fear of being outed by the husbands they marry or communities they join and sent back to North Korea.
Ryeberg: The curator for YouTube fatigue
Ryeberg is a site that features videos curated by various contributors accompanied by short essays. Contributors include Mary Gaitskill, Russell Smith, and the reliably compelling and often as reliably insane Lynn Crosbie. Check out her recent post dismantling the psycho-sexual shit fit the sexy but seemingly asexual Michael Jackson was capable of inciting in his fans.
...moreFade to Orange: “Do I Know You?” and Other Impossible Questions
Recently I rewatched a great film by Lynn Shelton called My Effortless Brilliance. I enjoyed it so much the first time that I wanted to show it to all of my friends, ideally while I sat beside them, beaming.
...moreGlenn Kenny on Editing David Foster Wallace
Film writer and former Premiere editor and critic Glenn Kenny talks about his experience editing David Foster Wallace for that magazine in the mid-to-late 90s and his friendship with the author in this wonderful interview at The House Next Door.
...moreFADE TO ORANGE: The Theory of Receptivity and Some Thoughts on Ethan Hawke’s Face
Call it the Theory of Receptivity. It’s the idea, often stated by young people and applied as a dismissive accusation to even marginally older people, that one’s taste in music, or film, or literature, or fine cuisine, petrifies during life’s peak of happiness or nadir of misery, at any rate during the period(s) when one is most open to and absorbent of the things we can all agree make life worth living, most curious about the world and energetic in chasing down its offerings.
...moreMichelle Orange: The Last Book I Loved
A few times over a life, you find a book that inspires a physical kind of love: you can’t be far from it, stroke it absently for reassurance, take it to bed at night— slip it under your pillow or shove it up under your T-shirt, so it can’t travel far— and reach for it in the morning before you’re coordinated enough to crack the spine.
Don’t Pimp the Messenger
Trying to formulate a simple opener for this post–”The latest conflict in Gaza…” “Israel’s recent war with occupied Palestine…”— I stalled, worried that my word choice itself will be a reflection of the powerful media filter through which so many of us experience the catastrophes, tragedies, and atrocities of war.
The Boss from the Hell Bosses Already in Hell Get Sent To
From the self-employed comfort of my couch and a distance of about thirty years, oil company CEO Edward “Tiger Mike” Davis gives excellent memo; his contemptuous, petty rants read like the love song of Daniel Plainview. But for anyone unlucky enough to have been working in the Houston office of the Tiger Oil Company in 1977, or anyone who has had a jerkhole boss of even remotely sub-Mike proportions, they might trigger a post-traumatic flashback.
...moreFADE TO ORANGE: Famous-on-Famous/Film Links Forever
You know, you come home from, say, a happening launch party, it’s around midnight and you’re feeling excellent, you turn on the TV so as not to consume your prophylactic course of pretzels and water in anomic silence, and see that channel 44 is about three minutes into its late nite movie, Good Will Hunting, and like that you’re way back, you’re circa 1997, and you remember everything: thinking Matt Damon was a mouth-breathing, bra-snapping punk, and sitting alone in the Uptown Theatre like you did every Tuesday afternoon, and liking them apples, and that scene they shot in your Canadian Lit classroom at St.
...moreFade to Orange: He is So Totally That Into Me Edition
I was in Halifax this weekend, visiting my 93-year-old grandma. Seeing her reminded me of the ace movie reviews she started sending me right after I moved to New York. My grandma loved to go to “the show” and would save the ticket stub to write her thoughts right on it, using both sides if the spirit moved her.
Fade to Orange: Michelle Orange’s International Film Link Incident
One of the films a few critics I know are looking forward to at this year’s Sundance is a documentary called 211:Anna, about the 2006 assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Screening several times this week, this is not the first film about Politkovskaya, but it is unfortunately the first one to make its debut amid another high profile murder in Moscow’s streets: This week 34-year-old human rights attorney Stanislav Markelov and 25-year-old freelance journalist Anastasia Baburova were shot in cold blood near the Kremlin following Markelov’s press conference contesting the early release of a Russian colonel found guilty of murdering an 18-year-old Chechen girl.
Fade to Orange: Michelle Orange’s Film Link Happening
I don’t know what to tell you about The Golden Globes, I missed them because I was out celebrating with a friend. We went to see Godard’s rarely screened Made in USA, mainly because
Fade to Orange: Michelle Orange’s Film Link Implosion
The ladies! The ladies! Slate’s Movie Club is back and this year it’s allll woman. I love this thing, it’s the best thing about the crummy first week of the year.
Fade To Orange: Michelle Orange’s Random Film Links
At my old stomping grounds, The Reeler, there is a great interview with Arnaud Desplechin, the French director of the excellent A Christmas Tale, current sweetheart of the critical set.
At Film Comment Desplechin interviews his star, Catherine Deneuve,
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