‘Being the Ricardos’ Disappoints (But I’ll Always Love Lucy)
'Being the Ricardos' is a neat piece of filmmaking, but it didn’t make me feel I knew the couple any better than I had before.
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Raquel Vasquez Gilliland:
“The Tale of the Earth” and “The Tale of Spice”
Today’s poems are from a chapbook called "Tales from the House of Vasquez," winner of the 2018 Rattle Chapbook Prize, and they are representative of the book as a whole: 14 spare, free-verse poems about motherhood, feminism, family, and origin.
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The Crushing Responsibility of Motherhood in
‘The Lost Daughter’
What’s rare, and exponentially more interesting, are films that reflect the full spectrum of motherhood, from dizzying love to what Leda in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s new movie 'The Lost Daughter' calls “crushing responsibility.”
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“Snorkeling,” by Allison Funk
The poem evocatively opens with a question: “What if, late in my life, / an old love returned?”
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“Even Now” by Susan Zimmerman
Sometimes we rely on poetry as a sort of goad—to bear witness, expose evil or hypocrisy in others, or expose ourselves to ourselves.
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Celebrating 2021’s Best Directors: Awards Season Begins
The new batch of Golden Globe nominees includes two female directors: Maggie Gyllenhaal for her celebrated first film 'The Lost Daughter' and Jane Campion for 'The Power of the Dog,' nearly 30 years after her nomination for 1994’s The Piano.
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‘The Rise and Fall of LuLaRoe’ — Ugly Leggings and An Uglier Legacy
'The Rise and Fall of LuLaRoe' is thorough journalism and a satisfying, if often disturbing, feature-length watch.
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Myra Viola Wilds: “Thoughts”
“Thoughts” strikes me as a perfect poem to consider around the end of one year or the beginning of another as we take stock of what has come to pass, and make plans and resolutions for the future.
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‘And Just Like That,’ Carrie Bradshaw is Back
'And Just Like That' picks up on three of the foursome as they navigate midlife. Fear not, they still dress up, but they also have to deal with graying hair, moody teenage children, new media, hearing aids, diversity wokeness, and possibly alcoholism.
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Amy M. Clark: “The Survival Kit”
The survival kit metaphor takes on other dimensions as we come to the end of a year that has felt relentless.
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Have a Nutcracker Christmas — Seven Ways to Celebrate
Whether you live in a major metropolis or a small rural community, there is probably a 'Nutcracker' nearby. While nothing compares to the joy and thrill of live performance, there are myriad 'Nutcrackers' available to stream or rent on TV.
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Historical Figures, Hysterical Television
Both 'The Great' and 'Dickinson' bring history to life in ways that may feel inappropriate — if not sacrilegious — to purists.
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Poetry Sunday: “All the Hungry Falcons,”
by Dion O’Reilly
"I read somewhere that as falcons starve, their vision sharpens. I knew I wanted to write about that hunger and the resulting enhanced power—like a superhero’s power." — Dion O'Reilly
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‘Beans’: Coming of Age in the Oka Crisis
'Beans' focuses on the Oka Crisis, a 1990 standoff between Mohawk protesters and the Quebec police. The issue at hand: whether the community of Kanesatake would be allowed to mow down ancestral Mohawk land to expand the Club de golf d’Oka.
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Lucille Clifton: “blessing the boats,” “homage to my hips,” and “won’t you celebrate with me”
These three Lucille Clifton poems are ones I love for their fresh, fierce, and sassy voice; compression; deceptively simple diction; rejection of punctuation and other conventions; humor and honesty; and above all, their joyous message of female empowerment, agency, and strength.
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‘Spencer’ Fantasizes Princess Diana’s Holiday from Hell
'Spencer' is not a fairy story; in fact, many of its scenes and sequences feel more like horror. As a meditation on the crisis of mental health that Princess Diana lived through, it’s devastatingly effective.
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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: “Aunt Chloe’s Politics,” and Marilyn Chin: “19th Amendment Ragtime Parade”
Today poems feature works by women about voting, and about our country. They emphasize the urgency and potency of the vote, reminding us of the difficult paths many have walked to secure our representation.
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Searching for Family, Lost and ‘Found’
'Found' is an intimate story about three particular Chinese-American girls, teenagers coming of age and on a quest to discover where they came from and, in doing so, who they really are.
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“Poem,” by Joan Naviyuk Kane
In today’s poem, “Poem,” by Joan Naviyuk Kane, the speaker’s search for a word in Inupiaq, the language of her mother, uncovers compounded losses—natural, cultural, ancestral, and personal—that have accrued over time and echo through generations.
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‘Passing,’ A Powerful Debut and a Profoundly Beautiful Film
With 'Passing,' every note of every scene is pitch-perfect. But the film transcends its own material. Although it’s about very specific people in a particular place and time, the questions it raises and the experiences it dramatizes are broader, more universal.
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Feminist Frights:
Halloween Horror with Women on Top
Horror is not a genre that’s often synonymous with feminism. Luckily for us, directors over the years have pushed to allow heroines to prevail.
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Athena Kildegaard:
“a safe, well-defined, acceptable unknown”
In the poem’s last lines, “evidence” is a crucial word. Seeking “a safe, well-defined, acceptable unknown,” perhaps, we look for scientific validation of the mystery, a concept fundamentally not susceptible to this kind of metric.
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‘Maid’: Beautifully Made and Terribly Important
'Maid' follows the story of a young mother who tries to escape her emotionally abusive, alcoholic boyfriend, Sean, only to find that the system offers very little opportunity for a fresh start.
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