Morad

[POEM] Charity at 11 by Morad Moazami A nocturnal meditation on guilt and charity in Oxford’s winter hush. The poem follows a speaker wandering Little Clarendon Street, caught between pity and self-reproach, where an act of giving becomes...

Over the moon to finally have a poem published after all these years—written in those dark, awfully lonely Oxford days. Really grateful to Ninth Heaven Literary Journal.

www.ninthheaven.co/issue-2-blue...

A ★½ review of Seven Days (2024) A Hidden Life, Mallick’s among-many masterpiece, does something brilliant with its torturous length and reiterations of one theme: it makes you ask, Is our noncompliant anti-Nazi of a protagonist a he...

But then, there was… this.

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A ★★★★½ review of Die My Love (2025) For years, I’ve thought how great it would be if Jennifer Lawrence would play Gena Rowlands in some sort of Casavettes biopic. And yet, with this, I got more than what I’ve ever wanted: Lawrence chann...

Absolutely adored Die My Love. boxd.it/cpGCED

Lucille Clifton, from Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 (1987).

Never one to believe quantity equals quality, or that how many books you read per year is anything more than superficial boasting. But I set this year aside to read and to make up for the years of proper reading the PhD took from me, and I’m very happy about the year I had!

As the sincere and grassroots Iranian opposition keeps getting hijacked by cynical Pahlavism from both within and without, I can't help but constantly think about this play.

Elizabeth Daryush, from Poetry Magazine (October 1948).

Lisel Mueller, from Poetry Magazine (July 1978).

Iranian off-set printed, no-copyright-in-our-country-fuck-yeah book haul.

8-bit fun.

I can never get over how Norwegian silent movies end.

Everyone I know in Iran is unsurprised that my Panahi essay about his false self-Orientalizing is dying on the vine. No one wants to touch it. When the hegemony is set on something, ears and eyes remain shut. The dissenting voices? We have none. Ironic when the discourse is about authoritarianism

A ★★★½ review of Sentimental Value (2025) There’s nothing I hate more than movies about movies. Well, actually, there is: books about books, or books about writers. Like movies about filmmakers, it usually signals that the director or writer ...

Movies about movies and books about books and stand-up specials about the stand-up special before it and music about fame; all so parochial and self-satisfied and insulated and isolating and… I’ll just shut the fuck up now.

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Hemingway never drove an ambulance, Sacks was a liar—were all our greats just self-mythologizing egoist? Is greatness just another word for charlatanary? God, I hate this world so much.

Actors aren’t intelligent. Part of the rot of our culture is that we’ve elevated them as figures of renown when we should take them for what they are: screen avatars.

A ★★★★½ review of Train Dreams (2025) Maybe its because I watched it in my favorite available movie medium, my beloved Quest 3: as large as a cinema screen you won’t get anywhere in Iran, or the West nowadays I guess since (from what I’ve...

Train Dreams reminded me of just how dearly I miss Terrance Malick’s films, but it is more than that. So sublime and simple and beautiful. Sometimes all you need is this kind of simplicity. You and the beauty taken for granted that surrounds you.

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A ★★★★ review of Blue Moon (2025) There is no reason that Robert Kaplow shouldn’t win every award under the sun for his brilliant script (thought obviously, he won’t, because “the business” doesn’t work like that). This is the kind of...

My stay at-home-and-only-watch-movies-week. And Blue Moon, how great it is.

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A ★★ review of Jay Kelly (2025) How timeless is Wild Strawberries that it gets made and remade and interpreted and reinterpreted decade after decade and yet nothing seems to quite capture its magic? Jay Kelly has charm, because Cloo...

Another Letterboxd post, because I’ve begun to miss being the movie critic I used to be. (Not that I was any good).

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Part Two of books I’ve read this year that I highly recommend—especially, especially if you want to fall into an even bigger pit of despair just for the heck of it.

Books I’ve read this year that I highly recommend—especially if you want to fall into a big pit of despair just for the heck of it.

What he said was a bit harsher too; but I toned it down for the sake of propriety! Too bad the actual review won’t likely see the light of day. Man is the best international cinema huckster there is.

A ★ review of It Was Just an Accident (2025) Semi-drunk viewing with best friends, dad, and girlfriend. Girlfriend, as usual, peaced and went to sleep early. Dad tried to watch, but instead decided to only half-watch to scroll news about Frank G...

Watched again, though relegated to the muck of Letterboxd. I have a proper essay on Panahi’s awful film, but no Western outlet will touch it; they don’t even respond. His warped, think-tank approved politics are clearly protected. “Don’t fuck with the Golden Goose.”

letterboxd.com/aghamorad/fi...

Mom and Pishi the Cat.

This entire chapter in Ohler’s Blitzed reminded me so much of Iran today. The poorer we get and the more isolated, the more drugs and hedonism take the place of everything else. The dance of death.

Another round of Panahi's impeccable brand of self-mythologizing dressed up for Oscar season.

The Iranian flank of it, for those who give a damn.