J Hoberman

The Joan Blondell vehicle BIG CITY BLUES is a nifty find as well. Uncredited Humphrey Bogart has a small but crucial perf as the Park Avenue punk he may actually have been.

A plug for Criterion's current pre-Code Mervyn LeRoy package.
LeRoy may be no one's idea of an auteur altho Andy S praised his "innate vulgarity." I knew most of them, love FIVE STAR FINAL & THREE ON A MATCH, but HEAT LIGHTNING is a small revelation w typically great work by Glenda Farrell.

‘Days and Nights in the Forest’: Into the Woods With Satyajit Ray

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/m...

An excellent Ray refresher

The Paranoid Style of Jeffrey Epstein Has Come for Us All The pedophile plutocrat had some peculiar predilections—especially for academics and thinkers who showed a potential to further his grand experiments in inhumanity.

newrepublic.com/article/2068...

Solid piece by Anna Marie Cox. Gotta agree w her sense that "every new file drop brings at least a whisper of validation to QAnon’s core contentions." If Musk a creature out of PK Dick, Epstein evokes Fritz Lang's Mabuse, exercising power from beyond the grave.

New York lawmakers seek rent control to protect small businesses A new bill would regulate rents and leases for bodegas, restaurants, and mom-and-pop shops.

gothamist.com/news/new-yor...
Commercial rent control is long overdue!
Next: A vacancy tax on unrented or warehoused apartments.

"Iran is not the greatest threat to Israel [or] the greatest threat to the unity & security of Jews around the world. That title goes to the government of messianic zealots, Arab-hating nationalists & anti-modern ultra-Orthodox Israelis put together by Benjamin Netanyahu to keep himself in power."

Opinion | Netanyahu Plays Trump and American Jews for Fools — Again

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/o...
I'm not a fan of Thomas Friedman but you can't be clearer than this: "Israel’s far-right government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is spitting in America’s face and telling us it’s raining."

Erin Cosgrove’s Baader-Meinhof Affair at Printed Matter, Inc. - Announcements - e-flux Erin Cosgrove’s Baader-Meinhof Affair at Printed Matter, Inc.

www.e-flux.com/announcement...

It's an art project--eccentric & full of attitude--a mock romance novel set in on an American campus w students who fetishize the RAF. Fits your interests for sure but I can't tell whether you'd love it or hate it (which is why I asked).

Switching to pulp, what's your take Eric Cosgrove's avant-romance "The Baader Meinhof Affair"? Seems like you might love it or hate it or consider it an arty (if comic) misfire...
And venturing afield I'm sure you're up on the amazing analog: Kōji Wakamatsu's United Red Army (2007)

Really is that the best Madam Bondi could do? The pictures of Big Brother in the 1984 movie our Dear Leader possibly saw as a kid were really, really YUGE.

More Than Ever, Videos Expose the Truth. And Cloud It, Too.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/u...
Lede asks "Is seeing still believing?" & continues "Based on the evidence of the past week, it is hard to say." Consider unsubtle dialectic in this think piece & understand why the smarter ICE apologists are so eager to have their masked thugs equipped w body cams.

Mets owner Steve Cohen calls Edwin Díaz’s decision to join Dodgers ‘perplexing’ Cohen also discussed losing several longtime Mets players to free agency, and the team's pivot from Kyle Tucker to Bo Bichette.

www.nytimes.com/athletic/704...
This mega (MAGA?) billionaire is puzzled b/c
having played for a team that crapped out of the post season, a great pitcher who's never been to the series might want to play for the best team in baseball? All he really cares about is getting a casino on NYC parkland.

Sounds great!

Abismos de Pasión (1954) Gone several years, the brooding Alejandro returns to the hacienda of his foster sister, Catalina, whom he loves, to find her married to the wealthy and effete Eduardo. Director: Luis Buñuel. Stars...

rarefilmm.com/2017/07/abis...

Wuthering Heights? A blatant hacienda melodrama that camps out on poverty row, pushing mediocre actors & hyperbolic montage to the max, before blasting triumphantly into the stratosphere, Luis Bunuel's 1954 Mexican version is a true surrealist classic.

Why assume she has a conscience? Leni Riefenstahl didn't. She was an opportunist who made Hitler her religion. Bondi may wear a crucifix and might well come from a Catholic family but there's no evidence that she goes to confession or even recognizes a higher authority. Her religion is Trump.

a latrine for the pigeons

‘Don Colossus,’ a Golden Statue of President Trump, Waits for Its Home

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/t...?

Our Dear Leader is not just a monster but an embarrassment. Forget about the golf course, this egel hazahav is destined to find its home at the Trump Gaza on Kushner Family Boulevard.

Administration Social Media Posts Echo White Supremacist Messaging

“echo” is a weird way to say “are”

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/u...

The murder of Medgar Evers was an act of racial terror. That fact is not partisan. It is historical. Calling it anything else is not “restoring truth.” It is erasing it.

I have and think the Bund (pretty much in evidence in pre WW2 NYC) is the missing link--I wish someone would unearth the truth. Of course, only a mind as bizarrely self-regarding yet overwhelmingly insecure as the Donald's could insist (and imagine?) that he invented the slogan "America First."

In ‘Nadja,’ Dracula’s Daughter Goes Downtown

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/m...

A stylish mash-up with an offbeat cast, Michael Almereyda’s 1995 film “Nadja” opens Friday--takes its title from André Breton’s surrealist novel & transposes the premise of the 1936 chestnut “Dracula’s Daughter” to ungentrified NoHo.

Did he really say that? His ignorance is only exceeded by his egotism. Still, I believe he learned a lot of this nativist, white supremacist and crypto-fascist shit from his horrible father Fred Trump who was surely a supporter if not member of the German American Bund.

Remembering Ken and Flo Jacobs, Basherts | MoMA The lights of downtown New York dimmed when we lost Ken Jacobs (1933–2025) and Flo Jacobs (1941–2025) last year. To Save and Project presents a special tribute to these giants of independent cinema wi...

www.moma.org/calendar/eve...

Preservation premiere Ken Jacobs's 1963 Baud’lairian Capers (fea Flo Jacobs & Bob Fleischner) & Ken's favorite Yiddish film
Zayn Vaybs Lubovnik (His Wife’s Lover, 1931) w Ludwig Satz
Intro by J. Hoberman (signing books pre screening)
Thu, Jan 29, 7 PM MoMA, Theater 2

Ralston Farina Unpacked...

www.artforum.com/features/i-r...

artistsspace.org/exhibitions/...
I shoulda skyed "Time/Time" weeks ago (kept lazily waiting for reviews). This first exhibition of a long dead object-poet cum SoHo performance-artist's notes, files, gags & chachkes is underground, Talmudic & often pretty funny, at Artists Space thru Feb 21.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Pi...

Baud'lairian Capers is a restored 1964 Ken Jacobs film featuring Flo Jacobs & Bob Fleischner. Made in 1932, Zayn Vaybs Lubovnik (also restored by the Center for Jewish Film), a comedy w the great Ludwig Satz) was Ken's favorite Yiddish film. He bought a 16mm print & used to show it sans subtitles.

Here's a very small thing you can do to send a little love to Minneapolis bookstores in the meantime. Search by state on Bookshop.org to support a particular independent bookstore, and rather than choosing your favorite local shop this week to receive a profit share, pick one that's in Minneapolis. Some favorites include Magers & Quinn, Moon Palace Books, Comma, Strive, and Wild Rumpus. Fuck ICE forever.

I would absolutely love to give you a personalized book recommendation if you promise that tomorrow, not today, you purchase from Bookshop.org to benefit a Twin Cities bookstore.

White House posts digitally altered image of woman arrested after ICE protest | First Thing Guardian analysis shows images are the same, with Nekima Levy Armstrong looking composed in original but crying after alteration. Plus, how to recover from burnout

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Sending this out to my students. We've been discussing the nature of photographic "truth claim." Note official disclaimer when deception was pointed out.

Hottest? Not quite yet, although Arizona and east Texas are getting up there.