Hi there,
That headline is in reference to True Detective, and while I did not care for the latest season, I've been very much feeling that time-is-a-flat-circle-ness lately. I only just started to remember to write the year correctly and it's almost March, but somehow I still feel like 2020 never ended. So before I forget, here are some things I've enjoyed recently.
Watch
I'm obsessed with Expats (Amazon Prime), which is based on a novel and directed by Lulu Wang, who wrote and directed the phenomenal movie The Farewell. I love Wang's work and her exploration of what it means to be of a place and the meaning of home. She does this especially well in Expats: many characters grapple with the question of whether home is a place, or a person.
The criminally short series (it only has six episodes) features foreigners living in Hong Kong — a mixture of Americans, Brits, and Filipinas, as well as some of the Hongkongers they befriend. It’s beautifully shot to really immerse you in the city, and the contrast between the wealthy and non-wealthy is well-drawn. It’s expertly written, with some deliciously tense scenes and a heartbreaking situation at the heart of the plot that neatly ties the characters together. The use of different languages is perfectly done, with the deliberate omission of subtitles during certain scenes. Make sure to come prepared with tissues.
I begrudgingly admit I really enjoyed Griselda (Netflix), a fictionalized biopic series on one of Miami's most notorious drug traffickers, who happened to be a woman. It weaves a little bit too far in the girlboss lane than the murderous criminal lane, and the writers decided they wanted to make her more of a sympathetic mom than the homicidal sociopath that she likely was. But it's a very fast watch and Sofia Vergara is really great in it, in spite of bad prosthetics.
Also, I saw Bob Marley: One Love in the theater and by keeping my expectations low, I enjoyed it. Biopics are hard to do well, especially of musicians. The music, is of course, great, and after I found out that it was produced by Marley's son and widow, a lot of the plot made sense. If you had the power to shape the biopic of a person you loved who's gone, what decisions would you make? If you can appreciate the movie from that perspective, I think it's enjoyable.
Read
I'm trying to read 60 books this year, so I'm blazing through a lot of them, but my two favorites recently are:
Banyan Moon follows three generations of Vietnamese women living in Florida and their complicated relationships with one another. It successfully jumps frequently in time and between Vietnam and the US. It's beautifully written, and while I didn’t agree with a few key decisions within the plot, I really loved this book and found the end satisfying.
Birnam Wood is about a leftist New Zealand gardening collective that becomes entangled with an American billionaire. It's written in a peculiar way, with very few chapter breaks and a whole lot of telling and dialogue. That said, it builds extremely well and has several great twists, and by the second half I couldn’t put it down.
See the full list of recommendations.
Follow
At some point I happened upon the account of an Italian chef with a huge social media following, and really enjoy his cooking videos, which are a bit easier to follow thanks to English subtitles. Every recipe he prepares makes my mouth water.
Do
Before the winter ends, here are three bean recipes I've really enjoyed in the last few months:
Until next time,
Rachel