Come inside the church of Artless, see the tables arrayed with traffic-cone orange pumpkins of essays and old-lady-haired leeks of criticism. But first—a few pieces from off-site:
The fine folk at Film Cred have published The Way of Cameron, my Abyss-deep dive into James Cameron’s career and plans for the movies, the planet and us. It was a real labour of conditional love, so go read it.
Meanwhile Bewildering Stories have serialised a short story of mine called ‘Murphy’s Lore’, about what it feels like to not get decadent Western pop culture, at a transdimensional level. Originally published by Tabulit, it preceded Everything Everywhere All At Once by many years, before you start…
This (couple of) month’s newsletters
Part 1 and part 2 here of my interview with So Mayer about their Tilda-Swinton-touted short story collection Truth & Dare
The Evil Dream - even more on Cameron’s Avatar series, or, more what it did or didn’t or should take from Ursula K Le Guin
On the road of excess - like a monkey with a miniature cymbal. The joy of repetition really is in here.
Be a good boy - how the Coen Brothers made their comeback with A Serious Man
Big screen energy - get the confidence of a man who has an IMAX cinema pass
How to read short stories - very carefully
Professionalism is - part 1 of a series on Medium about the perfection of The Office to run till the 20th anniversary of its finale and Christmas special. You know which “philosopher” said that?
From the Artless archives, like the Vatican archives but fewer skeletons
The seven kinds of people you get at an arts/culture Q&A - I said Hay. What’s going on?
Classic criticism
No Minister - writing about British TV felt like a good time to dust off this piece about two comedies that, in their separate ways, are almost but never quite perfect