OK, Been A While

​Look. I know I only update my blog about twice a year. This is my greatest shame. The plus side is, my lack of attention to the website means I’ve been busy with paid assignments, and I will have some exciting news to share on that front very soon.
 
So with that in mind, here’s everything I’ve been up to since May 2019 (oy)…

Podcast!

​I’m working on a podcast! That’s the biggest news. It’s a show about Father Coughlin, the fascist, anti-Semitic “radio priest” who seduced America during the Great Depression… from right outside my Michigan hometown. With our modern-day return to fascist demagoguery, conspiracy theories, and violent hate groups, the world Coughlin created seems to be coming back in style. I want to explore my personal obsession with him and investigate the lasting influence he’s left on our country.
 
I completed a pilot for the show with the good folks at Michigan Radio, and I’m currently shopping for institutional partners to turn it into a full series. Read more about it here. I also appeared on WDET’s Detroit Today to discuss Coughlin’s legacy with Stephen Henderson.
 
If you’d like to talk about ways we can partner on this, get in touch!

Speaking

Last year I delivered my first professional talk, entitled “The Freelancer Writer’s Survival Guide”. I delivered the talk at the Detroit Writing Room, a new venue in downtown Detroit for aspiring and professional writers to congregate; my talk was the first to be delivered at the location. The whole thing went well. I was glad to have attracted an engaged, curious, intelligent audience.
 
I also gave a similar talk to my alma mater, the Michigan Daily at the University of Michigan, and journalism and film production classes at Huron High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
 
If you’d like to hire me to speak to your organization about freelance writing, film criticism, or public media, you know where this is going -- get in touch!

Cannes

​In May 2019, I attended the Cannes Film Festival. It was my first-ever trip to the Croisette. You can read my review of the Brazilian competition feature Bacurau in The Economist; here are my other festival reviews of Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life and Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse.
 
I also wrote this longread for Jewish Currents about the new films by Ken Loach and the Dardenne brothers, and what they tell us about the state of social realism in movies.

Third Coast

​In October 2019 I attended the Third Coast International Audio Festival, the world’s biggest gathering of audiomakers, in Chicago. I’ve covered the event many times before and it’s always a wonderful experience. This year I got to file a feature on the wonderful podcast Ear Hustle for The Economist.
 
I also profiled Third Coast’s outgoing executive director, Johanna Zorn (pictured above), for Michigan Alumnus magazine. Go Blue!

In The Moment

In September 2019 I partnered with the good people at Moment magazine to launch Chai Brow, a new weekly arts and culture column covering film, TV, books, and anything else I can think of from a contemporary Jewish lens. In 2020 we’ve transitioned the column to biweekly. It’s been a lot of fun sounding off on all kinds of stuff for them.
 
Read my columns on:
 

• The Israeli documentary Afterward
• The frustrations of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
• The best Jewish movies of 2019, Parts One and Two
• Tiffany Haddish’s Judaism and her Netflix stand-up special
• My hero Leonard Cohen’s final posthumous album, Thanks For The Dance
• The lost Jews of Disney+
• Jojo Rabbit’s muddled jokes about fascism
• Noah Baumbach’s masterful Marriage Story
• An interview with Lauren Greenfield, director of The Kingmaker
• The fleeting pleasures of Find Me, the literary sequel to Call Me By Your Name
• A preview of Jewish films at 2019’s Chicago International Film Festival
• The bonkers “Musicale Finale” of Transparent
• Jonathan Goldstein’s Heavyweight, a great podcast about a weird, neurotic Jew intervening in other people’s lives
• Netflix’s Israeli espionage series The Spy, a bizarrely serious role for Sacha Baron Cohen
• The importance of memory in HBO’s Chernobyl

More NPR

My semi-weekly stint as a film critic for NPR continues. Reviews of:
 

• The Sonata, a very dull horror movie that botches its classical-music hook.
• Just Mercy, the legal drama of the moment. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #1)
• Uncut Gems, my favorite Adam Sandler movie. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #2)
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a masterful romance. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #3)
• 21 Bridges, The Good Liar, and Last Christmas, three bizarre and wildly different examples of mediocre mainstream holiday fare. I actually kinda liked Last Christmas, so read that if you want a differing opinion.
• American Son, a Netflix adaptation of a troubling play on race.
• By the Grace of God, a delicate drama about recovering from systemic sexual abuse. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #4)
• Jexi, lazy millennial phone humor.
• The Death of Dick Long, the weirdest thing I saw in 2019.
• Hustlers, a whip-smart crime caper. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #5)
• Official Secrets, an earnest but thin Iraq War intelligence drama.
• Give Me Liberty, one of my favorite movies of the year, a work that expertly communicates the pain and the euphoria of living in America. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #6)
• Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, punchy teen horror based on the beloved books.
• The Nightingale, a brutally effective tale of sexual violence and colonialism. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #7)
• The Mountain, a strange and unforgettable mood piece about lobotomies.
• Ray & Liz, a devastating memoir of poverty. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #8)
• Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, a documentary about the beloved author, reviewed only a few short months before her death.
• The Dead Don’t Die, dumb zombie anti-comedy.
• Ma, dumb horror.
• We Have Always Lived In The Castle, dull horror.
• Wine Country, a vacation for Amy Poehler and friends.

Odds and Ends

​I wound up doing a mini-media bliss to discuss Halloween horror movies. I appeared on Michigan Radio’s Stateside about horror movies with Michigan connections (discussed: It Follows, Evil Dead, The Crow, Don’t Breathe, Only Lovers Left Alive).
 
I was also interviewed for Washington Post’s The Lily to discuss my love of cult movies (tied to a discussion of Disney+’s planned Hocus Pocus sequel).
 
For my old friends at Current, in November 2019, I profiled Nanfu Wang’s chilling documentary One Child Nation, about the personal and political repercussions of China’s “One Child” policy. Still slightly unbelievable to me that it didn’t get an Oscar nomination.
 
For Detroit’s SEEN Magazine, back in February 2019, I wrote a critical appreciation of Troy, Michigan native Steven Yeun on the occasion of his barnstorming work in the film Burning.

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That's all I have for now. I will be scaling back my freelance work going forward, but will still try to find occasion to post here. Hopefully it won't be another eight months before I do.