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Winter Wonderland: 4 movies, 5 books, 1 puzzle
By
Published: Jan 17, 2019
Category:
Beyond Classification
It’s an icebox. Over the weekend, you can watch sports. You can follow the Trump train wreck. Or you could turn away from all that and feed and entertain that smart mind of yours.
MOVIES TO AVOID
BEN IS BACK (with Julia Roberts). DESTROYER (with Nicole Kidman)
MOVIES IN THEATERS
SHOPLIFTERS
I saw in a theater with a 99% Japanese audience. Rapt silence. At the end, applause. I’m with them: one of the best films I’ve seen in a decade.
The Times review.
CAPERNAUM
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. Unbearably sad, surprisingly hopeful. But a definite body blow. I’ll be haunted forever. The Times review.
MOVIES TO STREAM
THE DEATH OF STALIN
I laughed myself stupid.
LEAVE NO TRACE
From the director of Winter’s Bone, so you know it’s A+.
PUZZLE
PUZZLE SO HARD
The journey to total diversion begins with 1,000 pieces.
BOOKS
MR. S: MY LIFE WITH FRANK SINATRA
This is my favorite tell-all. George Jacobs was Sinatra’s live-in valet from 1953 to 1968. It begins like this:
Summer 1968. The only man in America who was less interested than me in sleeping with Mia Farrow was her husband and my boss, Frank Sinatra. Theirs had to be one of the worst, most ill conceived celebrity marriages of all time, and after two years of one disaster after another, it was all over except for the paperwork. Mr. S’s lawyer, Mickey Rudin, who was a combination bag man, hit man, and Hollywood hustler, was planning to take Mia down to Juárez for a Mexican divorce that would get her out of Mr. S’s life once and forever, which, for everyone who knew them as a non-couple, couldn’t have been soon enough.
THE KILLER INSIDE ME
The only thriller sicker than the news from the White House.
CROOKED CUCUMBER: THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF SHUNRYU SUZUKI
Suzuki was the monk who brought Zen to America. His widow’s advice to his biographer: Tell many funny stories.”
He did.
MOHSIN HAMID: EXIT WEST
Serious fiction, but addictively readable. 220 pages.
NINETY-TWO IN THE SHADE
Key West. It’s warm there.
