Some views of the other side

Yesterday I woke up at 3am and did one of these.

My brain sauntered off on a journey of non-sequitur thoughts until it landed on a talking-to. "You need to quit complaining about being laid up for a month and do something with it. Take one of the 500 ideas pinballing around your brain and follow the thread. Figure out how to make entertaining movie review videos. Finish your portfolio. Start a weekly curation feed. Sketch out a novel. Just write more! Once you're ambulatory again, you don't want to look back on this time and curse yourself."

Do you do this to yourself too? How do you push yourself? I'd love to hear your secrets. In the meantime...

🎥 Sing Sing (in theaters)
You likely haven't heard of this, but you will come Oscar time. Starring the phenomenal Colman Domingo, it's the true story of a theater troupe inside Sing Sing prison. But just how true isn't revealed until the final scenes, in one of those twists that will make you want to watch it again. It's a beautiful portrayal of the immense power of art and specifically acting and theater, things that are very close to my heart.

📖 Salvage the Bones
I'm way late to this one so you may have already read it. But damn, what a masterwork. A novel about a poor family preparing for a direct hit by Hurricane Katrina, its language and tone perfectly match the storm at the center of the narrative. You're instantly invested in the family and especially the narrator, the sole daughter. When the storm finally hits, you are carried headlong into it along with the characters.

🎥 Manila in the Claws of Light (Criterion Channel)
I haven't recommended anything out-there in a while, so here's a good one. It's rough around the edges, but then again so was the Filipino film industry in the 1970s. Shot in the streets of Manila and centered on a country boy who comes to the city to find his girlfriend, it's an intimate look at life among the unseen—exploited construction workers, sex trafficking, and the kind of poverty that involves sleeping on wooden pallets. One of the reasons I love movies so much is their ability to shine a light on places and people we normally never see. This is a prime example.

I'm also rewatching Friday Night Lights on Netflix and can report that it is still a very good show. So much drama and moody close-ups! Also Tim Riggins. Rawr.

xoxo,
Carla