Month in ReviewMarch 2026
a woman in a field walking away from the camera, with a damaged bust sitting on the field in the foreground. English subtitles read 'remain in dreams forever.'
Emotion, 1966.
Films & TV
  • Emotion, Nobuhiko Obayashi (1966). ♥︎ I love these types of 60s arthouse films which are so impenetrable yet so rich with imagery, movement, and emotion (ha!) that I'm absolutely mesmerized and can't bear to look away for even a second, even as I have no clue what's going on. There's enough of a vague sense of the story to feel as if something of weight happened, though.
    This film starts by dedicating itself to Roger Vadim's Carmilla adaptation, Blood and Roses. I can see the influence: this is basically what would happen if the psychedelic bits of Blood and Roses were extended to fill a whole film... and also happened to take place in sun-soaked 1960s Japan... and also were tinged with a quirky, sometimes meta sense of humor. Though certainly not an adaptation of the text of Carmilla, this feels at least spiritually like it is playing with or responding to it. Rather than a predatory lesbian vampire, though, it's got repressed lesbian desire triangulated onto and violently played out through a tertiary male "love" interest; and the vampirism feels like it explodes out of this tension. There's all sorts of other random stuff thrown in too, like a Wild West shoot out, and after the end, there's a silly Dracula spoof tacked on. It feels like the result of a lot of fun, good humor, and genuine love, and in that way it feels very inspiring - go out there! Make a movie with your friends! It doesn't have to make sense but you should try to make it look pretty, at least! And have a good time! Mwah! (Copy-pasted from my Letterboxd review)
  • The Hunger, Tony Scott (1983). Vampires have never been cooler. This starts with Bauhaus performing "Bela Lugosi's Dead" in a goth club while the vampires (one of whom is David Bowie) hunt and seduce their prey. If that sounds awesome to you (and why wouldn't it?) you should watch this.
  • Mulholland Drive, David Lynch (2001). ♥︎ Much to think about... very, very good, also very incomprehensible. I'm not as interested in poring over "what it means" or "what happened" as so many people seem to be, I think this is all about putting you into a certain headspace to recieve certain emotions and sensations, the best thing to do is to surrender to the surrealism and just feel. Fuck, I miss David Lynch...
  • Mirrored Mind, Gakuryu Ishii (2005). Ishii's one of my favorite directors of all time and this film contains all of the standard Ishii hallmarks that I've come to love... the strong use of environmental imagery to propel the story forward, the synth score that sounds like it's drawing from something deep and ancient inside of us, the introspective tone and calm pace. Overall it's a lot more quick and simple than a lot of his other films, this one is more about delivering a very specific message than telling a story. It's an important message, so I don't mind.
  • Party Girl, Daisy von Scherler Mayer (1995). This is such a gem of a 90s rom-com! A coming-of-age tale where the protagonist comes into her own by discovering her passion for library work? Yeah, maybe I'm a bit pre-disposed to like this. Parker Posey is delightful, her outfits are STUNNING, the romantic interest is sweet, and although creative license is taken with the representation of library work for the sake of comedic and dramatic effect, there is a genuine love and understanding of the work librarians do in this film. There's kind of the glaring flaw of the really uncomfortable fetishization of the love interest's culture, though. That aspect gave me a really icky feeling despite really enjoying the rest of the film.
  • The Thing, John Carpenter (1982) ♥︎ I can't believe it took me so long to watch this, it's pretty much a perfect horror movie. I was salivating over the practical effects used to bring "the thing" to life, and the contrasts of reds and blues as the scientists navigate the snow in the nighttime with their flares... The isolation, the paranoia, the inescapable threat... it's just so damn good!!!
  • Vampyr, Carl Theodor Dreyer (1932).
  • Videodrome, David Cronenberg (1983). My second Cronenberg (Dead Ringers was my first) and I'm still feeling a little... disappointed. The special effects and unique body horror in this are awesome and I appreciate it for that, and I definitely found this more engaging throughout than Dead Ringers. But it still suffers from a story that feels as if it was made up as the movie was made, it just feels muddled. Also, I think Cronenberg's just scared of women... can't relate.

"Fundamental to Floridi's model is the belief that, because personal information plays a crucial constitutive role in who I am and who I can become, protection of privacy should be identified as protection of personal identity and a breach of informational privacy as an aggression against personal identity and self-development. Protection of privacy should be based directly on protection of human dignity, rather than on secondary considerations, such as a right to property, to freedom of expression, or to privacy per se."

- David Bawden & Lyn Robinson, quoted on pg. 31 of "Physical-Equivalent Privacy" by Dorothea Salo.

Assigned Reading
album cover of Marathon by Maria BC
Marathon, 2026.
Books
  • Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture, Stephen Duncombe (1997). Duncombe's observations on zine culture (and alternative subcultures in general) are very astute, though limited in some ways. He is pretty insistent that the demographic most represented in America's zine underground is white, middle class "Bohemians." This has not really been my experience; from my observations, zine culture breeds more diversity because of the low barrier to entry, and thus probably contains more non-white and working class creators than the traditional publishing world does, and I think it has been this way for a long time, even when Duncombe was writing. Because of this view of his, I think he wound up being ignorant of many corners of the zine world. However, as specifically a work about punk and anarchist zines, I think this covers a lot of bases, and especially does a good job explaining the cycle of how subcultures become mainstream, then go underground again once capitalism sucks them dry; and confronting the paradox of authenticity.

"If pushed to come up with a single defining attribute I would have to say this: zines are decidedly amateur. While this term has taken on a pejorative cast in a society that honors professionalism and the value of the dollar, the roots of amateurism are far more noble: amator, Latin for lover. While other media are produced for money or prestige or public approval, zines are done [...] for love: love of expression, love of sharing, love of communication. And in protest against a culture and society that offers little reward for such acts of love, zines are also created out of rage."

- Stephen Duncombe, Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture, pg. 18.

Zines
a man in winter gear in the snow at night, facing away from the camera, holding an emergency flare
The Thing, 1982
On the Web
Songs on Rotation
Albums
  • Fever Ray, Fever Ray (2009). ♥︎🗘 One of THE albums of all time. I never get tired of it.
    Favorite tracks: "If I Had a Heart", "When I Grow Up", "Seven", & "I'm Not Done"
  • I Inside the Old Year Dying, PJ Harvey (2023). I see Harvey's vision very clearly here. She weaves a rather interesting cryptic, folksy narrative with this album. Unfortunately, I rarely felt as "haunted" as I'd like to feel by a project such as this one, with the sole exception of the track "I Inside the Old I Dying." A lot of the individual songs are a bit forgettable and feel like they're lacking something, though I can't quite put my finger on what. At the same time, this is at least a solid album, and I'm glad Harvey is still experimenting with new and different ideas 3 decades into her career.
    Favorite tracks: "Prayer at the Gate" & "I Inside the Old I Dying"
  • Marathon, Maria BC (2026). ♥︎ I have had this album on repeat for the entire month of March. I find it to be nearly perfect, and it has only grown on me more as I listen to it more. I think that on first listen the music can seem deceptively simple, but if you're really spending time with it, you begin to pick up on all of these tiny details embroidering the edges of each song, the vocals tracing delicate patterns through somewhat ambient instrumentals, tying it all together into something remarkable affecting. It all evokes the feeling of trying to have a "beach day" in the middle of winter, when the coast is gray and cold and empty of tourists; it's not what you wanted from a day by the sea, but in a strange way, the emptiness and coldness of it all feels like exactly what you need, and a small spark of warmth emerges from within your own body.
    Favorite tracks: "Rare", "Marathon", "As the earth turns", & "The sound"
  • Dedication, Mirah (2026). Quaint, cute, perhaps a bit too twee for me personally but still enjoyable from beginning to end. A couple of songs, especially "Beginning of Time," caught me off guard a bit with regret-drenched lyrics which honestly made me tear up a little bit. Definitely an album reckoning with the passage of time and how people grow and change as they get older.
    Favorite tracks: "Beginning of Time" & "Catch My Breath"
  • A Short History of Decay, Nothing (2026). I've enjoyed so much of Nothing's other stuff that I was surprised by how deeply boring I found this album to be. Nothing here is offensively bad, but it's almost offensively uninteresting.
    Favorite tracks: "Toothless Coal" & "Nerve Scales"
  • Oxis 8, Oxis (2026). Favorite tracks: "Dogfish" & "Fluke"
  • Normal Isn't, Puscifer (2026). I have a very odd relationship with Puscifer. I had the distinct pleasure of seeing them live alongside A Perfect Circle and Primus during the Sessanta tour, and they are absolutely stunning live. Really, all of Keenan's bands produce this crazy out-of-body experience when enjoyed live, and I think about that feeling all the time. When it comes to their recordings, though, they're more hit-or-miss for me. I usually adore 2-3 tracks from any given album while feeling either neutral about or even actively disliking the rest; and it's not uncommon for me to prefer one of their alternate mixes or live recordings of certain songs over their original album mix. The same remains true with this album: I have my two stand-outs and I have mild feelings about the rest. On a purely sonic level, I find the entire album to be a solid listen, but I can't say the same about the lyrics. Even as a Keenan fan, I'll be the first to admit that his lyrics can often veer into try-hard/pretentious/obnoxious territory, and it can feel like you're listening to a boomer complain about "kids and their got-damn screens!" "Self Evident," in particular, gives some rather unfortunate Redditor vibes with its lyrics.
    Favorite tracks: "Bad Wolf" & "ImpetuoUs"
  • Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs, Chelsea Wolfe (2012). ♥︎🗘 Safe to say this is an alt-country classic at this point. Chelsea Wolfe, you are my queen!
    Favorite tracks: "Flatlands", "Appalachia", "Boyfriend", & "Sunstorm"