Watching an Old Movie with New Connections

A Creepy Sensation

Sunday afternoon we watched “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” — which of course we have watched before. It’s one of several prequels to the Harry Potter story as you no doubt are aware. Its author, J.K.Rowling, has an uncanny ability to make me think of current events. As I watched, I had a creepy feeling that the eerie evil character Grindelwald was very familiar right now. 

Yes, I placed Grindelwald’s face: he looks like British right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos who was taken into custody by ICE and deported last Friday from the US to the United Kingdom. The reason for his expulsion was that he had overstayed his visa while engaging in very visible right-wing political activities. He was a writer for the far-right Breitbart website, and was proud of using language that was racist and that denigrated women, Muslims, and transgender people. Good riddance!

Left: Grindelwald. Right: Yiannopoulos.

UPDATE: Tuesday Sept 1 — We have now watched the entire series of Fantastic Beasts. Last night we watched two of them.

Stories for Our Time: Repost from 2024

A purely evil political leader appeals to the masses through his dramatic speeches. The large crowds of his followers go wild, howling with adoration and loyalty. He convinces them that they are superior beings, and that they should show no tolerance for those who differ from them. He promises that once empowered, he will expel or even exterminate their inferiors. His overwhelming appeal almost enables him to become the supreme ruler of the Wizard World. Luckily, a few brave opponents, especially Newt Scamander and Albus Dumbledore, prevent the deceptive and charismatic Grindlewald from achieving his evil plan. 

As we binge-watched the three recent Fantastic Beasts films (prequel to the Harry Potter story) I was overcome with dread because of the parallel to recent real life. Unfortunately, no one stopped the onslaught of our new dictator, and as he rapidly announces his coming regime, I fear that no one will stand up to his evil plan.

Not only are we without a magical hero to save us, we don’t even have adorable magical pets to cheer us up. However, these films are a good escape if you don’t take their political situation too seriously. Here are Newt Scamander’s two adorable pets:

A Niffler

A Bowtruckle

Blog post © 2024,2026 mae sander

“I Who Have Never Known Men”

Existentialist literature pares down human experience to its barest existence. In my opinion, that’s exactly the effect of this novel — I Who Have Never Known Men —by author Jacqueline Harpman (1929-2012). The stark reality of a world in which only one human being remains alive and conscious is the focus of this rather short novel. The character (never named) grapples with fundamental questions that in fact don’t bother most of us who lead an ordinary social existence. She says: “I lived in a perpetual present and I was gradually forgetting my story.” (p. 5)

I admired this novel for the economy with which the author uses words and formulates ideas, getting to questions of existence without being too pretentious. I admired the way a very bleak and unfriendly landscape became a key part of the narrator’s seeking in an absurd world. It makes me think of the classic example of existential fiction, the novel Woman in the Dunes by Japanese author Kobo Abe and the French film based on it.

The existentialists had an acute sense of the absurd, and the narrator of I Who Have Never Known Men puts it thus: “Perhaps, when someone has experienced a day-to-day life that makes sense, they can never become accustomed to strangeness. That is something that I, who have only experienced absurdity, can only suppose.” (p. 55)

And near the end of the book she wonders: “What does having lived mean once you are no longer alive? (p. 159) This is a powerful book, though I think it implicitly claims to be deep and profound to a greater extent than maybe it actually accomplishes. The AI summary from google says: “The book is a modern classic of feminist speculative fiction, known for its haunting atmosphere and philosophical questions about what it means to be human. ”

Recent Watching and Reading

We watched Dr. No — the very first time that Sean Connery played James Bond: 1962.
Better than we remembered it. The script was pretty faithful to the book (unlike some of the later films).

 

I’m still in the middle of reading some of these books, but I hope to finish them soon.

A.S. Byatt, Ragnarok
I expected a better narrative from A.S.Byatt than this book offers.
Not much more than a somewhat tedious retelling of the myths.
This one, I did finish — it’s short.

Edward Berenson, Perfect Communities: Levitt, Levittown, and the Dream of White Sububia.
There’s a lot of good social history in this book, but it’s way too long.
I was very interested in the final years of Levitt and his giant subdivisions of affordable homes.
Speculation: The author never saw a note card that he could bear to omit.

Victoria Redel, I Am You — still reading
A historical novel about a woman artist in the Dutch Golden Age.

Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman: The Stoics
I didn’t read much of this book as it’s really more a reference work,
ho-hum summarizing what’s known of each philosopher.
I hoped for a readable account of these early philosophers’ thoughts.

Eskimo Folk-Tales and Memories

Eskimo Folk-Tales collected by Knud Rasmussen (1879 – 1933), 
a Greenlandic–Danish polar explorer and anthropologist

Small sculpture of a Tupiak, a monster that plays a role
in the Greenlandic Inuit folk tales.
We bought this when we visited Greenland a few years ago.

Inuit art that we saw in the museum in Greenland.

From Eskimo Folk-Tales: “A tupilak frightening a man to death in his kayak.”

Illustration of kayaks from Eskimo Folk Tales.

Caption on above photo: “Hunters encountering Sarqiserasak, a dangerous troll, who rows in a half kayak himself, and upsets all he meets with his paddle.” p. 35

A kayak demonstration that we saw in Greenland.

Blog post and photos © 2026, 2022 by mae sander 

Mount Huangshan, Miriam’s Visit, and “Crouching Tiger”

We watched a movie after Thanksgiving Dinner.

 

“Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” (released 2000) is set in a scenic area in China that 
Miriam visited on her recent trip, which is why she wanted to see the film.

The film features incredible scenes of swordplay, as well as Chinese landscapes.
Michelle Yeoh is amazing!

Movie directed by Ang Lee.

Miriam’s Photos of Huangshan, China from earlier this month

Miriam took this photo of a landscape painting on a wall in the city.

Photo by Miriam

Photo by Miriam

Photo by Miriam

Photos from film websites and from Miriam.

In My Life This Week

Source: Fiona Katauskas in the Guardian

Escape Watching

“Willy Wonka” — a very silly and watchable film from 1971.

“The Battle of Algiers” a very serious Italian film from 1967, which we had always wanted to see.
The colonial war in Algeria is mostly forgotten by now, at least by Americans (if we ever heard
of it in the first place). The horrors of war and politics never seem to change. 

Escape Reading 

Here are the books I’ve been reading during the past week, along with a quote from each that shows how the authors use food to create characters and atmosphere.

Ann Cleves: The Long Call. A good police procedural.

Quote from The Long Call — “The house felt different without Simon. Empty. Quieter. It wasn’t that he’d made much noise, except when he was cooking and those had only been good sounds: the rhythmic beat of a knife on the chopping board, the sizzle of searing fish in a pan, the rattle of pots. He’d given up drinking quite so much recently and so even those noises had been calmer, less frenetic.” (p. 333)

Alice Munro (1931-2024) has recently become notorious for being a hideously cruel mother.
Despite this, I decided to read some of her stories, which I didn’t find especially wonderful.
If they had to find a Canadian woman for the prize, I wish it had been Margaret Atwood.

Quote from “The Progress of Love” short story by Alice Munro — “I didn’t have a problem right away with Beryl’s story. For one thing, I was hungry and greedy, and a lot of my attention went to the roast chicken and gravy and mashed potatoes laid on the plate with an ice-cream scoop and the bright diced vegetables out of a can, which I thought much superior to those fresh from the garden. For dessert, I had a butterscotch sundae, an agonizing choice over chocolate. The others had plain vanilla ice cream. Why shouldn’t Beryl’s version of the same event be different from my mother’s?” (p. 44)

Every story in this collection of the best from last year seems better to me than the
stories I read by Alice Munro. Sad.

Quote from  “Democracy in America” short story by Allegra Hyde — “I turned onto my back, my hands behind my head, pretending to ponder Honey’s question. The rented room was above a local grocer and below us the register clanged with the afternoon rush, shrill with its clattering belly of coins, the swish of paper money, credit card beeps, as locals purchased pumpkin pie filling, mint ice cream, meat, for one of their culture’s holidays. This was the kind of American town I had come to see, but it had not yet shown me what I wanted to know.” (p. 146)

I keep trying to read fantasy and si-fi, but it rarely speaks to me.
Definitely this well-regarded novel did not speak to me.

Quote from Binti — “I stood up, realizing that my time of death was not here yet. I took a quick look around the giant hall. I could smell dinner over the stink of blood and Meduse gases. Roasted and marinated meats, brown long-grained rice, spicy red stews, flat breads, and that rich gelatinous dessert I loved so much. They were all still laid out on the grand table, the hot foods cooling as the bodies cooled and the dessert melting as the dead Meduse melted.” (p. 30)

Escape Eating (In Real Life)

Lots of Clementines and Mandarins.

I made Beef Bourguignon according to the recipe of Julia Child (which I know by heart).
We enjoyed it with a salad and some of Len’s bread.

A light dinner salad. Farro and arugula are under the apples.

Mugs from the past.

 Blog post shared with Deb at Readerbuzz — © 2025 mae sander

Catching up on the Classics

 Reading

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin is a brutal and powerful book. I felt as if it was providing a deep look into past prejudices and how they destroyed their targets: namely, gay men. Published in 1956, it must have been a shock to readers — or perhaps the readers of that time held such negative views of gay men that they were insensitive to the impact of the self-hatred experienced by the narrator. Baldwin is brilliant in describing his character’s clear consciousness of how his peers must have detested him. I wonder if some readers were indifferent to the way the character bows to society’s cruel judgement of him, a judgement that he internalized. I chose this book because I wanted to read about Paris in the 1950s, and of course there is plenty of Paris atmosphere in the book, but it’s the ugly atmosphere of low-life bars and poverty.

In a 1956 review in the New York Times, I found little sympathy for the suffering of the narrator: “Much of the novel is laid in scenes of squalor, with a background of characters as grotesque and repulsive as any that can be found in Proust's ‘Cities of the Plain.’ But even as one is dismayed by Mr. Baldwin's materials, one rejoices in the skill with which he renders them.” (Granville Hicks, “Tormented Triangle,” NYT October 14, 1956)

The Dream is one of the twenty novels in Zola’s series titled Les Rougon-Macquart, published between 1871 and 1893. Each volume in the series highlights a character or a family that typify some aspect of French society in the second half of the 19th century in France. I’m enjoying The Dream, which is about the life of a young girl — an adopted orphan — in a town around 2 hours outside Paris: that is, two hours by the transportation that was available in the 19th century. The plot is slightly exaggerated with the angelic nature of the girl and her extreme religiosity, despite Zola’s famous antipathy to religion. She has a dream to marry a wealthy prince, and the book follows this as if it’s a fairy tale, not a story about an orphan taken in by a middle class couple. It’s lyrical (as the reviews all note) but I also feel a sense of irony in the much-too-happy plot.

I’ve only read a few of the novels in this amazing and fascinating series (maybe I’ve read six of them), and my ambition is to read more, as well as to read some of Zola’s other novels. I think I like his brutal realism better than this maybe fake idyl. 

And Watching…

Hitchcock Classic (1938)

Another Hitchcock classic but not quite as wonderful.  (1936)

All-around classic with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon,
directed by Billy Wilder (1959)

…and my Favorite Classic

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

“Regeneration: Black Cinema”

“Regeneration: Black Cinema 1891-1971” — on view until June 23. 

A wonderful exhibit is on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts: “Regeneration.” It includes a remarkable collection of movie posters, props, costumes, and above all numerous film clips: many from forgotten or lost films from the past. The exhibit documents  “the legacy of African American filmmakers and actors from the dawn of cinema, through the golden age, and into the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement. Inspired by and named after an independent 1923 all-Black-cast movie, Regeneration seeks to revive lost or forgotten films, filmmakers, and performers for a contemporary audience.” (source)

In the first room of the exhibit is this installation by Kara Walker.

We liked seeing the posters and other film memorabilia, but we most enjoyed the film clips,
and watched every one that was available. Quite a few viewing rooms showed loops with these excerpts.

Beyond the Exhibit

“Quilting Time” by Romare Bearden: a tile-mosaic mural near the entrance to the exhibit space.

On the Way to the DIA

“The Big Tire” has been next to US 94 in Allen Park, MI since 1966.
It is 80 feet high. This is perfect street art, isn’t it?

Blog post © 2024 mae sander;

All photos taken during my visit to the DIA.

Shared with Sami’s Monday Murals.