Hello, my darlings! This week I’ve got a very Clytie-ish selection of articles on Socialists, serial killers, and sexy movie stars! On with the articles….

On the 6th, Clara Weiss, a comrade at the World Socialist Web Site, honored Mieczysław Weinberg on the 100th anniversary of his birth:
“Weinberg’s music, largely forgotten or ignored during his lifetime, has over the past 15 years enjoyed a slow but stubborn rediscovery. With an extraordinarily prolific output, including seven operas, 17 string quartets, almost a dozen song cycles, 22 symphonies and some 40 film scores, he is now generally recognized as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century.”

Also on the 6th, William Goodman ranked all of the songs on “Vitolgy” in honor of its 25th anniversary, for Billboard:
“For all its acclaim and impressive sales — Vitalogy has moved 4.8 million album units to date, per Nielsen Music — it’s an artistic mixed bag. Vitalogy flaunts several of PJ’s best-ever songs; it also contains some of their most misguided forays into artsy overindulgence.”

Alex Pappademas talked about nerds being the culture overlords of the 2020s over at Medium, on the 10th:
“We’re now in a historical moment where anyone can claim to be a victim of bullying, irrespective of the relative power relationship between the accused bully and the party ostensibly being bullied. Before it became a catch-all banner uniting misogynists of all stripes, Gamergate was about defending the $43.4 billion video game industry and the fans of its most popular products against the perceived threat of independently produced text-based role-playing games about depression. What superhero movies and violent video games aimed at 16-year-old boys and YA fiction novels for teenagers have in common is that they were once looked down upon by the culture at large and have since become market forces so supermassive that no individual’s objection to them means anything at all. Yet their adherents will tolerate no dissent, rushing to the barricades at the drop of a mean tweet.”

Also on the 10th, Maria Elena Fernandez of Vulture, interviewed Taki Oldham Robert Kenner about their docuseries The Confession Killer:
“Listen, Henry’s not a good guy. This is not a series about an innocent man. Henry had no impulse control and Henry was a screwed up character who did bad things. More to the point, there are potentially hundreds of people out there who are walking the streets free. It’s not that we’re out to say Henry didn’t kill people. But, by closing on Henry, or not investigating because of Henry, it allowed other people to get away with murder and for victim family members not to get justice.”

On the 11th, Morgan Leigh Davies analyzed my favorite film of the 2010s, The Immigrant, for Bright Wall/Dark Room:
“A less interesting film might present Bruno as a more charming and calculating character, and Ewa as more susceptible to his charade of concern. But The Immigrant’s characters are too idiosyncratic to fit into this familiar binary. Bruno’s explosive rage is terrifying, but in his calmer moments he is not charming but merely pitiable. Both Gray and Phoenix work to make sure that Bruno is not a one-dimensional villain: though he exploits his ‘doves’ and takes advantage of Ewa’s undocumented status, as a Jewish man, he does not himself occupy a position of great social power, and will never be able to enter the echelons of high society to which he aspires.”

Jude Dry interviewed Kimberly Pierce about Boys Don’t Cry and its legacy, on the 12th, for IndieWire:
“I think it’s probably harder now because queer culture has assimilated and diversified. Look, I’m not going to say we should go back to being called deviants and that we should have it be difficult. But I think that mainstreaming and assimilation is having an effect on the type of stories that we’re experiencing and the stories that we’re making and the arts. The early queer stuff for us was like, we lived and died for it because we had never seen our sexuality on screen. There was no internet. You couldn’t sit home and just go search the internet for gay sex. You had to go to the video store or you had to go to the gay and lesbian film festival. So, yes, I’m really interested in the mainstreaming of the culture and the continuation of a radical queerness. That has been my home for a long time.”

Finally, Anna Swanson of Film School Rejects, declared my boyfriend Brad Pitt, “Performer of the Year,” also on the 12th:
“Pitt didn’t become the performer of the year just by delivering the impressive performances we’ve grown to expect. He commanded attention in 2019 by building on years’ worth of commitment and devotion to improving every film he puts his name on. This year, he’s continued to build on his resume as a producer and showed us that he’s willing to take risks on films that many others would pass on. He’s also delivered two of the best performances of his career and is in serious contention for what would be his first acting Oscar. But beyond awards glory, these performances demonstrate Pitt’s maturity and introspection, an indication that this outstanding year could be the start of a new phase of his career, one that I welcome with open arms.”

Enjoy!