The Farm

THE FARM READING SERIES NYC's destination 4 the newest & best satirical and/or critical writing in any genre

[ICE T @FINALLEVEL]

Tomorrow is Father’s Day…. As if anybody gives a F… lol

[Boots Riley @BootsRiley]

No, because your mom hates hats.

[sebastian castillo @bartlebytaco]

finally started ulysses today. first thoughts: less stuff about irish history (who cares?), fewer literary references (confusing), and needs more clarity in the prose. i think if james joyce had gone to an american MFA program he could have been a decent writer

[The Farm @AnimalFarmNYC]

I was afraid I lost my medically prescribed eczema cream, but guess what? I just found it in my backpack

[Hans Fiene 🦬 @HansFiene]

Sorry, but there's no way you're building a billion mile long ship for sixteen dollars

[John Attridge @John_Attridge]

Have writers considered thematising the vexed relationship between representation and reality. Perhaps in a self-reflexive vein

[Nuanced Film Takes @BadFilmTakes1]

I rewatched the season 2 finale of Twin Peaks yesterday. I can't imagine how audiences responded to it back in the early '90s. Horror and trauma dissolves in metaphysical space. The narrative peters out into raw abstraction under the sycamore trees.

[Alain Astruc @alainastruc]

Third entry in my counter-examples to Nolan's Odyssey.

Fellini's Satyricon (1969).

An adaptation of a Roman novel written by Petronius, 1st century AD, fragmentary and unfinished, written under Nero, describing Roman society like a fever dream: corrupt, delirious, fleshy, utterly decadent.

Nolan would have found a dozen clever ways to finish it, logically writing the narrative's missing pieces, packaging the chaos into something contemporary audiences could follow, while treating historical accuracy as something he can use or not. The result I bet would have been an ambitious big film that completely domesticates everything wild about the source.

Fellini did the opposite. He took everything specific about the book and turned it to eleven.

More delirium, more excess, more obscenity, more beauty, more absurdity, more, more, more and more of everything. And the film ends mid-sentence, like the book. Only this time, the unfinishedness is an authorial gesture that makes it even more startling.

Fellini said he treated it like science fiction. By doing so, he freed himself from any obligation of historical fidelity before anyone could ask. He took the Satyricon completely into his own hands to make it what it needed to be.

The choice was obviously not innocent. Fellini thought with good reason that this novel of the first century had something to say to audiences in 1969, and it did.

Nolan did the opposite with the Odyssey: he chose to treat cinema as a reliable translator to bring the story from the past to today's audiences and tell them: these people were just like us, just humans, and you can be a hero in your own life too, and I'm going to make ancient Greece look like a Los Angeles Starbucks to hammer that point.

But the ancients didn't think that way. Not everybody could become a hero. They were excessive, alien, often monstrous, operating by codes we no longer share and can barely imagine.

Fellini was Italian and this Roman story was his cultural inheritance, his to claim, his to make familiar if he wanted to. He chose instead to film it as a violently foreign world, alien in the science fiction sense, and that choice is precisely what lets us in. We recognize ourselves just enough to step inside, stay disoriented enough to actually see them, and we discover people at once so much like us and so little like us.

Anyway, enough about Nolan. Don't miss the opportunity to watch the masterpiece that is Fellini's Satyricon. I can only give you so many screenshots. Experience its madness for real with the beautiful restorations available today. Fair warning though, it's a wild ride, made on purpose to make people uncomfortable on many different levels. You've been warned. But it's worth it!

[The Farm @AnimalFarmNYC]

Folks should watch the movie “Casablanca”. I feel like it’s been sort of forgotten by younger people but it’s great, gets you really riled up

[Leigh Claire La Berge @marxforcats]

@rachellapides Tamiment labor archives and Fales special collections will both give you access

[The Farm @AnimalFarmNYC]

Check out my story THE WAREHOUSE DISASTER in Vol. 1 Brooklyn:

https://t.co/O6Jsq0KCFj

[Geoff Shullenberger @g_shullenberger]

Napoleon’s favorite novel was Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, which if you’re unfamiliar consists entirely of a young guy “sitting around moaning about his feelings” before eventually killing himself. He read it 7 times, carried it with him on his campaigns, tried to write his own novel in the same style, and sought out Goethe to discuss it while he was conquering Germany.

[DSA @DemSocialists]

NO WAR WITH IRAN!

NO TO IMPERIALIST WAR, YES TO THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE IRANIAN PEOPLE! 🌹

Read DSA's statement on the US-Israeli attacks on Iran (1/5)

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

Today’s military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression. Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war.  Americans do not want this. They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change. They want relief from the affordability crisis. They want peace.

I am focused on making sure that every New Yorker is safe. I have been in contact with our Police Commissioner and emergency management officials. We are taking proactive steps, including increasing coordination across agencies and enhancing patrols of sensitive locations out of an abundance of caution.

Additionally, I want to speak directly to Iranian New Yorkers: you are part of the fabric of this city — you are our neighbors, small business owners, students, artists, workers, and community leaders. You will be safe here.

[Vincent D'Onofrio @vincentdonofrio]

Pigs can't look up.
But I could pick a pig up one night and raise it into the sky and tilt this pig ever so gentle. I can make sure this pigs eyes line up with the stars. Imagine seeing the stars 4the first time.I want 2b treated that kindly and see the stars for the first time.

[Michael Mann @michaelmann]

Terribly sad about Tom Noonan passing. In casting Manhunter I auditioned about 10-15 actors in New York when Tom walked in the door and said, “I don’t want to talk. I just want to read.” He read and it was magical. We worked closely. I based Dollarhyde less on the novel’s character and more on a convicted killer whom I met and with whom I corresponded who was doing life in Vacaville. I took Tom into that world and he made it his own. It was an automatic to cast Tom in a wheelchair as Kelso in Heat. He did so much more fine work, but it was as the battered child become a killer adult - both alive in the same bottle - that projected the range and deep soul of this so acute and committed artist. Rest in peace, Tom.

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

Leqaa Kordia has spent nearly a year in an ICE prison for exercising her First Amendment rights in NYC & speaking out against the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

She was hospitalized after suffering a seizure. Now she's back in detention.

This is cruel & unnecessary.

Release Leqaa now.

[Brian Duffield @BrianDuffield]

Rename to O’Hara, cowards.

[Michael McKean @MJMcKean]

Catherine’s knowledge of humanity was always at the center of her comedy, no matter how absurd the character or loopy the material. She could play heartless because she was warm, brainless because she was brilliant, careless because she truly cared. Everyone loved her and everyone learned from her. This is a deep loss.

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

Corporations will not exploit working people in NYC.

Uber Eats, Fantuan & HungryPanda broke the law — shortchanging workers while raking in profits.

Today, we secured $5M+ in restitution for 49,000 delivery workers.

Let this be a warning: steal wages, face the consequences.