The Sunday supplement: #54

Some good mixes, a pair of documentaries, and a big new thriller you’ll finish in a two days, maybe three

A documentary I’m excited to see is The Super 8 Years from Nobel Prize-winner Annie Ernaux. It’s home movies, it’s testament, it’s a 60-minute narrated slideshow; it’s a period piece, it’s the end days of a marriage, it’s self-reflection.

One new to me this week was Portrait of Jason, which was incredibly compelling, though also (seemingly?) problematic.

The film is by Shirley Clarke, mid-1960s, about Jason Holliday, an aspiring cabaret performer who’s just magnetic. Filmed over 12 hours in a room in New York’s Chelsea Hotel, Clarke seemed to be intent on getting Holliday drunk (here’s an explainer of sorts) while he tells story after story about his life.

I definitely wasn’t comfortable watching it, but I loved it. And though it’s nowhere near as name-droppy as Courtney Love’s recent interview with Marc Maron – it’s practically a monologue, and she seems to drop two famous names in nearly every sentence – there’s something similar in the confessional’s tone?

Here’s a list of all the names Love dropped: