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Short Stories: Animals, Part II

The selected stories this month have a touch or more of surrealism and their writers — Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Sarah Hall, Robert Olen Butler, Beth Goder, and Jackie Kay — explore the humanity of our species and our relationships with other living species.

Books

In Two Minds: Robert Altman's 'Images' Essays the Terrors of Schizophrenia

Altman's Images is a complex, haunting and always disturbing film about the slow realization that one's sanity is a stake.

Film

Beneath Buñuel: On 'A Woman without Love'

Where, in A Woman without Love is the imagination, wit, and brilliance one expects of Buñuel?

Film

The Cabin Fever Goes Cult With "The Brown Bunny" (premiere)

Mysterious Los Angeles outfit the Cabin Fever draws inspiration from Heaven's Gate and surrealistic film on "The Brown Bunny".

Jedd Beaudoin

Music

Jennifer Caloyeras Gets Unruly In Her New Short Story Collection

Intimacy with animals, babysitting plastic dolls, and running into your dad at a furry cuddle party are just a few of the details in this off-the-chain collection of stories, Unruly Creatures.

Books

Going Back to Things Unknown with 'The Outer Limits'

The Outer Limits is a mix of science fiction, nightmares, and surrealism -- the very things that make life worth living even though they scare the bejeebers out of us.

Television

On Satyajit Ray's Make Believe World in The Hero

The Hero has deliciously surreal nightmares of obvious symbolism -- skeletons under piles of money, a nightclub in a spectral forest -- and these seem to give Satyajit Ray and Subrata Mitra special chiaroscuro joy.

Film

Criterion's 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me' Is a Semiotic Feast

Sheryl Lee's iconic performance as Laura Palmer evokes epic sorrow and haunting tragedy.

Film

Andrzej Żuławski Finds Love and Family in the 'Cosmos'

At its heart, Cosmos is a very human story born from rudiments both otherworldly and oneiric.

Reviews

Parochial Hierarchy in Walerian Borowczyk's 'Goto, Isle of Love'

Shot in lustrous black and white, Borowczyk’s film straddles an impossible line between grim drama and ramshackle fantasy.

Film

Salvador Dalí’s 'Alice in Wonderland' Work Finally Gets Some Mad Love

This edition is valuable because it underscores a variety of connections that are generally not foregrounded in the work of either Lewis Carroll or Salvador Dalí.

Books

'Dreaming of Cinema' Demonstrates Why the Humanities Are Out of Touch

For better or worse, contemporary scholars in cinema studies spend more time drawing from and debating one another than talking about films.

Books

Sewing Machine, Lobster, Giraffe, Umbrella... 'L'Age D'Or' by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali

Amidst familiarity the artists overwhelm the viewer with unexpected, lurid absurdity.

Reviews

'On Elegance While Sleeping' Is a Hidden Gem in the History of Surrealist Literature

Viscount Lascano Tegui seduces with his prose, drawing the reader into an ever more depraved fantasy world in a manner that mixes repulsion with wonder.

Reviews

Pop Ten

Jackie Chan's 10 Best Films

The 100 Greatest Alternative Singles of the '80s: Part 1: 100 - 81

Say It Loud! 100 Great Protest Songs: Part 1 - Beethoven to Janis Ian

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Mixed Media

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