Table of Contents for August
August was slow, man. Here at Medium I wrote one piece:
“Devil’s Den Disappointment and the 40-Mile Week” (August 24)
But I also had this go up at Maudlin House:
“Welcome to the Wonderful World of Scorsese” (August 27)
Part of me wonders if I used the idea to write this bit on Scorsese as an excuse to rewatch most of his filmography and fill in the few pieces that were missing. That part of me is correct.
I’m glad Gillian (my wife for those who don’t know either of us) could live with such excuses. I don’t think she stayed in the room as most of these movies played. She’d take pause for a scene or two. My sister made clear her disdain for Scorsese’s work when I ran the idea by her. She just couldn’t imagine giving all that time over to Martin. And his films are often on the longer side. But I don’t know. I think each one I rewatched was better than the last time I saw it, especially Wolf of Wall Street, Mean Streets, and The Irishman. I also had a blast seeing Cape Fear and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore for the first time, and The Last Temptation of Christ really resonated with me and the eternal struggle I often have between the part of me that wants to believe and the part of me that is clearly agnostic. Silence is good too. And on second thought The Departed does not improve.
Today felt less like summer and a bit more like autumn. Killers of the Flower Moon will be in theaters soon. The book was devastating, which is always a strange statement to make about a book or a film in which the events were lived by people and not characters. Whether he intended it to or not, Killers of the Flower Moon fills a hole in the geography of Scorsese’s film world. He has only really eyed that remote part of the country with his camera’s eye in a few select scenes from Casino, but even then, the focal point was not the action on the plains, but Vegas. Similarly, in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore the characters in the Southwest are pushing toward California.
So thank you to the team at Maudlin House. Thanks to Sam LaBella who offered some suggestions on improving the piece. And thanks to Gillian and anyone who’s read this far. Enjoy Labor Day weekend wherever you are.
