Happy Friday! 🥳

About a year ago I finally remembered the name of a book my 4th grade teacher read aloud to the class. I’d been searching for it all this time and the only things I could remember were that

1. it was a murder mystery and

2. it featured a cat named S.O.B. (That just seemed so transgressive to little nine-year-old Joe.)

And I somehow finally figured out through all my Internet sleuthing that it’s called “The View From the Cherry Tree” by Willo Davis Roberts and they’ve since renamed the cat to Sonny of all things. Apparently murder is appropriate for children’s literature in modern American society, but not borderline swearing. I don’t know, man. I don’t make the rules.

I haven’t re-read it yet, but in my quest I started recalling other books from my youth and the works of E. L. Konigsburg came sweeping back to mind. I started with “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” and moved on to some of her other works. It was fun revisiting them!

But the granddaddy of transgressive nine-year-old literature has got to be Roald Dahl. I mean come on: “James and the Giant Peach,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “The Witches,” “Matilda.” The list goes on and on, as do some of his… shall we say outdated views on certain racial subjects.

Dahl created such odd, unique little worlds in each of his books that hook everyone who reads them, a power that filmmaker Wes Anderson is well suited for. You may remember Anderson previously adapted “Fantastic Mr. Fox” as a stop-motion animated film way back in 2009. Now he’s back at it with a series of short films released on Netflix back in September based on some of Dahl’s more mature short stories: “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” “Poison,” “The Swan,” and “The Rat Catcher.”

Each short film, running between 17 and 39 minutes, is narrated rapid-fire by Ralph Fiennes as Roald Dahl, as well as by each of the stories’ characters themselves as they go about their business, with a recurring cast consisting of Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade, Rupert Friend, and others. It’s peak Wes Anderson, so if that already gets your blood boiling, I just don’t know what to tell you.

But I love the way the actors recite Dahl’s stories almost word for word, even including things like “he said” after quoting dialogue, sometimes looking straight at the camera for emphasis. Props and backgrounds pop in and out of view via wires and stagehands as if we’re watching a play. Anderson is using these short films to portray the art of storytelling itself in a visually dynamic way and it’s so fun to get lost in them.

Look there are so many good movies out right now in theaters and streaming that it would take me a full year of these things to get caught up. Just throw a rock in any direction and you’ll find something worth watching. But along the way, please do catch these small ripples in the water. They’re a delight.

Now read this 👀

Here are a few new movie-related books that stood out to me for this holiday season:

• Writer/director Jordan Peele (“Get Out,” “Us,” and “Nope”) co-edited and curated “Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror,” featuring tales like:

  • A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over.

  • Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them.

  • A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents.

• If you enjoyed Martin Scorsese’s latest film, then check out the book it’s based on: David Grann’s “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.”

• Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham (cohosts of the Ghibliotheque podcast) collaborated on ”Ghibliotheque Film Korea: The Essential Guide to the Wonderful World of Korean Cinema,” which touches on thirty films including “Parasite,” “Oldboy,” and “Train to Busan.”

• I adore foreign film posters, so “Moving Pictures Painted: 200 Posters From The Golden Age of Egyptian Cinema” is right up my alley. It spans seven decades of illustrated Egyptian film posters alongside essays by historians and academics.

• Lastly, if the name Werner Herzog means anything to you, then you know his new memoir, “Every Man for Himself and God Against All,” will surely be something.

There’s plenty more to browse in the Cinescape Bookshop, including all the books I mentioned earlier in this newsletter. Check ’em out!

Until next time! 👋

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