Recommendations for your weeks ahead

What I've been watching, reading and eating.

Film and TV

Magnolia (1999)

I was devastated to hear that One Battle After Another (which I loved) has been, commercially speaking, one flop after another (Paul Thomas Anderson – come collect your things).

A few weeks before seeing it, I watched Magnolia, Anderson’s 1999 masterpiece. While both movies are markedly different from one another in plot – one concerning the collapse of left-wing revolutionary movements, and the other concerning, well, complete randos (including Tom Cruise as a Tate-esque pickup artist) – they bear some important similarities. As my partner described it, they’re both a bit like Shepard tones: an auditory illusion in which a melody seems to be increasing in pitch but ultimately never does (see the endless stairs in Super Mario 64). The tension in both films hovers at about a nine out of ten for most of their duration, while also having a constant sense of escalation. In both cases, this means the three hours you spend watching them fly by. In Magnolia, there is an incredible moment of release – I won’t spoil any further – which will stay in my mind forever.

There are no bold revolutionaries in Magnolia, but both films have sprawling web of characters running from misdeeds, regret and pain. My main criticism of Magnolia is the writing of WOMEN IN CRISIS, which at times feels very much written by MAN WHO THINKS WIFE IS CRAZY.

The Bourne Trilogy (2002, 2004, 2007)

Can’t recommend this enough for a Sunday night in. I like how all three films treat Western Europe with the appropriate bleakness it often evades. Also, I hate to be this person, but I’m finding a lot of comfort in movies from this era lately (y2k vibes!!!). I keep thinking about how different (and boring) spy movies would pan out today, with facial recognition technology and drones, among other technologies. In fact, most of the first film’s mystery might’ve been solved with a simple Google reverse image search.

Alien: Earth (2025)

I also watched Alien: Earth recently, the new TV show on Disney Plus. This is not a franchise which requires more lore or entries, and actually I think much of the brilliance of the original Alien (1979) has been defiled by subsequent entries.

However, the first few episodes of this were quite excellent, actually! I am, admittedly, a sucker for memory implantation a la Blade Runner (sue me!) , but even accounting for this, I found lots of Alien Earth to be novel, compelling and a worthy edition to the franchise. The cinematography and production design is excellent, and many shots are ones for the books. Sadly, I think the quality of the storytelling takes a serious nosedive after episode 4, and much like the Alien movies, starts to get a bit stupid. However, I am at least positive about where this may go in season 2.

Books

Misinterpretation

Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga was recommended to me by Jo at Pages of Hackney. It was on the Booker longlist this year, though I don’t think it’s received as much traction as some its contemporaries. It follows an Albanian interpreter whose relationship ironically suffers from a deep crisis of communication, and whose career encroaches on all aspects of her life (much like the trauma of the Kosovo War which drapes itself over some of Misinterpretation’s characters). I’ve bought it as a gift for two friends since. It’s often funny, often sad. There’s a strong sense of restraint in the dialogue, both frustrating and effective in illustrating the ways in which language and history can hamstring us.

The Wax Child

I loved The Employees by Olga Ravn, a workplace satire which takes place on a spaceship housing many alien objects, and so was grateful to receive an early proof of The Wax Child, out 6 November. The book is a fictionalised account of the 17^th century Danish witch trials which ended in the execution of a Danish noblewoman, Christenze Kruckow. It’s told from the perspective of her wax effigy in the shape of a child (it works better than it sounds), an immortal and omnipotent narrator who, similarly to the women persecuted in the novel, lacks material autonomy. The prose is a rare combination of being historically rich but also poetic – entirely immersive and covering much ground in its 150 pages.

Celestial Lights, Minbak

Full disclosure, Cecile and Ela are friends, but they are both talented writers publishing second novels next year, now available to pre-order. I’ve had the pleasure of reading early copies and wouldn’t be writing about them (or blurbing) if I didn’t think they were very good books to look out for.

Cecile Pin’s second novel, Celestial Lights, comes after her much lauded Wandering Souls, and follows Oliver Ines’ odyssey to Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. In the confines of space, he tells the story of his life and how it has culminated in this decade-long expedition. I loved the gently speculative and science fiction elements to this novel (something I’m dabbling in as well!), the result of a lot of careful research by Pin. Celestial Lights examines the price we pay for legacy, and whether ambition is just a flimsy cloak for shallower desires, especially for those of us who believe we’re changing the world. To borrow a line from the book, “men would rather go to space than go to therapy”. Pin is such a thoughtful storyteller and exercises great economy of word - I will read everything she writes.

Ela Lee’s book, Minbak, follows three generations of women living under one roof in London, tragedy forcing them to convert their home to a minbak (a guesthouse). The scope of the book is much larger, however, eventually homing in on exploitative adoption practises in South Korea. This is a novel with range. In some chapters, we see a very skilled rendering of memory loss in Youngja. In others, we follow Ada, who is a Dream Matte Mousse-wielding teenager in 2008. It’s difficult to unify diverse voices within the same novel without clashes, but Lee is excellent at this.

Food

Shokher Hari

I went here with my friends Leo and Lauren after a Friday night sauna trip (sigh) round the corner. A rare and surprising cheap eat which we thoroughly enjoyed. Highly recommend if you are passing by Bethnal Green.

Mushroom carbonara

NOT glamorous lighting, I know, but this for me this is absolutely NOT a daylight hours dish, and so photographs were thus compromised.

I made one of my favourite recipes recently, which is a mushroom carbonara. The trick is always to remember that it’s really hard to fuck up a mushroom, and so you want to go hard on it to get it dry and crispy, imitating the fatty richness of the traditional guanciale omitted from this recipe.

Ingredients:

• 600g portobello mushrooms, sliced

• 200g parmesan (one supermarket wedge, basically, grated with the rind saved in your freezer for another recipe!)

• 500g pasta

• 4 egg yolks and 1 whole egg (save the egg whites for breakfast)

• Smoked paprika

• Soy sauce (Kikkoman always – it’s one of few supermarket brands made of mostly soy beans rather than flavourings).

• Salt and black pepper

Add salt, olive oil, smoked paprika and soy sauce to sliced portobello mushrooms. Arrange on a baking trays atop parchment paper and bake at 180 degrees until the edges start to crisp (maybe around half an hour but potentially more depending on your oven – option to switch to high temperature grill towards the end). As I said earlier, it’s hard to mess this up – burnt mushrooms taste good. I have posted a picture of my ideal mushroom i.e. cremated. You may differ.

Cheesy fingers NOT warts

Bring a big pot of water to boil and salt very generously. Cook your spaghetti. I recently learnt a method which has changed the game a bit for me, which is to boil for the first 2 minutes and then take it off the heat for anywhere between 6-10 minutes with the cover still on the pot. In this case, if your pot retains a good amount of heat then I’d say 6!

Gently beat the egg yolks and egg into the grated parmesan, crack lots and lots of black pepper into the mixture. Reserve some pasta water and slowly add some of it to your parmesan-egg-paste until you have a slightly thinner consistency.

Drain your pasta and take it off the heat, then add some your paste to the pot, agitating vigorously with the pasta so that the sauce emulsifies. Add more pasta water if you need to loosen. Add mushrooms and heat through. Let it sit for a few minutes before eating.

Enjoy!