Jeanine Cummins Joe Kennedy Jeanine Cummins, the author of the new novel American Dirt, will not be appearing at Powell’s Books this Friday as planned. Earlier today, her publisher, Flatiron Books, announced that it was canceling her entire book tour, citing concerns for Cummins’ safety. In a statement sent out by Flatiron’s publisher and president […]
Books
Posted inBooks
Carmen Maria Machado Interview: Difficult Questions About In the Dream House
Carmen Maria Machado will appear in conversation with Lidia Yuknavitch Thurs Jan 23, 7:30 pm, Powell’s City of Books, FREE ART STREIBER Carmen Maria Machado isn’t teaching this year. In the spring of 2019 she won a Guggenheim Fellowship, so she’s taking the year to work on a new project. That didn’t stop her from […]
Posted inArts
Carmen Maria Machado Interview: Difficult Questions about In the Dream House
In a notebook Machado wrote “Gaslight the reader?”
Posted inBooks
Sympathy for the Drummer Is an Unbeatable Analysis of the Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts
Satisfaction guaranteed. Backbeat Books This is not your father’s Rolling Stones book. Sympathy for the Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters is as much a study of drumming and what constitutes great rock and roll as it is about the cat who’s provided beats for the Rolling Stones over the last 57-plus years. Even if you’re […]
Posted inBooks
E.J. Koh’s Memoir The Magical Language of Others Is a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Korean Genius
At 15 years old, E.J. Koh was left in the United States when her parents moved to South Korea. JENNY JIMENEZ “There is a Korean belief that you are born the parent of the one you hurt most,” E.J. Koh writes in her new memoir, The Magical Language of Others. “I was revenge when I […]
Posted inBooks
The Mercury’s Favorite Books of 2019
It’s that time of year: there’s clouds and rain, and now I’ve got “Books of the Decade” lists all over my shoes. But are we really gonna do 2019 like that? No, we are not. We’re doing a 2019 books list like usual: short, spicy, and summing up the favorite books our staff read this […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Cats Review: Ah, So This Is What It’s Like to Have a Nightmare While You’re Awake
Universal Pictures Everyone who saw the HUMAN FACE/CAT BODY NIGHTMARE that was the first Cats trailer balked at the weirdly flat faces that seemed to slide off the cast’s half-humanoid, half-feline, all-horny bodies. Some thought Universal Pictures might cave to fan pressure, much like the Sonic the Hedgehog brouhaha that unfolded last spring, and manage […]
Posted inArts
The Mercury’s Favorite Books of 2019: Cultural Commentary, Environmental Pragmatism, Vegan Cooking, and Graphic Novels
This is a short list, but we feel strongly about it!
Posted inMovies & TV
Greta Gerwig’s Adaptation of Little Women Is Perfect
Wilson Webb Every hater on my block asked why we needed another Little Women movie when the 1994 version is “perfectly fine” and “has Winona Ryder in it.” My answer: You don’t know how good you can have it! You don’t know how good Little Women can be, you poor fools! A less inflammatory reason […]
Posted inBooks
Watching Watchmen: Is This the Best Show of the 21st Century?
Mark Hill / HBO HBO’s Watchmen shouldn’t be as good as it is. In the three decades since the debut of writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons’ genre-shattering comic, DC Comics has done everything possible to exploit it—always poorly, and always against the will of Moore. But every time I watch this new, wildly […]
Posted inArts
John Waters Interview: Mr. Know-It-All Talks Tarnished Wisdom and Why He Stopped Making Films
Your favorite filthy father X-mas returns!
Posted inTheater & Performance
John Waters Interview: Mr. Know-It-All Talks Tarnished Wisdom and Why He Stopped Making Films
GREG GORMAN John Waters doesn’t plan on making a movie any time soon, even if it’s been 15 years since his last feature, 2004’s A Dirty Shame. If the stories the 73-year-old cult filmmaker recounts in his latest book Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder are to be believed, Waters was fine […]