Isn't there talk of 2020?

During the COVID pandemic, films were often used to try to find analogies for what was happening. It was also believed that what was happening was so significant that it would fuel many other films for years. So far, that hasn't been the case. In part, as film critic Sonny Bunch ventured in The Bulwark newsletter, because the state of denial hasn't passed yet and there's little desire to revisit it. According to Bunch, one of the audiovisual products that has best referenced the pandemic is the series The Pitt , perhaps the breakout fiction of the year, whose protagonist, Dr. Robinovitch, head of the emergency room at an underfunded public hospital in Pittsburgh, has flashbacks to COVID, which caused the death of his mentor and collapsed the hospital. Otherwise, few products have defied the unwritten rule that the 2020-2021 period is best left unspoken. Among them, the sequel to Knives Out and the 2023 film Heist on Wall Street . Eddington , the fourth film by Swedish director Ari Aster, which opens in Spain next month, comes to break that curse, because it not only addresses the pandemic, but also the death of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter protests and much of what occupied the newspapers in 2020. Acclaimed at Cannes (which already means very little), the film, which has Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone leading the cast, has also received fierce reviews, such as that of Justin Chang in The New Yorker, who wrote that the film has “the stale taste of yesterday's headlines”.

THE IMPURE SCREENWRITER WHO DOESN'T ALLOW BLOCKING

La Llama School is the humor and comedy writing school linked to the La Llama bookstore in Barcelona. One of the latest content they've just added to their subscription is the course "Screenwriting as a Craft ," by the highly sought-after Eduard Sola. The scriptwriter of "Casa en flames" and "Volver" explains, among other things, why he overcame the anger he felt at not being a "pure screenwriter" with a recognizable style, like Rafael Azcona or Paul Laverty, and instead having "an IMDB that's completely unrelated." Sola is also often asked about his productivity, because he works a lot. That also has an explanation. "He doesn't allow himself to get blocked," he explains in the online course. "If I'm not inspired, I write the scenes in an uninspired way (...) I don't allow myself the luxury of getting stuck; the people who get stuck are the ones who hired me. It's not fair to play at 'I'm an artist.' It might not be perfect, but it will be done, and that's saying something."

TURBULENT FRIENDSHIPS

Breaking up with a friend is often more painful than breaking up with a partner, but it's not as explored in literature. The English edition of Granta magazine has been publishing stories of broken friendships for several issues, written by writers such as Tao Lin, Eileen Myles, and Megan Nolan. In her piece, she recalls the type of friendship that generally exists between two women, which is "dedicated, too dedicated, intricate, and so codependent, bordering on the morbid, like a doomed romance," and which is found in novels such as Conversations Between Friends by Sally Rooney or Country Girls by Edna O'Brien. A reading playlist about fluctuating friendships also couldn't be missing Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan tetralogy, published in a boxed set by DeBolsillo/Debutxaca, nor Variable Cloudiness by Carmen Martín Gaite. The short novel Amiga mía (Blackie Books), by Raquel Congosto, has recently joined that subgenre, the story of the breakup of two architect friends whose relationship perfectly fits Megan Nolan's definition.

ESZTERHAS PROMISES “A WILD AND ORGASMATIC TRIP”

Every year, dozens of films and series compete for the unofficial title of “most unnecessary remake.” A potential giant in this race has just arrived on the scene. Producer Scott Stauber and Amazon Studios have purchased the rights to a remake of Basic Instinct written by Joe Eszterhas, the author of the 1992 original, for a record price ($4 million for the script alone). Asked about it, the screenwriter told IndieWire in true Eszterhas fashion: “For those wondering what an 80-year-old man is doing writing a sexy erotic thriller: the rumors of my cinematic impotence were exaggerated and ageist. I call my writing partner ‘the twisted little man.’ He lives inside me. He was born at 29 and will die at 29. He tells me he’s crazy excited to write this script and that we’re going to give viewers a wild, orgasmic ride. That makes me very happy.”