Need a great book to read, album to listen to, or TV show to get hooked on? The Flavorwire team is here to help: in this weekly feature, our editorial staffers recommend the cultural object or experience they’ve enjoyed most in the past seven days. Click through for our picks, and tell us what you’ve been loving in the comments.
“Hungry For Love,” by Marching Church
Marching Church is kind of just a side project for Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, lead singer of Danish punks Iceage, but “Hungry For Love” has such urgency and raw energy in its seven minutes that it’s a wonder Rønnenfelt has anything left in him to fill even an LP under the Marching Church moniker. He does, though, and if any of the seven other tracks are any bit as captivating as this one, it’s going to be something worth paying attention. This World Is Not Enough is out via Sacred Bones 3/31. — Shane Barnes, Editorial Apprentice
Orson Welles 100 at Film Forum
Orson Welles would have turned 100 this month, and Film Forum’s wonderful (and extensive!) retrospective has been the cinephile event of the season—particularly since so much of his work is either hard to see or only spottily available. I hadn’t seen some of this stuff before, so it was a real treat to experience, for the first time on the big screen, something like the rare “Scottish version” of his 1948 take on Macbeth, a visually stunning rendition of Shakespeare’s classic, full of gorgeous compositions and inventive camerawork. Ditto that for his adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial, which can only be found in shoddy public domain dupes; its crisp presentation brought this darkly funny and hauntingly photographed tale to life. But the highlight of the series, for this fan, was series consultant and Welles scholar Joseph McBride’s “Wellsiania” showcase, a remarkable assemblage of rare footage, outtakes, trailers, and (best of all) an extended clip from The Other Side of the Wind, the long-unfinished final film that will (supposedly!) finally see the light of day this fall. McBride’s presentation served as a reminder that there is still much of this iconic filmmaker’s work to see, feel, and be surprised by. — Jason Bailey, Film Editor
In Ballast to the White Sea, by Malcolm Lowry
If you find yourself intrigued or suspiciously alarmed by the revelation that Harper will publish a sequel (of sorts) to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, might you also consider that, last year, a lost manuscript for a novel by Malcolm Lowry — the oft-drunk, nomadic genius responsible for the great Under the Volcano — was found in the papers of his estranged first wife, Jan Gabrial? I’m happy to say that In Ballast to the White Sea is a brilliant Künstlerroman that follows its protagonist through a hyper-convincing existential crisis. Pour yourself a drink, curse or toast your demons, and enjoy. — Jonathon Sturgeon, Literary Editor
My Brilliant Friend and Redeployment, by Elena Ferrante and Phil Klay
I’m on a kick of reading two books at once. This week I’ve finally begun reading Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, along with Phil Klay’s collection of stories about the Iraq War, Redeployment. One is a novel in translation about two girls growing up in a gritty postwar Naples while the other is short fiction about a very contemporary conflict. Yet both use the power of fiction to look at our violent impulses, the connection of love to lashing out, and the cycle of revenge that is so unfortunately universal, because it is so human. — Sarah Seltzer, Editor-at-Large
Early Tori Amos
With a growing back catalog of Christmas albums, albums where each song belongs to a specific type of garden, albums with this title and albums with this cover, it’s hard not to feel a pang of embarrassment admitting to Tori Amos fandom, to the point where one, such as myself, might simply stop admitting to it. But sometimes it just takes a reminder of the basis of the formerly acceptable fandom to renew it: when it was announced today that she’d be reissuing Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink in April, I went back and listened to her first four studio albums (after which her style and songwriting seemed to slip) and became ashamed of my shame. Though going forward with Amos may be a challenge, it’s truly worth going back (as Amos seems to be doing) and reengaging with the acerbity, fury, and vibrant beauty of everything from Little Earthquakes to From the Choirgirl Hotel. — Moze Halperin, Editorial Apprentice