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In Milan, shady art critic James Figueras and Berenice, his mysterious American lover whom he just met yesterday, is invited to the lakeside villa of rich-as-Croesus art collector/gallerist Cassidy and roped into a scheme to steal a painting from reclusive artist Debney, who may have set his own work on fire many years ago. Giuseppe Capotondi’s film of The Burnt Orange Heresy, based on the novel by Charles Willeford (which I now want to read), is supposed to be a thriller, but it’s too languid and stately to raise your pulse.

The movie starts to fizzle out right when the crime is committed, but it raises fascinating questions about Art. Like, wtf is it? What do you really see when you look at art—the art itself, or the artist? How do we value a work when a critic can spin a tale turning paint splotches into a tragic masterpiece? Who really owns a work of art? What does the artist owe the world?

With the elegantly elongated Elizabeth Debicki (who will play Princess Diana in the next season of The Crown), Claes Bang (best name in showbiz, as a rancid version of his character in The Square), Donald Sutherland, and Mick Jagger as the devilish collector (He should always be cast as the devil). The cast is perfect, the Italian locations are gorgeous, the subject is intriguing, the movie is tepid but stress-free viewing. Debicki is always worth watching.

P250/issue + shipping. The first issue is out now. Second issue in November, third issue in January, and fourth issue in March. Subscriptions are available. Email saffron.safin@gmail.com or DM @jessicazafrascats.

We donate part of the proceeds to the UP Ikot and Toki drivers, whose livelihood has been affected by the pandemic.

Nearly everything I know about Black American History, I learned from Spike Lee movies. They are compelling and vivid, funny and furious, and they are an education. He will interrupt the flow of his own movie to have a character address the audience directly and deliver a lecture about some point of African-American life that we need to know. Reality is more important to him than the movie. In the end the movies merge with the real world: the undercover cop in BlacKkKlansman steps into a present where a sitting president empowers racism and murder. Da 5 Bloods is even more emotionally charged than other Spike Lee movies because Chadwick Boseman is in it, and the moment he appears onscreen his character is already a myth.

Spike Lee is an angry man, but he is fair. We understand Danny Aiello’s pizzeria owner in Do The Right Thing, we understand Edward Norton’s drug dealer in The 25th Hour, and here we almost understand Delroy Lindo’s Trump-voting, MAGA cap-wearing, PTSD-suffering Vietnam veteran. In a towering performance, Lindo pulls us into the rage and resentment of a man who feels that he has been cheated by life and will lash out even if he hurts himself. (Fans of The Wire will enjoy the reunion of Clarke Peters and Isiah Whitlock, Jr, who got one of his trademark Sheee-its in there.)

Da 5 Bloods is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as a Vietnam war picture. Five men go into the jungle to retrieve the body of their fallen leader and a stash of gold bars they view as reparations—they were conscripted into someone else’s war to kill and die for rights they themselves did not have. I do not know if it was the filmmaker’s intention or budgetary constraints that led to the flashbacks in which Chadwick Boseman (the joy and pain of seeing him, especially now that we know what he was going through during filming) is young and heroic while his squad is old and grizzled (no digital de-aging), but it drives home the movie’s point: Wars never end. Those men are still fighting to this day.

We’re told that Rizal and the ilustrados lived in Paris in the 1880s. What if one of the ilustrados was a woman? An independent woman who wore men’s suits, knew all the interesting characters of the day, and did whatever she wanted? She didn’t exist, so I made her up.

Who could draw a later George Sand, early Marlene Dietrich, proto-Madonna…why, Madonna’s ambassador to earth himself, Ricky Villabona. Spot the maps of France and the Philippines.

Presenting our latest zine: The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters, Volume 1, No. 1. First of a 4-part series. On sale August 31. P250. Email saffron.safin@gmail.com to pre-order, or message me @jessicazafrascats.

Reading Ali Smith is the most exhilarating experience. The things she can do with words—she bends them to her will, makes them fly with no visible effort. Her writing is exuberant, eccentric, and just when we thought everything has been done, original. Beginning in 2016, when Brexit signalled the end of the world as we know it (for me it was Prince’s death and then elections) she’s written a novel a year about our bizarre new world, where the truth is not the truth and everything you believe is wrong. The last volume Summer is hot off the presses, and in it the pandemic has begun. And yet the Seasonal Quartet is full of hope in humanity. Our species is not done yet.

Antkind, from the screenwriter of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is not a novel to be consumed quickly. It is best read a chapter at a time in order to get to know its protagonist, film critic B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, and enjoy its comic invention without becoming violently irritated at his dithering and self-loathing. Occasionally it is advisable to hurl it across the room, and when one’s tantrum has passed, to retrieve it and put it back on the shelf to return to the next day. It is about Rosenberg’s discovery of a stop-motion movie whose total running time is 3 months (Yes, a 3-month-long movie, so Bela Tarr and Lav Diaz have ADHD in comparison), and when it is destroyed, his attempts to reconstruct it from memory. Antkind is like your neurotic friend whom you can only bear in small doses but can’t write off entirely because suddenly they’ll do something brilliant.

How to write a short story. How to build characters who breathe. How to create a setting, set a tone, figure out point-of-view. How to invent a plot and ratchet up conflict. How to find your style and discover your voice. Where to get ideas for stories. How to form the habit of writing.

Join Jessica Zafra’s Writing Boot Camp. Oct 10, 17, 24, 31. Four sessions from 3-5pm on Zoom. Fee: Php10,000. Early bird rate: P5,000 if you pay before Sept 10. Email us at saffron.safin@gmail.com to book your place.