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The cartoonists Georges Wolinski and Cabu at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, Paris, May 23, 2012. Photo by Patrick Fouque/Getty Images

Dear Friends of Charlie Hebdo and Libération,

Right now I have nothing left but three fingers wrapped in Band-Aids, a heavily bandaged jaw, and just a few ounces of strength, a few minutes in which to express to you all my affection and thank you for your friendship and your support. This is all I wanted to say to you: if there is one thing that this attack reminded me about, or even taught me in the first place, it’s why I practice this profession at these two papers—out of a spirit of freedom and the sheer fun of expressing it, whether in the form of news or caricature, in good company, and in every way possible, however unsuccessful, without feeling the slightest need to judge the result.

Continue reading at the NYRB Blog.

If you require linear narrative and clear resolution
If you have to know what’s going on at all times
If you want people to behave “normally”
If you are annoyed by ambiguity
If you think there’s no excuse for indulgence
If you demand that the world make sense
If you don’t like voice-overs
If you hate stoner comedies
If you expect stoner comedies to be surrealist
If you don’t particularly care that someone had the chutzpah to adapt a Thomas Pynchon novel for film
If you find Joaquin Phoenix distressing and wonder why Josh Brolin can’t just stick to being a hot guy
If you require that a movie be something you can recount in detail to your friends

Do not watch Inherent Vice because you’ll just kill our buzz.

You might enjoy (#9) American Sniper, which is stylistically, thematically, politically its opposite.

The not-understated frames are from Moira’s trip to Bangkok last year. Prescription frames by Nella Sarabia at UP Shopping Center. The hair is uncharacteristically well-behaved because Chus just cut it.

We know Lynda Barry as a writer and cartoonist whose illustrated memoirs of growing up with her Filipino grandmother (with manananggal drawings!) are hilarious and heartbreaking. Ms Barry is also an assistant professor of interdisciplinary creativity in Wisconsin. Syllabus is a collection of class notes, drawings and syllabi from her early years of teaching. It’s a creativity workshop in convenient composition notebook form.

Argonath not included, we just used them to keep the book open.

Syllabus is available at National Bookstores, Php1195.

Usually we find the work of Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu irritating, self-important and gimmicky. It thinks it’s really deep. We like his Oscar-nominated movie Birdman, which is a gimmick—the whole film is made to look like one long take, accompanied by a single drummer whom we occasionally glimpse in the theatre hallway—that works. It is deeper than it looks. The subtitle The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance reminds us why we were irritated at his previous films, but that’s a minor quibble at a movie that is entertaining on so many levels. Maybe the director’s decision to shorten his credit to “Alejandro G. Iñarritu” signals a change in direction?

It’s the meta level that probably appeals to Academy viewers: Michael Keaton, who played Batman in the Tim Burton movies, plays Riggan Thompson, an actor verging on washed-up who had played a superhero in a blockbuster series called Birdman. Now Thompson is trying to regain his artistic credibility by starring and directing his own adaptation of Raymond Carver’s story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. After Thompson, who has eliminated the ham in the cast with a little telekinesis-induced accident (apparently playing a superhero has given him powers, one of the surreal aspects the director wisely does not explain), the cast is joined by Mike Shiner, a Method actor jerk played by Edward Norton. Who also has that reputation, and is himself a superhero alumnus, having played Bruce Banner/The Hulk in a movie the Marvel cinematic universe has wisely wiped from our memories.

The resulting movie is, among many things, an examination of the creative process, a critique of how superhero franchises have eaten the film industry, and a resurrection of the career of Michael Keaton, a brilliant actor who seems to have disappeared post-Batman (He didn’t, it just feels that way).

Here’s the movie that announced Michael Keaton: Night Shift, where he played a morgue attendant who comes up with a money-making scheme.

Thanks to Deo for introducing us to the series. The second season has begun.

Millennials try to make their way in the world in Comedy Central’s brilliantly bizarre, often surreal Broad City. Creators Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson star as two college graduates in their early 20s also named Ilana and Abbi. They’re in the same demographic as the characters of Lena Dunham’s HBO series Girls, but far less self-conscious and ten times funnier. Here at last is a show by, about, and for girls; where the girls do not obsess about their weight, wardrobe, or boyfriends; where they forgive themselves for not being perfect; where they are free to be themselves, and that includes being gross.

Read our TV column, The Binge, at BusinessWorld.