Thanksgiving season: Movies, theater, art & of course, thanks
Reasons to see Oedipus, Nuremberg, Sentimental Value, Katherine Bradford, Ruby Sky Stiler, and Nicole Eisenman
Dear Writers,
Happy almost Thanksgiving and thank you for being a reader. If you’re hosting this holiday meal, good luck! If you’re going to be a guest at someone else’s table, good for you! I love Thanksgiving and no longer feel pressure to reinvent the wheel for this holiday. I make the same sage and apple cider turkey, sweet potato casserole (my mother-in-law Dorothy’s recipe), cranberry sauce and apple cake that I’ve made for years. My brother and sister-in-law bring a green salad and a fruit salad, and we have a store-bought birthday cake from Billy’s Bakery for my husband, who was born on Thanksgiving. This year, my younger son has to work on Thanksgiving and my oldest nephew will be with his girlfriend and her family. The kids are young adults now and they’re supposed to be building their careers and love lives but it’s bittersweet not to have them at the table this holiday.
This whole season is bittersweet for me for other reasons. So many people I love were born between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, and I just found out that three writers in my Thursday afternoon workshop were born during this time, so we will be having cupcakes in class twice in December! But in 1996, my father fell into a deep depression between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and attempted suicide the day after Christmas (he survived; my piece about what happened in the NYT here). Every Thanksgiving, I brace myself for a season that can be joyous and lonely, inclusive and demanding, short and sweet, long and hard.
Wishing you a holiday season that is warm and full.
✦ MOVIES ✦
Sentimental Value: Bittersweet movie directed by Joachim Trier. Gustav, a Norwegian screenwriter/director (Stellan Skarsgard), leaves his therapist wife and two young daughters. Decades later, after his wife dies, he returns to try and convince his older daughter, Nora (Renate Reinsve), to appear in one of his movies. Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (who plays her younger sister Agnes) are wonderful as sisters who support and understand each other. The scenes with Reinsve and Skarsgard are stinging and sharp: The message of this movie: Damaged people can still make great art together. If you’ve ever had tension with your father and/or one of your parents is difficult to deal with, but has keen insights into your work, this film is for you. NYT review here.
Nuremberg: Riveting movie inspired by Jack El-Hai’s book, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII. Russell Crowe is diabolically charming as fallen Reichsmarschall Nazi politician Hermann Göring, who was second in command to Hitler. Crowe is funny, perceptive, manipulative and seductive, in the manner of Anthony Hopkins as serial killer Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. Rami Malek is interesting to watch as the ultimately unstable psychiatrist assigned to treat Göring in anticipation of his trial at Nuremberg (their deaths echo each other). There is devastating concentration camp footage in this film plus excellent performances. Richard Grant is Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, the British prosecuting attorney who supported Robert Jackson, the lead American prosecutor and Supreme Court Justice; Michael Shannon is Jackson; Leo Woodall is Sgt. Howie Triest, a German-English interpreter. NYT review here and WSJ review here (the movie is better than the reviews.)
✦ THEATER ✦
Oedipus: Excellent adaptation and reinterpretation of Sophocles’s play, Oedipus Rex. Mark Strong is fun to watch as Oedipus, now a successful politician, loving father, and adoring husband, on the eve of a major election. Lesley Manville is wily and ultimately devastating as his wife Jocasta, who gave birth to a baby at age 13 and thought he had been abandoned in the woods. The first two-thirds of the play feel like an entertaining political romp; the last third is wrenching (there is no intermission). You feel these characters’ delight in and desire for each other and then their spectacular grief. Manville is extraordinary as she describes what it was like to be married to a middle-aged man who liked sleeping with teenagers. You probably know the ending to this Greek tragedy. Love is love, except when it comes to incest and pedophilia. NYT review here; Strong and Manville in a scene here.
✦ ART ✦
Katherine Bradford, Communal Table, Canada New York: Gorgeous collection of rich, colorful paintings by Maine artist, who is 8o-something and still paints every day. Bradford graduated from Bryn Mawr, married, had twins, left her politician husband, and launched a career as an artist and single mother in NYC when she was in her 30s. She paints (mostly) women flying, dancing, levitating, and swimming, in a former shoe factory on the Androscoggin River, and in a Brooklyn studio, and lives with her wife, Jane O’Wyatt, in Brunswick. Brooklyn Rail story here. Hyperallergic story here. Through December 13.
Often it was the awkward, mysterious pieces that you couldn’t figure out right away that interested people. I had to learn not to be so insistent on a theme or a subject. I had to learn to let it be. In other words, I had to leave my rational mind behind, and that was foreign to me, because I’d had a rather rigorous education based on facts. The fact that I would approach making something and not know what I was doing was kind of heady, but it was uncomfortable and not what I was used to. - Katherine Bradford, Brooklyn Rail
Ruby Sky Stiler, Long Pose, Alexander Gray Associates. Serene, beautiful paintings that look like mosaics. Through December 30.
Nicole Eisenman, STY, David Zwirner/52 Walker: Provocative paintings and sculptures by French, German Jewish artist, MacArthur fellow, recovering heroin addict, and daughter of a Scarsdale psychiatrist. Cultured story here, NYT story here, New Yorker story here. Through January 10.
NEW YEAR, NEW IDEAS: Gear up, writers. The Writing Ranch starts up again in January 2026. Using Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, as our guide, we’ll read and discuss a chapter of the book every week, and jumpstart our creativity.
We meet virtually on Tuesday nights, 6-8 p.m. EST
The dates are January 13, 20, 27; February 3, 17, 24; March 3, 10
Writers can submit 40 pages of work (double-spaced, 12-14 point font) during the 8-week session.
Cameron’s book is magic. All you need is a copy of it and a willingness to do “morning pages” (three pages of handwritten notes) every morning. The rest will come, we promise.
We meet virtually on Mondays mornings, 9:30-11:30 a.m. EST
Winter 2026 dates: January 5; January 26; February 2, February 23
We’re bringing you an intensive writing workshop to fuel new ideas. This workshop focuses on writing new material and receiving feedback on it over a short period of time.
Writers can submit ten pages (double-spaced, 12-14 point font, 2,500 words) for line edits and feedback before each class. You will leave each session fired up, with new work in hand.