newyorker--2020-12-08--The Life and COVID Death of a Revered Siberian Doctor

Two days later , Shikankov tried again .
He set out from his apartment in Tomsk , a city of around half a million people in Siberia , bundled up against the cold—by mid-October , the temperatures dip well below freezing—and walked to the nearest ambulance station himself .
He was brought to the hospital , but doctors said that they wouldn ’ t be able to admit him , even with a temperature above a hundred and four degrees and a scan showing damage to nearly ten per cent of his lungs .
By this point , the hospitals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The first wave of the pandemic , this spring , felt like a distant danger , a problem for Moscow and London and all the world ’ s other megalopolises , but the second hit the city with terrible force .
Lines for free testing at state-run clinics were so long that people sometimes waited for five or eight hours , or more .
Trying to summon an ambulance was like shouting into the black Siberian night , as Shikankov had learned .
Local hospitals would only admit patients with thirty per @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who was sixty-three years old , with deep-set eyes and a trademark bushy dark mustache , was a respected and well-known local cardiologist , who was equally revered for his modesty and quiet professionalism—it wouldn ’ t be like him to make a fuss and start asking for special treatment .
After doctors refused to admit him to the overcrowded hospital , he called a taxi and went home .
Another three days passed , and Shikankov felt worse .
He managed to call for an ambulance—which felt like a small victory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when it brought him to Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two , as the hospital is known , the answer was the same : no room , we ’ re all full , orders are to take only those whose lungs are in worse shape .
Finally , nearly a week after his symptoms first appeared , with a blazing fever and his breathing growing steadily more painful and labored , Shikankov decided to call in a favor .
Some friendly doctors at the city ambulance service arranged for him to be picked up and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
At the hospital , the sick waited hours to be seen , leaning against the wall or each other , some placing their coats on the linoleum floor and lying on top of them .
Shikankov , still sheepish about special treatment , let other patients be seen before him .
At last , doctors agreed to admit him , but there was no space in the wards , which were packed with COVID-19 patients .
Shikankov was given a bed placed in the corridor .
He was a man of great @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , marked by a “ quiet bravery , ” as his brother Evgeny described it to me .
His modesty and stoicism wouldn ’ t have allowed him to complain .
When Shikankov ’ s wife , Elena , called him , he told her that it was actually nicer to lie in the hallway , anyway : there ’ s more light , a bit more air , and it ’ s that much closer to the nurses ’ station .
What was in short supply was oxygen : Shikankov told his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ patients in the hallway shared an oxygen machine between them , passing it back and forth , sucking in air in big gulps , in between spasms of chest-piercing coughing .
Shikankov ’ s character was forged in his early childhood , which was spent in the remote expanse of Zabaikalye , a region that lies beyond Siberia ’ s Lake Baikal , in the Russian Far East .
Hundreds of miles of sparsely populated land are pockmarked by mineral springs and taiga forests , and the deer and wolves that inhabit them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a number of the mega-projects that marked the late Soviet era , including a massive hydroelectric power plant on the Angara River , and he taught Shikankov—along with his siblings Evgeny and Natalia—patriotism and work ethic and heartiness .
Young Shikankov joined the Young Pioneers , the Soviet equivalent of the Boy Scouts , and , as a teen-ager , started his own club at school .
It was called Podvig , or Act of Bravery , and at meetings Shikankov and the other members regaled one another with tales of great figures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ service , in an artillery unit in the Russian Far East , he came down with a serious stomach ailment and was sent to a military hospital .
He never shared the full details with his family , but late-Soviet medicine was not exactly focussed on the patient experience , and this was likely particularly true at a distant military outpost .
Shikankov thought that he might be able to offer better care , that it was possible for a doctor to be both competent and kind , and this was a calling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at a medical institute in Tomsk , a university town , known for its legions of students and stock of well-preserved nineteenth-century wooden architecture .
After working as an urgent-care doctor on an ambulance crew for several years , Shikankov settled on a new specialty : cardiology .
Dr. Evgeny Vyshlov told me that he spent many years working with Shikankov at the cardiological institute in Tomsk , and was struck by his colleague ’ s quiet , unassuming dedication .
“ I noticed right away how meticulous he was , that for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a trifling concern , every case was important and required attention and care.
” Shikankov was a big , vital man , full of energy and brawn ; he enjoyed challenging both mind and body , taking up qigong and ballroom dancing .
In the winters , he went cross-country skiing with his two sons , Alexander and Alexey ; in the summer , they rode bikes through Tomsk ’ s many parks .
There was an Orthodox chapel near the cardiological institute , and , as the years passed , Shikankov began @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grandmother had been religious in the quiet , unobtrusive way of the late Soviet period , taking Shikankov to church as a child , without making a fuss about it .
When his father died , Shikankov saw how faith gave his mother both purpose and strength .
“ He understood that the soul requires something else , that there is another side to life , ” Natalia told me .
One day at the cardiological institute , Shikankov announced to Vyshlov , his colleague , “ Truth is in Christianity.
” Vyshlov @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remember this phrase , serious and thought out.
” Shikankov deepened in his faith , observing Orthodox fasts and lending his rumbling voice to the choir for Easter services .
He and Vyshlov joined the local branch of a group called the Society of Orthodox Doctors , whose members saw in their care of the human body something divine .
“ He never imposed his faith , ” Irina Samoilenko , a gynecologist and one of the organizers of the society , said .
“ Instead , he demonstrated it in his actions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is it !
’ ” Several years ago , doctors in the society organized a kind of mobile clinic , spending many weekends travelling to the far-flung villages outside of Tomsk , offering free medical care to those who were cut off from it .
If there was no road or bridge , they travelled by ferry .
They would start with a prayer at the local church and set up wherever they could , whether at a school or a first-aid clinic .
At first , villagers were skeptical , assuming that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prescriptions or send them for costly treatment at a private clinic .
But attitudes quickly softened , and Shikankov and his colleagues became beloved figures .
One woman brought her son , who suffered from a chronic illness that doctors in the region hadn ’ t been able to identify ; Shikankov quickly diagnosed the boy ’ s rheumatism .
When the clinical work was done for the day , locals would bring cabbage , tomatoes , pickles—whatever they had in their gardens or cellars—and set a large table for the visiting doctors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ join them .
Samoilenko remembered , “ It would often happen that we had seen all our patients , the food is ready , we ’ re all waiting—and where ’ s Valery ?
” He was still seeing patients , taking his time with each .
Shikankov came to learn—or , rather , he intuited all along—that the sickness people complain about is not always what actually ails them .
Shikankov was an undeniable medical expert , but he was also sensitive to the maladies of the spirit , and the way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ body .
“ He was able to listen , and to feel compassion , ” Samoilenko said .
“ A person doesn ’ t always need pills or injections , but simply to be heard.
” The arrival of autumn changed everything .
Testing centers were overwhelmed , and soon the neighborhood clinics were as well .
“ People were getting sick everywhere , ” Vyshlov told me .
Local media reported a shortage of oxygen at Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two , a story that the hospital authorities quickly denied .
Seven out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s local medical charity contracted the virus .
Shikankov himself was preoccupied with another tragedy .
In October , his mother died , at the age of eighty-four .
( His father had died in 2003 . )
The family gathered in a Siberian village for the funeral and , in Orthodox tradition , for a wake on the ninth day after her death .
The virus felt like a distant concern— “ It ’ s hard to imagine that danger is nearby , ” Shikankov ’ s brother Evgeny said—even though , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were almost certainly breathing it in and out as they shared remembrances of their mother .
Within days , five out of the seven family members present at the wake began to show symptoms of COVID-19 .
It is unknown exactly where Shikankov encountered the virus : the day he returned to Tomsk , he examined a patient who later tested positive .
The next day , Shikankov left work with a fever .
His wife was also sick , along with his son Alexey .
His siblings and their families fell ill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it would pass quickly ; he kept up with his breathing exercises in the morning to build up strength in his lungs .
Within days , it was clear that his condition was worsening—and , at the same time , that the health-care system in Tomsk was slowly collapsing .
Alexey couldn ’ t find the medicines that his father requested in local pharmacies .
Whether out of mismanagement or callousness , or because its staff was unprepared and overwhelmed , Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two was unable to deal with the never-ending stream @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there was just one admitting doctor for the hundreds of people who showed up with COVID symptoms each day .
Rooms meant for ten housed twenty to thirty .
Some patients were offered “ seated ” treatment , that is , a chair instead of a hospital bed .
For three days , Shikankov was denied even that improvised measure , as doctors told him that they had no room for him .
Even after he was admitted , his relatives worried that Shikankov wasn ’ t getting the care he needed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ touch with him from Moscow , reposted a number of videos circulating online showing patients crammed into the packed corridors of the hospital , waiting hours to be seen by a physician .
“ A person who has saved hundreds of lives has ended up in a circle of medical hell , unable to receive elementary care , ” she wrote .
Shikankov ’ s experience was not unique .
A woman in Tomsk told me that she had called an ambulance five days in a row before being brought to Medical-Sanitary Unit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hours to be admitted .
“ No one examined me and barely checked in at all , ” she said .
She shared a room with other COVID patients ; one evening , a woman began breathing in increasingly pained and shallow gasps , but no doctors or nurses came to see her .
She died in the middle of the night .
The woman I spoke to called the treatment at Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two “ boorish , callous , and indifferent.
” Another woman in Tomsk , Veronika Pshenichnaya , told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ came down with COVID-19 and was hospitalized at Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two .
For days , she heard nothing about his condition and couldn ’ t reach anyone at the hospital by phone .
Her only source of information was a doctor who was a friend of a friend and agreed to read her basic statistics from her father-in-law ’ s chart .
On a Monday , they spoke by phone .
After she didn ’ t hear back , she tried him again that Thursday .
The doctor told her that her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If I didn ’ t have this acquaintance , how much longer would we not have known ?
” Pshenichnaya wondered .
She called the hospital ’ s staff “ untransparent to the point of inhumane.
” When Pshenichnaya went to pick up her father-in-law ’ s belongings , hospital staff said that his passport had gone missing .
( Personal-identification documents are required to receive a death certificate and organize a funeral . )
A hospital administrator told her not to worry : if she hired a particular funeral company to arrange @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taken care of .
It sounded to her like a corrupt kickback scheme .
A man named Alexey Khromykh told me a similar story .
Last month , his mother died of COVID-19 at Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two , and her personal items and documents also went missing .
As he relayed it , a hospital employee told him , “ If you go to this funeral home at such-and-such address , then everything will be found.
” After he called the police , his mother ’ s documents and belongings resurfaced—except for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asked Aleksei Mikhlenko , the hospital ’ s head doctor , about the missing items , he rebuffed them : “ Where does an eighty-year-old grandmother get a diamond ring from anyway ?
” Khromykh ’ s mother was sixty years old .
Perhaps the most macabre proof of the dysfunction in Tomsk came when , according to local media , a family picked up the body of their beloved aunt , who , as they had been told , died at Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two .
Just before burying her , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and opened the lid of the casket—only to see that it was not their aunt at all but , rather , the body of an elderly woman whom they did not recognize .
They rushed back to the city morgue , where administrators argued with them that a person can change in appearance after death—before eventually admitting their mistake .
The family ’ s aunt was alive and being treated back at Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two .
They found her in a room , flipping through some magazines .

The first day that Dr. Valery Shikankov tried to call an ambulance, he rang and rang, but after three hours he never got through, and so he gave up.
Two days later, Shikankov tried again. He set out from his apartment in Tomsk, a city of around half a million people in Siberia, bundled up against the cold—by mid-October, the temperatures dip well below freezing—and walked to the nearest ambulance station himself. He was brought to the hospital, but doctors said that they wouldn’t be able to admit him, even with a temperature above a hundred and four degrees and a scan showing damage to nearly ten per cent of his lungs.
By this point, the hospitals accepting COVID-19 patients in Tomsk were overflowing. The first wave of the pandemic, this spring, felt like a distant danger, a problem for Moscow and London and all the world’s other megalopolises, but the second hit the city with terrible force. Lines for free testing at state-run clinics were so long that people sometimes waited for five or eight hours, or more. Trying to summon an ambulance was like shouting into the black Siberian night, as Shikankov had learned. Local hospitals would only admit patients with thirty per cent lung damage and higher.
Shikankov, who was sixty-three years old, with deep-set eyes and a trademark bushy dark mustache, was a respected and well-known local cardiologist, who was equally revered for his modesty and quiet professionalism—it wouldn’t be like him to make a fuss and start asking for special treatment. After doctors refused to admit him to the overcrowded hospital, he called a taxi and went home. Another three days passed, and Shikankov felt worse. He managed to call for an ambulance—which felt like a small victory in and of itself, but, when it brought him to Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two, as the hospital is known, the answer was the same: no room, we’re all full, orders are to take only those whose lungs are in worse shape.
Finally, nearly a week after his symptoms first appeared, with a blazing fever and his breathing growing steadily more painful and labored, Shikankov decided to call in a favor. Some friendly doctors at the city ambulance service arranged for him to be picked up and brought back to Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two. At the hospital, the sick waited hours to be seen, leaning against the wall or each other, some placing their coats on the linoleum floor and lying on top of them. Shikankov, still sheepish about special treatment, let other patients be seen before him. At last, doctors agreed to admit him, but there was no space in the wards, which were packed with COVID-19 patients.
Shikankov was given a bed placed in the corridor. He was a man of great dignity, as well as Orthodox faith, marked by a “quiet bravery,” as his brother Evgeny described it to me. His modesty and stoicism wouldn’t have allowed him to complain. When Shikankov’s wife, Elena, called him, he told her that it was actually nicer to lie in the hallway, anyway: there’s more light, a bit more air, and it’s that much closer to the nurses’ station. What was in short supply was oxygen: Shikankov told his son Alexey how he and the other patients in the hallway shared an oxygen machine between them, passing it back and forth, sucking in air in big gulps, in between spasms of chest-piercing coughing.
Shikankov’s character was forged in his early childhood, which was spent in the remote expanse of Zabaikalye, a region that lies beyond Siberia’s Lake Baikal, in the Russian Far East. Hundreds of miles of sparsely populated land are pockmarked by mineral springs and taiga forests, and the deer and wolves that inhabit them. His father was a supervisor for a number of the mega-projects that marked the late Soviet era, including a massive hydroelectric power plant on the Angara River, and he taught Shikankov—along with his siblings Evgeny and Natalia—patriotism and work ethic and heartiness. Young Shikankov joined the Young Pioneers, the Soviet equivalent of the Boy Scouts, and, as a teen-ager, started his own club at school. It was called Podvig, or Act of Bravery, and at meetings Shikankov and the other members regaled one another with tales of great figures from Russian history. During his Army service, in an artillery unit in the Russian Far East, he came down with a serious stomach ailment and was sent to a military hospital. He never shared the full details with his family, but late-Soviet medicine was not exactly focussed on the patient experience, and this was likely particularly true at a distant military outpost. Shikankov thought that he might be able to offer better care, that it was possible for a doctor to be both competent and kind, and this was a calling that spoke to him. He enrolled at a medical institute in Tomsk, a university town, known for its legions of students and stock of well-preserved nineteenth-century wooden architecture.
After working as an urgent-care doctor on an ambulance crew for several years, Shikankov settled on a new specialty: cardiology. Dr. Evgeny Vyshlov told me that he spent many years working with Shikankov at the cardiological institute in Tomsk, and was struck by his colleague’s quiet, unassuming dedication. “I noticed right away how meticulous he was, that for him there is no such thing as a trifling concern, every case was important and required attention and care.” Shikankov was a big, vital man, full of energy and brawn; he enjoyed challenging both mind and body, taking up qigong and ballroom dancing. In the winters, he went cross-country skiing with his two sons, Alexander and Alexey; in the summer, they rode bikes through Tomsk’s many parks.
There was an Orthodox chapel near the cardiological institute, and, as the years passed, Shikankov began to spend more time there. His grandmother had been religious in the quiet, unobtrusive way of the late Soviet period, taking Shikankov to church as a child, without making a fuss about it. When his father died, Shikankov saw how faith gave his mother both purpose and strength. “He understood that the soul requires something else, that there is another side to life,” Natalia told me.
One day at the cardiological institute, Shikankov announced to Vyshlov, his colleague, “Truth is in Christianity.” Vyshlov understood his friend perfectly: “I remember this phrase, serious and thought out.” Shikankov deepened in his faith, observing Orthodox fasts and lending his rumbling voice to the choir for Easter services. He and Vyshlov joined the local branch of a group called the Society of Orthodox Doctors, whose members saw in their care of the human body something divine. “He never imposed his faith,” Irina Samoilenko, a gynecologist and one of the organizers of the society, said. “Instead, he demonstrated it in his actions: ‘Here, look, this is it!’ ”
Several years ago, doctors in the society organized a kind of mobile clinic, spending many weekends travelling to the far-flung villages outside of Tomsk, offering free medical care to those who were cut off from it. If there was no road or bridge, they travelled by ferry. They would start with a prayer at the local church and set up wherever they could, whether at a school or a first-aid clinic. At first, villagers were skeptical, assuming that the doctors wanted to sell them expensive prescriptions or send them for costly treatment at a private clinic. But attitudes quickly softened, and Shikankov and his colleagues became beloved figures. One woman brought her son, who suffered from a chronic illness that doctors in the region hadn’t been able to identify; Shikankov quickly diagnosed the boy’s rheumatism.
When the clinical work was done for the day, locals would bring cabbage, tomatoes, pickles—whatever they had in their gardens or cellars—and set a large table for the visiting doctors. Shikankov was often the last to join them. Samoilenko remembered, “It would often happen that we had seen all our patients, the food is ready, we’re all waiting—and where’s Valery?” He was still seeing patients, taking his time with each.
Shikankov came to learn—or, rather, he intuited all along—that the sickness people complain about is not always what actually ails them. Shikankov was an undeniable medical expert, but he was also sensitive to the maladies of the spirit, and the way they are interrelated with what pains the body. “He was able to listen, and to feel compassion,” Samoilenko said. “A person doesn’t always need pills or injections, but simply to be heard.”
This spring, the pandemic tore through Moscow, as well as a handful of large cities like St. Petersburg, filling up hospitals and clogging the streets with ambulances waiting to deliver sick patients. In some places in the Caucasus, like Dagestan, whole villages lost nearly all their elders in the span of a few weeks. But few people in Tomsk seemed to get infected. Shikankov had retired from the cardiology institute and was working as a general practitioner in a private clinic, where he saw plenty of patients with cold and flu symptoms. Who knew what they might be carrying? “We discussed the virus, and knew it carried a risk, but somehow weren’t afraid,” Vyshlov recalled.
The arrival of autumn changed everything. Testing centers were overwhelmed, and soon the neighborhood clinics were as well. “People were getting sick everywhere,” Vyshlov told me. Local media reported a shortage of oxygen at Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two, a story that the hospital authorities quickly denied. Seven out of the twelve physicians in Shikankov’s local medical charity contracted the virus.
Shikankov himself was preoccupied with another tragedy. In October, his mother died, at the age of eighty-four. (His father had died in 2003.) The family gathered in a Siberian village for the funeral and, in Orthodox tradition, for a wake on the ninth day after her death. The virus felt like a distant concern—“It’s hard to imagine that danger is nearby,” Shikankov’s brother Evgeny said—even though, as would soon be clear, they were almost certainly breathing it in and out as they shared remembrances of their mother. Within days, five out of the seven family members present at the wake began to show symptoms of COVID-19. It is unknown exactly where Shikankov encountered the virus: the day he returned to Tomsk, he examined a patient who later tested positive. The next day, Shikankov left work with a fever. His wife was also sick, along with his son Alexey. His siblings and their families fell ill, too. Shikankov told them that it would pass quickly; he kept up with his breathing exercises in the morning to build up strength in his lungs.
Within days, it was clear that his condition was worsening—and, at the same time, that the health-care system in Tomsk was slowly collapsing. Alexey couldn’t find the medicines that his father requested in local pharmacies. Whether out of mismanagement or callousness, or because its staff was unprepared and overwhelmed, Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two was unable to deal with the never-ending stream of patients. For a while, there was just one admitting doctor for the hundreds of people who showed up with COVID symptoms each day. Rooms meant for ten housed twenty to thirty. Some patients were offered “seated” treatment, that is, a chair instead of a hospital bed. For three days, Shikankov was denied even that improvised measure, as doctors told him that they had no room for him. Even after he was admitted, his relatives worried that Shikankov wasn’t getting the care he needed. His niece Marina, who was in touch with him from Moscow, reposted a number of videos circulating online showing patients crammed into the packed corridors of the hospital, waiting hours to be seen by a physician. “A person who has saved hundreds of lives has ended up in a circle of medical hell, unable to receive elementary care,” she wrote.
Shikankov’s experience was not unique. A woman in Tomsk told me that she had called an ambulance five days in a row before being brought to Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two, where she waited ten hours to be admitted. “No one examined me and barely checked in at all,” she said. She shared a room with other COVID patients; one evening, a woman began breathing in increasingly pained and shallow gasps, but no doctors or nurses came to see her. She died in the middle of the night. The woman I spoke to called the treatment at Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two “boorish, callous, and indifferent.”
Another woman in Tomsk, Veronika Pshenichnaya, told me of her seventy-nine-year-old father-in-law, who came down with COVID-19 and was hospitalized at Medical-Sanitary Unit Number Two. For days, she heard nothing about his condition and couldn’t reach anyone at the hospital by phone. Her only source of information was a doctor who was a friend of a friend and agreed to read her basic statistics from her father-in-law’s chart. On a Monday, they spoke by phone. After she didn’t hear back, she tried him again that Thursday. The doctor told her that her father-in-law had died on Tuesday. “If I didn’t have this acquaintance, how much longer would we not have known?” Pshenichnaya wondered. She called the hospital’s staff “untransparent to the point of inhumane.” When Pshenichnaya went to pick up her father-in-law’s belongings, hospital staff said that his passport had gone missing. (Personal-identification documents are required to receive a death certificate and organize a funeral.) A hospital administrator told her not to worry: if she hired a particular funeral company to arrange the burial, it would all be taken care of. It sounded to her like a corrupt kickback scheme.


newyorker--2020-12-09--Newly Re-Edited, “The Godfather: Part III” Is the Masterpiece It Already Was

There ’ s a Serbian proverb that an idled priest would baptize goats ; Francis Ford Coppola , whose formidable artistry has unfortunately not been channelled toward making a new movie for quite a while , is instead turning back to tinker with his earlier work .
He did so last year with “ Apocalypse Now ” and has now done so again , to greater effect , with “ The Godfather : Part III.
” It ’ s back , in his new cut ( available digitally and on Blu-ray ) under the heavy-duty new title “ Mario Puzo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Death of Michael Corleone.
” The re-edited version is a puckish paradox : it is only slightly different from the original—yet , now , this movie , which was widely derided at the time of its release , in 1990 , is being acclaimed by a ( mainly ) new generation of critics , even if not quite as the masterwork that some of us knew it to be from the start .
As a reminder , “ The Godfather : Part II ” ended with Michael ( Al Pacino ) supreme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Corleone empire of crime , which he resolves to leave and go straight .
In “ Part III , ” Michael , having divested himself of his criminal enterprises , makes a six-hundred-million-dollar “ contribution ” to cover up the Vatican Bank ’ s losses in exchange for a promise to head the Vatican ’ s vastly lucrative international real-estate business .
His son , Anthony ( Franc D ’ Ambrosio ) , defies him to become an opera singer ; his daughter , Mary ( Sofia Coppola ) , who runs his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ love with the hotheaded gangster Vincent Mancini ( Andy Garcia ) , her first cousin .
( He ’ s the illegitimate son of Michael ’ s late brother Sonny . )
Vincent ’ s conflict with a local Mafia capo , Joey Zasa ( Joe Mantegna ) , leads to a Mob war that threatens the Corleones , forcing Michael to retake bloody control of the crime family .
Meanwhile , Michael ’ s promised Vatican enterprise is threatened by the Vatican ’ s internal political chicanery—which turns out to be equally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of criminal conflict get tangled up in a colossal and horrific maelstrom of violence .
In the new version , the story is identical ; so , for that matter , are its emphases .
The main changes to the film are seen at the beginning , where Coppola has eliminated the sumptuous papal knighting of Michael and replaced it with an in-chambers discussion between Michael and Archbishop Gilday ( Donal Donnelly ) , which sets the quid pro quo of his “ contribution.
” In the middle of the film , Coppola @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the aged Don Altobello ( Eli Wallach ) .
The one emotionally and dramatically significant re-edit is to the movie ’ s very ending—we ’ ll get to that .
Yet over all , these edits are inconsequential both for the plot or the affect of “ The Godfather : Part III , ” and it ’ s hard to imagine why a viewer who disliked the film in its original version would be moved to enthusiasm by the new one , or why anyone who admired the original would be disappointed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the reissue and restoration of “ Part III ” is , rather , why the film was received so poorly in 1990 and why , now , with negligible adjustments , its time has come .
There ’ s a carefully parsed opulence to Coppola ’ s direction of “ Part III ” ; the film ’ s tautly controlled turbulence guides the eye to salient details , its clarified lines of dramatic tension calmly burst into images of an explosive yet nearly static intensity .
I ’ m haunted by several @ @ @ @ @ @ @ versions ) : Michael looming over Joey Zasa in their first backroom confrontation ; the quietly fiery intimacy between Mary and Vincent in a restaurant-kitchen scene ; the deadly exchange of glances between Mary and Michael after Vincent pushes her away on his orders ; the gory ingenuity of an attempted bedroom hit on Vincent ; the audacious staging of another gory scene , of a big Mob hit in a ballroom ; and , above all , the kitchen scene in which Michael keeps his cool about the killings but delivers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the whole “ Godfather ” cycle , an enduring bit of existential poetry : “ Just when I thought I was out , they pull me back in.
” Coppola had made other films in between “ Part II ” and “ Part III ” that are far ahead of where he ’ d been at the time of the early-seventies diptych—in particular , “ One from the Heart , ” “ Tucker : The Man and His Dream , ” and “ Rumble Fish.
” They weren ’ t commercially successful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ money into “ One from the Heart , ” which was both thrillingly original and a box-office disaster ) .
In his subsequent career to date , Coppola has had only one other flare of such audacious and original directorial accomplishment , the absurd and glorious image-frenzy of the film he made after “ Part III , ” “ Bram Stoker ’ s Dracula , ” from 1992 , which may also have been the last best flourish of practical , optical , scenographic effects , just ahead of the C.G.I .
revolution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Part III ” is directed quite as well as the first two films in the series—no differently and no better , which is a terrible thing to say about a sixteen-year span in the career of a great filmmaker .
On the other hand , the stylistic continuity among the three installments is one of the reasons for “ Part III ” ’ s belated acclaim , now , with its reissue .
The kind of romantic classicism that Coppola ’ s grandiose and meticulous style embodies—along with its conspicuous professionalism—is very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to nostalgia for a time , so recent yet so distant , when Hollywood made such substantial movies on such high budgets , and to the generalized shift ( at a time when a mere foothold on stability in the arts is woefully rare ) from idealizing the struggling outsider to hailing the insider who has found or forged a place in the world .
The difference between “ Part III ” and the first two films isn ’ t in style ; it ’ s that , with the third film , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The first two “ Godfathers , ” made during the age of the Vietnam War and Watergate , reflect a generalized recognition that American self-congratulatory mythology was a hollow veneer ; they tore away the veil of civic virtue to show that gangsters are us , that corporate power and Mafia power were indissociable .
In “ Part III , ” Coppola did with and to the Catholic Church what he ’ d previously done with and to American mythology .
Where “ Part I ” and “ Part II ” tapped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which accounts significantly for its success ) , “ Part III , ” though a box-office success , is a much more personal film , with a political and emotional engine that is Coppola ’ s alone .
In “ Part III , ” Coppola challenges the religion in which he was raised ; he confronts the rituals of the Church , the hierarchy on which it depends , the virtual cult of personality—running in a chain from the parish priest to the archbishop to the Pope—on which it is based , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a mediated relationship to God .
( It ’ s no coincidence that the movie ’ s voice of conscience is Michael ’ s ex-wife , Kay , the daughter of a Baptist minister ; she ’ s played by Diane Keaton . )
The movie is an audacious , self-scourging drama of a crisis of faith , The movie ’ s theological passion is inseparable from another , obviously personal aspect of the film , one that ’ s too painful and intimate even to discuss in detail : the crucial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the death of a child and of the guilt that comes with a parent ’ s grief .
It ’ s a horror that Coppola and his wife , the writer and filmmaker Eleanor Coppola , endured , with the death of their son Gian-Carlo , in a boating accident , in 1986 ; what ’ s more , Gian-Carlo had been part of the family business , working with Francis Ford Coppola on the production of “ Gardens of Stone ” at the time of his death .
The death of Mary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climactic incident , its tragic culmination—but the role of Mary , played by Coppola ’ s daughter , Sofia , who was nineteen years old and a nonprofessional actor , was the focus of critical hostility toward the movie at the time of its release .
Sofia had appeared in bit parts in many of her father ’ s previous films but never in a major dramatic role .
In “ Part III , ” she was called on at the last minute to replace one of the most acclaimed young actors of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ withdrew from the role of Mary because of illness .
Sofia Coppola ’ s performance was wrongly , absurdly , frenetically reviled by many critics at the time of the film ’ s release ( though not by Pauline Kael , who wrote , in The New Yorker , that Coppola “ has a lovely and unusual presence ; she gives the film a breath of life ” and added , “ I grew to like her.
” ) Her tremulously expressive performance , which seemed so idiosyncratically low-key and indeed unusual , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the same vein as the younger generation of actors who have populated Sofia Coppola ’ s own films and many low-budget independent films of the past decade .
The dreadful scene of Mary ’ s death moves swiftly to the ending of “ Part III , ” and that ending , in “ The Godfather , Coda , ” is indeed radically—yet infinitesimally—different .
Despite the new title of the new version , Michael doesn ’ t die .
The aged Michael , sitting alone in his garden in Sicily , doesn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he is condemned to live—and to remember—as a newly added title card explains , with wry and bitter irony , that “ a Sicilian never forgets.
” ( Moreover , in the original , flashbacks show the aged Michael recalling Mary and his other loves in their youth , including Kay and his first wife , Apollonia ; in the recut , his thoughts are only of Mary . )
In 1990 , with “ Part III , ” Coppola , barely in his fifties , imagined the consolation and the deliverance of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that played like his “ To be or not to be ” moment , his confrontation with the horrific prospect that death would nonetheless be no relief .
Now , thirty years later , Michael is cursed with a long life—and has borne the long sentence of too much time on his hands , too much time to fill with one tormenting memory .
Coppola has remade the ending to fold himself back , agonizingly , into the very substance of the film .
• New Yorker writers on the best books they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ counts down the best music .

Andy Garcia and Sofia Coppola in a scene from “The Godfather: Part III,” originally released in 1990. Photograph from Allstar Picture Library / Alamy
There’s a Serbian proverb that an idled priest would baptize goats; Francis Ford Coppola, whose formidable artistry has unfortunately not been channelled toward making a new movie for quite a while, is instead turning back to tinker with his earlier work. He did so last year with “Apocalypse Now” and has now done so again, to greater effect, with “The Godfather: Part III.” It’s back, in his new cut (available digitally and on Blu-ray) under the heavy-duty new title “Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.” The re-edited version is a puckish paradox: it is only slightly different from the original—yet, now, this movie, which was widely derided at the time of its release, in 1990, is being acclaimed by a (mainly) new generation of critics, even if not quite as the masterwork that some of us knew it to be from the start.
As a reminder, “The Godfather: Part II” ended with Michael (Al Pacino) supreme, guilt-ridden, and alone atop the Corleone empire of crime, which he resolves to leave and go straight. In “Part III,” Michael, having divested himself of his criminal enterprises, makes a six-hundred-million-dollar “contribution” to cover up the Vatican Bank’s losses in exchange for a promise to head the Vatican’s vastly lucrative international real-estate business. His son, Anthony (Franc D’Ambrosio), defies him to become an opera singer; his daughter, Mary (Sofia Coppola), who runs his entirely legitimate family foundation, falls in love with the hotheaded gangster Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia), her first cousin. (He’s the illegitimate son of Michael’s late brother Sonny.) Vincent’s conflict with a local Mafia capo, Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna), leads to a Mob war that threatens the Corleones, forcing Michael to retake bloody control of the crime family. Meanwhile, Michael’s promised Vatican enterprise is threatened by the Vatican’s internal political chicanery—which turns out to be equally dominated by the Mafia—and the two webs of criminal conflict get tangled up in a colossal and horrific maelstrom of violence.
2020 in Review New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
In the new version, the story is identical; so, for that matter, are its emphases. The main changes to the film are seen at the beginning, where Coppola has eliminated the sumptuous papal knighting of Michael and replaced it with an in-chambers discussion between Michael and Archbishop Gilday (Donal Donnelly), which sets the quid pro quo of his “contribution.” In the middle of the film, Coppola has eliminated a brief scene between Michael and the aged Don Altobello (Eli Wallach). The one emotionally and dramatically significant re-edit is to the movie’s very ending—we’ll get to that. Yet over all, these edits are inconsequential both for the plot or the affect of “The Godfather: Part III,” and it’s hard to imagine why a viewer who disliked the film in its original version would be moved to enthusiasm by the new one, or why anyone who admired the original would be disappointed by the recut. The real story of the reissue and restoration of “Part III” is, rather, why the film was received so poorly in 1990 and why, now, with negligible adjustments, its time has come.
There’s a carefully parsed opulence to Coppola’s direction of “Part III”; the film’s tautly controlled turbulence guides the eye to salient details, its clarified lines of dramatic tension calmly burst into images of an explosive yet nearly static intensity. I’m haunted by several key moments in the film (both versions): Michael looming over Joey Zasa in their first backroom confrontation; the quietly fiery intimacy between Mary and Vincent in a restaurant-kitchen scene; the deadly exchange of glances between Mary and Michael after Vincent pushes her away on his orders; the gory ingenuity of an attempted bedroom hit on Vincent; the audacious staging of another gory scene, of a big Mob hit in a ballroom; and, above all, the kitchen scene in which Michael keeps his cool about the killings but delivers, with heat, the single greatest line in the whole “Godfather” cycle, an enduring bit of existential poetry: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
Coppola had made other films in between “Part II” and “Part III” that are far ahead of where he’d been at the time of the early-seventies diptych—in particular, “One from the Heart,” “Tucker: The Man and His Dream,” and “Rumble Fish.” They weren’t commercially successful (and he had sunk his own money into “One from the Heart,” which was both thrillingly original and a box-office disaster). In his subsequent career to date, Coppola has had only one other flare of such audacious and original directorial accomplishment, the absurd and glorious image-frenzy of the film he made after “Part III,” “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” from 1992, which may also have been the last best flourish of practical, optical, scenographic effects, just ahead of the C.G.I. revolution. By contrast,“The Godfather: Part III” is directed quite as well as the first two films in the series—no differently and no better, which is a terrible thing to say about a sixteen-year span in the career of a great filmmaker. On the other hand, the stylistic continuity among the three installments is one of the reasons for “Part III” ’s belated acclaim, now, with its reissue. The kind of romantic classicism that Coppola’s grandiose and meticulous style embodies—along with its conspicuous professionalism—is very much in vogue now, owing both to nostalgia for a time, so recent yet so distant, when Hollywood made such substantial movies on such high budgets, and to the generalized shift (at a time when a mere foothold on stability in the arts is woefully rare) from idealizing the struggling outsider to hailing the insider who has found or forged a place in the world.
The difference between “Part III” and the first two films isn’t in style; it’s that, with the third film, Coppola was passionately interested in his subject. The first two “Godfathers,” made during the age of the Vietnam War and Watergate, reflect a generalized recognition that American self-congratulatory mythology was a hollow veneer; they tore away the veil of civic virtue to show that gangsters are us, that corporate power and Mafia power were indissociable. In “Part III,” Coppola did with and to the Catholic Church what he’d previously done with and to American mythology. Where “Part I” and “Part II” tapped into a general Zeitgeist of disillusionment (which accounts significantly for its success), “Part III,” though a box-office success, is a much more personal film, with a political and emotional engine that is Coppola’s alone. In “Part III,” Coppola challenges the religion in which he was raised; he confronts the rituals of the Church, the hierarchy on which it depends, the virtual cult of personality—running in a chain from the parish priest to the archbishop to the Pope—on which it is based, and even the Church’s very notion of a mediated relationship to God. (It’s no coincidence that the movie’s voice of conscience is Michael’s ex-wife, Kay, the daughter of a Baptist minister; she’s played by Diane Keaton.) The movie is an audacious, self-scourging drama of a crisis of faith.
The movie’s theological passion is inseparable from another, obviously personal aspect of the film, one that’s too painful and intimate even to discuss in detail: the crucial dramatization (spoiler alert!) of the death of a child and of the guilt that comes with a parent’s grief. It’s a horror that Coppola and his wife, the writer and filmmaker Eleanor Coppola, endured, with the death of their son Gian-Carlo, in a boating accident, in 1986; what’s more, Gian-Carlo had been part of the family business, working with Francis Ford Coppola on the production of “Gardens of Stone” at the time of his death. The death of Mary is “Part III” ’s climactic incident, its tragic culmination—but the role of Mary, played by Coppola’s daughter, Sofia, who was nineteen years old and a nonprofessional actor, was the focus of critical hostility toward the movie at the time of its release.
Sofia had appeared in bit parts in many of her father’s previous films but never in a major dramatic role. In “Part III,” she was called on at the last minute to replace one of the most acclaimed young actors of the time, Winona Ryder, who withdrew from the role of Mary because of illness. Sofia Coppola’s performance was wrongly, absurdly, frenetically reviled by many critics at the time of the film’s release (though not by Pauline Kael, who wrote, in The New Yorker, that Coppola “has a lovely and unusual presence; she gives the film a breath of life” and added, “I grew to like her.”) Her tremulously expressive performance, which seemed so idiosyncratically low-key and indeed unusual, comes off now as utterly contemporary, in the same vein as the younger generation of actors who have populated Sofia Coppola’s own films and many low-budget independent films of the past decade.


newyorker--2020-12-08--Britain’s Vaccine Program Brings Joy and Chauvinism

Cameras flashed , and Keenan was wheeled down a corridor lined with applauding medical staff , while Parsons prepared for the next patient in line , a man from Warwickshire named William Shakespeare .
Watching and giving his reaction for television , Britain ’ s Health Secretary , Matt Hancock , teared up .
And so began a joyous few hours of coördinated vaccinations across the country .
In Northern Ireland , the first person to get the jab was Joanna Sloan , a twenty-eight-year-old senior nurse who will manage a vaccination center in Belfast .
In Wales , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Atkins , from Ebbw Vale .
At around 9 A.M. , the Prime Minister , Boris Johnson , was at Guy ’ s Hospital , by London Bridge , to watch Lyn Wheeler , an eighty-one-year-old from Bromley , receive her first dose of the vaccine .
“ It ’ s all for Britain , ” Wheeler said .
The rapid launch of Britain ’ s coronavirus-vaccine drive is a triumph for Johnson ’ s government .
The night before it began , Hancock branded the occasion as V Day , embracing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any opportunity to refer to the Second World War .
In recent days , around eight hundred thousand doses of the Pfizer vaccine—enough to vaccinate four hundred thousand people—have arrived from the drug company ’ s factory in Puurs , Belgium , after it was approved for emergency use by Britain ’ s medical regulator , on December 2nd .
By the end of the year , another five million doses are expected , which will be administered by some fifty hospitals and immunization centers around the United Kingdom , before the effort @ @ @ @ @ @ @ community venues , next year .
It is an exciting stage in what has been , until now , an erratic and botched response to the pandemic , which has killed seventy-five thousand people in the U.K. During the past nine months , Johnson and his ministers have dallied with herd immunity , promised a “ world class ” test-and-trace system , which has yet to materialize , and talked airily about Operation Moonshot , an estimated hundred-billion-pound mass-screening program , which is currently being piloted but whose usefulness has been questioned , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ erroneous results .
The government has moved fast in some quarters and slowly in others , and has broken things .
Last month , the Financial Times reported that , among the G-7 group of large economies , Britain ’ s COVID strategy is on course to achieve an unusual trifecta : the worst economic hit , the second-highest level of state spending , and the second-highest death rate .
Thankfully , the government also bet big on vaccines .
In addition to forty million doses of the Pfizer vaccine , Britain has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s , which was developed at Oxford University and is easier to move and store , and a batch of the Moderna version , for good measure .
In total , the U.K. has more than three hundred and fifty-five million doses of various vaccines on the way .
Johnson ’ s administration claims that leaving the European Union has given the country an edge in the vaccine race .
Last week , when Britain ’ s medicines regulator approved the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use , Hancock claimed that its officials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because of Brexit.
” That was not true in any formal sense .
As June Raine , the head of the U.K. ’ s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority , explained , Britain is still bound by European law until its absolute departure from the bloc , on January 1st .
Under E.U .
rules , any member state can grant emergency approval for a drug .
( Hungary is currently planning to experiment with Russia ’ s Sputnik V vaccine . )
The reason that most European countries haven ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their vaccination drives .
The European Medicines Agency has pencilled approval of the Pfizer vaccine for December 29th .
But Brexit , like other nationalist projects , has never been overly concerned with facts .
It is more of an attitude .
Gavin Williamson , Britain ’ s Education Secretary , was asked whether Brexit had helped to catalyze the vaccination drive .
“ We ’ ve obviously got the best medical regulators , ” he told the radio station LBC .
“ Much better than the French have , much better than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Americans have .
That doesn ’ t surprise me at all , because we ’ re a much better country than every single one of them , aren ’ t we ?
” It takes a certain mind-set to see the ravages of COVID-19—and the hopeful cross-border collaborations of science—as an opportunity for national self-congratulation .
But here we are .
On Wednesday , Johnson plans to travel to Brussels to finally seal the terms of a post-Brexit trade deal with the E.U .
The second , and much more consequential , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ departure from the bloc has been interrupted and overshadowed by the pandemic .
But that hasn ’ t changed the underlying fact that , even if there is a deal , the U.K. will emerge on the other side of its current catastrophe with a more distant economic and political relationship with its neighbors than at any time in the past fifty years .
And , for a time , despite all evidence to the contrary , its leaders will continue to tell the population that this was the right thing to do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ randomly colliding world , we are better off apart , outsiders with an edge , taking a moonshot , celebrating our V Days .
More on the Coronavirus • To protect American lives and revive the economy , Donald Trump and Jared Kushner should listen to Anthony Fauci rather than trash him .
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It is not too late to ask what they really want .
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What kinds of space are we willing to live and work in now ?

At 6:31 A.M. on Tuesday, Margaret Keenan, a ninety-year-old former jewelry-shop assistant from the West Midlands, became the first person to receive a clinically approved coronavirus vaccine. Keenan was given the first of two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at Coventry’s University Hospital. She wore a gray cardigan with black dots and a blue T-shirt adorned with a penguin in a Santa hat. “Is that done?” Keenan asked, when the injection, in her upper left arm, was over. “All done,” May Parsons, a National Health Service matron, replied, as she put on a Band-Aid.
Cameras flashed, and Keenan was wheeled down a corridor lined with applauding medical staff, while Parsons prepared for the next patient in line, a man from Warwickshire named William Shakespeare. Watching and giving his reaction for television, Britain’s Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, teared up. And so began a joyous few hours of coördinated vaccinations across the country. In Northern Ireland, the first person to get the jab was Joanna Sloan, a twenty-eight-year-old senior nurse who will manage a vaccination center in Belfast. In Wales, it was a forty-eight-year-old care-home worker, Craig Atkins, from Ebbw Vale. At around 9 A.M., the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was at Guy’s Hospital, by London Bridge, to watch Lyn Wheeler, an eighty-one-year-old from Bromley, receive her first dose of the vaccine. “It’s all for Britain,” Wheeler said.
The rapid launch of Britain’s coronavirus-vaccine drive is a triumph for Johnson’s government. The night before it began, Hancock branded the occasion as V Day, embracing, as is customary in Brexit Britain, any opportunity to refer to the Second World War. In recent days, around eight hundred thousand doses of the Pfizer vaccine—enough to vaccinate four hundred thousand people—have arrived from the drug company’s factory in Puurs, Belgium, after it was approved for emergency use by Britain’s medical regulator, on December 2nd. By the end of the year, another five million doses are expected, which will be administered by some fifty hospitals and immunization centers around the United Kingdom, before the effort moves to sports stadiums and other large community venues, next year.
It is an exciting stage in what has been, until now, an erratic and botched response to the pandemic, which has killed seventy-five thousand people in the U.K. During the past nine months, Johnson and his ministers have dallied with herd immunity, promised a “world class” test-and-trace system, which has yet to materialize, and talked airily about Operation Moonshot, an estimated hundred-billion-pound mass-screening program, which is currently being piloted but whose usefulness has been questioned, because of a predicted large number of erroneous results. The government has moved fast in some quarters and slowly in others, and has broken things. Last month, the Financial Times reported that, among the G-7 group of large economies, Britain’s COVID strategy is on course to achieve an unusual trifecta: the worst economic hit, the second-highest level of state spending, and the second-highest death rate. Thankfully, the government also bet big on vaccines. In addition to forty million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, Britain has ordered a hundred million doses of AstraZeneca’s, which was developed at Oxford University and is easier to move and store, and a batch of the Moderna version, for good measure. In total, the U.K. has more than three hundred and fifty-five million doses of various vaccines on the way.
Johnson’s administration claims that leaving the European Union has given the country an edge in the vaccine race. Last week, when Britain’s medicines regulator approved the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use, Hancock claimed that its officials had been able to work faster “because of Brexit.” That was not true in any formal sense. As June Raine, the head of the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority, explained, Britain is still bound by European law until its absolute departure from the bloc, on January 1st. Under E.U. rules, any member state can grant emergency approval for a drug. (Hungary is currently planning to experiment with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.) The reason that most European countries haven’t done so is that they are coördinating their vaccination drives. The European Medicines Agency has pencilled approval of the Pfizer vaccine for December 29th. But Brexit, like other nationalist projects, has never been overly concerned with facts. It is more of an attitude. Gavin Williamson, Britain’s Education Secretary, was asked whether Brexit had helped to catalyze the vaccination drive. “We’ve obviously got the best medical regulators,” he told the radio station LBC. “Much better than the French have, much better than the Belgians have, much better than the Americans have. That doesn’t surprise me at all, because we’re a much better country than every single one of them, aren’t we?”
It takes a certain mind-set to see the ravages of COVID-19—and the hopeful cross-border collaborations of science—as an opportunity for national self-congratulation. But here we are. On Wednesday, Johnson plans to travel to Brussels to finally seal the terms of a post-Brexit trade deal with the E.U. The second, and much more consequential, phase of negotiations around Britain’s departure from the bloc has been interrupted and overshadowed by the pandemic. But that hasn’t changed the underlying fact that, even if there is a deal, the U.K. will emerge on the other side of its current catastrophe with a more distant economic and political relationship with its neighbors than at any time in the past fifty years. And, for a time, despite all evidence to the contrary, its leaders will continue to tell the population that this was the right thing to do; that, in a troubled, randomly colliding world, we are better off apart, outsiders with an edge, taking a moonshot, celebrating our V Days.
More on the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-12-08--Can You Really Buy Bob Dylan’s Songs?

Can You Really Buy Bob Dylan’s Songs?

On Monday , the Universal Music Publishing Group announced that it had purchased Bob Dylan ’ s entire catalogue—more than six hundred songs , beginning with Dylan ’ s eponymous 1962 début , through “ Rough and Rowdy Ways , ” his thirty-ninth album—in a deal estimated to be worth more than three hundred million dollars .
The Times suggested that this “ may be the biggest acquisition ever of the music publishing rights of a single song-writer.
” Universal will now collect all the income generated whenever one of Dylan ’ s songs is sold , broadcast , streamed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ film , television show , or commercial ; the company will also control Dylan ’ s copyright , meaning that it determines when and how his songs can be used , and at what price .
Dylan did not offer a comment on the announcement .
Jody Gerson , the chief executive of Universal ’ s publishing arm , described the acquisition as “ a privilege and a responsibility.
” Few American songwriters have been as zealously exalted as Dylan—and few are as consistently inscrutable .
His most devoted fans spent the day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it certainly looked financial ( the pandemic has grounded his Never-Ending Tour ) , but could also be pragmatic ( he is seventy-nine , and might be taking proactive steps to organize and secure his estate ) .
There was anxiety , of course , about how Dylan ’ s songs could now be deployed to embarrassing or brazenly mercenary ends .
But Dylan himself has not always approached his catalogue with the same seething reverence as his fans do , nor has he been especially reluctant to monetize his image .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ —a wordy , cryptic song about unwelcome love , from “ Blonde on Blonde ” —was used in a Super Bowl ad for Chobani , in which a marauding grizzly bear destroys a general store in search of a cup of honey-flavored yogurt .
In 2015 , in a commercial for I.B.M.
, Dylan had a brief conversation with the company ’ s signature artificial intelligence , Watson , about the recurring themes of his lyrics , which Watson identified as “ that time passes and love fades.
” Dylan agreed with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” My favorite example came in 2004 , when Dylan , sporting his late-career pencil mustache , appeared in a moody , ponderous commercial for Victoria ’ s Secret , co-starring the model Adriana Lima , who was wearing only her underwear and a pair of enormous wings .
Dylan doesn ’ t speak in the spot— “ Love Sick , ” which opens “ Time Out of Mind , ” plays—but glowers purposefully at the camera for a few seconds , as if to say , “ Can you believe this shit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ commercials , Dylan has also developed his own line of whiskey , and recently revived his SiriusXM radio show , the “ Theme Time Radio Hour , ” to promote it .
In 2016 , he granted Amazon and Lions Gate Entertainment permission to develop any of the characters or stories in his collected lyrics into a television series . )
Dylan ’ s fans are multigenerational enough that reactions to the news of the sale revealed the shift in how we think about the intersection of art and commerce .
I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ offense and outrage unleashed by the public when a beloved song was used to sell , say , running shoes .
I ’ ve since made peace with the idea—placing a track in a commercial is a relatively easy way for artists to make money in a marketplace that continues to devalue creative work—but some small , eternally righteous part of me still bristles whenever I hear a song that means something repurposed as an advertising jingle .
Pop songs are so useful in commercials , in part , because they allow a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ connection that viewers and listeners have already established with an artist .
It ’ s not fair , perhaps , to expect the artist to honor or protect that point of communion in an era in which huge numbers of fans listen for free .
These days , how much a songwriter cares about maintaining control of her rights varies , although age does seem to have something to do with the fervency with which an artist approaches the issue .
This year alone , a handful of legacy acts ( including Stevie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Chrissie Hynde ) have made similar deals , relinquishing control of their catalogues in exchange for sizable payouts .
The popularity of streaming has , at least temporarily , buoyed the bigger names in the music industry , which means that new investors are now looking to scoop up evergreen music rights .
( For Dylan , this all but insures that his music will remain available and highlighted on streaming services in perpetuity . )
Meanwhile , Taylor Swift , who turns thirty-one this Sunday , has been entangled in an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ former label , Big Machine Records , and the music manager Scooter Braun , who acquired Big Machine from its founder , Scott Borchetta , and , with it , the rights to the master recordings of Swift ’ s first six studio albums .
Swift described Braun ’ s involvement in her career as her “ worst case scenario , ” and has accused Braun , who manages Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande , of “ incessant , manipulative bullying.
” Many fans believe that at least two songs ( “ my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ) on Swift ’ s newest album , “ folklore ” refer directly to what Swift understands as an unforgivable betrayal .
“ I ’ m taking ’ my time / Taking my time / ‘ Cause you took everything from me , ” she sings , her voice tender but menacing .
For Swift , the issue seems to be less an ideological opposition to the fact that her songs might be used to sell stuff ( she has had elaborate promotional partnerships with U.P.S.
, Target , Subway , Capital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , but the understandable and very human desire to maintain some degree of control over her work and legacy as she moves further into her career .
Swift recently posted a note to Twitter , explaining that her team had attempted to negotiate with Braun but ultimately found his conditions—namely , the signing of a nondisclosure agreement that Swift ’ s team suggested was more commonly used to “ silence an assault accuser ” —unreasonable .
Instead , Swift said , she is rerecording all of her old music , a process @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Braun ’ s acquisition .
Swift said that the work of revisiting her old albums has been “ exciting and creatively fulfilling.
” Dylan ’ s situation feels different , and not simply because he consented to the sale ( or because Braun only acquired the master rights to part of Swift ’ s catalogue , and not also her publishing rights ) .
It is difficult , perhaps , to know precisely when an artist ’ s work transforms into common property , becoming part of the public domain in the spiritual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one .
( That Dylan ’ s songs have reportedly been covered more than six thousand times suggests how they have been functionally untethered from their creator . )
Dylan has always seemed to subscribe to the notion that songs are never quite fixed or fully claimed , even by their authors .
Instead , all music can be reimagined or reshaped to suit new purposes .
He has , at times , been accused of borrowing a little too freely from other writers , including just this past spring .
( “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Rough and Rowdy Ways , ” is extremely similar to “ If Lovin ’ Is Believing , ” a B-side , from 1954 , by the pianist and singer Billy “ The Kid ” Emerson . )
Sixty years after his recording début , Dylan ’ s best-known and most resonant songs ( “ Blowin ’ in the Wind , ” “ The Times They Are A-Changin ’ , ” “ Subterranean Homesick Blues ” ) are now so intensely and inextricably interwoven into the American experience that the question of “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Those songs are part of the cultural ether and will be with us forever , ” Michael Chaiken , the curator of the Bob Dylan Archive , in Tulsa , Oklahoma , told me recently .
Universal may have secured certain legal and financial privileges when it comes to Dylan ’ s catalogue .
But I ’ d venture that the songs belong to everyone who has claimed them .
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• Amanda Petrusich counts down the best music .

On Monday, the Universal Music Publishing Group announced that it had purchased Bob Dylan’s entire catalogue—more than six hundred songs, beginning with Dylan’s eponymous 1962 début, through “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” his thirty-ninth album—in a deal estimated to be worth more than three hundred million dollars. The Times suggested that this “may be the biggest acquisition ever of the music publishing rights of a single song-writer.” Universal will now collect all the income generated whenever one of Dylan’s songs is sold, broadcast, streamed, covered, or placed in a film, television show, or commercial; the company will also control Dylan’s copyright, meaning that it determines when and how his songs can be used, and at what price. Dylan did not offer a comment on the announcement. Jody Gerson, the chief executive of Universal’s publishing arm, described the acquisition as “a privilege and a responsibility.”
Few American songwriters have been as zealously exalted as Dylan—and few are as consistently inscrutable. His most devoted fans spent the day speculating about Dylan’s motivation: it certainly looked financial (the pandemic has grounded his Never-Ending Tour), but could also be pragmatic (he is seventy-nine, and might be taking proactive steps to organize and secure his estate). There was anxiety, of course, about how Dylan’s songs could now be deployed to embarrassing or brazenly mercenary ends. But Dylan himself has not always approached his catalogue with the same seething reverence as his fans do, nor has he been especially reluctant to monetize his image.
In 2014, “I Want You”—a wordy, cryptic song about unwelcome love, from “Blonde on Blonde”—was used in a Super Bowl ad for Chobani, in which a marauding grizzly bear destroys a general store in search of a cup of honey-flavored yogurt. In 2015, in a commercial for I.B.M., Dylan had a brief conversation with the company’s signature artificial intelligence, Watson, about the recurring themes of his lyrics, which Watson identified as “that time passes and love fades.” Dylan agreed with the assessment: “That sounds about right.” My favorite example came in 2004, when Dylan, sporting his late-career pencil mustache, appeared in a moody, ponderous commercial for Victoria’s Secret, co-starring the model Adriana Lima, who was wearing only her underwear and a pair of enormous wings. Dylan doesn’t speak in the spot—“Love Sick,” which opens “Time Out of Mind,” plays—but glowers purposefully at the camera for a few seconds, as if to say, “Can you believe this shit?” (Beyond his work in commercials, Dylan has also developed his own line of whiskey, and recently revived his SiriusXM radio show, the “Theme Time Radio Hour,” to promote it. In 2016, he granted Amazon and Lions Gate Entertainment permission to develop any of the characters or stories in his collected lyrics into a television series.)
2020 in Review New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
Dylan’s fans are multigenerational enough that reactions to the news of the sale revealed the shift in how we think about the intersection of art and commerce. I’m just old enough to remember the offense and outrage unleashed by the public when a beloved song was used to sell, say, running shoes. I’ve since made peace with the idea—placing a track in a commercial is a relatively easy way for artists to make money in a marketplace that continues to devalue creative work—but some small, eternally righteous part of me still bristles whenever I hear a song that means something repurposed as an advertising jingle. Pop songs are so useful in commercials, in part, because they allow a corporation to exploit whatever complex, visceral connection that viewers and listeners have already established with an artist. It’s not fair, perhaps, to expect the artist to honor or protect that point of communion in an era in which huge numbers of fans listen for free.
These days, how much a songwriter cares about maintaining control of her rights varies, although age does seem to have something to do with the fervency with which an artist approaches the issue. This year alone, a handful of legacy acts (including Stevie Nicks, Blondie, Barry Manilow, and Chrissie Hynde) have made similar deals, relinquishing control of their catalogues in exchange for sizable payouts. The popularity of streaming has, at least temporarily, buoyed the bigger names in the music industry, which means that new investors are now looking to scoop up evergreen music rights. (For Dylan, this all but insures that his music will remain available and highlighted on streaming services in perpetuity.)
Meanwhile, Taylor Swift, who turns thirty-one this Sunday, has been entangled in an increasingly public and acrimonious fight with her former label, Big Machine Records, and the music manager Scooter Braun, who acquired Big Machine from its founder, Scott Borchetta, and, with it, the rights to the master recordings of Swift’s first six studio albums. Swift described Braun’s involvement in her career as her “worst case scenario,” and has accused Braun, who manages Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, of “incessant, manipulative bullying.” Many fans believe that at least two songs (“my tears ricochet” and “mad woman”) on Swift’s newest album, “folklore” refer directly to what Swift understands as an unforgivable betrayal. “I’m taking’ my time / Taking my time / ‘Cause you took everything from me,” she sings, her voice tender but menacing.
For Swift, the issue seems to be less an ideological opposition to the fact that her songs might be used to sell stuff (she has had elaborate promotional partnerships with U.P.S., Target, Subway, Capital One, Diet Coke, and more), but the understandable and very human desire to maintain some degree of control over her work and legacy as she moves further into her career. Swift recently posted a note to Twitter, explaining that her team had attempted to negotiate with Braun but ultimately found his conditions—namely, the signing of a nondisclosure agreement that Swift’s team suggested was more commonly used to “silence an assault accuser”—unreasonable. Instead, Swift said, she is rerecording all of her old music, a process that will ultimately diminish the value of Braun’s acquisition. Swift said that the work of revisiting her old albums has been “exciting and creatively fulfilling.”
Dylan’s situation feels different, and not simply because he consented to the sale (or because Braun only acquired the master rights to part of Swift’s catalogue, and not also her publishing rights). It is difficult, perhaps, to know precisely when an artist’s work transforms into common property, becoming part of the public domain in the spiritual sense, if not quite the financial one. (That Dylan’s songs have reportedly been covered more than six thousand times suggests how they have been functionally untethered from their creator.) Dylan has always seemed to subscribe to the notion that songs are never quite fixed or fully claimed, even by their authors. Instead, all music can be reimagined or reshaped to suit new purposes. He has, at times, been accused of borrowing a little too freely from other writers, including just this past spring. (“False Prophet,” a song from “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” is extremely similar to “If Lovin’ Is Believing,” a B-side, from 1954, by the pianist and singer Billy “The Kid” Emerson.)
Sixty years after his recording début, Dylan’s best-known and most resonant songs (“Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “Subterranean Homesick Blues”) are now so intensely and inextricably interwoven into the American experience that the question of “ownership” almost seems moot. “Those songs are part of the cultural ether and will be with us forever,” Michael Chaiken, the curator of the Bob Dylan Archive, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, told me recently. Universal may have secured certain legal and financial privileges when it comes to Dylan’s catalogue. But I’d venture that the songs belong to everyone who has claimed them.
2020 in Review


“Antiques Roadshow”: 2021

“ From what I can see from here , it ’ s either a thirteenth-century meiping bowl or a colonial-era @ @ @ @ @ to a garage sale near you : “ Antiques Road Trip ” !
Special episode @ @ @ @ @ t seem like your family should own this .
.
.
.
” ( Perhaps @ @ @ @ @

Keno appraising furniture from his condo.
On tonight’s episode: six-foot antiques only.
“From what I can see from here, it’s either a thirteenth-century meiping bowl or a colonial-era urinal jug.”
A new episode of “Vintage Roadshow.”
Coming soon to a garage sale near you: “Antiques Road Trip”!
Special episode: “It doesn’t seem like your family should own this. . . .” (Perhaps give it back?)


newyorker--2020-12-08--My Thirty Favorite Albums of 2020

My Thirty Favorite Albums of 2020

A lot of music released this year never had the opportunity to breathe—to fill a packed space , to trickle through a nearly empty one , to add texture to the symphony of everyday life .
Songs that might have fuelled a festival crowd or spilled out of car windows simply couldn ’ t be experienced in the old way .
A few of those songs took on new meaning during a summer of protests , others migrated to social platforms such as TikTok ; some artists reimagined the live show for virtual audiences , but music remained at a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s only after a song is heard live , in the open , at a barbecue , buzzed in the back seat of a cab , or when someone bombs at karaoke that it clicks into place and unlocks an artist .
So much of the best music is truly revealed in motion—that is how music becomes the lifeblood that animates our days .
When I think about the best music of 2020 , I think first of the album , a medium that ’ s nearly at odds with streaming ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ close listening during a time of unprecedented idleness .
I think second about context : which albums helped us navigate a lost plague year and which albums will transcend it ?
Or , rather , what music will forever be “ pandemic music , ” and what music will carry over with the best music of other years into the great historical record ?
That kind of forecasting is always an inexact science , but this year it feels even more like bone-casting .
Who ’ s to say what music might suddenly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve finally awakened from a pandemic-induced fugue state ?
Listening to new music is hard , and it was harder still under distress .
It is much easier to return to the familiar in a time of crisis .
I was grateful for the chance to vote for Rolling Stone ’ s “ 500 Greatest Albums of All Time ” this summer , because it gave me a reason to retreat into music I already cherished—music that had already revealed itself to me and could act as a salve amid uncertainty .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , about accumulation—the things that imprint upon us in the course of the given period .
In 2020 , it was difficult to feel connected to things , and , therefore , tougher than ever to do the requisite stockpiling and auditing required to make a truly thorough accounting of “ bests.
” Even so , there will always be music that manages to break through the fog , that grabs hold and shakes you and refuses to let you free of its grasp .
These are the albums that stuck with me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Phil Elverum yearns to understand the impulses that produced the heady music of his youth .
“ Microphones in 2020 , ” a return to his old Microphones moniker , after seventeen years as Mount Eerie , is a steady , gripping consideration of process , form , and identity—an undulating forty-five-minute guitar composition that surges and crashes against his recollections as a career indie musician .
These are the naked , gorgeous musings of an introspective artist lost in thought .
Recorded in Apple ’ s Venice Beach home , with her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Bolt Cutters ” is about as organic and uninhibited as music gets .
Constructed entirely out of sounds around the artist and composed entirely of biting lyrics that challenge any attempts to silence her , it ’ s an album made of jagged edges .
Apple ’ s songs are intensely personal yet powerfully transparent .
Clattering and cluttered but clearheaded and deliberate , this brilliant , brutal , unprecedented work feels like a transcendent artist assembling a new form of music from scratch .
The sophomore album of the twenty-six-year-old folk-rock @ @ @ @ @ @ @ haunted , radiant collection of songs about managing personal turmoil in the periphery of a wider crisis .
Her muted singing lends her songs about searching for feeling even greater depth .
“ I ’ ve been playing dead my whole life , ” she sings on “ ICU , ” and , throughout the album , she seeks to reverse course and become alive again .
Her sincere , almost blunt manner of writing is rich in its specificity , and there is a constant sense of resiliency in her sad songs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A Californian born to Ghanian parents , Moses Sumney has often obsessed over division and betweenness .
His sumptuous , two-part album “ græ ” delves further into this duality of being , exploring statelessness and displacement .
These songs are about uncovering the self amid feelings of isolation and detachment , eventually settling in a space beyond definition or classification .
The music is just as fluid—owing to a diverse host of collaborators such as Daniel Lopatin , Thundercat , James Blake , Tom Gallo , Jill Scott , Adult Jazz @ @ @ @ @ @ @ indie rock and folk to electro soul and pop .
But it ’ s Sumney ’ s overarching vision and cutting falsettos that give the album shape , texture , and dimension .

A lot of music released this year never had the opportunity to breathe—to fill a packed space, to trickle through a nearly empty one, to add texture to the symphony of everyday life. Songs that might have fuelled a festival crowd or spilled out of car windows simply couldn’t be experienced in the old way. A few of those songs took on new meaning during a summer of protests, others migrated to social platforms such as TikTok; some artists reimagined the live show for virtual audiences, but music remained at a cool distance. Often, it’s only after a song is heard live, in the open, at a barbecue, buzzed in the back seat of a cab, or when someone bombs at karaoke that it clicks into place and unlocks an artist. So much of the best music is truly revealed in motion—that is how music becomes the lifeblood that animates our days.
2020 in Review New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
When I think about the best music of 2020, I think first of the album, a medium that’s nearly at odds with streaming’s playlisting model yet one that deeply rewards close listening during a time of unprecedented idleness. I think second about context: which albums helped us navigate a lost plague year and which albums will transcend it? Or, rather, what music will forever be “pandemic music,” and what music will carry over with the best music of other years into the great historical record? That kind of forecasting is always an inexact science, but this year it feels even more like bone-casting. Who’s to say what music might suddenly resonate with many of us whenever we’ve finally awakened from a pandemic-induced fugue state? Listening to new music is hard, and it was harder still under distress. It is much easier to return to the familiar in a time of crisis. I was grateful for the chance to vote for Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” this summer, because it gave me a reason to retreat into music I already cherished—music that had already revealed itself to me and could act as a salve amid uncertainty.
Year-end lists are, more or less, about accumulation—the things that imprint upon us in the course of the given period. In 2020, it was difficult to feel connected to things, and, therefore, tougher than ever to do the requisite stockpiling and auditing required to make a truly thorough accounting of “bests.” Even so, there will always be music that manages to break through the fog, that grabs hold and shakes you and refuses to let you free of its grasp. These are the albums that stuck with me despite everything.
The Microphones, “Microphones in 2020”
The singer and multi-instrumentalist Phil Elverum yearns to understand the impulses that produced the heady music of his youth. “Microphones in 2020,” a return to his old Microphones moniker, after seventeen years as Mount Eerie, is a steady, gripping consideration of process, form, and identity—an undulating forty-five-minute guitar composition that surges and crashes against his recollections as a career indie musician. These are the naked, gorgeous musings of an introspective artist lost in thought.
Fiona Apple, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters”
Recorded in Apple’s Venice Beach home, with her piano and her dog, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is about as organic and uninhibited as music gets. Constructed entirely out of sounds around the artist and composed entirely of biting lyrics that challenge any attempts to silence her, it’s an album made of jagged edges. Apple’s songs are intensely personal yet powerfully transparent. Clattering and cluttered but clearheaded and deliberate, this brilliant, brutal, unprecedented work feels like a transcendent artist assembling a new form of music from scratch.
Phoebe Bridgers, “Punisher”
The sophomore album of the twenty-six-year-old folk-rock musician Phoebe Bridgers is spectral and internal—a haunted, radiant collection of songs about managing personal turmoil in the periphery of a wider crisis. Her muted singing lends her songs about searching for feeling even greater depth. “I’ve been playing dead my whole life,” she sings on “ICU,” and, throughout the album, she seeks to reverse course and become alive again. Her sincere, almost blunt manner of writing is rich in its specificity, and there is a constant sense of resiliency in her sad songs, in which she never stops moving.
Moses Sumney, “græ”


newyorker--2020-12-09--When Fifty Per Cent Is O.K., but Ninety to Ninety-Five Per Cent Is Extraordinary

Here are some other instances when fifty per cent is O.K.
, but ninety to ninety-five per cent is extraordinary : Per cent of the croissant that makes it into your mouth .
Per cent of Marianne Williamson quotes you understand .
Per cent of the Atlantic article you read before you say , “ I just read the most fascinating Atlantic article.
” Per cent of Algebra II you remember .
Per cent of the group project someone else did .
Per cent of past sexual partners who , when surveyed anonymously , say you are at least O.K @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the week your nemesis spends thinking about you .
Per cent of an e-mail from someone in marketing that is exclamation points .
Per cent of lines in the school play your kid remembers .
Per cent off from Bed Bath & Beyond coupon .
Per cent of blame your good-for-nothing ex accepts for the decay of your relationship .
Per cent of botched social interactions from your twenties that , after much replay and careful analysis over the past year , weren ’ t as embarrassing as you initially thought .
Per @ @ @ @ @ @ @ box .
Per cent of pizza remaining in the pizza box after drugs .
Per cent chance of rain on your nemesis ’ s wedding day .
Per cent of articles sent to you by your conservative mother that are from reputable news sources .
Per cent of phone calls in which your conservative mother doesn ’ t ask , “ So , when you coming home ?
” Per cent voter turnout in the Georgia runoffs .
Per cent of your deep , dark past you will one day escape .
Per @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found funny .
Per cent of items on this list you found funny if you are my nemesis .

The F.D.A. plans to approve any coronavirus vaccine that is at least fifty per cent effective. Early clinical trials are showing some vaccines to be ninety to ninety-five per cent effective. Dr. Fauci called the results “extraordinary.”
Here are some other instances when fifty per cent is O.K., but ninety to ninety-five per cent is extraordinary:
Per cent of the croissant that makes it into your mouth.
Per cent of Marianne Williamson quotes you understand.
Per cent of the Atlantic article you read before you say, “I just read the most fascinating Atlantic article.”
Per cent of Algebra II you remember.
Per cent of the group project someone else did.
Per cent of past sexual partners who, when surveyed anonymously, say you are at least O.K. in bed.
Per cent of the week your nemesis spends thinking about you.
Per cent of an e-mail from someone in marketing that is exclamation points.
Per cent of lines in the school play your kid remembers.
Per cent off from Bed Bath & Beyond coupon.
Per cent of blame your good-for-nothing ex accepts for the decay of your relationship.
Per cent of botched social interactions from your twenties that, after much replay and careful analysis over the past year, weren’t as embarrassing as you initially thought.
Per cent of pizza remaining in the pizza box.
Per cent of pizza remaining in the pizza box after drugs.
Per cent chance of rain on your nemesis’s wedding day.
Per cent of articles sent to you by your conservative mother that are from reputable news sources.
Per cent of phone calls in which your conservative mother doesn’t ask, “So, when you coming home?”
Per cent voter turnout in the Georgia runoffs.
Per cent of your deep, dark past you will one day escape.
Per cent of items on this list you found funny.
Per cent of items on this list you found funny if you are my nemesis.


newyorker--2020-12-09--The Guilt, Humor, and Nostalgia of the Holidays in “Eight Nights”

Childhood flashbacks are rendered in hand-drawn black-and-white , giving the animations the sooty , sharply limned quality of memory .
“ Growing up in Russia , ” where Jewish education and observance were banned by the Soviet leadership , “ I had no clue what it meant to be Jewish , ” Gamburg explains .
He learns quickly , in this retelling , when anti-Semitic classmates attack him .
“ They ’ ve hated our people for two thousand years , ” Gamburg ’ s father tells him , cutting off his mother ’ s attempts to soothe .
Soon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ His father hopes that Gamburg will become an aeronautical engineer .
Gamburg wants to be John Travolta .
In America , kids were free .
“ Free to torment me , ” he explains , which turns out to be “ good preparation for becoming an actor.
” Years later , as he is trying to establish his acting career in Los Angeles , Gamburg learns to tolerate the humiliations of being cast in stereotypical bit parts , until a surprise gig on “ Conan ” cuts too close to the bone .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the sketch he has been cast in is not just grotesque but deeply degrading : he is one link in a giant menorah made of human bodies , dressed in skin-tight silver and connected one to another , mouth to rear end .
At this moment , knowing his family is watching him on TV , Gamburg remembers his first Hanukkah in America , his mother smiling as her son learns that the menorah , like the holiday itself , is a symbol of “ our fight against oppression.
” Onstage , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on their backs waggling ; he remembers Conan “ laughing so hard he can ’ t speak.
” “ I always pick up the phone when my family calls , ” Gamburg explains .
“ It comes from a subconscious fear ” —the film cuts to documentary footage of Jews being loaded on to cattle cars— “ that this might be the last time I hear from them.
” But , after his “ Conan ” appearance , Gamburg avoids his father ’ s calls .
Shame , it seems , can overpower @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , his father ’ s forgiveness is a kind of rebirth , like peeling off a sheath of silver latex .

Like the holidays themselves, Daniel Gamburg and Benjamin Goldman’s documentary short “Eight Nights” mixes nostalgia, family, shame, guilt, and humor into a seriously potent cocktail. In a hybrid of animation, interview, and archival footage reminiscent of Michel Gondry, the directors make their film, about an especially complicated Hanukkah, work like a palimpsest—a narrative with traces of memory insistently breaking through.
Childhood flashbacks are rendered in hand-drawn black-and-white, giving the animations the sooty, sharply limned quality of memory. “Growing up in Russia,” where Jewish education and observance were banned by the Soviet leadership, “I had no clue what it meant to be Jewish,” Gamburg explains. He learns quickly, in this retelling, when anti-Semitic classmates attack him. “They’ve hated our people for two thousand years,” Gamburg’s father tells him, cutting off his mother’s attempts to soothe. Soon the family is moving to America. His father hopes that Gamburg will become an aeronautical engineer. Gamburg wants to be John Travolta. In America, kids were free. “Free to torment me,” he explains, which turns out to be “good preparation for becoming an actor.”
Years later, as he is trying to establish his acting career in Los Angeles, Gamburg learns to tolerate the humiliations of being cast in stereotypical bit parts, until a surprise gig on “Conan” cuts too close to the bone. He arrives on set to discover that the sketch he has been cast in is not just grotesque but deeply degrading: he is one link in a giant menorah made of human bodies, dressed in skin-tight silver and connected one to another, mouth to rear end. At this moment, knowing his family is watching him on TV, Gamburg remembers his first Hanukkah in America, his mother smiling as her son learns that the menorah, like the holiday itself, is a symbol of “our fight against oppression.” Onstage, the men crawl forward, the giant candles on their backs waggling; he remembers Conan “laughing so hard he can’t speak.”
“I always pick up the phone when my family calls,” Gamburg explains. “It comes from a subconscious fear”—the film cuts to documentary footage of Jews being loaded on to cattle cars—“that this might be the last time I hear from them.” But, after his “Conan” appearance, Gamburg avoids his father’s calls. Shame, it seems, can overpower fear. When he finally does answer, his father’s forgiveness is a kind of rebirth, like peeling off a sheath of silver latex.