Five Bullets 1.5.24

Movies, Screenwriting and Frederick A. Cook

Good Morning & Happy Friday Everyone!

First off, Happy New Year to all! 

I hope you had a wonderful holiday and enjoyed some time off.

I’d also like to say Welcome New Subscribers! I’ve got a lot planned for you to read this year as my humble newsletter slowly but surely marches on. 

Here’s Five Bullets from the past week:

• Movies: Some new and old movies I enjoyed over the holiday:
  
  

  • American Fiction [2023] (adapted from Percival Everett’s novel “Erasure”)

  • The Holdovers [2023] (not based on a book but feels like it is)

  • Everything is Illuminated [2005] (adapted from the Jonathan Safran Foer novel)

  • Nicholas Nickelby [2002] (adapted from the Charles Dickens novel)

  • The Firm [1993] (adapted from the John Grisham novel). 
    
    

• Music:
  
  

  • Jonathan Scales is reinventing the steelpan. Check out his jazz fusion group Fourchestra on Toast of the Nation.

  • Netflix’s Song Exploder on the making of iconic Nine Inch Nails song ‘Hurt’.

  • RIP jazz pianist and vocalist Les McCann.
    
    

• NYC: It’s been 690 days since the city had at least an inch of snow but winter storms expected this weekend could bring some snow our way.
  
  

• Profile: How a Script Doctor Found His Own Voice - an engaging read on screenwriter Scott Frank with insight into the art of screenwriting. 
  
  

• Opinion: The Polar Explorer, and Scammer, Who Should Be an American Hero or how Frederick A. Cook “was not the man for his era, but he might just be the one for ours”. Cook’s Brooklyn mansion still stands only a few blocks from my apartment:
  
  

  

  Lipsius-Cook house 670 Bushwick Avenue 1909 © Brooklyn Public Library

That’s all for this week!

What did you read, watch, and listen to over the break? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Keith