Das Lied zum Sonntag

Vika & Linda - Bliss (on Where Do You Come From)

 

Reading List: April.

Fiction: 

 

Mieko Kawakami: Sisters in Yellow. 

Kiran Millwood Hargrave: Almost Life. 

Tana French: The Keeper. 

Jade Song: I Love You Don't Die. 

Kylie Lee Baker: Japanese Gothic. 

Rene Karabash: She Who Remains.  

James S.A. Corey: The Faith of Beasts. 

 

Films: 

 

Umimachi Diary (2015, Hirokazu Koreeda).

Umi yori mo mada fukaku (2016, Hirokazu Koreeda).

Manbiki kazoku (2018, Hirokazu Koreeda). 

Rental Family (2025, Hikari). 

Undertone (2025, Ian Tuason). 

Chun gwong ja sit (1997, Wong Kar-Wai). 

The Testament of Ann Lee (2025, Mona Fastvold).

The Chronology of Water (2025, Kristen Stewart). 

 

Shows: 

 

Jakeun assideul, Season One. 

Climax, Season One. 

Favourite Books I've Read This Year (in progress)

Fiction: 

 

Han Kang: Human Acts 

Kylie Lee Baker: Japanese Gothic 

Ellis Avery: The Teahouse Fire 

Jade Song: I Love You Don't Die

 

I started this year reading Han Kang's work for the first time: The Vegetarian, Human Acts, and We Do Not Part in succession. I went into them knowing very little about what to expect and with an embarrassing lack of knowledge about Korean history. Human Acts is set during the May 1980 Gwangju democratisation uprising, when the military brutally suppressed student protests against the military coup of Chun Doo-hwan. It is told from different point of views of people who died during the uprising and those who are confronting the grief of losing loved ones and are finding ways to remember them. 

 

Ellis Avery's The Teahouse Fire is set in Japan during a time of radical change, when the country has been forcefully opened to Westerners for the first time. Its main character is Aurelia, a French-American girl who arrives in Kyoto with her uncle, a pastor, after the death of her mother, but runs away from him after a fire. She ends up becoming part of a Japanese household - the most beautiful parts of the book are about how she learns language and the richly described culture (which is shifting due to outside influence) as she tries to fit in - and her complicated relationship (filled with much queer yearning) with Yukako, the woman who leads the household. 

 

Politico: Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Could Change the World. Here’s How, January 4, 2026.

The Guardian: US attack on Greenland would mean end of Nato, says Danish PM, January 6, 2026.

Ars Technica: Trump withdraws US from world’s most important climate treaty, January 9, 2026. 

The New Yorker: What Makes the Iranian Protests Different This Time, January 10, 2026. 

Xtra*: Renee Nicole Good’s queerness isn’t an aside—it’s a key part of her story, January 13, 2026. 

Liberal Currents: So, How’s the Occupation Going for You?, January 14, 2026. 

Newsweek: Germany, Other NATO Allies Sending Troops to Greenland Amid Trump Threats, January 14, 2026. 

Rick Morton: The Great Silencing, January 15, 2026. 

Compass: An ‘almost revolutionary’ moment for Iran, January 16, 2026. 

World Economic Forum: Davos 2026: Special address by Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, January 20, 2026. 

Al Jazeera: Public opinion shifts on ICE as advocates warn of US ‘inflection point’, January 21, 2026. 

Vanity Fair: “The Homeland” Is War on America: The Blood-and-Soil Nationalism That Killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, January 26, 2026. 

The New York Review: The Crime of Witness, February 2026 Issue.

Aeon: Between being and emptiness, February 5, 2026. 

The Verge: Reality is losing the deepfake war, February 6, 2026. 

BBC: What we know so far: Supreme Leader Khamenei killed, Trump says, as Iran launches retaliatory strikes, March 1, 2026. 

Al Jazeera: Under the shadow of the Iran war, Israel finds another way to punish Gaza, March 1, 2026.

The Interpreter: Iran’s threat to airline travel: The Gulf’s skies are now a chokepoint too, March 5, 2026. 

BBC: Russia, China and the US – the global winners and losers of the Iran war,  March 20, 2026.

The New York Review: Shenzhen Express, March 2026. 

The Straits Times: From wuxia games to AI-powered microdramas, China sharpens its soft power playbook, March 23, 2026. 

The Straits Times: Fuel shortages from Iran war threaten Asia’s biggest food staple, April 11, 2026. 

The Guardian: Viktor Orbán concedes defeat as opposition wins Hungarian election, April 13, 2026. 

Al Jazeera: As Iran crisis drags on, fears of global food catastrophe grow, April 21, 2026.

Aeon: Justice is geometric, April 21, 2026. 

...

"Shakespeare gives us more than Lear or Hamlet, real or feigned mental derangement. There is a third possibility. Titus Andronicus begins by pretending to be mad and then becomes so in reality. To translate this into the history of the American presidency, we need only return to Nixon. Just because you’ve invented and acted on the Madman Theory doesn’t mean you can’t go mad: Nixon’s paranoia, enemies lists, conspiracy theories, and seemingly drunken order to nuke North Korea do not speak of robust mental health. The Madman Theory, it seems, can be a self-fulfilling prophecy."

The New York Review: ‘The Right Amount of Crazy’, May 2026 Issue 

Undertone

Don’t be afraid of the dark. Be afraid of the silence.

What would trap someone in a haunted house, beyond the a supernatural curse that traps, blocks doors, removes exits, twists hallways back upon themselves until they become loops? I don’t know if Evy’s family home in Undertone is haunted per se as much as perhaps possessed, if it is the place that is the problem or if there is a demon that has moved itself in like an infection, making use of a hallowed out space inside her mother. There aren’t many answers found here, beyond the observations that things happen without her noticing (it’s a film that rewards close attention) that make it clear that whatever is happening goes beyond the idea of a fractured mind – by insomnia, grief, guilt, stress – latching on to increasingly more complex and horrible stories and projecting them on the unbearable situation she finds herself in.
Evy is caring for her terminally ill and uncommunicative mother. The first shot of the film captures all the detritus of care work: the toilet chair, the absorbent sheets for the bed – and it sets up the context of who the person she cares for is, the open bible that is being read, the religious statues around the house, the pictures of her at her first communion. Evy’s mother is a deeply religious person, and Evy, as her sole carer, has moved back into this realm even if she herself has perhaps no other connection to that religion except what she experienced in her childhood. When her work is done, she goes downstairs to record a podcast with her friend Justin, who lives in London – forcing her to do this work in the middle of the night – where she plays the resident sceptic to his open-minded, maybe naive and trusting Mulder as they dissect stories about hauntings and ghosts. It’s an established routine at this point, and each time she puts on her headphones to talk to him, they run through the same routine of Justin, worriedly asking about her mother, always receiving the same answer that there has been no change. The first time, Evy voices her deepest and darkest thought: that she is wishing for an end, even if it means her mother’s death, because waiting for the “death rattle” (the nurse, explaining how it will end, trying to use gentle language) is unbearable. Her mother is no longer eating or drinking, and she hasn’t been communicating with her. Her boyfriend is absent in this ordeal. Justin says he understands, but to what extent he really can grasp the routines of caring for someone who will die is questionable from his far remove. His concern is genuine, but Evy is in this entirely alone, and her only connection to the outside world is through phone calls. If she does leave, the camera does not follow her – we are trapped with her in the house.
Into this backdrop, they begin a new episode about a series of ten recordings they have been sent in an email with no explanation. They cover the story of a couple, Mike and Jessa, through the process of their own deterioration. Mike has been recording Jessa during the night because she sleeptalks (for me, one of the most heartbreaking small moments of the film is Evy’s clear longing when she hears them interact for the first time, their intimacy, their closeness), but what he uncovers in these recordings goes beyond that, like their house has become haunted as well, and along with them, Justin and Evy, with their respective ideological interpretations of reality, try to interpret the mysteriously filled sinks, the noises of a baby that should not exist crying, Jessa’s increasing distress and Mike’s futile attempts to help her. The act of bearing witness without being able to affect the outcome begins affecting both Justin and Evy, especially as Evy’s own perception of reality begins breaking down. She isn’t sleeping, and the noises begin creeping in, in the way that outside noise subtly sneaks in when you’re wearing noise-cancelling headphones (she can never be sure – it’s like she is sensing it more than hearing it). In addition to the recordings, Justin becomes obsessed with the idea that every detail – nursery rhymes, names that appear, songs played backwards – have meaning beyond themselves, endless rabbit holes that lead down wikipedia pages and obscure sites and historical horrors (in a way, the film portrays how conspiracy theories can become embedded in minds that are desperate to find meaning when reality becomes inexplicable). Without an outside source of reassurance, Evy seems to become trapped in these stories as well. Her responsibility for her mother, her detachment from the outside world, her ability to sleep, the alcohol she begins drinking and the sleeping tablets she takes, begin eroding her ability to apply her scepticism to what is happening around her, and because we are trapped alongside her, and with her as she moves through the house, the audience becomes unable to escape as well. It doesn’t help that the details of what Justin uncovers in his “research” seem to map so neatly onto Evy’s anxiety (at the point of complete breakdown, she goes so far as accusing him of gaslighting her) – her pregnancy, her guilt over not praying with her mother that she thinks is connected to her catatonic state and terminal illness, the stories of women killing their children, the idea that children suffer for what adults do, all mix together in the final explosion, when the walls break down.
Tuason achieves his horrors mainly through how he films the house, determining what is visible and invisible with light and angles, his sound design. But it’s Nina Kiri’s extraordinary performance – in what is essentially a chamber play – that carries the Undertone, and makes it so great. 

2025, directed by Ian Tuason, starring Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco, Michèle Duquet.

Links: 16/4/26

Politics: 

 

Cautiously watching what newly elected Prime Minister Peter Magyar will do in Hungary to try and return the country to the mainstream after his victory. It seems like some of his first actions will be towards the ideologically captured state media (here's some pre-election reporting from CJR on the state of media in Hungary).  

 

I'm deeply worried that we will find out this week how a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz (for ships travelling to or from Iranian ports) could possibly play out, and none of the options are good: firing missiles on ships carrying oil would cause an environmental disaster, launching boarding parties would escalate the conflict. Meanwhile, the last tankers that have passed the Strait are reaching refineries so there's no end to the crunch in supply in sight. That's particularly dire news for Asia - nearly 90 % of its crude oil passed through the Strait. And an Australian tidbit: a blaze in a Geelong refinery that is a "significant part of Australia's fuel supply" is "not great timing" (as per Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen). 

 

Pop Culture: 

  

I'm still weighing up whether to write about The Handmaid's Tale sequel series The Testaments - an intriguing concept, to switch perspectives to June's teenage daughter Hannah stuck in Gilead, and the dynamics within a "wives" training school (a teenage drama series set in the context of a fascist prep school, in the year 2026!). 

 

The first trailer for the third season of anthology series The Terror is out: this one is based on Victor LaValle's The Devil in Silver (and LaValle is showrunner as well as the scriptwriter along with Halt and Catch Fire's Chris Cantwell). There are so many great actors in these few minutes alone (always excited to see Marin Ireland and CCH Pounder) that it looks very promising. 

 

Some films I'm looking forward to: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's Soudain (All of a Sudden), Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Xiaodan He's Montréal, ma belle, Ian Tuason's Undertone. 

Das Lied zum Sonntag

Daphni - Clap Your Hands (on Butterfly)