The Checkout Counter #23
September 2024
Mars Express
The Zone of Interest
Memoir of a Sparklemuffin

the checkout counter wouldn't exist without cohost. i started it on a whim in november 2022, compelled by my need to share what movies i've been liking and by the endless formatting options cohost provided. it's become a fun habit to collate all the things i've found interesting.

i started this for myself, mostly, since it's an easy way to log and remember the cool articles i read or small games i played. it's been a nice surprise that others like it, too—on cohost and beyond.

thank you, as always, for reading!
Film
  • Mars Express, 2023
    Animation, sci-fi, action. A case of a missing college student pulls a private detective and her android partner into the underbelly of Mars' capital city.
  • Raining Stones, 1993
    Drama. In his desperation to buy his daughter a new Communion dress, an unemployed father takes odd and increasingly risky jobs.
  • The Zone of Interest, 2023
    Historical drama. The commandant of Auschwitz and his wife conduct their home life right beside the extermination camp.
Music
  • BUY NOW, Eyeliner
    Electronic, new wave
  • Memoir of a Sparklemuffin, Suki Waterhousei was introduced to this artist when she opened for a mitski show i attended—such a fun performance! lots of catchy tunes in this newest album of hers.
    Alternative, pop
Games
Books
  • Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith
    Mystery, thriller. While on a train to meet his unfaithful wife, a man is approached by a stranger who presents the idea of a perfect murder.
Articles & essays
  • The secret inside One Million Checkboxes, Nolen Royalty
  • Every webpage deserves to be a place, Matt Webb
  • How to Monetize a Blog, modem.io
  • Communal Luxury: The Public Bathhouse, Kris De Decker
  • Interview: Tarsem Singh on the 4K restoration of The Fall, C.J. Prince

    "I never cared about the reaction. It’s made for the people who like it. And the people who hate it, it’s okay. It’s not your film. The people think it’s okay, you fuck off. You can say it’s shit; I’m OK with that. And if it’s the best thing since sliced bread, I love you."

    so, so happy that the fall has gotten a re-release. such a special film!

  • The Sentimentality of Evil, Sari Edelstein"Indeed, the notion that the “banality of evil” is the [The Zone of Interest's] primary concern overlooks its particular focus on family life itself as the structure that animates unspeakable malevolence. The film’s real subject is bourgeois domesticity, the mundane concerns of child-rearing, household management, class striving; it is about the way the private family becomes its own fortress and how its insularity, atomization, and privatization enable horrific violence."

  • Coming home, Mandy Brown"A website is, among other things, a container. The shape of that container both constrains and makes possible what goes within it. This is, I think, one of the primary justifications for having your own website. Not just so you can own your stuff ... Not just so you have a home base among the shifting winds of the various platforms, which rise and fall like brush before the fire. Not just so you can avoid setting up camp in a Nazi bar. But also so that you can shape the work—so that you can give shape to it, and in that shaping make possible work that couldn’t arise elsewhere."

  • Some Country for Some Women, Kim Hew-Low"Yet despite her comprehensive retreat, not only from the workplace but also market pressures in general, the tradwife ironically becomes the ultimate capitalist subject by insisting that her labor is priceless. This dynamic is further complicated by the current wave of homesteading wives, many of whom enjoy profitable careers through social media, ironically by selling the idea of unpaid labor."

Around the web
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