JacquiWine

New on the blog today, my thoughts on THE BACHELORS by Muriel Spark. An unsettling novel focusing on a somewhat ill at ease group of middle-class bachelors living in London in the late 1950s. Not top-tier Spark, but flashes of brilliance nonetheless! 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/10/25/t...

The London Korean Film Festival (2-16 Nov) is bookended by Kim Mi-jo's family revenger THE JOURNEY TO GYEONG-JU and Park Hoon-jung's astonishing noir actioner TRISTES TROPIQUES. My Cinema Now programme includes domesticity & the diaspora, misfits & metacinema. www.koreanfilm.co.uk/london-korea...

'Yes, he’s a wonderful medium. But he’s no good to Alice. Weak as water. He’s supposed to be getting a divorce from his wife and then he’ll marry Alice. But I don’t believe he’s getting a divorce. I don’t believe there’s any wife.' #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/10/25/t...

Interesting thread and discussion about MIDSOMMER, which wasn’t for me, but as ever, @jamesewand.bsky.social’s thoughts are well worth reading! #FilmSky

The story we thus get of Plath’s creativity is of a dedicated student and an almost preternaturally hard worker …. She did not emerge on or around October 1962 ready to kill her long-dead daddy in incandescent verse Great piece about Plath & the industry around her

UK artist Helen Musselwhite combines hand cutting, folding and scoring paper and card to create her artworks, which are often inspired by nature #WomensArt #Autumn

November, Washington Square (1932) looks out from Hopper's own neighborhood at seasonal light. Here, New York is seen from the inside—through the eyes of someone who lived there. The composition shows lived experience rather than another detached urban vista.

Over on our @letterboxd.social HQ page, we have made a list for the @talkingpicturestv.bsky.social #PreCode season which will include the #TPTVEncore links for each film when they become active. A great season on tv! Get following and get watching: letterboxd.com/filmnoirfest...

Phenomenon https://botfrens.com/collections/69/contents/19664

'Yes, he’s a wonderful medium. But he’s no good to Alice. Weak as water. He’s supposed to be getting a divorce from his wife and then he’ll marry Alice. But I don’t believe he’s getting a divorce. I don’t believe there’s any wife.' #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/10/25/t...

When Paul Feiler moved to Cornwall in the early 1950s, he joined a community which had established itself as the centre of avant-garde British art in the post-war years. His works are studies in light and shadow, space and solid objects, geometric shapes against organic forms.

Postwar glass-and-steel offices promised modernity and progress. In Office in a Small City (1953), Hopper reveals the cost as he shows a single figure boxed into corporate solitude.

PSA for those with access: My Favourite Cake is currently streaming on BBC iPlayer

Standing at the entrance to Watanabe Sake Brewery (Watanabe Shuzōten), maker of the renowned Hōrai sake, situated in Hida-Furukawa (Hida City), Gifu Prefecture, Japan.

'Monday Morning.' John Anthony Park made a name for himself through his means of observing and recording the colours and textures of the natural landscape which surrounded him in St Ives and for his impressionistic manner of handling colour and light. Monday was always wash day.

Now reading - The Cold Embrace: Stories of the Macabre (1966), ed. Alex Hamilton An all-women anthology from Corgi - quite a rare occurrence in terms of 60s mass market genre paperbacks Take a look at that line up 🤌 A few stories I know, but plenty I don’t #booksky

Next of Kin is a wonderful Gothic horror that is redolent with the feelings of cold Victorian haunted house, but one that has been transplanted to the humid and fecund Australian countryside. The heat pours off the film, while everything seems a little overgrown, a little threatening.

'Tis the season... (Day 28) boxd.it/c6xUKF

Chen Peiqiu (1922 – 2020), acclaimed Chinese calligrapher and guohua painter #WomensArt

Watched this gem of a movie from Iran about loneliness, love and resistance to tyranny

‘most would be out the streets shopping for their bacon & eggs, their week’s supplies of breakfasts & occasional suppers; and these bachelors would set out early, before a quarter to ten, [..] to avoid being jostled by the women, the legitimate shoppers.’ 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/10/25/t...

Laura Knight mentions this portrait of her from 1897 in her memoirs. Her husband Harold, had returned from Paris after weeks away. 'My hair was done in a new French style that Harold fancied and I posed for a portrait of head and shoulders. How mystical I look.'

'In Queen’s Gate, Kensington, in Harrington Road, The Boltons, Holland Park, and in King’s Road, Chelsea, and its backwaters, the bachelors stirred between their sheets, reached for their wound watches, and with waking intelligences noted the time...' 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/10/25/t...

A magnificent October sky from a few weeks ago.

Pablo Picasso was constantly reenvisioning Velazquez's Las Meninas. If you must be obsessed with a painting, that's a good one! Picasso, friend of the Old Masters: his day is today.

Happy Birthday Hong Sang-Soo 🎂♥️ Kwon Hae-hyo et Lee Hye-young dans 'Juste sous vos yeux', 2021

'Tis the season... (Day 27) boxd.it/c3XJ6f

A young girl living in a London council flat in the early 70s finds her family relationships unravelling as she confronts a tragedy. A typically great study in psychology from the reliably brilliant Celia Dale. As often with Dale, this feels like a slow-motion car crash, in the best way.

The painter, sketched in a notebook in 1915 by the endlessly creative Pablo Picasso, who was born on this day in 1881.

'In Queen’s Gate, Kensington, in Harrington Road, The Boltons, Holland Park, and in King’s Road, Chelsea, and its backwaters, the bachelors stirred between their sheets, reached for their wound watches, and with waking intelligences noted the time...' 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/10/25/t...

I absolutely loved this movie…my second Satyajit Ray film and I’m eager for more. Wow. boxd.it/gXkRJR

'Night,' (c1903) is one in a series of ‘window’ pictures by William Orpen that depict the artist’s wife, Grace; here she is dwarfed by the scale of the Georgian drawing room which almost acts as a prison cell in the hinterland of Tottenham Court Road in north London.

A treasure! 👇 #FilmNoir #FilmSky

'He was in a constant state of repressed agitation. His preoccupation with the soldier grew in him like a disease. As in cancer, when the cells unaccountably rebel and begin the insidious self-multiplications that will ultimately destroy the body...' 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/10/20/r...

Great news! The new Persephone bookshop opens at 10am on Wed Nov 4 at 1 Scala Street, London W1. All 155 titles in stock. ❤️

Some more favourites from Tate Modern’s LIGHT AND MAGIC: THE BIRTH OF ART PHOTOGRAPHY exhibition, which I’d definitely recommend!

Vincent van Gogh, like many other late nineteenth century artists, was a great admirer of Japanese prints. He produced his own versions of a few of them in oils, such as his Flowering Plum Tree, based on a Hiroshige design. Top image: Kameido Plum Garden, by Andō Hiroshige. Woodblock print, 1857.

From the archive for Marghanita Laski, #BornOnThisDay in 1915, my thoughts on THE VICTORIAN CHAISE-LONGUE. A highly unnerving novella that plays on our fears of entrapment and the loss of any grip on reality. It's a very atmospheric read. #BOTD #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2021/01/26/t...

Natsume Sōseki Museum Caturday special 🐈‍⬛ 📕 🇯🇵 #caturday #catsofbluesky

“Give me four versions of you.” #FilmSky

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's melancholy romance is shot-through with a Sirkian disregard for contrivances. It is a film searching for an ecstatic truth, where clean white digital photography belies a general sense of malaise and depression that settles on our lead character after the first act.

From the archive for Marghanita Laski, #BornOnThisDay in 1915, my thoughts on THE VICTORIAN CHAISE-LONGUE. A highly unnerving novella that plays on our fears of entrapment and the loss of any grip on reality. It's a very atmospheric read. #BOTD #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2021/01/26/t...