(Simon Schama) There’s the Amsterdam dutch And the Zaandam dutch And the Rotterdam dutch And the God-damn dutch… However, despite their slightly dodgy record in slave driving, tulip speculating, trade finance and robust colonization, this admiring and admirably crammed history of culture in the Dutch Golden Age is a delight. The ‘Burgemeester van Delft’ in Jan Steen’s painting on the cover is a dead ringer for Jeffrey Jones (Mr. Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).
Continue Reading →(dir. George Sluizer) (1988) A Dutch couple on their summer holidays fight, then make-up. She goes to get some things from the service station shop and that’s it – gone girl. From there, we work backwards, into the dark canals of human activity. Forget the 1993 remake; this French/Dutch original version is brilliant – funny, creepy; one of the best studies of men compelled to plumb life’s mysteries, with fatal results.
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