The Crossed Keys Chronicle

As I’ve stated previously and as you can probably tell by this site’s aesthetic and naming, I’m a pretty huge fan of Wes Anderson. When I heard last year that a special exhibition dedicated to the whole breadth of his work was being staged in Paris, I knew that I had to make a trip there.

I visited the exhibition officially named “Wes Anderson, The Exhibition” at the Cinematheque in Paris at the start of June this year. The Cinematheque is an organization dedicated to the celebration of cinema in all it’s forms. The building located in the Bercy neighborhood of Paris, was designed by Frank Gehry and is very reminiscent of his Guggenheim Bilbao and Abu Dhabi designs.

The exhibition was a special ticketed event, and it took up an entire floor of the museum. The layout was a winding path through the floor, laid out in theatrical release chronological order from Bottle Rocket to Asteroid City. There was over 500 different items on display that ranged in size Max Fisher’s pocket knife all the way to 20 foot wide models of the Grand Budapest Hotel facade.

For me the most interesting pieces on display were ones that showcased Wes Anderson’s creative process. There were a number of storyboards from some of his earlier works showing how meticulously he blocked his films from the very beginning.

The centerpiece showcasing his planning and preparation was a giant display case that contained dozens of notebooks and on-set polaroids from many of his films. I will admit I was a little surprised, given Anderson’s aesthetics, that the notebooks were almost all the super generic style that you could buy at Walmart or even Amazon. I expected he would use some ultra fancy Japanese or European style one, but it seems in this case that functionality wins out over form.

Overall, the exhibition was a truly great experience and I think anyone with even a passing interest in Wes Anderson’s works would be interested in seeing it. When you read this though, sadly you will have missed your chance to see it in Paris, but it is transferring to the London Design Museum starting in November of 2025, so if you’re at all interested and are in the area I would highly recommend a visit. Stevsie will be waiting for you.

The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi tells the story of a thirty-something Pakistani woman named Anisa, living in London as a translator, who wants to transcend her basic job translating pop culture and instead work on translating the true classics of literature.

As the book opens, Anisa is recounting a relationship she had with Adam. One of the traits that drew her to Adam was his fluency in several languages. During their mostly amicable relationship, however, he showed no aptitude for picking up any Urdu—Anisa’s native tongue—saying that the languages he did learn, he learned through a very special technique that he doesn’t specify.

As the relationship gets more serious, the couple goes on a trip to visit her family back in Pakistan. On the flight over, Adam speaks incredibly fluent Urdu to another passenger, which incenses Anisa, who thinks he’s been purposely holding out on her.

Eventually, he admits that he just learned it a few weeks ago during a two-week trip to a place called The Centre. She doesn’t believe such a thing is possible, but after enough back and forth, she extracts from him the single referral he has to The Centre. (Clearly, they don’t believe in affiliate marketing.)

The Centre’s marketing pitch is: learn any language you desire with perfect fluency in only two weeks. The only catches are: it’s moderately expensive, and you are sworn to secrecy about how you acquired your new linguistic prowess. Anisa is willing to accept these terms to fulfill her literary translation dreams.

The plot moves shockingly quickly from that point. She travels to the secretive facility in rural England, makes friends with the administrator of it, and magically learns her new language at the end of the session. Then, in a very anticlimactic few paragraphs, we learn that she does fulfill her dream of translating classical literature and receives all the appropriate accolades. The rest of the book involves her discontent with how the language teaching actually works and her attempts to unravel its secrets by any means necessary—including exploiting a romantic-ish relationship she forms with the facility’s administrator.

The book makes it clear early on that something shady is responsible for unlocking the magic of language skills. I feel compelled to reveal what the secret is, only because of how bonkers it is—so please skip the paragraph if you wish to remain unspoiled. The secret to learning languages, dear reader, is cannibalism. At The Centre, they feed people who know the language you want to learn to you. They wrap it up with some of their own special listening tech, but ultimately, as they say: The Centre is people.

The Centre has some interesting ideas, the concept of being able to nearly instantly learn a language is probably third on my list of Things I’d like to be able to do, after playing an instrument and doing magic, but they are told in a simplistic and not very engaging way. I will say that it’s not an overly long book, so it has that going for it. In the end watching some of Duolingo’s viral marketing videos is probably a better use of your time if you’re looking for something scary and language-based.

Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted by Ben Okri is a book I found randomly on a recent trip to the bookstore at the National Theatre in London. If there is one thing I’m very susceptible to when it comes to books, it’s having a cool or interesting form factor, I’ve rarely met a fancy splayed edge book I haven’t liked, and this format of the book was specially sized and signed by the author, so I was basically forced to buy it.

The novel opens with Viv deciding, on the 20th anniversary of her first husband leaving her, that she should host a party for all those in the world who have felt the pain of heartbreak. She is grudgingly able to convince her current husband, and two of her friends to go along with this plan. She also has a chance encounter with the titular Madame Sosostris, a famous clairvoyant to the rich and powerful. Viv invites Sosostris to be the guest of honor at the party and to read fortunes for the guests. Sosostris reluctantly agrees and tells Viv of an enchanted forest in France that will be the perfect venue.

What happens in the rest of the book is left mostly to the interpretation of the reader. The book is very well written, and it has a style that I would most closely associate with a Shakespeare play. In fact, I think it compares very closely to A Midsummer’s Night Dream, but it also has a lot of what I can only call magical realism. We hear that preparations have been made for the party, and people from all over the world have seemingly heard about the party and have booked tickets to it. But none of that is shown and the two couples arrive after a long drive using handwritten directions through the French countryside that deliver them exactly to where they need to be.

In another nod to many Shakespearean plays, the party is also done in full costumes and masquerade. This, of course, allows for many cases of mistaken identity and confusion. I won’t give away the ending, but the entire party is thrown into chaos when the arrival of Madame Sosostris is thrown into doubt. As I said, I do think it’s well written, and I enjoyed reading the prose and the general vibe of the book. But I personally think I would have enjoyed it more if it had been a little more grounded, a la The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, which also centers around a magical gathering but in a much more “realistic” way.

In any case, Okri isn’t interested in the minutiae of party planning or guest lists, rather he presents a much more vibes-based approach to storytelling. If you are looking for a quick summer read, the book clocks in at a brisk 208 pages. If you are in the mood to enjoy a story that just sort of washes over you, then I think this would be a good choice, if you are instead desperate for a tightly plotted thriller, then I think your fortunes lay elsewhere.

Often, what I decide to read is heavily influenced by what kind of mood I'm in at the time. When I read Glass Houses, I was firmly in a creepy near-future, slightly sci-fi kind of mood, brought on by watching Severance season 2. I will say that this book definitely fulfills that mandate and then some.

The novel opens in a very Lost-esque fashion, with an automated jet crash-landing on a weird, seemingly uninhabited island. The passengers on the plane are the CEO and key employees of Wuv, a company that has just been acquired, which has made everyone on board exceedingly rich. Shortly after crashing on the island, the survivors find a fully automated black cube mansion, but they have no communication with the outside world—also very Lost-like.

The plot of the novel follows Kirsten Mara, the “Chief Emotional Officer” of Wuv, navigating surviving on the island interspersed with flashbacks of key life events leading to the acquisition of Wuv. Kristen is famous from a childhood incident where her family was killed effectively on an internet live stream by a fire that only she escaped from, yet left her seriously burned and scared. She is also a pioneer in the field of affective computing, which in the book is described as a system that can fully read a person’s emotional state and have it be read and understood by AI or other people using special software. Wuv is also looking to create a cryptocurrency-like system based on this tech, which is exactly as dystopian as it sounds. Affective computing does have a relatively long history in the real world, but thus far, no megacorps have sought to exploit it in the ways described in the book—at least not yet.

As the story progresses, we learn more and more about the CEO of Wuv, and exactly why the black cube mansion's smart systems seem to behave so oddly—like how it seemingly ignores women trying to use most of its features. Could the whole crash have been some kind of horribly executed team building exercise? The weird atmosphere and ever-increasing stakes definitely ticked all the Severance-adjacent boxes. If you are looking for something to fill the void until season 3, I think Glass Houses can do that for you, even if there is no Adam Scott around.

The Fair Botanists is a novel whose central plot revolves around a question that I think we’ve all had to answer at some point in our lives: exactly how many seeds does a mature Agave americana produce? While it might seem like I’m being glib, even though there are myriad characters and interlocking plot lines in this book, almost everything ties back to that question.

Our main protagonist is Elizabeth Rocheid, who has just moved to the city to live with her late husband’s aunt, Clementina, at a great house. It just so happens that the house is adjacent to the newly relocated Royal Botanic Gardens. Being in such close proximity to the gardens brings her into contact with many members of the book’s main cast, including a courtesan named Belle Brodie—whom she befriends without knowing her occupation or reputation—and the head gardener, William McNab. The latter is eager to employ her as a botanical illustrator—a skill she once practiced at Kew Gardens in London—due to the flowering of the garden’s prized possession: an Agave americana plant, otherwise known as the century plant, which is blooming for the first time.

The flowering of the plant also coincides with the city of Edinburgh being breathless with anticipation over an upcoming visit from the King. In advance of the royal visit, an envoy is sent to prepare the way, which includes one Johann von Streitz, who crosses paths with Elizabeth and eventually becomes a love interest.

As I mentioned in the opening, however, the number of seeds produced by the Agave americana is, in fact, the driving force behind most of the book’s plots. The head gardener has secretly promised some of the seeds to an unscrupulous seed merchant—an arrangement that, if he fails to fulfill, will plunge him into unrecoverable debt. The higher-ups at the Garden have promised the seeds will be sent back to London for cultivation, and finally, Belle Brodie has a plan to create an irresistible love potion using their scent. It’s a pretty important plant.

All of the characters’ various schemes and tribulations intersect in a multitude of entertaining ways—through blackmail, secret affairs, illicit perfume-making, seed stealing, and, eventually, love. While I think the ending wraps things up a little too neatly, it does at least give us a mostly happy ending and it’s hard to be too upset about that.

One additional detail that makes the book even more compelling is that many of the characters and places mentioned are historically accurate. King George IV did visit the city of Edinburgh in 1822 and many of the prominent side characters in the book did exist in real life. The fact that Sheridan can weave these details in seamlessly is a credit to her writing skills, it’s enough to make you almost forget how much of the story hinges on seeds.

As a general rule, I am not a fan of the horror genre. Whether it’s in books, TV, or movies, the genre is just not my thing. I am much too easily jump-scared or grossed out by gore. Despite this, I still gave Polybius a shot because the title and subject matter—video games—are near and dear to my heart.

The name Polybius is taken from a real-world urban legend that has been circulating on the internet since at least the early 2000s. The general gist of the story is that there was an arcade game named Polybius that mysteriously appeared in the Pacific Northwest in the ’80s and caused a variety of ailments in those who played it, up to and including insanity. For those interested in the real-world history behind the name, there was a good Radiotopia podcast series about it in 2017 that delves deep into the history and the lore.

With all that background out of the way, on to the novel version of Polybius. This version of the story starts in 1982 in a Northern Californian town named Tasker Bay. The town is Silicon Valley–adjacent, so it’s experiencing an influx of new residents due to the tech explosion happening at the time. Our protagonist, Andi Winston, is a recent transplant to the town following her parents’ separation. She is the stereotypical loner kid, with a penchant for tech hardware hacking learned from her now-absent father. Andi spends her afterschool time working at “Home Video World,” a combination video rental/arcade store.

The store’s unscrupulous owner, Mal (definitely no foreshadowing there), purchases a salvaged video game cabinet which, of course, turns out to be Polybius. I’m going to drop some relatively self-evident spoilers here, but let’s just say bad things happen to the people who play the game. The novel does a good job of slowly ratcheting up the tension and weirdness in the town as more and more people become affected by it. There's a very Stranger Things vibe to the storytelling, which is a show just on the edge of what I am ok with horror-wise.

Where it goes off the rails a bit for me personally is that, despite the slow-burn start, the novel eventually dives deep into horror territory. There are lots of descriptions of gruesome deaths, horrific mob violence, and people doing very horrible things to one another—some of which are caused by the game’s brain-breaking effects, and some simply by human nature at its worst.

The level of gore and violence, while probably nothing higher than what is common in a Stephen King style novel, was still higher than I enjoy in a piece of fiction. I finished the book mostly skimming the last fifty or so pages just to find out the resolution to the plot and I can’t say I’m too upset about that. If you do enjoy standard horror plots and are looking for one set in the ’80s with a video game theme, then this could be the book for you!

The name of this website is a subtle callback to one of the greatest Wes Anderson films of all time The Grand Budapest Hotel, so it should be no surprise that I am inclined to like the famed auteur’s work, but even discounting that, I think The Phoenician Scheme is a great movie on its own and one of the best in Anderson’s filmography.

The Phoenician Scheme is a departure from Anderson’s last two feature films, The French Dispatch and Asteroid City. The former was effectively an anthology meant to parallel the articles in a literary magazine and the latter a TV staging of a play that was full of meta-narrative devices. This film instead features a straight line plot, that while the details of which might be a little nebulous to the viewer, the film at all times lets you know of your progression through it by a constantly updating checklist of people and places.

The film stars returning Wes Anderson alumnus Benicio del Toro as Zsa-zsa Korda, a wealthy industrialist with a penchant for surviving plane crashes, and Anderson film debutant Mia Treapleton as his estranged, nun-in-training daughter.

It opens with a shockingly violent event on Zsa-zsa’s plane that causes it to crash. He is momentarily believed to be killed in the crash, but instead has a “biblical” vision—and apart from some scrapes, bruises, and a random organ he couldn’t shove back into his body, he miraculously survives again. Perhaps as a side effect of his vision, once he returns home he decides to reconnect with his only daughter Liesl and offer her the chance to be his sole heir upon his timely or untimely death. He also proceeds to explain to her the titular Phoenician Scheme which is a complex set of interlocking infrastructure projects that Zsa-zsa has been organizing and maneuvering into place via a number of organizations and oligarchies across the fictional area of the middle east. The plans are revealed in, perfect Anderson fashion, from a set of differently sized shoe boxes, each representing a different contributor or location relevant to the scheme. The smallest, but most important of these, is “The Gap”, which he refuses to elucidate more at the time.

Liesl agrees to the arrangement on a trial basis with the hope that she can find out more about why her mother was killed. Shortly afterwards, the US industrial complex begins a sabotage effort on the price of materials that are used in the completion of the scheme. These price increases explode “The Gap” which Zsa-zsa then finally defines as the difference between how much has been pledged by all the parties involved in the Scheme and the actual end cost. This begins the driving force of the movie as Zsa-zsa and Lisel, along with insect tutor Bjorn played by comedy super star Michael Cera, go from location to location in a mostly fruitless attempt to close “The Gap”.

Along the way they encounter a rogues gallery of recent Wes Anderson actor favorites, including Bryan Cranston, Tom Hanks, and Jeffrey Wright. In the course of events Zsa-zsa has more “biblical” flashes that do give us the opportunity to see long time Anderson favorite Bill Murray in a brief cameo as God. A well deserved casting choice I have to say.

The actual mechanics and outcome of the plot related to “The Gap” and the infrastructure projects themselves is irrelevant. In reality the goal of the Scheme was to reunite father and daughter and make the family whole again. It’s my understanding that Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola both have daughters which I’m sure influenced heavily the story. I’ve also seen some astute analysis of the movie saying that the scheme in the movie is an analogue for creating and seeing a movie through to completion. If that’s the case I hope for everyone’s sake there is a lot less bloodshed on the set than is implied in the movie.

Before closing, I would be remiss in not mentioning the soundtrack. Long time musical collaborator Alexandre Desplat is back with a percussive and driving score that moves the action along.Also worth noting: the movie clocks in at a cool 102 minutes—a rarity for modern features.

In summation, I think that The Phoenician Scheme is one of Anderson’s best films and is solidly in my top five of his oeuvre, and it’s one that I think I’ll revisit often in the future.

The Story Collector is the second book by author Evie Woods (Gaughan) by publishing date and it’s the third book I’ve read from the author overall. While there is never any claim of a shared fictional universe, all three of her recent novels share so many thematic commonalities I like to think of them as a trilogy. All of her works thus far have featured :

• a fish-out-of-water female protagonist
• a dual-track narrative structure featuring the past and present
• at least one surreal bit of magic/paranormal occurrences that happen in the story and are just simply accepted by all the characters.
• the present-day protagonist finds a new love interest

In this particular novel our present-day protagonist is named Sarah Harper. As the story opens, she is heading back to her parents' home in Boston after deciding to separate from her husband and leave their NYC apartment on Christmas Eve. While waiting for her flight, a chance encounter with a ceramic gift shop sheep and an Irish newspaper article highlighting a story about a motorway being diverted due to fairies, causes her to change her to flight to Shannon, Ireland instead. The logistics of booking international travel while in the airport on a holiday are nearly as magical as anything related to the fae folk.

Once she arrives in Ireland, a series of fortuitous events leads her to stay in a cottage in a small village that happens to have both an old Great House and a fairy hill. Shortly after arriving, she finds an old diary hidden inside a tree, which introduces us to the main character from the past: Anna, an 18-year-old girl who helps an American researcher searching multiple countries for stories about the fae folk.

I won’t spoil the details, but the rest of the plot is a very paint-by-numbers story that obviously involves Sarah finding love in the small village and rediscovering her joie de vivre while learning more about Anna and her interactions with the very real fae. It’s all enjoyable enough if you don’t think too hard about it. For instance how can Sarah randomly stay in Ireland for weeks on end? Why is her family not super bothered by her erratic life choices? And how does a diary stay dry in a metal box in a tree for hundred years? None of these things ultimately matter and that’s probably for the best.

If you are looking for a pleasant, but not very deep, story that takes place in Ireland and has a moderately happy ending, I think this is the book for you. If you are hoping for fraught historical fiction about fairies, you should probably look elsewhere!

Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall is a new British mystery novel that marks a return to form for the author. Chibnall was the showrunner and writer for the massively popular ITV show Broadchurch, which like this novel featured a very public murder in a coastal British town.

The protagonist here named Nicola Bridge is an experienced detective who has moved back to her hometown after dealing with the fallout and stress that her job has put on her family relationships. She has to deal with a murder investigation involving the local shady pub owner who is found dead in the middle of the roadway with deer antlers glued to his head.

Despite the creepy and vaguely occultist nature of the crime, the antlers are certainly evocative of some season 1 True Detective vibes, the story instead sticks to more down-to-earth British themes of cheating pub owners, eager-to-please junior DIs, and wrongly accused but very plausible suspects.

I really enjoyed the novel, I find pacing is one of the most important things in a murder mystery book and the plot here has the appropriate amount of twists and turns to keep the reader engaged without needlessly dragging things out. I also thought there was good characterization of the main protagonist and the cast of possible assailants. My only minor quibble is that there are some times when Chibnall’s TV instincts are display. A few of the chapters I feel more like they were written for the eventual streaming tv show than for the novel itself. These chapters are brief though and don’t really detract from the overall story.

If you are looking for a very solid British murder procedural, or just want a preview of what I’m sure will be a someday popular tv show almost certainly staring Olivia Colman, I highly recommend Death at the White Hart.

Every blog, by definition, has to have a first post, and this one is no different. I think it's also tradition for the first post to lay out some of the goals for the blog itself. Like a lot of people these days, I consume a lot of content: books, TV shows, movies, and video games. I find that in many cases, though, that's all I'm really doing — consuming.

Other than a book a month for my book club or the occasional special TV show that friends of mine are also watching, I rarely get a chance to reflect on what I’m consuming. So, my goal is to write (hopefully) pithy reviews of my media diet and, in the process, maybe gain a better understanding of why I like what I like — or even what I don’t.

So, welcome aboard, and let’s see where the tides of 2025 media take us!