Madame Tutli-Putli

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This little gem, created using stop-motion animation, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Short. (It also won a handful of other awards.) The animation is phenomenal in parts. One of the creators mentioned in the extras that they didn't intend it to be a novel, so to speak, but more of a little poem, and that they were really trying to create a certain mood. Nonetheless, there are some interesting theories about the meaning of the film on the message boards at IMDb.

Madame Tutli-Putli (17:21), without words, written and directed by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, with special visual effects by Jason Walker; puppets, sets, and animation by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski; choreography by Laurie Maher; and music direction by David Bryant and Jean-Frédéric Messier.

"Compassion and Mercy" (and other stories)

"Clare scrabbled in the bottom of her bag for the house key, furiously tossing tissues and pens and Chap Sticks and quarters onto the walk, and thinking with every toss, What's your hurry? This is your last moment of not knowing, stupid, slow down."

This is a section of "Compassion and Mercy," a short story by Amy Bloom, from her new collection, Where the God of Love Hangs Out (Random House, 2010). The book includes four stories about William and Clare, four (three of them reprints from earlier collections) about Lionel and Julia, and four unlinked stories. "Between Here and Here" is a real standout, as was "By-and-By," originally published in Ms. in 2004.

The Spring 2010 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Spring 2010 issue of the journal features fiction by Wendy Fox and Courtney McLean; poetry by Vince Corvaia, Simon Perchik, Avra Wing, G. L. Grey, Darlene Pagán, Cal Freeman, Elizabeth Levinson, April Lindner, Jim Murdoch, Pat Daneman, Floyd Cheung, Linda King, Dan O’Brien, T. J. Jarrett, Anthony Liccione, Hal Sirowitz, and Joanne Lowery; essays by Jennifer A. Howard and J. W. Young; and artwork by Yevgenia Nayberg.

The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal. The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available at www.applevalleyreview.com.

"Erasures" by Sharon Bryan

"My best lover ever
is dead. . . ."

"Erasures," a poem by Sharon Bryan, is continued in The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor (October 8, 2009). It is reprinted from Sharon Bryan's book Sharp Stars (BOA Editions: Rochester, 2009).

"Between Here and Here" by Amy Bloom

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"I had always planned to kill my father. When I was ten, I drew a picture of a grave with 'Alvin Lowald' on the tombstone, on the wall behind my dresser. From time to time I would add a spray of weeds or a creeping vine. By the time I was in junior high, there were trees hung with kudzu, cracks in the granite, and a few dark daisies springing up. Once, when my mother wouldn’t let me ride my bike into town, I wrote 'Peggy Lowald is a fat stupid cow' behind the dresser, but I went back the same day and scribbled over it with black Magic Marker because most of the time I did love my mother and I knew she loved me. The whole family knew that my mother’s feelings were Sensitive and Easily Hurt. My father said so, all the time. My father’s feelings were also sensitive, but not in a way that I understood the word, at ten; it might be more accurate to say that he was extremely responsive. My brother, Andy, drew cartoon weather maps of my father’s feelings: dark clouds of I Hate You, giving way to the sleet of Who Are You, pierced by bolts of Black Rage.

Most of the mothers in our neighborhood were housewives, like my mother. But my mother was also a very good cook and a very accomplished hostess and even if the things she made and the way she entertained is not how I would have done it (red, white, and blue frilled toothpicks in lamb sausage pigs in blankets on the Fourth of July, trays of deviled eggs and oeufs en gelée—with tiny tulips of chive and egg yolk decorating each oeuf—to celebrate spring)."

"Between Here and Here," a short story by the incomparable Amy Bloom, is continued in Narrative Magazine (Winter 2010). The story is from Amy Bloom’s most recent story collection, Where the God of Love Hangs Out (Random House, 2010).

"A Crossing" by George David Clark

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"Giant salamanders, blue-black and purple-black, lie
along the bottom of this stream in Northern China —

I cannot even balance the place’s name on my tongue.
They lie like bruises in the stone-strewn pools, . . ."

"A Crossing," a poem by George David Clark, is continued in Linebreak (January 12, 2010).

Two poems by Jason Heroux and a film by Woody Allen

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"Windows" and "Brief Case" by Jason Heroux (prose poems from his chapbook Leaving the Road, Mercutio Press, 2003)

Match Point, written and directed by Woody Allen and starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Chris Wilton, Emily Mortimer as Chloe Hewett Wilton, Matthew Goode as Tom Hewett, Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton as Alec and Eleanor Hewett, and Scarlett Johansson as Nola Rice.

(There are also some very talented supporting actors including Margaret Tyzack as Betty Eastby, Ewen Bremner as Inspector Dowd, James Nesbitt as Detective Banner, and Rupert Penry-Jones, who played Captain Wentworth in the BBC version of Persuasion, as Chris's friend and former tennis rival.)