The January 1&8 issue has several good articles. Two of them, "The Ventriloquist" and "Genghis the Good" are not about what their titles are.
"The Ventriloquist" is about the screenwriter turned director Scott Frank. Not a household name but I guarantee you've seen his work. He is most famous as a script doctor, adding depth and assuring that the audience will engage with the characters. I love his approach of putting characters before plot and making the plot work in service of the characters. He is very adept at imparting the knowledge audiences need without narratives such as can be included in novels.
Now he's teamed up with Anya Taylor-Joy on the brilliant Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit." And, yes, Heath Ledger is mentioned.
"Genghis the Good" Starts out being about Pope Francis's trip to Mongolia. But it's really about the growing field of global history, a discipline that looks at history as a whole and how populations moved and affected others throughout the world, ignoring political borders. I've read several new books on the subject and find it very eye-opening.
