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You got Qs, I got As. That’s the name of the game here. If you saw my earlier post announcing this AMA, then you already know what’s up. If you didn’t then you still probably know what’s up. Simply: I requested readers submit questions about any topic, including math, for me to answer. I ended up with a very nice range of queries, and here are my responses! The last one is particularly fun, in which I give my advice on where someone looking to get into classic movies should start.
Q: What's your favorite movie of the decade so far?
A: The truth is, this is the kind of thing I rarely think about deeply, though I’ll often toss out wild claims like “Red Rooms is best of the decade material” or “Tenet might be the best movie ever made.” Those two films stick out for me, but I think my real answer is Charlotte Welles’s Aftersun, a movie that affected me so deeply that when I saw it at TIFF, as the movie ended I had to run out to a bathroom stall to have a good private cry. I watched it a second time some months later, and not only did the film lose none of its power, I was left agog at how impeccably constructed it was while still feeling totally natural, like a bunch of memories that never leave you but slip through your fingers anyway. I’m quite confident calling it one of the best debut features ever made, so calling it best of the decade doesn’t seem like a stretch.
Q: If you had to be on a six-hour train ride with someone else, and you had to maintain eye contact and converse with that person the whole time, who would it be and why?
A: Diabolical question right here. The eye contact thing makes this pretty impossible. I suppose the question might be searching for some celebrity answer, but this all sounds too intimate for that. I’d be frightened more than anything. So my answer is probably just my good friend Amir, who I basically have six-hour conversations with every time we hang out. On a train would make it that much more exciting!
Q: What is your favorite Taylor Swift album and why? What is your favorite Taylor Swift song that is NOT on your favorite album?