& a blog

if the reader were an alcohol, it would have one of those painful, complex tastes. something that burns as it goes down, and sobers as much as it intoxicates.
the film is complex in that sense that it’s hard to know what particularly one should be considering amongst the emotional wreckage the film quickly unleashes upon [...]

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doubt is an actor’s vehicle, a film of great performances, but without any real drive to its narrative. where philip seymour hoffman, meryl streep, and amy adams put in exceptional performances, they seem to be almost freestyling through a listless and contrived story-line. perhaps this artificiality has something to do with the fact the doubt [...]

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the curious case of benjamin button is philosophy produced from a photograph found in the attic of american literature. it is gimmick made beautiful, which makes it a truly american film, caught between the circus and the opera as it were, and in the tradition of ‘fable americana’ films like forrest gump, and big fish. [...]

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in the spirit of christmas, and the fact that i just completed my gift wrapping (yes! best wrapping-EVER), here’s a short history of xmas in celluloid.
1898

the most interesting thing about this short clip, is that santa claus carries a tree the whole time (wtf?) i was assuming that he was bringing it to the kids, [...]

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the big news today is that a hospital in cleveland (cleveland?) has completed the most advanced face transplant in history, the first such operation in the united states, and just the fourth worldwide.
while no one’s talking about it, i think it’s clear that the most important implication of this surgery is that john woo’s legendary [...]

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here is a story about stories; with a question about whether stories are still stories and whether we are beginning to live in a post-story age.
the already cool mit media lab has founded a “center for future storytelling.” the purpose of this “labette” as the initiative is described, is to engage in studying and possibly [...]

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the american action movie is founded on the idea of catharsis through violence. which is why critics and intellectuals generally object to it. because it espouses a sort of primitivism in the name of healing, and engages in profound acts of brutality in the pursuit of some sort of harmony.
the american action movie confronts an [...]

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i recently caught a pretty underground flick at the fenway regal. you might not have heard of it. it’s called “the dark knight” and it’s about a rich, urban billionaire who spends his evenings fighting crime as a super hero in a city called gotham. apparently, this dramatis persona, called “bruce wayne,” is a recurring [...]

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before i crash for the evening, a quick note on sphere, the best bad sci fi thriller of the 1990’s. it was just on “chiller” (what kind of a name is that for a tv network?), and I finally got a chance to see the whole thing.
for the first time since around 1999.
i frickin’ love [...]

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