Yes, I finally watched it. I’d had a hard time getting into it: first off-put by the banality of “LOL HItler” (World War 2 was eighty years ago), then by being bored during the first half-hour. Frankly, for a film that billed itself as a trangressive comedy, there weren’t nearly enough laughs (the most transgressive… Read More Quick Review: Jojo Rabbit
What can I say, sometimes my mood becomes very Russian. Dovlatov is a film about a Soviet dissident writer before he became well-known. It’s less a move than it is a portrait of the writer as a winsome rapscalion. Not very much happens except you spend a week or so in this guys’ life in… Read More Quick Reviews: Dovlatov and The Death of Stalin
Currently, I’m trying to launch a brand. I dislike that phrase but there it is. I’ve set up the following things: A Patreon A Podcast A YouTube Channel A Twitter A Gumroad (soon) Additionally, I’m producing content for the next issue of UJ (out next month), and I’m trying to grease the creative wheels on… Read More Managing the Flow
When I say “critic” I don’t mean “someone who gives you feedback on a piece of art”, I mean “someone who applies a formal critical assessment to your work”. You know, the nerds. This video, worth watching in full (it’s less than 9 minutes), discusses well two things: That authors/artists don’t necessarily follow a logic… Read More When Critics Don’t Help, and When They Do
There are two ways this can go: desperate attempt to defend this oh-so 1930’s take on historical drama, or dump all over it as the irritation it is. I will do the second thing. I do not like Gone With The Wind and never have. I don’t know why anyone does. I shall give a… Read More Let Us Now Discuss Gone With The Wind
This is your periodic reminder that my ongoing music review Tumblr Every Damn CD, is well, ongoing… In fact, I have a second Tumblr, Art Rises where I reblog art and stuff from this website gets posted.
I’m the sort of guy who likes minimalist covers. A single image, one or three colors, something striking, a bold font. I like seeing those kinds of books. I like buying them. One of the things that hold me off from a lot of Fantasy literature, especially the Pulp kind, is the genre of cover… Read More Cover Aesthetics
Things I learned today: Roman Polanski experienced the Holocaust to a terrifying degree, losing his mother at Aushwitz, which puts his career as primarily a horror director into perspective (it doesn’t excuse his crimes and the bastard should have gone to jail – Fiat Iustitia, ruat astrum). There’s a whole sub-genre of Nazi horror cinema. I… Read More Nazi Horror
Was, whatever. Any perusal of his filmography — especially from the Era of ’68 — could have led me to that conclusion. But reading Godard on Godard, his collection of film criticism I earlier linked to, has rather shoved my nose in it, to a distasteful degree. In his obscure five-run magazine Gazette du Cinema, Godard… Read More Godard is a Godless, Worshipful Communist
I haven’t watched a single thing on my art-house bucket list, but I’ve subscribed to the Criterion Collection subreddit, because displays of aesthetic approval from an institutional source matter more in the Matrix than actually developing aesthetic sense. Which is fine, as most people have no idea what aesthetic sense even is. I include philosophers… Read More Criterion Collection Lust and Other Class Settings
Content Blues 