Every now and again I like to indulge in the temptation to rail against the mindless repetition of uninteresting facts. I know it will accomplish nothing, and indeed is probably counterproductive, but I cannot help myself. This is stupid and I’m going to tell you why. Cry about it in the comments, nerds. I could… Read More Why in the Hell Does Anyone Care That It’s Carrie Fisher’s Birthday?
My wife suggested we go see it, when we had a free evening. I was willing, but not enthusiastic. In the end, we ended up not doing that instead. The film had good word of mouth, and I know Nolan to be a competent director, but the excitement to do it wasn’t there. And according… Read More I Almost Saw “Tenet”, But Didn’t. Apparently I’m Not Alone.
In my wild opinionated youth, I was something of a disdainer. Where other readers and writers widely explored what certain genres had to offer; I tended to stick with the first thing that brought me in the door. I liked Star Wars, and never found another sci-fi world that interested me until I read Heinlein.… Read More Entertainment vs. Edutainment: The New Pulp Narrative
I’ve never seen Black Panther. I think the last MCU movie I saw was the first Avengers. This is due to indifference. I’m not big into Marvel, and only slightly more into DC (the last DC movie I saw was Dark Knight Rises, which doesn’t count). That whole journey went right by me. Don’t take… Read More Chadwick Boseman’s Death is a Reminder of All That We Do Not Know
Back in the 90’s, when concepts such as “youth culture” seemed relevant to me, I was known to lament the chokehold Boomers had over pop culture. Every time the same damn Beatles songs were repackaged into a new format, I got incredibly annoyed, especially when someone my age bought it. Looking back, this exercise seems… Read More The Milennial Nostalgia Machine
Movies are a strange art form. They immerse an audience in a world that looks and sounds real, yet we can only access them through two-dimensional screens. We observe them as though we’re part of them, but the Fourth Wall is absolutely inviolable to us (not to the movie itself, mind). We can’t crash them… Read More Why Movies Need Stars
{The following was first written for my defunct Medium.com account in 2012. In some sense it has been overtaken by events. The success of the indie film Bone Tomahawk, among others, in some sense supports my premise. And the points it has to make about the nature of the Western, especially as against the Noir,… Read More Beyond Cowboys and Indians
My last post, about the slapfight between William Shatner and RLM fans, contained a passage perhaps intemperate: More to the point, I think people who do fill their house with junk and go to such conventions are spiritually depleted dorks. Am I still a fan? It seems I let my rhetoric get away with me.… Read More On Dorks and Spirits
Never meet your heroes. I’ve mentioned Red Letter Media before. They’re a YouTube channel that discusses film in a serious way, but with lots of jokes – spoonfuls of sugar to make the medicine go down. They’re different from most cinema nerds on YouTube in that they’ve actually undergone the process of making movies themselves… Read More William Shatner, Red Letter Media, and What Everyone Gets Wrong About Fandom
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
