Recorded the new Shallow & Pedantic podcast last night, and put it up today. What a masterpiece of efficiency! It’s mostly us gibbering about which of Cannon Film’s vast vault is actually worth watching, and several times blaming them for Chuck Norris’ film and TV career. But we had fun. In other news, I’ve uploaded… Read More Let’s Have Another Cup of Podcast, Let’s Have Another Slice of ‘Zine
I mentioned earlier that I was going to to be redesigning the site. The idea is for it to be a content hub as much as a blog. So if you click the button in the top corner, you will see some new pages, for the podcasts I am involved with: Shallow & Pedantic and… Read More Content Update and New Shallow & Pedantic Podcast
See how far you can get into their marketing gibberish before you give up. There’s so many things wrong with this. First of all, Robert Oppenheimer was not an heroic figure, however poetic his turn to the Baghavad-Gita was upon viewing what his science had wrought. He was a lab coat surrounded by lab coats.… Read More Christopher Nolan is Making a Movie About Robert Oppenheimer, and Variety Wants Me to Care
I’ve written on the Indiana Jones series before, explaining the problem I had with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. A lot of people complained about the tiredness of that movie, the strain of it, and they were right to do so. But for me the problem was theological: So sure, say the movies, Indiana Jones,… Read More An Encomium of Pankot – In Defense of Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom
The Boys at RLM Recently did one of their “list” re:View episodes, about the films of John Carpenter. Let the record state that I’m not the biggest fan of this particular format. re:View works best as an opportunity to dust off an old/forgotten piece of cinema, turn it over backwards and front and make a… Read More Aesthetics vs. Prophecy: John Carpenter’s Escape from L.A.
As promised, a new episode of friendly rambling. I plan what I talk about with these, some notes I want to make, and then I just let the ramble happen. It gives me ideas and let’s me talk out loud about where my thoughts are. This one covers new readings and old movies. Available on… Read More Content Blues, The Podcast – Episode 3: Poems, Prose and Princes
Time for Low-Rent Clint Eastwood to Ride Again. The only question is Why, and there’s only one answer. No one is going to enjoy this. Harrison Ford is too old for this. He was too old for it in the last movie. It’s going to be regurgitated trash, that will almost but not quite pay… Read More Oh Good, a New Indiana Jones Movie
Not really. I think I had that in mind when I conceived the episode, but when it came time to do the recording, we were far more even-handed. Kevin Smith has moved beyond his View Askew films from the 90’s, and although he’s done other things the universal critical consensus is that he’s never really… Read More Shallow & Pedantic 13: Let us Now Abuse Kevin Smith
I may have made fun of it a while back, but honestly, I don’t hate the concept. I might scope it if it rolls through one of the apps I have. I cannot, however, promise that I will do that. Movies in this era are largely an individualized aesthetic exercise, not a community one. The… Read More Maybe I’ll see Nomadland, Maybe I Won’t
Carl Schmidt was a German jurist and political philosopher of the Weimar and Nazi eras. True to the time, his writings contain very strong critique of what he called “the liberal critique of politics.” He phrased it that way because to his mind there was no such thing as true liberal politics, as the essence… Read More Doing Things For a Reason: Miller’s Crossing and the Friend/Enemy Dynamic
Content Blues 