“I’m not going on about any law.  You’re no good, is all.”  (Cristi)

True irony is a very difficult thing to pull off in cinema.  Literature allows an artist the freedom to draw out language in order to create and sustain the proper atmosphere for the gap between what is intended and what is delivered to be made painfully clear.  Cinema has far ( Read more... )

It continues to amaze me every day how completely and thoroughly we fail to understand our own culture.  It’s especially baffling considering that this country, really, only has pop culture going for it; having given up on the Supermanly troika of truth, justice, and the American Way, and having shipped all its manufacturing to places where the gap ( Read more... )

There seems to be an audience that demands everything be explained to them; that everything be easy.  And I don’t think that’s doing us any good as a culture.  The ease with which we can accomplish or conjure any possible scenario imaginable through CGI is almost directly proportionate to how uninterested we’re becoming in all of this.  I can ( Read more... )

 “Walk in my footsteps.  It’ll be easier.”

François Truffaut’s conundrum about the impossibility of making an anti-war film has been reheated and turned over until it’s become inedible; a fresher tidbit for us to chew on is how national cinemas portray war based on their own experiences of it. In the first century and a half of film, it has been ( Read more... )

Well, I guess I am a rather interesting man - refined, intelligent.  But that stomach, that stomach!  (Baron Cefalù)

You never know what caprice will keep you away from a movie, and what whim will draw you in.  Even during the last few years, when I’ve finally gotten around to educating myself on the remarkably rich history of Italian cinema, I’ve ( Read more... )

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.  (Elie Wiesel)

I’m not especially familiar with the work of Scott Kurtz.  Cursory investigation reveals that his webcomic, PvP, is quite successful, though, which may explain why his recent post regarding creator’s rights and the ( Read more... )

The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor. Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one’s mental equilibrium. It is your window on time’s infinity. Once this window opens, don’t try to shut it; on ( Read more... )

Nineteen Eighty-Four is not often thought of as a useful text for illumination of the art of criticism, but like all great writers, Orwell contained multitudes of meaning in his writing, leaving great lessons barely concealed for application to whatever subject needed them.  At the book’s very beginning, Winston Smith opens his newly acquired diary ( Read more... )

Donald Dunn, whose old man named him “Duck” when the both of them were sitting around watching cartoons in their modest house in Memphis, was touring Japan with his old friend the Colonel, backing up Eddie Lee Floyd as they’d done so many times before in the past.  After last night’s show at Tokyo’s Blue note, “Duck” headed back to the hotel, hit ( Read more... )

What does a man need - really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in - and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all, in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, ( Read more... )