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- dsense on Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life is one of the greatest films ever made.
- dsense on Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life is one of the greatest films ever made.
- LatinNerd on Facebook, Forever 21, and the Hidden Hypocrisies of Capitalism
- noel on Noam Chomsky is Wrong on Bin Laden (and Foucault Won That Debate))
- qubitman on Charles Ramsey, American Hero
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Recent Posts
Charles Ramsey, American Hero
“You do what you have to do,” Charles Ramsey said as he described saving the three girls. We should be more specific: he heard a girl scream… and checked. And when the girl said, “I’ve been trapped in here, he won’t let me out!” he– you should sit down for this– helped her.
Only in America can… Read the rest
King Of Comedy– Why is Chuck Low imitating De Niro?
(King Of Comedy at the Tribeca Film Festival, starts today, so I thought this would be appropriate.)
Chuck Low, in the background behind De Niro’s right ear, imitates Rupert’s movements. But why? Fans of the movie have long speculated about what it could mean, I think I have a clue: the deleted scene.
In the script, after Rupert… Read the rest
Mad Men s6e1 Doorway
(It’s hard to write about a show that has exactly as many viewers as commentators and make it interesting.)
This season, Don Draper learns what women already know: you can be hot and bitchy up until the time you are only bitchy, and then you better hope you’ve accumulated a lot of money or a loving spouse because people… Read the rest
Zero Dark Thirty
I didn’t see Zero Dark Thirty, but from the hype I’ve gathered that the only two things I need to know are that it may or may not justify torture; and that it’s made by a woman and has a strong female lead.
My point here is not the movie, but the fact that those are the two publicly… Read the rest
Lean In Dissent
Though I’m radio silent, this email was important:
After reading your piece, I thought you may be interested in this article [from Dissent]. I doubt you’ll agree with everything, but certainly an interesting / similar take to yours on Lean In:
Where other feminists focus on articulating the amount of free or underpaid labor that women do, Sandberg
February 13, 2013: The School Shooting Pivot Date
“People are fed up!” I’m told. “People don’t feel safe!” Uh oh, I’ve heard that before, are we going to vote to invade all the states that start with Co? Everyone hates living in a police state until the moment they suddenly want a police state, and then they wonder why they live in a police state. Understandably,… Read the rest
The problem of wives on cable TV
An interesting article in the LA Times about how the wives portrayed in cable dramas are…. hated.
Lori’s bloody end capped off a particularly rough year for AMC’s first wives club. When the once-svelte Betty showed up at the beginning of “Mad Men’s” fifth season carrying 50 or so pounds of extra weight, “Fat Betty” became an
Email from a disappointed father
A retired naval officer sends an email to his three grown kids about “being forced to live through the never-ending bad dream of our children’s under-achievement and ineptitude.”
The obvious first step is that the Guardian and Telegraph are papers for people who still write emails to their kids. So of course, anything where that generation gets to criticize… Read the rest
5+1 Sentences On The Walking Dead s3e6 “Hounded”
Never answer a ringing rotary phone because there’s madness on both ends, but Rick does anyway and has a heart to heart with his dead wife, and the interpretation is that this is a kind of working through of the grief and forgiving himself, which would be right except that this is a show about zombies, so it’s wrong.… Read the rest
5+1 Sentences On The Walking Dead s3e5 “Say The Word”
If it’s about zombies, it’s about mourning, and we’re presented with two kinds of pathological mourning. First, the negation of the negation: we see the Governor in denial and not letting go– of his daughter’s hair as he brushes it, by sheer will alone he has ended her death and kept her undead, but this kind of grief results… Read the rest
5+1 Sentences On The Walking Dead s3e3 “Walk With Me”
An observation, and I’ll qualify it by saying this isn’t me but the logic of the show: Totalitarianism doesn’t arrive by erosion of individual rights or worsening economic inequality, it comes because women want it.
(Non-black) Women will gladly allow total domination for the semblance of domestic freedoms– they’ll let an old man’s penis penetrate them in exchange for… Read the rest
5+1 Sentences On The Walking Dead s3e2 Sick
Here’s your five sentence introduction to psychoanalysis in the age of atheism: “Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.” Funny how it’s the… Read the rest
5+1 Sentences On The Walking Dead s3e1 Seed
I only get 5 sentences, so better make them count: according to this show, post apocalypse, when things devolve into a hunter/gatherer society, the men naturally become hunters and the women… at some point wish they were dead. I guess gathering must really suck, or else the women don’t have much faith in their hunters. This is… Read the rest
Looper Is Not Inception, So Why Does The Trailer Make It Look Like It Is?
A lot of the criticism of movie trailers (“why do they put the whole plot in it?” “The actual movie was totally different!” etc) comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose of trailers.
The trailer is designed to do exactly what a political ad does.
No spoilers: the plot of Looper is really about a boy, and the relationship… Read the rest
Who Are The Bad Guys In Homeland?
There are no bad guys and good guys in “intelligent” TV dramas like Homeland, or so they say. But.
Exhibit A:
Midway in the show, the 16 yo daughter, Dana, and her classmates are attending a Quaker meeting at her prep school: a person stands, says whatever he wants about anything, and everyone else sits silently and… Read the rest
Here’s What’s Wrong With Everyone’s Understanding Of Dexter
http://youtu.be/-S4Cn7xeiUY
What do we have here, a serial killer trying to pass himself off as normal?
A hallucination of your father admonishing you for your mistakes is a pretty standard literary metaphor for the superego, and if that’s true you should probably sit down: this superego, like your superego, doesn’t criticize him for doing something wrong, like killing, … Read the rest
Samsung vs. Apple = Red vs. Blue, Guess Who Wins
This is a simple ad, which is also why it is being displayed in…. newspapers. It plays off Apple’s Genius theme, but it is, literally, a straightforward comparison between two objects (obviously skewed towards the Galaxy S III.)
This is the kind of ad that you would never see for a political candidate except in… Read the rest
They Love This T-Shirt
Whenever something tragic like the violence in Aurora happens, I always think of this scene from “Almost Famous”. Note that I believe this clip is a different take from the one actually used in the movie. What you can’t see is that the t-shirt shows the band, but only Russell (the guitarist) is in focus.
When… Read the rest
I’m a good person because he’s a bad one
There are two conversations to be had on the recent tosh topic. One is whether a rape joke is ok or not and the other is whether it is ok to heckle or not. Obviously one is making more noise than the other.
A rape joke is debatable though and it has the opportunity of making the comedian looking… Read the rest
The Busy Trap
Life too busy? Let this guy offer a solution.
All I can think is how it must be nice to have the luxury of having to barely work for a living–apparently without the distractions of raising kids. But this article is useful, I’ll take it into account the next time I’m haggling with an employer about not being… Read the rest
