Mother. Eh. A hyper-protective mother defends an idiot son who’s been accused of a crime he may or may not have done. It waffled between realist slice-of-life and whodunit, and should have stopped at least 15 minutes earlier. I suspect this movie would have been better without the plot. Directed by Bong Joon-ho. I hear his movie The Host is pretty good.
Stumbled across this in Dan Pink’s book, Drive:
You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation,you have only to watch his eyes:
a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeonmaking a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,wear the same rapt expression,
forgetting themselves in a function.How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.
He keeps saying he’s going to erupt into some unspeakable atrocity such as waving his dingdong at an Embassy.
“Well in those days the internet was in black and white. It was only on for three hours a day. We used to get all dressed up in our Sunday best to log onto it. We’d log onto letsbuyit.com and order a gas mask and a pound of tripe. Then when we’d finished with the computer we’d switch it off and we’d all stand up and sing the national anthem.”
Municipal Market by Boyd Lewis, circa 1970. We know it today as the Sweet Auburn Curb Market on Edgewood Avenue. (via)
Personally and emotionally it surprised me that I could actually stay committed to something so consuming without ruining my life. It’s almost axiomatic that people in the arts have to be willing to jettison their friends, marriages, loves, in order to really push through and break out. That is a hefty quantity of bullshit, and is an excuse for not living a full life and integrating work into it. This more than anything was the most positive outcome for me.
“An isogloss (sometimes called heterogloss) is the geographical boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or use of some syntactic feature.” (via)
The public does not like bad literature. The public likes a certain kind of literature and likes that kind of literature even when it is bad better than another kind of literature even when it is good. Nor is this unreasonable; for the line between different types of literature is as real as the line between tears and laughter; and to tell people who can only get bad comedy that you have some first-class tragedy is as irrational as to offer a man who is shivering over weak warm coffee a really superior sort of ice.
The Cameraman. Keaton’s first film with MGM, whereupon he lost creative control and began his decline. In other words, the last of the good ones. Generally, if your movie introduces a monkey companion part of the way through, you are probably not in top form. That said, the best parts are very good: the dressing room scene and the scene at Yankee stadium (love his pitcher’s mannerisms, also check out the base-running and perfectly-timed slide into home at 2:35). It’s fun at times, but doesn’t compare with The General, Sherlock, Jr., or Our Hospitality.
“If you’re playing along at home, with the exception of the first, none of these criticisms are really iPad-specific.”
“Bill Simmons has set a new and unbeatable standard by writing like a fan—just far better.”
Il Posto (The Job). I loved this movie and recommend it very, very highly. I would probably put this in my top 5. Here’s a Criterion essay. Basically, a young Italian goes interviewing for his first job at a faceless corporation, and there meets a lovely young woman in the same situation.
A few things I loved: 1) The story centers on a reluctant hero you can relate to. He’s tentative, intimidated. You find yourself rooting for him not because there’s some obvious evil to triumph over, but because he seems like a decent guy with decent aspirations. 2) The central love interest is done so well. The tension is really amazing, mostly created with pure body language: fleeting eye contact, reflexive shifting and posture perking up, trying to suppress that rush of exhilaration when they sense potential, (not-so-)subtle ways of giving the other an opening. 3) It’s beautiful. It’s got a feeling of being both very precise and very casual. I found myself thinking “what a beautiful moment” instead of “what a beautiful shot”.
One of the things I wish more people (anyone) would blog about is not just the books, movies, blog posts, or magazine articles they liked, but rather what in their estimation were the best uses of their time. Was it a chapter of a book or a particular article from the New York Times? Beyond just the content they consumed, was it maybe a conversation with a friend?
I really loving Ramanan’s posts about his trip to India. Wonderful photos + in-the-moment notes on the iPhone. Great combo.
It matters a great deal if people have to write out questions in advance, or during the talk, and a moderator then reads out the question. That mechanism improves question quality and cuts down on the first three motives cited. Yet it is rarely used. In part we wish to experience the contrast between the speaker and the erratic questioners and the resulting drama.
I like the second commenter’s suggestion: “Take multiple questions at once. The moderator will take say three questions from three audience members before giving the presenter a chance to answer them one-by-one.”
Marginal Revolution: Why do people ask questions at public events?
Forecast for Los Angeles. Hell yeah.
What you have to find is your own niche that will allow you to keep feeding and clothing and sheltering yourself without getting downtown. (Laughs.) Because that’s death. That’s really where death is.
Mark Larson 