Category: uncategorized

~ Mark

2013 Double Feature: Her / Don Jon / The Dissolve.

Samantha and Barbara are idealized, objectified versions of women based on the main characters’ tastes. In Don Jon, Gordon-Levitt’s Jon repeatedly calls Barbara the most perfect thing—note the “thing”—he’s ever seen, an evaluation based primarily on her physical resemblance to the women in the pornography he spends hours watching each day. In Her, Samantha is literally the ideal woman for Joaquin Phoenix’s sad-sack Theodore Twombly, an intuitive piece of technology that adapts to him, without him even realizing she’s doing it. She’s everything he wants, without him having to say, or even understand, what he wants.

Armageddon

~ Mark

Armageddon. Ebert summarized it correctly (“Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer.”), but I enjoyed it more than he did. Some terrible writing and comedy hasn’t aged well, but the melodrama and spectacle holds up. I’d totally forgotten about the hyper-idealized middle-America nostalgia in there.

Philip Seymour Hoffman: The End of Quitting

~ Mark

He knew the habit wasn’t worth it. The inevitable consequences had long resonated, I’m sure. But the culture that says that such remembering, taken one day at a time, is the key to recovery is the culture that drives so many — even those who have sought help in the past — to die in the shadows. It’s just too embarrassing to admit you did it anyway. Again.

There are limits to empathy. Every addict lives in fear of reaching them.

Philip Seymour Hoffman: The End of Quitting

Возвращение (The Return)

~ Mark

Возвращение (The Return). First of all: just a ridiculously gorgeous and beautifully shot movie. I dig the desaturated blue-grey metallic finish to the whole thing. You can take the story as presented and see a good, moody, thoughtful mystery unfold… or you can put on your analytical hat and pull out plenty of theological/mythical/psychological/allegorical stuff. Either way, you win. Really enjoyed seeing a few scenes/shots mirrored at later points (a moment in bed is reprised in the rowboat; compare a shot of the brothers on the boat trip out with the one on the way back; etc.) If you’re looking for another amazing movie that revolves around two boys, mysterious boats, and a mysterious man, you have to see Mud.

Kanye West

~ Mark

I was a music producer, and everyone was telling me that I had no business becoming a rapper, so it gave me the opportunity to tell everyone, “Hey, I need some time to recover.” But during that recovery period, I just spent all my time honing my craft and making The College Dropout. Without that period, there would have been so many phone calls and so many people putting pressure on me from every direction—so many people I somehow owed something to—and I would have never had the time to do what I wanted to.

Kanye West

Jack Reacher

~ Mark

Jack Reacher. Pulpy, ridiculous, and just barely passable thriller. Tom Cruise, though. I love how pretty much every female in the movie starts drooling whenever he passes by. He’s a pretty remorseless “hero”, but interesting to see him enact a very personal brand/blend of justice and opportunism.

Her

~ Mark

Her. I expected to love it, I did, and I still was pleasantly surprised with some of the mordant humans-are-screwed humor and the science-fiction-y, speculative thoughtfulness. It’s pretty wonderful. Shout-out to movies that rely on conversation and subtle music. Also neat to see a movie set in the comfortable future – nothing crazy here, just a few plausible tweaks that have had some time to settle in. Some of the writing and face-acting didn’t work for me, but for ideas and smarts, I will forgive many things. Also, seeing Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams on screen together again made me want to re-watch The Master.

American Hustle

~ Mark

American Hustle. Disappointed with the ending, but that’s heist movies for ya. I should note that most of my disappointment was because most of the movie has such an enjoyable, playful ambiguity to it. You spend so much time on your toes, wondering what these folks are really up to, because there’s no real obvious villain or goal, and then it all wraps up too neatly for my taste. But Amy Adams is so good, the sets and stuff are a trip, and there’s some fun visual gags in there. I’d also recommend David O. Russell’s Three Kings, which has a lot of the same energy and restlessness.

I Started a Joke: “PBR&B” and What Genres Mean Now | Pitchfork

~ Mark

This is what genres do really well, for good and for ill: They make large amounts of music easier to talk about (and, by extension, sell). Most often, genres do not stand up to scrutiny, yet they’re a fundamental part not only of music discussions online and off, but of any conversations we have about culture more generally. Particularly with the infinite online options for music access and conversation, pithy and memorable genre names can make it easier (if not necessarily accurate) to classify, discuss, and compare music. Genres arise out of tastes, and are often institutionalized (I wrote about one such example here), though online there’s infinitely more space to create, market, sort and search by micro-genres. (Remember “witch house”?) People have lengthy, years-long arguments using genres as combatants. If nothing else, genres make music easier to fight about.

I Started a Joke: “PBR&B” and What Genres Mean Now | Pitchfork

What I Discovered on My Flash Drive

~ Mark

I really like the whole mood and vibe of this review. A smart writer who’s not super-invested in the industry or the product in general, but still curious and open-minded, talking about a new-to-them thing.

I pulled the car — it resembles a growling alien insect — into her high school’s parking lot, and I half-accidentally revved the engine as I came into view. The resulting snort of sound made six dozen pairs of eyeballs swivel in our direction. The only way I can describe this blast is to borrow a phrase from the rock critic Lester Bangs: “imperative groin thunder.” I felt like an idiot. But I went with it.

What I Discovered on My Flash Drive