GTA is basically the most elaborate asshole simulation system ever devised
Poison Tree: A letter to Niko Bellic about Grand Theft Auto V
Category: uncategorized
A Perfect World
A Perfect World. I didn’t realize it had been a year since my last Eastwood movie. Not many directors exploring violence so thoroughly and thoughtfully. The thematic priorities are pretty clear when you consider what is depicted and what takes place off-screen. Ties into the father-son/parent stuff. The kid’s personality is not the most interesting but neither are real kids, so fine. It actually helps the bond with Costner, as you really don’t know where these two are headed. A bigger weakness is that Eastwood and the other cops feel a bit superfluous. It’s not much of a manhunt/chase movie. There’s some story details that come out via the police, and they bring a variation in tone, but the heart is with Costner and the kid.
I’ve got so many Eastwood movie rankings that specific placement is getting silly, but not like it’s gonna stop me…
THE BEST: Nothing is more Larry Bird than this play
This is, by far, my favorite Larry Bird moment, and a Top 10 NBA Moment Ever in my opinion. The first time I saw this highlight, I gasped.
It’s one thing to know your shot is short. It’s another to know where the rebound’s headed. It’s a third to instinctually and immediately go for the ball, and just patently absurd to switch hands to get the shot off, and make it.
There are a lot of great plays in the NBA, but you will not find ten better than this. It really is breathtaking.
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. It’s an odd one, and that is enough sometimes. Unexpectedly dark/funny. No one measures up to Cage, so if you can ride along with his zaniness, you’ll probably like it.
In a World…
In a World…. Loved it. The power of voice! And such a great a set of characters. No one is perfect; no one is irredeemable. I couldn’t help but think of Frances Ha, but this one, like its protagonist, is far more polished. A really fine piece of work. Also was reminded of writer/director/producer/star Lake Bell on screenwriting:
It’s so intimate, and it’s one of your best friends, this stupid script that you end up living with for seventeen drafts or twenty drafts. […] You’re like, ‘You’re still here?? Can you clean up your shit? You leave it everywhere!
In the Dark: Looking back at The X-Files on its 20th anniversary
The show out-noired noir by recognizing that the most extreme context for modern alienation was not the mean streets of the detective story but a white-collar bureaucracy that extended infinitely above the main protagonists — literally into space — and that threatened to control them without their knowing how or why.
In the Dark: Looking back at The X-Files on its 20th anniversary
Kanye West Loft, NYC 2007 – Claudio Silvestrin. Cf. Rick Rubin:
We talked a lot about minimalism. My house is basically an empty white box. When [Kanye] walked in, he was like, “My house is an empty white box, too!”
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Had a few nice moments, but really not for me. Didn’t click. I think I disliked the book, too, but I can’t remember it at all. Shrug.
Barcelona
Barcelona. I think it’s the weakest of the three loosely-related movies (Metropolitan is great; The Last Days of Disco is really enjoyable, too.), but there’s plenty to like. I appreciate the layers of themes. You’ve got two cousins working out how to be family. They each are figuring out their careers and romantic relationships. And they as Americans are navigating what it means to be a foreigner. Along with other less character-specific stuff like ‘80s self-help/management trends. Whit Stillman is a good writer. Ebert says.
Drinking Hanson’s beer, Mmmhops, with Hanson
Austin Ray totally nailed this article for Creative Loafing. I took some photos. We drank beer with Hanson. It was a lot of fun.
I mentioned this on Twitter already—I’m not sure what would have seem crazier to 11-year-old Me: That one day she’d have a dude pal (that would be Austin, mentioned above) who “got” Hanson, or that Hanson would make a beer. But now that I think about it, actually, the beer maybe would have seemed more likely.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about this for a while and haven’t quite cracked it, but in short: back when I was someone who would have identified in any real capacity as “a Hanson fan,” people in general and boys in particular were, to put it quite elegantly, basically like total megadicks to me about it! Liking this band was probably the thing I got teased about the most in middle school. It probably wasn’t that much, actually, just amplified times a million by the general OMG OMG UGHHHH EVERYTHING IS AWFULNESS of being an adolescent human/female, but it still hurt and made me feel weird and bad about myself in a way nothing else quite could. This was true even on into high school, when Hanson was quickly becoming more of a personal relic than an active~*~*~love~*~*~; I think I was a sophomore when a friend of mine, a senior, in a very convoluted and roundabout and deeply personally stabby way, mocked me for it in front of our entire creative writing class.
MEANWHILE, one of the greatest things ever, when I was a wee fan and an even wee-er Person Thinking About Becoming A Writer One Day, was when people wrote things that seemed to really “get” the band, which is actually not super hard to do but does requires a certain amount of taking-them-seriously, which is a tough prospect when the subjects are widely beloved by teenaged girls. Two pieces I remember in particular: This Rob Sheffield review, and this Spin feature (well, except that subhed, but eh). They took the band seriously, and by extension I felt like I was being taken seriously, and that was huge.
Anyway, can’t wait to drink some of this stuff. I will probably giggle a lot.
The Cosmology of Serialized Television
How serialized storytelling has evolved on television, and how prestigious shows habitually promise viewers more than they can possibly deliver.
Russell Brand and the GQ awards: ‘It’s amazing how absurd it seems’
The glamour and the glitz isn’t real, the party isn’t real, you have a much better time mucking around trying to make your mates laugh.
Russell Brand and the GQ awards: ‘It’s amazing how absurd it seems’
“Shooting a movie is the worst milieu for creative work ever devised by man. It is a noisy, physical apparatus; it is difficult to concentrate—and you have to do it from eight-thirty to six-thirty, five days a week. It’s not an environment an artist would ever choose to work in. The only advantage it has is that you must do it, and you can’t procrastinate…”
— Stanley Kubrick on making films
Photo of Kubrick on the set of Barry Lyndon via a certain cinema
Kanakaweb: Sargent: All Ava Maria. So awesome. (via)
Below the original is my attempt to copy Sargent’s painting. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how people learn to paint. I’m starting to think that maybe copying paintings you like is a good way to study other people’s paintings technique while forcing yourself to learn some basic skills along the way. I gather that this is how students learned to paint back in the day, so it seems like a good thing to try in my spare time.
The painting took about an hour to complete, but I feel like I learned a lot in that time. Here are my random notes in case you are interested…
This entire thing is fantastic.
Mise-en-scene #5
A still from Pretty in Pink (1986, dir. Howard Deutch).
I particularly like how the image on the wall to the left contrasts with Ringwald’s position in the frame.
Donald Trump Licked My Flesh, Part 3
Legacy is a marketing tool; it exists for the convenience of people who want to sell you something. It has nothing to do with the athlete, whose accomplishments aren’t going to change if he plays past his prime, literally aren’t going to change at all, because Skip Bayless doesn’t own a time machine. Legacy is a post-Jordan, made-up idea that glorifies “going out on top” as part of a corporate strategy, presuming that fans don’t have memories and can’t cope with the complexity of a human life. Legacy belongs in the same pile of bogus thought-propaganda as “controlling the narrative” and “personal brand.”
Mark Larson 