Category: uncategorized

Captain America: The First Avenger

~ Mark

Captain America: The First Avenger. Pleasantly surprised by this one. You’ve got a solid underdog story, with an arc from bumbling to confident. The love interest wasn’t treated as typically as I expected. There was some blood spray and general grittiness that, coupled with the cutting-edge 1940s tech and throwback look, was really satisfying. I always loved that Captain America carried a gun. And they took some breaks for musical comedy! I understand and appreciate his role in the movie, but I wish they’d eased up on the Stark references. It’s really annoying to mention Stark because Stark is probably connected to Tony Stark who’s Iron Man who’s in a related movie. Stark. NUDGE. Hugo Weaving every now and then signalssss malevolenccccce with his sibilantssss. I will really miss Tommy Lee Jones if he ever retires.

Another Earth

~ Mark

Another Earth. This was just slightly too melodramatic for me, and thus I found it better as a source of ideas and food-for-thought than as general dramatic entertainment. Strong acting from the leads, though, and I appreciate that focus on only a pair of charactrers. I would have like less handheld camera. Good soundtrack.

Abebe: Nicki Minaj, Hot 97, and the Fight Over ‘Real Hip-Hop’ — Vulture

~ Mark

We’ve all spent years talking about taste in the age of the mp3, and how listeners can shuffle happily from Hank Williams to Too $hort to Katy Perry. Minaj might force some people to accept that a musician might have more than one inclination as well — that she might, unsurprisingly, be interested in steely rapping and sugar-rush pop at the same time.

Abebe: Nicki Minaj, Hot 97, and the Fight Over ‘Real Hip-Hop’ — Vulture

Drive

~ Mark

Drive. Second viewing. (The first.) I told myself I was just going to watch the opening scenes again, but I kept going. This time around I find myself enjoying the directing and mechanics even more and the plot/characters so much less. I can’t handle the beach scene. Still, those first 20-40 minutes? That’s some good stuff.

~ Mark

Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valour
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’?

Lady Macbeth, suggesting you be less of a wimp. Cf. Seneca:

You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.

Some that will never be read

~ Mark

maudnewton:

Limits

There is a line of Verlaine I will never remember

There is another street I can no longer walk down

There is a face in the mirror I have seen for the very last time

There is a door that is closed until the end of the world.

Among the books of my library (I am seeing them now)

There are some that will never be read.

This summer I will be fifty: 

Death consumes me, constantly. 

 —Jorge Luis Borges, trans. Rebecca Walker; original

Image of Borges, Hôtel des Beaux Arts, Paris, by Pepe Fernández, 1969

Borges auto-reblog rule in effect.

~ Mark

If you sit on, sleep on, stare at, or touch something for more than an hour a day, spend whatever it takes to get the best.

Marco Arment.