Barracuda. Features one of the most unlikeable yet magnetic characters I've seen in a while. Good fun.
Carrie
Carrie. Last time I saw this was middle school I think. Long time ago. So sad, wrenching. We remember the mad scene for good reason, but build-up to it at the prom is exquisite.
The Hole Where All the Success Leaks Out
Everything has its own list of classic amateur blunders. [...] Just one of these blunders, made consistently, can undermine almost everything you’re doing right.
There Will Be Blood
There Will Be Blood. Second viewing. Daniel Plainview is a sad sad sad lonely man, who is also very funny sometimes. Filed under: Paul Thomas Anderson.
A Modest Guide to Productivity – Frank Chimero
When the day’s list is done, do not go back to the master list. The rewards of productivity must not be a bottomless well of work.
News-Adjacent Reading
Ask yourself what are the relevant topics you have yet to read good pieces on, and then try to find them and read them. Over time, your broader opinions will then evolve in better directions than if you focus on having an immediate emotional reaction to the events right before your eyes. The more tempted you are to judge, the higher the return from trying to read something factual and substantive instead.
Tyler Cowen on finding saner, more productive ways to relate to the news (if you must).
Interiority
To explore someone else's interiority is not just to flash, at this moment, to what you think the other person might be thinking or feeling. It's a layered, almost literary thing, to imagine the history of their experiences (known and unknown, actual and possible) and to think through those experiences, thoughts, and feelings all the way through to the end.
Today I found myself thinking back to this, from the January 12 edition of the Kottke/Carmody Noticing newsletter.
The Fast and the Furious
The Fast and the Furious. Second viewing (the first). It's aged pretty well. I really got a kick out of the dialogue this time around. I also like the sound effects when cops break up the street race, and everyone scrambles, and you can hear the car alarms/locks chirping. And that first moment when Brian hits the NOS and we dive into engine is still such a rush. Filed under: The Fast and the Furious.
Streets of Fire
Streets of Fire. It's such a good mash-up. Combine a western-style rescue movie with hardboiled dialogue (Michael Pare has a good John Wayne-ish drawl to his delivery sometimes), and set it in a rockabilly + '80s glam alternate universe, and take some musical breaks. It stays pretty high-energy and moves along quickly. Early work from Diane Lane, Willem Dafoe, Bill Paxton, Rick Moranis. It's just plain fun.
The Florida Project
The Florida Project. Kids are deeply weird. I like how this movie holds to their perspective with a lower, child-height camera angles. And the colors! It's largely episodic, but eventually adds up. The choices in the very very last scene didn't work for me, but I forgive it easily. I liked Sean Baker's earlier Tangerine, too.