Point Break. So damn good. Sensual west-coast crime cat-and-mouse rivalry a la Heat. I need to move to L.A.. I don’t know what it was, but that lawnmower scene had the most viscerally tense squirmy moments of anything I’ve seen since, maybe Compliance? I also liked Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, and loved Zero Dark Thirty.
Michael Bay – What is Bayhem?. Looks like I’ll be combing through the archives at Every Frame a Painting soon.
Optimism is often dismissed as false hope. But there is also false hopelessness.
The Crying Game. I think contemporary eyes will guess The Big Twist like I did, and it doesn’t matter because the story and characters are good enough to keep you hooked. Strange turns and odd narrative devices abound.
The Firm. Better than I remember! I like that the early parts stay upbeat while maintaining the foreshadowing. You can be ominous without being dark. Good momentum through the whole thing. An even better Sydney Pollack film is Three Days of the Condor.
I particularly hate that phrase about women “wanting to have it all.” Because that’s not about women, it’s about humans. The humans want to have it all! Blame the fucking humans who situated themselves halfway between the beasts and the gods and then discovered it was an uneasy place to be.
Most journalists have gotten over using the archaic terms of past generations. Every once in a while that coded language will flare up again (as it did during Jeremy Lin’s emergence a couple of years ago, and when Richard Sherman went off a couple of months ago) but for the most part we know better. We don’t connect ability to chromosomal sequences anymore. Well, except for white basketball players.
Not looking for pity for the white man here, but it’s something I’ve noticed, too. Thoughtful writing on race, sports journalism, and lazy thinking.
Write Flight: When White Hoops Writers Run Away from White Players
If you don’t want to read Anil Dash geeking out about Prince for 3600+ words, then I just don’t know what I can do for you.
War of the Worlds (2005). I love the opening hour or so. I think the big weakness is that the aliens are kinda boring. I like their throwback design and effects, but something is missing there. The basement scene also drags on waaaaaayyy too long. Spielberg is still a genius, though.
I read Kathryn Davis’ Duplex, but I didn’t finish. There’s some neat stuff in here – robots! sorcerers! – but the writing was a bit opaque for me this go-round. Readers with a bit more patience who are willing to re-read will probably be rewarded. (More recent reading.)
Martha Marcy May Marlene. I loved it the first time I saw it. Now I’m even more convinced that it’s pretty special. We have the privilege of seeing all sides, and how hard it is for each to understand the other. Another awesome movie that explores the gap between what one person feels and what others experience is Take Shelter, which has been on my re-watch for way too long. Watch that one, and this one.
Watchmen. I don’t know why I do this to myself.
Hide Your Smiling Faces. Two brothers wrestle with death in their midst. Not amazing, but not bad at all. They found some ridiculously great locations, and I appreciate the emotional modesty. If you’re looking for other movies starring two adolescent boys growing up before your eyes, I recommend The Return and highly recommend Mud.
Sound of My Voice. Two idealistic journalists join a cult to expose it from the inside. Hijinks ensue. This one was alright, but it makes me curious to see The East, as this seems to be something of a first draft or starter’s kit for the ideas developed in that bigger feature. Brit Marling also does good work in Another Earth and the very excellent Arbitrage.
When you can type quickly, there’s a joy to the iterative quality of writing. You start bashing out a sentence, then realize about half-way through that it’s not quite what you want — the phrasing or ideas are “off”, clichéd, flat, barbaric. So you instantly delete all but the first few words and rewrite, zipping back and forth and trying out various microexperiments in phrasing and conception. This is delightful and fun, and pretty much impossible if you can’t type fluidly.
Proponents of handwriting tend to romanticize the physicality of the pencil and paper, while failing to appreciate the rich physical and kinesthetic joys of the keyboard.
Good to see this argument for both/and rather than either/or.
I read Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle Is the Way, at least to the point that I realized it’d be better to peck at it here and there, else the pile-on of stories and reminders would become tedious just chugging straight through. If you’ve been paying attention to Holiday’s must-subscribe reading newsletters, you’ll see many of those works and people and themes resurface here. I’ll keep it nearby to knock off a few more chapters as needed.
I read Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness because it’s regarded as one of those high points in the scifi canon. It’s about an envoy on an ambisextrous planet, which is a great start. I wish the political intrigue hadn’t been derailed by a particular journey toward the end, but still enjoyed most of it.
I read Amy Hempel’s Tumble Home. The title novella didn’t do much for me, but the short stories were so crisp and weird and vivid. From page 21, one of my favorite images of the year: “the halved-apple faces of owls”. Short and sweet.
Mark Larson 