The Loveless. Gotta admit I got really restless watching this one. Funny to see old fashion from yesteryear that’s still around today, but the cultural associations are so different. I love Willem Dafoe. Another willfully slow-paced and stylish movie with a hero on the fringe: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Easy Rider is a better movie focused on bikers. Can I count The Place Beyond the Pines, too? And yeah, Sherlock Jr. has one of the best motorcycle scenes you’ll ever see.
Blue Steel
Blue Steel. It took me a while to realize I’d seen big chunks of this one before. Jamie Lee Curtis is a cop with itchy trigger finger issues, but she’s also in a frame and no one believes her! Interesting to watch this in the wake of The Thin Blue Line and see how easily cops are over-committed to their early suspicions and prejudices. Slowly catching up on Kathryn Bigelow films. She’s good.
The Robots Are Winning! by Daniel Mendelsohn
On two strains of Greek narrative (economic and theological) that continue in modern science fiction storytelling. Good stuff. Filed under: Daniel Mendelsohn. The Robots Are Winning! by Daniel Mendelsohn
Our Pampered Wilderness
A reservation can cost up to $220 per night for a minimum two-night weekend stay in midsummer. Coffee delivered at your tent-flap is $9 extra. This is the worst thing to happen to public camping since poison ivy.
The Thin Blue Line
The Thin Blue Line. I appreciated it more for historical/influence reasons than for the viewing experience. Charles Musser’s Criterion essay helps put it into context.
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga. It tracks a year in the lives of Siberian trappers, mostly. Deep Russia is such a strange place. I’m both in love and terrified. Definitely want to see more Herzog, documentaries in particular. So far I’ve only seen Grizzly Man a couple times, and The Bad Lieutenant: Port of New Orleans.
Three-Ten to Yuma, and Other Stories
I read Elmore Leonard’s Three-Ten to Yuma, and Other Stories because I really liked the old movie that was based on the title story. The others are similarly brisk and evocative of more than they say explicitly. This was a great fit with my current reading cycle. Some small tasty bits to shake things up between a couple longer ones.
Don’t You (Forget About Me) - A Tribute to 80’s Teen Movies
Don’t You (Forget About Me) - A Tribute to 80’s Teen Movies. (via). So many formative feelings here.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Orion Magazine | Landspeak
A new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary was published. A sharp-eyed reader noticed that there had been a culling of words concerning nature. Under pressure, Oxford University Press revealed a list of the entries it no longer felt to be relevant to a modern-day childhood. The deletions included acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heather, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter, pasture, and willow. The words introduced to the new edition included attachment, block-graph, blog, broadband, bullet-point, celebrity, chatroom, committee, cut-and-paste, MP3 player, and voice-mail.
