One cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do.
Captain America: The First Avenger
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.
Did He Feel Good?: James Brown's epic life and career by Ian Penman - City Journal
Another Earth
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
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
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Nothing incredible, but it checks all the boxes. The pivotal moment is done really well. So is the final scene on the bridge.
June 6, 2012
Pornography is not directly obscene: it excites only as long as there is a struggle within the viewer between lust and the angel of culture.
Drive
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.
June 6, 2012
Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what’s done is done.
Lady Macbeth, Buddhist/Stoic. Cf. Palladas.
June 6, 2012
June 6, 2012
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.
June 6, 2012
Chris Glass » Vorontsov & Livadia Palaces. That floral relief is incredible.
June 6, 2012
Nought’s had, all’s spent,
Where our desire is got without content
Lady Macbeth has a lot of good lines.
June 4, 2012
A willingness to hear unwelcome truths is the unhappy person’s best friend.
Racist Culture is a Factory Defect - Anil Dash
Post-Popchips reflections. Anil Dash is awesome.
One of the great struggles in trying to challenge racist aspects of culture is that we’ve moved from overt, obvious, overbearing racist practices to things that are much more nuanced, and which are often the result of bad habits or ignorance from otherwise well-intentioned people.
How Roland Barthes Gave Us the TV Recap - NYTimes.com
He was the Walt Whitman of critical theory.
The Times Herald - A room so quiet no one can stand it for more than 45 minutes
Feelings have great predictive value, but opinions don’t.
The Times Herald - A room so quiet no one can stand it for more than 45 minutes
Logan's Run
Logan’s Run. Campy disco scifi. It works, in fits and starts.
June 4, 2012
Listen to your friends, by all means, but not to the conclusions they’ve drawn; those are about them. […] Listen instead to the reasons your friends felt and concluded what they did, and use them to inform your decisions.
Some that will never be read
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.