January 2012
3 posts
“The fact that a gay guy painted the Sistine ceiling is not nearly as...”
– William H. Gass, “The Literary Miracle,” his acceptance speech for the 2007 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, available in his collection, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts.
Films I Saw in 2011
Arranged by year of production, then chronologically by viewing. My favorites are in boldface.
90 Degrees South: With Scott to the Antarctic (1933)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Carnival of Souls (1962)
Doctor Who: The Daleks (1963)
Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction (1964)
Head (1968)
Vanishing Point (1971)
Macbeth (1971)
Time Bandits (1981)
The Thing (1982)
The Decalogue (1989)
...
December 2011
8 posts
“The river grinds away, through all seasons, furiously in the spring, high in its...”
– Stanley Crawford, “A History of Flat Stones,” DoubleTake 2 (Fall 1995).
“If Simon Pegg were forced to name the collaborator who brought the warmest glow...”
– Dave Itzkoff, “The Big Profile: Simon Pegg,” The One-Page Magazine, New York Times, 16 December 2011.
“… We are in need of a new Enlightenment, which will base itself on the...”
– Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
“Indie rock culture wasn’t invented on the internet, or in Williamsburg,...”
– Bob Mould, See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody.
November 2011
18 posts
The Last 10 Films I've Seen
1. Contagion (Soderbergh, 2011)
2. Hot Coffee (Saladoff, 2011)
3. Bobby Fischer Against the World (Garbus, 2011)
4. Cinema Verite (Berman & Pulcini, 2011)
5. Drive (Refn, 2011)
6. Hot Tub Time Machine (Pink, 2010)
7. Unstoppable (Scott, 2010)
8. Macbeth (Polanski, 1971)
9. House of Sand and Fog (Perelman, 2003)
10. George Harrison: Living in the Material World (Scorsese,...
“The mass synthesis, marketing, and distribution of versions and simulacra of an...”
– Michael Chabon, “Landsman of the Lost,” from his collection, Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing along the Borderlands.
“… There was, in my middle years [at Dartford Tech]… a period of...”
– Keith Richards, Life.
I actually read Swanton’s book in grad school; it was far less entertaining than Richards’ memoir, which I am enjoying the shit out of reading.
“When Wes Anderson asked me to provide incidental narration to his film about the...”
– Alec Baldwin, from his Top 10 list of Criterion DVDs.
ifuckinglovespace:
Carl Sagan And Ann Druyan’s...
“[Paradoxically]… the most persuasive witness to the lyrical distillation...”
– Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts.
“He thought he might want to time the shower scene. Then he thought this was the...”
– Don DeLillo, Point Omega.
“I have seen a lot of people talking about jobs, corporate greed, and sharing the...”
– Derrick Jensen (via cultureofresistance)
October 2011
14 posts
“We are not born with our values: they are embedded and normalised by the...”
– George Monbiot, “Advertising Is a Poison That Demeans Even Love—and We’re Hooked on It,” The Guardian, 24 October 2011.
“It’s better for us not to know the kinds of sacrifices the professional-grade...”
– David Foster Wallace, “The String Theory.” Esquire (July 1996). Published in expanded form as “Tennis Player Michael Joyce’s Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness,” in...
“The first time Kurt and I slept together was at a Days Inn in Chicago. We were...”
– Courtney Love on the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video.
Courtney is the queen of all over-sharers. The “who still had lots of hair” dig on Corgan is especially egregious and great.
(via perpetua)
September 2011
9 posts
“I would never intervene for the purpose of overthrowing a government. If enough...”
– Jimmy Carter, “Playboy Interview: A Candid Conversation with the Democratic Candidate for the Presidency,” Playboy, November 1976.
“Public opinion has closed down a coin-operated game called Death Race in the...”
– “Forum Newsfront: Vent That Hostility,” Playboy, November 1976.
1 tag
