March 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Film Journal -- 3/14/10
Triangle A combination of Memento, Time Crimes, and, I don’t know, Ghost Ship, this little ditty was a terrific surprise. Check in on the BGH podcast for our full rousing discussion. Final score: 4 out of 5
Bright Star It has been a while since I’ve sat down and taken in something akin to Bright Star, and because of that I enjoyed it as a change of pace if nothing else. But to leave...
3 tags
Reading Journal -- Pandora in the Congo
Pandora in the Congo first pinged my radar when I caught a capsule review in the New York Times. I had been reading Bolano at the time, and I think the fact that Pandora was also pegged as a playful, postmodern Spanish language novel, made it stick in my mind. It was at least a year later, when I saw Pinol’s book on The Daily Beast’s end-of-decade The Best Books You Missed list that I...
2 tags
Film Journal - 2/28/2010
Cop Out Shockingly shallow plotting and characterization make this film near unwatchable. Nearly everyone involved seemed to be mailing it in — none worse than Bruce Willis, except for maybe director Kevin Smith, who almost seemed to be actively spitting in the audience’s face. The film’s only saving grace was Tracy Morgan, who clearly wants to move beyond his success on TV and...
February 2010
3 posts
4 tags
Film Journal - 2/21/2010
Dracula A.D. 1972 Having now watched three Hammer films — two featuring Dracula — I feel comfortable saying that I get the allure. As a group they feel very dated, but in the best possible way. It’s almost too easy to call them a perfect blend of the Universal studio era sensibilities and the edgier, tongue-in-cheek genre conventions that would blossom in Hollywood in the 70s and...
5 tags
Film Journal -- 2/7/10
Monsters, Inc.
My top five Pixar films list goes like this: 1) Toy Story 2 2) Monsters, Inc. 3) Wall-E 4) Up 5) Ratatouille The key factor for me in each of the top two is the level of comedy writing, with Monsters and Toy Story each playing like the best buddy comedies. The blend of Laurel-and-Hardy-esque repartee with more juvenile gags and child-like imagination and wonder (particularly in...
January 2010
3 posts
4 tags
Film Journal -- 1/31/10
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
There are several obvious criticisms to be leveled at Andrew Dominik’s film about the demise of Jesse James. The first is its length, which is excessive at just a hair over 150 minutes. The second would be its pacing, which is deliberate and sometimes stilted — with a coda that could wear on some viewers. The last might be the...
2 tags
Film Journal -- 1/24/10
Legion
“The Bible has quite a healthy section on the apocalypse, replete with descriptions beyond even what many Hollywood screenwriters might imagine. Unlike the limitless films that have found success by mining this information, ‘Legion’ chooses to go its own way with a plot that makes little sense. In doing so it’s steps out into potentially fertile territory, but...
4 tags
Film Journal -- 1/17/10
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
More absurd, and therefore more tolerable, than Bay’s “Transformers” films, “G.I. Joe” may set the record for most stuff packed into 105 minutes. This is not to say that it’s good, but it does need to be seen to be truly appreciated. “Joe’s” saving grace may actually be its script, which manages to make the...
December 2009
2 posts
2 tags
3 tags
Smooth Sounds Ending for Music Games
Catching up with some things I missed over the holiday, one in particular stuck in my head. At PaidContent, in a post about Warner Music’s third quarter earnings report, the headline trumpets CEO Edgar Bronfman’s displeasure with income from video game licensing. On its face, the comment doesn’t mean a whole lot — as a CEO focused on his company’s bottom line,...
November 2009
3 posts
2 tags
Cognitive Dissonance and Playboy For Sale
Playboy has been more or less on the market for almost a year now. Seemingly every day brings word of a potential buyer or interested party or decidedly uninterested party. The trouble, as with virtually all magazines these days, is that print revenues are getting slaughtered. Cuts have been made, but CEO Scott Flanders says he’s committed to maintaining Playboy magazine as the...
3 tags
Heroics in Comment Moderation
Of all the great blogs run by the NYT, perhaps my favorite is the “Idea of the Day” blog edited by Tom Kuntz. The concept — linking one thought provoking article or blog post per day — is simple, but executed so well here that it becomes a can’t miss. As an added service to readers each post offers a handful of additional recommended stops.
This past Thursday, I...
4 tags
Wisdom of the Crowds
As a loyal Amazon purchaser — particularly of books — I am quite comfortable with putting my trust in the aggregate score most products receive. Of course there are all the caveats that one must take into account (best bet is to read a sample five star and one star to ensure the conversation hasn’t been hijacked by some tangential aspect of the work), and the personal rebalancing...
July 2008
18 posts
“For a lot of reasons, “Silver Bullet” fails to deliver where other...”
– Adolescent Wet Dreams Do Come True | Bloody Good Horror
“Imagine that those running for office tailored their economic positions to...”
– Economic View - What if the Candidates Pandered to Economists?
“If Batman represents cold, unfeeling justice, then the Joker is irrational death...”
– The Dark Knight | Bloody Good Horror
5 tags
4 tags
4 tags
“It’s an artful, clever throwaway that may, over time, turn into a valuable...”
– A.O. Scott on Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
4 tags
We’ve Got Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Inglorious... →
3 tags
4 tags
“…but horror is not spectacle, and never will be. Horror is an unknown...”
– Stephen King: Why Hollywood can’t do horror
3 tags
The Believer - Interview with Matt Bai →
4 tags
“Two things are well-known among sports economists. 1. Ticket prices do not drive...”
– Success in Year t, Greater Demand in Year t+1, The Sports Economist
4 tags
“The sports systems that produce Chinese, American and Russian Olympians reflect...”
– China’s athletes feel push for gold in Beijing Games from the LAT. It’s a sad truth that I find the politics of the Olympics more interesting than the actual sports to be competed.
3 tags
3 tags
“(It turns out you don’t want to sound southern, either. Although pretty...”
– via Freakonomics: How Much Does It Cost You in Wages if You Sound Black?
“I can picture my brother as a handsome young boy, all eyes and nerves, traipsing...”
– written by a literary sibling, via A Staggering Mother
“But this raises the first of many difficult questions. The pictures hadn’t...”
– Knowing What We See, Seeing What We Know
“Its bathrooms are equipped with specially designed “no mix” toilets that...”
– Elizabeth Kolbert reports on Europe’s progressive environmental fringe for the New Yorker in The Island in the Wind
June 2008
10 posts
“OK, let me be clear: I love GTA IV and I have no doubt that it is art, but an...”
– ‘Grand,’ but No ‘Godfather’: Junot Diaz in the WSJ
“We’ve grown accustomed to expecting surprises from Pixar, but “Wall-E” surely...”
– A.O. Scott reviews Wall-E
Watch
“Those hoping for a new gadget to rival the iPhone finally understood that Google...”
– Google’s Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web
“I think people just develop better over there,” he said. “You’re playing...”
– William Rhoden breaks down how Brandon Jennings may be blazing a trail that leads star basketball players away from college, for their own good.
“A more reasonable explanation would be that they actually enjoy resting on their...”
– Dana Carvey and the burden of audience expectations
April 2008
1 post
“Viewed from the perspective of economics, security is a trade-off. There’s...”
– Bruce Schneier’s Security Matters: The Difference Between Feeling and Reality
March 2008
8 posts
“There is danger in writing off the things people don’t notice as being no big...”
– Bomani Jones » Sports Fights in Black and White
Chrono Trigger a Better Investment Than Apple →
Muxtape →
Music sharing start-up. Could be cool. Might see some legal fireworks.
“The best critics,” Follett writes, “are those who use the plainest words and who...”
– Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing
JOURNALISTS TRY NEWS VAN DRAG RACING →
If you’re not too concerned about getting canned, I’d say this is as good a way to go out as any.
“I later came to appreciate comics as an art form, and realized that even with...”
– If you’re not familiar with Alan Moore, now is your chance to get caught up.