Archive for September 2007
blucarbnpinwheel reviews Darjeeling
Because he lives in the Megapolis, blucarbnpinwheel has seen The Darjeeling Limited and reviewed it at his blog, which like most of the reviews I’ve linked to I only skimmed for fear of being spoiled. The film comes to the Outskirts sometime in October; I think next week, but maybe that’s wrong.
Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time
I don’t normally do these sorts of “blog memes,” because I think they’re corny, but I’ll make an exception for the top 50 dystopian movies of all time. The ones I’ve seen are in bold. Via SF Signal.
1. Metropolis (1927)
2. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
3. Brazil (1985)
4. Wings of Desire (1987)
5. Blade Runner (1982)
6. Children of Men (2006)
7. The Matrix (1999)
8. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
9. Minority Report (2002)
10. Delicatessen (1991)
11. Sleeper (1973)
12. The Trial (1962)
13. Alphaville (1965)
14. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
15. Serenity (2005)
16. Pleasantville (1998)
17. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
18. Battle Royale (2000)
19. RoboCop (1987)
20. Akira (1988)
21. The City of Lost Children (1995)
22. Planet of the Apes (1968)
23. V for Vendetta (2005)
24. Metropolis (2001)
25. Gattaca (1997)
26. Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
27. On The Beach (1959)
28. Mad Max (1979)
29. Total Recall (1990)
30. Dark City (1998)
31. War Of the Worlds (1953)
32. District 13 (2004)
33. They Live (1988)
34. THX 1138 (1971)
35. Escape from New York (1981)
36. A Scanner Darkly (2006)
37. Silent Running (1972)
38. Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
39. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
40. A Boy and His Dog (1975)
41. Soylent Green (1973)
42. I Robot (2004)
43. Logan’s Run (1976)
44. Strange Days (1995)
45. Idiocracy (2006)
46. Death Race 2000 (1975)
47. Rollerball (1975)
48. Starship Troopers (1997)
49. One Point O (2004)
50. Equilibrium (2002)
Clearly, I am a depressing movie date; as is so often said, poor Jaimee.
Saturday Night Links
Another busy day, but here are some links:
* Jeff Bigler suggests that the difference between nerds and normals is all about the directionality of the tact filter. Via Geekpress.
* Do you write like a terrorist? Via Backwards City and my dad.
* Vintage photographs of American cities from the middle of the 20th century. Via MeFi.
Saundersize Me
My good friend Patrick “Easy” Egan writes to ask “Does the world need another George Saunders interview?” The answer, of course, is yes.
Congressional Hearings on Rap Music. Still.
Believe it or not, Congress is still holding hearings about these kids today with their rap music and their “hipped-hop.” Thank God for John Stewart.
Against Tenure?
Tim Burke has an article in the latest minnesota review about academic freedom and in particular the way that tenure can work to stifle the very open debate it exists to protect.
In particular, the system of tenure, allegedly the cornerstone of academic freedom, often acts perversely in the opposite direction. The tenure system sometimes suppresses rather than enhances autonomy and freedom among graduate students and junior faculty during their most crucial period of professionalization. Moving outside of established consensus views of topics and methodologies as a junior scholar creates a very serious risk to an academic career. Junior scholars are encouraged to be original but often only within very narrow paradigmatic definitions of originality. While both academics and non-academics have heard tenure “horror stories” in which clearly qualified candidates have been punished for perceived non-conformity or unorthodoxy, the real problem is subtler. Senior scholars who break cover and exhibit open brutality towards junior faculty are at least slightly unusual. More important by far are the small, pervasive, and sometimes unconscious ways that tenured scholars are able to direct or channel the intellectual labor of untenured scholars.
He may be right, but he’ll get my imaginary tenure out of my cold, dead hands.
Via The Valve, where elsewhere Smurov presents the “Little Nell” school of criticism in all its glory:
1. Convene the PTA on the docks.
2. Call up to the clipper’s captain: “Does Little Nell yet live?”
3. If “yes,” deem the book acceptable. If “no,” start the bonfire.
Salon reviews The Darjeeling Limited
“The Darjeeling Limited” — which opens the New York Film Festival this evening, and opens elsewhere beginning tomorrow — is the first of Anderson’s movies that has elicited even the mildest scrap of affection from me: I feel warmly toward it, although I reserve the right to remain wary of its aging-hipster gimcrackery.
Apologies
Sorry posting has been so light this week; I’ve randomly been extremely busy and have barely had any time to do anything. After the weekend I’m expecting a return to form…
More Wes
More Wes Anderson news, via blucarbnpinwheel: first a conversation with Anderson at the Huffington Post and second some tidbits of information about his inscrutable next project, the stop-motion-animated The Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Bearers of Hope
Bearers of hope: the four Ginkgo trees that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Thanks to my #1 lady for the pointer.
Yes But And
Meanwhile, at the House Next Door, Keith Uhlich reviews Darjeeling. He isn’t in love, but he’s in like, which probably means I’ll be in love. I’m keeping my expectations sensible and rational, but I’ve been out to sea for a long time.
"Hotel Chevalier"
There is a sense—and it is by no means a trivial sense—in which “Hotel Chevalier” is an iPod commercial. And there is surely another sense in which it is all about the frustrated desire to see Natalie Portman’s breasts. It also seems to have a lot to do with the color yellow.
But putting all three of these senses aside for the moment, “Hotel Chevalier” is most completely about being Part 1 of The Darjeeling Limited, and the tremendous amount of joy that very notion brings me.
So far I’ve watched it twice.
The Life Obsessive with Wes Anderson
New York Magazine has a long feature on America’s greatest living folk hero, Wes Anderson, on the eve of Darjeeling. The latter half of the article deals with the lukewarm reception for the (much, much underappreciated) Life Aquatic, as well as Anderson’s reaction to the reaction—as well as what all this means for the new one:
Still, Anderson was tense at the premiere in Venice. It is the same at all premieres—Anderson worrying about how his movies, crafted in something of a parallel universe, will play in the world at large. “Mostly it’s just a process of steeling oneself for what’s going to happen. I’m sitting there thinking, Is the movie gonna be received with a lull of silence? Or with a boo?” says Anderson. “That’s a common thing in Europe, you know? They boo here.”
For the record, they did not boo. The early reviews were mainly positive, much more so than with Aquatic, though there was the requisite grumbling that the movie was “good but more of the same,” as Anderson puts it, shaking his head, after reading what Variety had to say. But the director does not seem particularly hurt or defensive this time around. “It’s probably not a good idea to put too much of your self-esteem on something like this, because, really, you can make a bad movie and it can be well received, and you can make a good movie and it can be badly received,” he says. “I think people who’ve done it a lot have learned, like the Coen brothers, for instance. My impression of them is that they really aren’t that vulnerable to what comes back at them. And they could get anything from any of their movies. Like The Big Lebowski, the first time I saw it I thought it didn’t quite work, but the second time I saw it I thought, Oh, I didn’t get it. I just didn’t understand it. And I really loved it then.” He adds, “You know, everyone’s limited. You can only do so much. I think in the end all I can do is say, Let me live the moment. I can still do what I want to do. I’m lucky enough to be able to do these movies so far.”
Much more on Wes in the next couple of days, no doubt…
Gerry Canavan 