quick media summaries, Holiday season:

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: interested all the way through despite a somewhat lame story. cool structure, was sad about the cat, and i love sociopathic vigilante revenge scenes where my allegiance to the protagonist is abused - as in Inglourious Basterds or Super. kept thinking about relationships with father figures, the penetration of technology, and the girl's repeated encounters with fate and choicelessness

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: the kind of spy movie that i love. gary oldman makes me happy.

Mission Impossible 4: the kind of spy movie that i'm surprised people like. enjoyed some of the technological gadgets and action scenes. the core conflicts of the movie are tremendously uninteresting. professionally, the disavowed "central HQ"-less heroes foil a sloppy two man (i.e. smaller!) team that has worse technology/resources. no interesting parallels about how both teams are loners. missed opportunity for the Hunt gang to fight a greater foe. lame.
personally, the main conflict is vanished from underneath the audience at the end, because Hunt already knows it's not an issue. the other is resolved by kicking an assassin out of a window, plus some predictable grumbling.  double lame.


Sherlock bbc: compared to House, Holmes is socially inept, which is preferred. compared to Sherlock Holmes movies, BBCHolmes is far more terrifyingly insightful. as someone who has some - but not extensive - knowledge in the Holmes literature, i dig it.


Happy Endings: fantastic! like one writer having a blazingly fast, reference-filled conversation in his/her head between 6 stereotypical 30-year-olds. the characters, relationships, and emotions are fluff for the interactions and social insights, so there's no more pretending (cf. How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory).

New Girl: i wanted this to be like Happy Endings, which i found later. mostly uninteresting, and Deschanel is merely annoying.


Midnight in Paris: Woody Allen's films work for me. here, there's engrossing dialog, sharp comedy, memorable characters, nostalgia, and escapism (my favorite!). Owen Wilson is a good fill in for Allen's neurotic lead character.

Hugo: surprised by the second half and the filmmaking parallels. i was emotionally unengaged for a significant portion of it, but the ideas alone kept me interested. the only movie I've really enjoyed in 3D.

Are my methods unsound?
I don't see any method at all, sir.

I do not like Apocalypse Now, though I enjoy the idea and experience of a maddening journey into the self. I enjoy Conrad's Heart of Darkness because the darkness of man comes across as an artificial, perhaps melodramatic analysis, and the struggle can then only be absurd - I expect not intentionally. My love for documentaries aside, I guess it's then no surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed the self-inflicted self-explorations shown in Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse.

the Plinkett reviews of the Star Wars prequels are somewhat hard to watch, but brutal and often insightful. a combination of his and my thoughts:

• nothing makes sense and all of the characters are idiotic. clearly they aren't good at writing sweeping political plots.
• the blocking is so, so bad. (bothered me about these movies from the first viewing)
• the camerawork is boring and repetitive.
• the story is mostly told and not shown.
• fan service is usually awful, and the prequels are bloated with this intolerable shit.
• the mirroring of dialog/events between the originals and prequels occurs lamely, without purpose
• most of the lightsabering is boring, made to be more of a stick clacking drill than lethal (and still it's 90% of what i enjoyed when watching the prequels). Yoda's fighting is pretty stupid, and his lightsaber doesn't make any sense.
• I love the idea that Vader's lightsaber is the symbol of a fallen knight, and the emperor shouldn't even have one.

Can't Hardly Wait is another high school movie that I'm weak for.

Look baby, I mean it ain't your fault you lack the flava

It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust.

Minimal character representations on SomethingAwful

Satire, etc, by Pawła Kuczyńskiego

As for webcomics, SMBC regularly surprises me with interesting perspectives:

And akimbo on depression:

Also, whatisdeepfried. Shocking and so very clever:

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

on second thought, The Birds is probably the most engaging Hitchcock film. the techniques are terrifying and immersing. two that stick with me:

• The last crow landing in the playground as Melanie watches.
• when Mitch and Melanie find Annie on her porch

amazing! (though i still like Vertigo better)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!–An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

This poem is the first that I ever loved. Everything about the meter, the message, and the imagery hit me suddenly and hard. I think fondly of it to this day.

On a related note, this poem is the first that I ever hated:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I also think fondly of it to this day.

Troll 2. wow. wow...

No more. No more popcorn

Also the docu Best Worst Movie:

These are my people. If they were to run for office I'd vote for them

Diegesis is a term I always forget when I need it the most. May it live forever on this here bloggy thing.

Community has a 'forced' feeling at times, but the parodies and homages get me. Also, some quotables:

Would that this desk were a time desk

Gotcha! This was...also..a test, and you all penis'd.

Dexter, uncharacteristic but necessary comedic interaction with Deb. double douche!

Quick movie thoughts, round 2 of the day:

food inc - a terrible documentary about an interesting issue. clumsy, sensationalist, dogmatic

christopher nolan - insomnia, memento, inception, prestige are all films that I like, but they all have some crucial editing / story telling piece that make them impossible to fully enjoy. Why does he keep doing this to me? Memento is a little excusable, but I can't stand the overlapping bits at the edges of each scene and the explanation scene at the end. Inception really did impress me the first time through. (but with the same geek captivation as the first time through Revenge of the Sith)

september issue - all for the moments where you see her with her daughter. a different person.

leaving las vegas - nicholas cage was powerful; the only time that I have been able to like him or his performance.

hitchcock - the Birds is repeatedly shocking and visceral. Vertigo is subversive and engrossing. I only remember some of the films for particular scenes and shots, like Psycho (e.g. the bathroom cleaning scene!), Strangers on a train (strangulation mirror shot in the glasses), or Rope ('continuous' takes). North by Northwest is solidly uninteresting.

I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

I'm left thinking that the fear that I see and tame is the only fear worth having.

A thought on some more films:

Heavenly creatures - The beginning and end are really great. enjoyable all around.

Dear Zachary - The speed draws you in. I haven't been this upset in ages. What a docu!

Drive - Beautiful, and I was captivated the whole time. The mystery of the Kid is gone now, so I might not be as absorbed when rewatching?

Puss in Boots - Great visual play/jokes meet crap dialog/plot. Adorable anthropomorphism will entertain me regardless.

When Harry Met Sally - The pacing is really perfect for a conversational film that skips through time. Convincing timing makes good romances?

as opposed to planet "look at me! look at me!"?!

I really like 10 Things I Hate About You. I give high school films special treatment for some reason. Maybe I'm trying to relive that first time?

I love reason and argument, and so I love 12 angry men. To me, this film is a dance between Reason and Humanity, at times adversarial and at times aligned. (What more can one ask of a film about debate?) The film's clear message shows reason and compassion toppling positions of belief, whether they be based in emotion, fact, or bigotry. Interestingly though, reason itself is not shown to win the day; it is the social pressures and tricks of debate - entirely human in their effect and significance - that win over each of the dissenters. The strange allegiance seems to undermine Reason at times, especially when the main antagonist is brought to rage and then tears under the silent stares of his fellow jurors. Cobb's #3 collapses both below the weight of the argument and below the weight of his peers, and I am left feeling that reason has lost when it cannot stand on its own. For me, these moments seed distrust in the filmmakers and the Fonda's protagonist #8. At times, #8 is quiet and passive, and at times a hawk, physically swooping in to finish his weakened opponents. It is upsetting at times, and I too begin to distrust the arguments, reminded of satan the logical deceiver.