"When did time begin, and where does space end? Is life under the sun not just a dream?"
I've been thinking about death a lot lately, I think because the inclement weather and the smoke from the Canadian wildfires have me thinking about the end of the world, about the fact that my life might be more than half over not because I'm ill but because I might essentially outlive the planet, and I find myself wishing for more time,…
"Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage in the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric."
–Theodor Adorno, "Cultural Criticism and Society"
"Adorno does not wish to negate representation; on the contrary, he argues that the aesthetics of post-Holocaust poetry are of a particular 'barbaric' character... Adorno is attempting to describe a new form of poetry which is stylistically and thematically awkward. The language is necessarily unstable because it…
"Children don't necessarily grow up the way you want them to."
Great expectations
Junpei died 12 years ago saving a young boy, the structural void at the heart of the narrative, the gravitational pull of which generates the force of the plot, but for me the heart of the film lies with the parallels between Ryota, Junpei's younger brother, and Yoshio, the boy Junpei died saving. At the most immediate level, they're both struggling to live their lives in the…
Watching (and now rewatching) Old Joy is such a strange, conflicting, almost dissociative experience for me, because on the one hand it's about one of my principal neuroses, this kind of subtle social dysfunction that Mark either can't see or won't acknowledge, but then on the other hand the very moment we exit this slightly uncomfortable interpersonal relationship the movie becomes a totally fucking serene, tranquil, borderline meditative experience, so half the time I've got this low background hum of…
"Hey pretty girl, time to wake up."
There was a time not too long ago when if you asked me what my favorite movie was I might have told you Mulholland Drive. There's a lot going on in the film and I certainly won't claim to understand all of it (something I might have done when it was my "favorite movie"), but I do have a reading of it that seems to answer a lot of the questions it poses,…
In a selfish attempt to cope with his separation anxiety, a sociopathic student abuses his relationship with his mentally unstable best friend in order to throw his future away on a single day of raucous debauchery.
