Category: Arts & Entertainment
-
Okay, what ELSE you got?
A few years ago, my friend Alex recommended I read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I filed away the suggestion but never acted on it, for any one of a dozen stupid reasons. I wouldn’t have the attention span to read a 1000-page book I liked, much less one without spaceships. I wasn’t that…
-
The Spy Who Didn’t Have Enough Sense to Come In From the Cold
Burn After Reading and the Coen Brothers’ populism
-
Literacy 2008: Exhibition Round 2: Yokai Attack!
There’s no way I’m going to finish my resolution to read 26 books by the end of 2008, but even out of desperation I can’t in good conscience include this book to pad out the list. But it’s still neat enough to be worth an exhibition round. Book Yokai Attack!: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide…
-
Beat Bachs
A post on Boing Boing was the first I’d heard of Omodaka, a collaboration from a Japanese electronic musician putting out some of the most amazing videos I’ve ever seen. (You can read more about the artist on this modern Japanese music guide). He’s got six videos available on YouTube, and pretty much every one…
-
The Beast Must Have a Problem He’s Not Telling Us About
Friday night I imitated a normal person and left work before dark. I just sat at home and watched movies on AMC, so I guess I imitated a depressingly boring normal person, but still, it beats working. Apparently, AMC runs horror movies on Friday nights, and this week we got: Puppet Master (a reminder of…
-
Just ’cause it’s a theme song, don’t mean it’s not true
When I first heard about Tropic Thunder, I thought it was going to be just another two hours of Ben Stiller and Jack Black hamming it up, or at best one of Stiller’s MTV Movie Awards parodies stretched out to feature length. Turns out it’s got plenty of both, but it manages to be surprisingly…
-
Maybe I Didn’t Want to Believe As Much as I’d Originally Thought
Somehow I’d gotten the idea that the new X-Files movie was about werewolves. I think maybe I mis-heard “Wendigo” when someone was saying, “When did it go horribly wrong?” So if you go see the movie expecting werewolves or yeti, you’re going to be disappointed. Of course, if you go see the movie at all,…
-
Why So Serious?, or, I Miss the Giant Penny
According to the box office numbers, there’s a good chance that everyone reading this has already seen The Dark Knight. But just in case, I’ll include a spoiler warning: it’s pretty damn good. The movie mentions several times how the Joker and Batman are both “freaks” and outsiders, and how lonely it is to be…
-
To Be in the Venture Compound in the Summertime
I’ve got 2 Venture Brothers-related confessions to make: first is that before he showed up in the series, I’d never heard of Klaus Nomi. Second is that until last week’s episode (“What Goes Down Must Come Up”), I’ve thought this season was clever but not hilariously funny. This episode had me dying, though. (Yeah, I’m…
-
The Right Hand of Doom
I really wanted to love Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and for the first 15 or 20 minutes, it looked like that was exactly what was going to happen. There’s a really clever flashback to Hellboy’s time growing up on an army base (previously only seen in a two-page gag story called “Pancakes”), and a…
-
An Inconvenient Contaminant
I saw Wall-E last week for my birthday (thanks, Rain!), but have been too busy distracted buying stuff and staring blankly at computer screens to be able to write anything about it. It’s so good I can’t think of a better word to describe it than “wonderful.” At this point, it’s a given that any…
-
All up in her griddle
A couple weeks ago, my satellite went out, and I seriously considered just canceling the service altogether. Even if I were home long enough to watch TV, all the shows I’m most interested in are available on the internet. And if I ever do get free time, wouldn’t I be better off going outdoors, or…