Category: Arts & Entertainment
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Literacy 2008: Book 5: Mere Christianity
Book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis Synopsis Originally presented as a series of lectures on BBC Radio during World War II, this book is Lewis’s attempt to describe and defend the fundamental beliefs of Christianity, regardless of any particular church or denomination. It’s presented from the perspective of a former atheist who converted to Christianity,…
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Arch Fiend
A month or so before The Darjeeling Limited was released, they made the Hotel Chevalier short film available on iTunes. Watching that sucked away any desire I’d had to see the full movie. I just kept thinking: This! This is exactly what people hate about Wes Anderson movies! It’s so overcrowded with affectations and artificially…
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Knowing Goodwin
Thursday’s episode of “Lost” was called “The Other Woman,” and the double entendre in the title is the most interesting thing about this episode. (Assume spoilers in all these “Lost” posts.) Not that it was bad, just completely straightforward. The whole question of whether the freighter gang are bad guys was supposed to climax in…
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Yojimboring
Even though I’ve gone on record as being unimpressed with the French New Wave, I still feel totally justified in my rental of Le Samourai. Movies with the word “Samurai” title have rarely let me down. And listen to the Netflix description (with most intriguing words highlighted by me): A little bit gangster film, a…
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I hardly know her Stevens.
This week’s episode of “Lost” (I was laid low with crushing head trauma Thursday, so I’m just getting around to watching it) was called “The Constant.” If I ever start bouncing back and forth through time, the one constant I’ll be able to latch onto is that I’ve always been ridiculously easy to manipulate, and…
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More Doughty than a Fan Can Handle
Mike Doughty’s got a new album out, it’s called Golden Delicious, and I was already hooked just from hearing the 30-second samples. I’m a monstrously big fan of Soul Coughing. My first take on Haughty Melodic (Doughty’s first “real” solo album) was unfair disappointment that it didn’t sound like Soul Coughing, but over time it…
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Come on and dance
I went looking around the internet for an explanation of the title of last Thursday’s “Lost,” which was called “Eggtown.” That turned up nothing, forcing me to resort to a Steve Miller Band reference. It’s tenuous at best, but I assure you that one bad title is not indicative of my entire oeuvre. One thing…
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Grotesk
Helvetica is an hour and a half of people with bad hair and bad accents talking about fonts. I don’t want to discourage people from seeing it, really. It’s a very well-made documentary, doing all the things a documentary should do. It stays neutral throughout (like you’d expect from the subject matter), but a couple…
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Literacy 2008: Book 4: Baltimore
Book Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden Synopsis On a battlefield late in World War I, allied soldier Lord Baltimore is attacked by a strange bat-like creature. Now, the war is over, but a mysterious plague has spread through all of Europe. Three of Baltimore’s friends…
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The Orchid
As I mentioned, I was confused for most of last year’s ComicCon, so I missed the “Lost” panel. I wasn’t aware until reading about it on a message board just now, that during that panel they showed another Dharma Initiative orientation film, that was later repeated on ABC’s website. This one is for station 6,…
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The Sayid Ultimatum
This week’s “Lost” was called “The Economist,” and the series is continuing on its trajectory of pure awesomeness. I genuinely feel bad for the people who’ve given up on the show, because I feel like my patience has paid off. They’re doing exactly what I was hoping they’d do, but better than I imagined they’d…
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Literacy 2008: Book 3: Jingo
Book Jingo by Terry Pratchett In a series 21st in the series of Discworld books. Synopsis The lost island of Leshp suddenly rises in the middle of the ocean, sparking a war between the nations of Ankh-Morpork and Klatch over ownership of the new land. Sam Vimes and the rest of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch…