Category: Arts & Entertainment
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Literacy 2008: Book 8: The Graveyard Book
Book The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Synopsis The Jungle Book for goth kids. No, the Real Synopsis After his family is killed, a toddler wanders into the neighboring graveyard. He’s taken in by the residents, raised as one of their own, and taught the ways of the dead. Pros Genius concept, interesting and endearing…
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Sequential Images
I wasn’t aware of The Criterion Contraption blog until the author started commenting on here, and I wish I’d found it years ago. It’s exactly the thing I’ve been looking for. The premise is that the aforementioned author, Matthew Dessem, is watching the movies of The Criterion Collection in order by spine number, and writing…
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And the preamble goes like this
Since I’ve been confronted with my age (thirty-seven) a lot lately, I’ve been wondering: 1) If you’re around my age (thirty-seven), can you recite the Preamble to the US Constitution? If so, can you do it without singing it? 2) If you’re significantly below my age, can you recite the Preamble to the US Constitution?…
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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…
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The Spy Who Didn’t Have Enough Sense to Come In From the Cold
Burn After Reading and the Coen Brothers’ populism
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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…
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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…
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The Beast Must Have a Problem He’s Not Telling Us About
A recap of a Friday night at home watching the movies, including a new favorite
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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…
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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,…
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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…