-
Recent Posts
Top Posts
Archives
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
Monthly Archives: July 2010
Marienbad, Your Grandfather’s Inception
There is no “solution” to Marienbad – no clothes on the emperor. But we can’t help but imagine some. This is its beauty. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Alain Resnais, Alain Robbe-Grillet, dreams, Inception, Last Year at Marienbad, Marienbad, memories, movies, Nim, TSPDT
Leave a comment
John Wayne, Colonel Blimp and War Crimes
Two John Ford films and one Michael Powell flick ask the question – the bad guys don’t play nice, so why should the good guys? Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Boer Wars, Britain, Colonel Blimp, counterinsurgency, Dresden, ethics, genocide, holocaust, James Stewart, John Ford, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Michael Powell, movies, My Darling Clementine, politics, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, TSPDT, war, war crimes, WikiLeaks, World War II
Leave a comment
Viridiana – Mocking Charity
The idea that the poor are just as sinful as the rich doesn’t seem too revolutionary, until you look at the majority of Western art and literature. Usually we get the Charles Dickens trope. If only the mean rich people were to leave and the poor people were put in charge, things would run more smoothly.
Viridiana in contrast, might have been written by Ayn Rand. It’s about as anti-populist as you can get. Rand however, would have tossed in a Prometheus or two. Buñuel’s Calvinistic misanthropy allows for no heroes. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged charity, Christianity, communism, fascism, film, Franco, Luis Buñuel, movies, parody, politics, religion, satire, TSPDT, Viridiana
5 Comments
How To Tell If You’re In A Dream
How do we know we’re in the “real reality” and not in a dreamlike state, in someone else’s dream, in Tommy Westphall’s snow globe, in The Matrix, a brain in a vat, in Plato’s Cave, on The Truman Show or creations in The Sims 12? As Nolan demonstrates in Inception, we can’t.
Last month, director Errol Morris wrote a New York Times series on ‘The Anosognosic’s Dilemma.’ It’s about Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns.” We simply don’t know when we don’t know the limits of our own knowledge, either individually or collectively. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Christopher Nolan, dreams, epistemology, film, Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio, movies, philosophy, religion, science, science fiction
Leave a comment
Land Without Bread – The Original Borat
Luis Buñuel’s 1933 Land Without Bread is a hilarious parody of early ethnographic documentaries. I’m glad I saw it just a few days after The Song of Ceylon; seeing at least one example of the genre prior to Land Without … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged absurdism, anthropology, cinema, documentary, film, humor, Land Without Bread, Las Hurdes, Luis Buñuel, movies, parody, Spain, TSPDT
1 Comment
