- "Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." — James Joyce
- "Say, any of you boys smithies? Or, if not smithies per se, were you otherwise trained in the metallurgic arts before straitened circumstances forced you into a life of aimless wanderin'?" — Ulysses Everett McGill
Category Archives: movies
Zero Dark Thirty: The Ashes Of American Flags
Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty is politically abhorrent, an ideologue’s digest of how torture “works” on behalf of democratic governments seeking to defend from or avenge themselves upon terrorism. There’s no debate: by means of torture, CIA operative Maya (Jessica … Continue reading
The Monster In The Painting
There’s a moment in Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) that seizes the eye. The film holds many small wonders of composition, but this one hides just beyond the shoulder of the actor holding the frame, and it suggests … Continue reading
Wednesday’s Heroes: Christopher Drake
xx Somebody’s gotta keep these projects classy. DC Universe, the animated arm of the DC Comics empire, has carved out a niche by mining and exploiting classic comics storylines for direct-to-video product. How they manage that material is up for … Continue reading
Posted in comics, movies, music
Tagged batman, christopher drake, composers, DC comics, green lantern, superman
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The Only Way The End Of SKYFALL Makes Any Sense (spoilers)
Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) represents a new element in the rebooted universe where Daniel Craig holds the James Bond role. Previously, this Bond has answered truculently to the stentorian MI6 director addressed only by the letter M (Dame Judi Dench). … Continue reading
Loving The Vampire: Tony Scott And The Arc Toward ‘Twilight’
Pendulum swings in culture are slow and ponderous; they only seem to come all at once because you’re not paying attention. Tony Scott, the famed filmmaker who took his own life this week, represents a point on the arc which … Continue reading
Batman: The Character Of A City
Anton Furst chose to die by architecture. It’s darkly fitting, because the production designer of Tim Burton’s Batman films had hinted to us that architecture could kill — specifically, that a city could be a mad thing, hostile to the … Continue reading
Things I Liked And Disliked About THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
Spoilers. LIKED: Andrew Garfield Blinky, twitchy, mumbly, maybe a dash too much of each, sure — but his Peter Parker is a smart, bruised kid who’s jittery with the fear that he’ll lose even more than he already has.
I Talked To This Lady And She Is Awesome
“My real name is Noreen Roth, but after I played J. Carrol Naish’s daughter in a film, The Southerner, my agent suggested changing it to Noreen Nash (without the ‘I’). Everything was alliteration in those days — Greer Garson, Marilyn … Continue reading
The 9 People You Meet In A Film-Review Comment Thread
By Friday, Walter Chaw’s Prometheus review was on its way to being the most-clicked-ever at Film Freak Central, where I write sometimes. Walter and site editor Bill Chambers assessed its wealth of reader comments, goaded on by me, Abby Holmes … Continue reading →