Via All About George, A.O. Scott applies Stanley Cavell to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I’m a big Cavell fan…in fact, his reading of Emersonian perfectionism figured heavily in (and, with Michael Sandel’s work, helped inspire) my political philosophy list last week. Can’t wait to see how Cities of Words turned out, and how close it dovetails with his old Moral Perfectionism course at Harvard.
Month: April 2004
Where my K-9s at?
So, I don’t know what’s stranger…the claim that P. Diddy, Snoop, and Jay-Z are allegedly donning rubber masks for the new Dr. Who revival on BBC, or the assertion that Diddy’s got a full-size gold-plated Dalek of bling. Puff Davros? Diddy Digs Daleks? I think somebody’s having me on. (By way of Triptych Cryptic.)
Terminator J.
He’s big, He’s mean, He’s pissed…He’s the Son of God? The NY Times examines the rise of “Angry Jesus” among conservative evangelicals and other Christian groups feeling swamped amid a rising tide of secularism (Never mind that Mel’s paean to gory Christian martyrdom is the highest grossing film of 2004, and that the White House of the most powerful nation on Earth is currently manned by a born-again biblethumper.) C’mon y’all…to use the parlance of the movement, WWJD? Somehow, I’d think He’d err on the side of love and forgiveness, not run around like the Rock wreaking havoc on sinners and unrepentants. But perhaps I’m just old-fashioned.
(Bat)Man about Town.
Ok, it’s just Christian Bale in a suit. Still, if you suspend belief, you’ve got the first look at Batman Begins Bruce Wayne here. In related news, the official site, in an attempt to keep the fanboy buzz happy, put up a few shots of the new Batmobile online last week. Hmm…it looks like a cross between a monster truck and the troop transport in Aliens.
The Return of Harvey.
It’s official…A year after reneging on their two-year deal, the cretins at Sci-Fi have agreed to resurrect Farscape for the Peacekeeper War, a four-hour miniseries set for this fall. It’ll be nice to see Crichton & co. return for closure, and I’ll definitely have to break the Sci-Fi boycott for this event. Still, we were supposed to get 22 episodes, not 4 hours. Frellers…
Jackie Bond.
As the second chapter of the disappointing Kill Bill comes to the screen, Quentin Tarantino suggests making a low-budget Casino Royale, with Brosnan remaining as 007. Might be interesting, and it’s really a win-win for MGM…but the Bond franchise is so poorly run that I suspect Wilson and Broccoli will let this opportunity slip.
Down for the Count.
After the comparative restraint of Eternal Sunshine, Jim Carrey gets loony again in the teaser for Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. I haven’t read these books, so I can’t comment on the fidelity here. It’ll take something more than this teaser to pique my interest in this project, though.
Hell Hath No Fury.
Well, I’ve only read a handful of issues of the comic over the years, but I could tell Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy looks and feels just about perfect. You can’t really ask for a better Big Red than Ron Perlman here, and John Hurt always brings class to the equation. The film’s got Rasputin, both post-dead Nazi ninjas and evil blonde Nazi temptresses (a.k.a Darth Maul and Indy 3‘s Ilsa Schneider respectively), and even heavy shades of the Cthulhu mythos. What more should a fanboy desire?
And yet, perhaps it was due to a post-orals energy slump, but I found the movie kinda slow and uninvolving. The curse of any first comic movie is the origin stuff (although in Spiderman at least, that turned out to be the best part of the film), and here I thought all of the backstory and character introductions took just a little too long. Then we have Hellboy beating up Sammael the Hellhound over and over again for an hour, followed by a rather cheesy and nonsensical third act in Russia (with heavy borrowing from the Temple of Doom this time, and particularly when Agent Myers has his rosary moment…soon Kali Ma will rule the world!) I probably enjoyed Hellboy most when it was pushing the unfathomable evils of Lovecraft angle, but tuned out slightly whenever it was time to punch out another hellhound, which, sadly, was most of the movie.
Perhaps I’m being too hard on Hellboy. The acting was good all around, and, really, it’s undoubtedly going to be better than 4 out of 5 comic movies this year (Case in point: The Punisher.) Still, while I wasn’t expecting as lyrical as The Devil’s Backbone, I was expecting a popcorn film as fun as Blade II…and in that category, I thought Hellboy was somewhat wanting. Then again, it took a second go for Bryan Singer to get the X-Men popping, so perhaps Del Toro can cut to the chase in a Hellboy 2.
The End of History.
“The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. – Karl Marx” Yeah, well, not anymore. As of this afternoon, the orals process is complete (although I do plan to fix up the subsite quite a bit), and I’m now ABD (All But Dissertation for you folks out there with real jobs.) I’m not going to go blow-by-blow into it here, but the exam went well for the most part…I definitely think I could’ve answered a few of the questions more lucidly, but so be it. At any rate, plan for updates here to resume their usual schedule, once I complete the rest of the week’s goal of doing absolutely nothing. Speaking of which, I think it’s nap-time…