January 2011
28 posts
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The wounded bird narrative
This story, almost heartbreaking in its poignancy, could almost have slipped from the pages of Mary Oliver, one of Williams’s favourite poets – or, for that matter, from one of her own films, which are filled with such moments combining the elegiac and the everyday. (Tom Shone, Michelle Williams “Blue Valentine” interview, The Telegraph) Is it me, or is there something...
“…the secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a...”
– Buster Keaton tells you how to fall, 1914.
In Which We Put On A Cool Pair Of Sunglasses
mollylambert:
Author Photos, Facebook, & How To Portray Yourself, ML x TR
“It is difficult enough to be injured or gravely ill. To add to this the burden...”
– What did you think of Richard Sloan’s Times op-ed, “A Fighting Spirit Won’t Save Your Life?” The narrative of disease in American/Western culture is a strange thing. You see enough variations of cancer and it’s pretty obvious that cancer isn’t particularly...
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Real Amazon Reviews
One star for Laura Lippman’s Baltimore Blues: A Letdown for Rowers, January 11, 2010
By
[redacted]
This review is from: Baltimore Blues: A Tess Monaghan Novel (Tess Monaghan Mysteries) (Hardcover)
I read about one novel per decade. I picked up this one, having heard that it has characters who are rowers. (I myself row.) I was astonished, however, to encounter on page 10 a passage in...
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“Don’t even get me started about having to watch Claire Danes age into a sinewy...”
– “My Rayannes” by Emma Straub on the Paris Review website. Her book Other People We Married is coming out very soon - I had the chance to read an ARC of it and I loved it so much. Terrifically funny, with goofy laughter and sadness that was truly, truly reminiscent of Lorrie Moore.
Go read Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, one of my favorite books ever, I have all these FEELINGS about it - as a winter read, it is difficult, wrenching, and heartbreakingly beautiful - and then go read firstpersonsingular’s great interview with Nick Flynn on The Rumpus. I’m really curious about what will happen with the imminent film version, set to star Paul Dano* (who has been...
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Michael Fassbender hates shirts
Exhibit A: Fish Tank (2009) Exhibit B: 300 (2006)
Exhibit C: Hunger (2008) Exhibit D: Centurion (2010) Is it written in his contract? Why did Tarantino make him wear a shirt in Inglourious Basterds, thus, TAMING the Fassbender charm? The secret Fassbender weapon? His next film’s going to be Jane Eyre (obviously, Mr. Rochester’s manliness and animalistic sexual charm is linked to...
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Peter Yates Died
A great film director who never, ever pigeonholed himself. The same guy made Bullitt, Breaking Away, and The Friends of Eddie Coyle. You should watch these films! Breaking Away is one of my favorite films ever, and The Friends of Eddie Coyle is arguably the best Boston film ever. I’m not exaggerating!! I wrote a tribute to Eddie Coyle a couple of years ago, before it was reissued on a...
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At the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, Armond... →
seanfennessey:
Breathtaking.
Armond White’s ridiculousness and condescension is rather epic. And yet! There is a part of me that thinks he’s really, truly, one of the most interesting film critics around, in print. Sure, you could guess that he’s going to pan Blue Valentine. That’s easy. But what’s he going to compare it to? David Bowie and Twyla Tharp’s...
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“It was, perhaps, the worst time in history to be starting out as a writer. In...”
– From Blake Bailey’s Cheever: A Life. (It’s not… unfamiliar sounding, is it?)
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Lessons from Drunk Irishmen
I just started watching The Wire recently, as a reward for finishing a big project. (I am currently on s04, e09, dreading the heartbreak that’s surely ahead. To quote Lorrie Moore: “On the other hand, so engrossing, heart-tugging, and uncertain are the various story arcs that watching in this manner one becomes filled with a kind of mesmerized dread.” Yup.) In an age of...
