December 2009
72 posts
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Up in the Air (2009)
Someone told me this review was didactic and I told them I didn’t know what that meant.
filmosophy:
JUST SOMEBODY WHO’S LOST
by Chris Cantoni
I really like Jason Reitman’s films. Thank You for Smoking, Juno, and now Up in the Air? I connect to these movies. And not just the movies but the people too! It’s not that I like them all or think they’re super slick. But Reitman’s...
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“He did not like the girl sitting next to him, and it offended him that she...”
– Confessions of an author, clearly. Paul Auster writing about Quinn pretending to be Paul Auster while also writing as William Wilson. The New York Trilogy, City of Glass
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Santa Wants Me To Be So Mad Luxurious
tesslynch:
Do you know what I can do now, post-Christmas, that I couldn’t do before?
I can crack open a bottle of wine from a CASE OF WINE, sit in a CASHMERE BLAZER with CASHMERE FINGERLESS GLOVES and A CASHMERE SCARF, play SCRABBLE SUPERDELUXE EDITION or SIMS 3 WORLD EXPLORER EXPANSION PACK, fix myself an elaborate dinner prepared in a CUISINART ELITE FOOD PROCESSOR and LE CREUSET CASSEROLE...
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If I was going to rename my blog, I'd name it...
That, or Darmok at Tanagra.
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how do you christmas shop?
areyoucallingmefat:
do you wear a pink button-down shirt and ask the borders guy where the gay fiction section is? does he tell you it’s behind the poetry section?
cool, we shop the same way.
areyoucallingmefat is killing me today.
“It’s a gradual descent into a life you never meant.”
– Rilo Kiley, “A Man/Me/Then Jim”
Sometimes I get scared that this will be me, and it’s the most terrifying thing I can think of.
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I hate when the last peanut M&M tastes like old...
kellyegan:
ughh.
I hate that I understand this. What is up with that?
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How to Avoid Getting a Headache During Avatar (or... →
moranga:
Yeah, I had myself a wicked headache, or maybe eyestrain, after seeing Avatar. I definitely suggest you follow their suggestions.
( Via: popculturebrain: Gotta read up on this before I see Avatar tomorrow. (via /Film) )
This won’t work. From what I’ve read (and not being an actual eye doctor), we get eyestrain headaches from 3D movies because typically when something...
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Don’t do it.
sometimesagreatnotion:austra:
If it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it.
Unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it.
If you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don’t do it.
If you’re doing it for money or fame, don’t do it.
...
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“Teachers of Literature are apt to think up such problems as “What is the...”
– Vladimir Nabokov, On a Book Entitled Lolita
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“I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.”
– Lolita
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“That’s not nothing. That’s not the worst record of any 21st Century public...”
– All Hail Bernanke! Matthew Yglesias’ response to Time’s Man of the Year.
Polar bears are EATING EACH OTHER! →
via
Sadface.
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Irving Penn - Small Trades
Last week I had the fortune of visit the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Currently on display is a collection of photographs from Irving Penn, who passed away in October. The collection, Small Trades, includes over 250 full length portraits of various people in their work uniforms, covering Paris, London, and New York.
The photographs, the solitary figure, uniformed, holding a fire hose, a loaf...
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Bonus Quiz
Guess what Monsterbeard hates more than roaches.
Can you guess?
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Talkin' bout bloggin'
Claire: you be bloggin
always
like my slang?
me: hahaha
yes
i be bloggin
Claire: you should write about me in your blog
because i'm so interesting
between my slang and cacti
you could make me sound so cool
me: I'm putting all that you just said in. that's a promise
Claire: ok wait
me: nope, we're done
Claire: that's not what i was suggesting
me: too late
Claire: don't use my name!
EVERYONE WILL KNOW WHO I REALLY AM
me: why not?
what do you want your code name to be?
Claire: margaret
ahahaha
NO i'm kidding
i hate that name
me: make it something cool
like RavenFIRE
just like that
Claire: i don't know. i guess you can use my first name.
just don't embarrass me
me: do you find any part of this conversation embarrassing?
Claire: my part
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“I’m of two minds. Sometimes I think what women should do what various black and...”
– The great Manohla Dargis of the NY Times on why there aren’t enough movies for women out there. Great read. (via klendathudrop)
Yes. Read it. If she made more jokes she’d be the Jon Stewart of Hollywood. Can I say that?
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Grass, unromantic
My friend asked me to write about grass in an unromantic context, so this is what I did. It is fictional.
I do not remember the shot. I don’t remember the exact moment. There was him, and then there was the ground. There was no in between. All I could hear was the rustle of leaves and my hands on the grass. Not green anymore, not in the moonlight, but a muted blue almost, if you’ve seen...
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Remember to write about
Paul Blart
Irving Penn
People I once knew in high school
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“Wallace’s autobiographical I, whether writing about tennis, porn, television, or...”
– Troy Patterson, “David Foster Wallace: Self-Absorbed Genius” (via nerdshares)
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NY Mag: When TV Became Art →
bibliotheque:
Bla bla bla, The Wire is the best thing in the world which is a fucking fact of course.
While I agree with the great TV of the past decade, plenty of people aren’t watching plenty of great stuff. Arrested Development, Freaks and Geeks, Veronica Mars, Firefly, The Comeback: all shows that no one watched and got axed prematurely.
Even The Wire itself barely got to 5...
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“I realized that the point I was trying to push with these two programmed robots...”
– WALL-E Q&A with Andrew Stanton. You really should go read the whole thing.
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French Kiss (1995)
filmosophy:
Anyway, we start out with Meg Ryan on a plane. Throughout the movie she’s dressed in that way any mom circa the 90s was dressing and doing it better than all of them. She’s got the short-but-not-too-short hair, the high pants, the sneakers. Basically, Meg Ryan was Ellen before Ellen, although who pulls it off better is certainly up for debate (in my opinion, both woman are...
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Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
filmosophy:
The memories of her will always be positive. There will be a lot of I should have done this, I should have done that, while she was here, and then doing it. There will be a lot of compensating. There will be a lot of carpe diem, a lot of living the way we were meant to live. In the moment, unafraid, with feeling. I don’t care if I’m not the love of your life. I don’t care if you are in...