Monday, March 19, 2007
Is Sandra Bullock the Cure for the Common Cold?
Dave White’s compelling interpretation of the psychosomatic relationship between Sandra Bullock’s films and the viewer’s health.
Monday, March 12, 2007
This Is Not Happening
This Is Not Happening.
This Is Not Happening.
This Is Not Happening.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
The Matrix Meets YouTube
“You think that’s air that you’re breathing?” Thanks, um, to Bob Gates for the link, we think.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
This Comes Highly Recommended
This comes highly recommended, from several sources.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Da Vinci Code CleAVes You Wondering
From the “we can’t help but wonder” department: notice the font similarities between the CLEAVE logo’s use of the AV (designed 1998, launched 1999) and the movie graphics for The Da Vinci Code, using the same AV design in which the A and V are inversions of each other. The ancient correlation between the two is seen in the star of David, in which the upward-pointing triangle is the symbol of man, fire (sacrifice), smoke (prayer), and therefore mankind, while the downward pointing triangle is the symbol of woman, water, mercy (rain), and judgment (flood), and therefore the godhead. So presumably Man(kind) and God will get along just as soon as men and women get along… I wonder how long before ViAgra takes notice and changes their logo?
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Another Calvin & Hobbes and Fight Club Connection
Thanks to Thomas Sowell for sending us the link to this one, which reconfirms our original conviction. In related news, we’re extending the deadline and reupping the call for papers for Fight Club and Philosophy, due to the fact that we received far fewer submissions than promised. E-mail to if you’ve got something you’ve always wanted to work on—Chuck Palahniuk has agreed to write the intro, so hit us as hard as you can.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Sacred Profanity
No wonder they call it The Holy Land. A spoof ad from Holy Virals, found on Metacafe, makes a pitch for Israeli tourism by remaking the connection that Jesus Jeans made back in the 1970’s. At the opening of the clip, notice the Metacafe logo font and “Are you bored?” tagline—look familiar?
Friday, January 14, 2005
Matrix Ghosts
In cinema, what’s the line between “homage” and “plagiarism”? Today’s case study: The Matrix and Ghost in the Shell compared scene by scene.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
The Gospel of Tomorrow
Sandy Starr at Spiked has an excellent discussion of The Day After Tomorrow as Green propaganda. Entertainment or science? “The answer you get from the filmmakers depends on whether they stand to gain publicity from a scientific debate about the film (in which case, it’s serious), or whether you’re taking them to task over the film’s scientific accuracy (in which case, it’s just entertainment). You have to hand it to the marketing department—the blurring of fact and fiction is an ingenious promotional technique.” Heads you win, tails I lose. “What purpose can raising ‘awareness’ of an unlikely or impossible scenario possibly serve, other than encouraging people to be more afraid than is rational? And why would scientists, of all people, wish to encourage such irrationality?”
Well Sandy, since you ask, it occurs to me that this is a reminder that ]http://www.perc.org/publications/articles/Crichtonspeech.php] much of environmentalism is, as Michael Crichton has argued recently, more religion than science[/url]. This movie is thus more than mere propaganda (boring). It is proselytizing (even more boring, not to mention hypocritical given the Passion hysteria). I’m all in favor of religion in movies, but let’s at least be honest about it. Truth in advertising? In this case let’s try starting with truth in science.
