The Three Versions of Batman
Have the Nolan Brothers been reading Borges?
The Matrix, American Beauty, and Fight Club as Retellings of Pink Floyd’s The Wall
A Sneak Preview from You Do Not Talk About Fight Club: I Am Jack’s Completely Unauthorized Essay Collection
In Metaphilm, and in these books . . .
Diane English, of Murphy Brown fame, directs an all-female cast in an almost all-female production called The Women. Is this one of those 18 million cracks in the ceiling, or is this revenge for Hillary not getting the nomination? The other odd thing is that Mick Jagger is one of the producers. Is Jagger paying his dues after getting all that satisfaction? Themes of the film, according to English, are Female Empowerment, Body Image, and Self-Esteem. Film is out September 12—interpretations welcome.
“During the Clinton era—when conspiracy theories ran riot—the show had a real connection to the American psyche. It had additional social resonance in the runup to the year 2000, when some religious folk were predicting world-changing events would occur because of divine intervention, and more earthbound doomsayers claimed that the U.S. economy was going to shut down because computers would not be able to handle the changeover to the year 2000. . . . Today, however, when we face real conspiracies such as 9/11 and the continuing Islam-based carnage in Iraq and in Europe, it seems the fanciful stuff of the X-Files no longer speaks to people. Now we have to believe in horrors we really don’t Want to Believe.” S. T. Karnick’s The American Culture.
Nick: I’m working my ass off, I’m off the sauce, I even stopped smoking
Beth Garner: How’s not smoking?
Nick: It sucks.
- From Basic Instinct (1992)
Get this: Joe Eszterhas has come to Jesus. Is life too weird, or what? Reminds me of the end of John Gardner’s Grendel: “An accident has befallen poor Grendel. So may it happen to you all...”
In The Matrix, Neo’s passport expired on 9/11/01. . . . Interpretations?
Dug up for you by someone at Terminal Pictures with way too much time on their hands.
From the web comic “Basic Instructions” by Scott Meyer, How to Analyze Classic Literature. Moby-Dick as “the greatest American novel ever written . . . about marriage.” Hits a bit close to home for us, but most amusing.
Stars, the Canadian-Indie band that brought you the ethereally wonderful Set Yourself On Fire (2005), has a new album that’s been out for almost a year, but which I’ve just listened to all summer, In Our Bedroom After the War. If you’re a Metaphilm phan, chances are good you’ll like this one too, especially the song, “Life 2: The Unhappy Ending” which is sort of a melancholy pop rendition of Neal Gabler’s book, Life, The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality. Where’s my unhappy ending now?
The Cinema IS the New Cathedral
The Truman Show as DSM V Category
When You Have to Run and Pee During the Film
True Grit and Canada
TIME magazine mock-ups in movies
The Princess Bride as Grading Rubric
Let’s Hope This Isn’t The Only Way Tree of Life Could Win
I’ll take my clothes off, and it will be shameless…
The Descendants on the Couch
Cinemetrics
“Nuked the Fridge” is the new “Jumped the Shark”
You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover, but You CAN Judge A Movie By Its Poster
These are the movies of The Moviegoer
Hollywood Star Makes Good
Synecdoche, New York
Truman Burbank, Call Your Office, STAT
Brent Plate Gets Even Closer to the Core of The Tree of Life
Life Imitates Art Which Imitates Life
Hell Burns for The Tree of Life
Slavoj Zizek Goes to See Transformers
