Culture Snob Normally, lists of the best or worst of anything offend my sensibilities, but Blender magazine’s fifty worst songs ever seems to nail it, topped by Starship’s “We Built This City.” I hated it way back in 1985, when I liked a lot of awful stuff.
Because I believe dead horses should be beaten, Snob heroine Dahlia Lithwick writes an amusing but bitter piece on the topic of the U.S. Supreme Court and the death penalty.
21 Grams is a beautifully made formal exercise – a story chopped up into so many bits that the audience spends almost all of its energy putting the pieces together. But the structure is so overpowering that it’s difficult to evaluate the content; one viewing suggests the narrative is too under-developed to survive scrutiny or a linear telling.
What, exactly, is one supposed to get from Errol Morris’ latest movie, The Fog of War, winner of this year’s Oscar for best documentary? This feature-length interview with Robert McNamara – secretary of defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations – is more mirror than painting, allowing many critics to read into it exactly what they bring in. It’s a curious effect, but not entirely surprising.
My dictionary says a requiem is a musical composition or somber chant in honor of the dead, but Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream is more like a howl of pain that builds slowly over 100 minutes to an intensity that’s nearly impossible to bear.
The founder of Decent Films has started a discussion on my recent rant “The Morality of Movies.” The people who have posted so far make some interesting and valid points. Worth checking out.
I’ve been fascinated for a few months by the cleverly titled Web site Decent Films, whose slogan is “film appreciation, information, and criticism informed by Christian faith.” The site has an abundance of thoughtful writing about movies, and it’s frequently clever and funny. Still, there’s something disturbing about it.
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick is my favorite legal writer, because she invariably cuts through the bullshit and makes the U.S. Supreme Court sound fun and catty. She’s also excellent at clearly laying out the issues of a case and talking about it both legal and practical terms. Yesterday’s dispatch on the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is a perfect example.
The new issue of Rolling Stone features a series of essays on 50 “legendary” artists by musicians who aren’t quite as legendary. John Mayer contributes a well-written piece on Jimi Hendrix, saying, “He is the common denominator of every style of contemporary music.” That’s a stretch, but he makes a pretty good case.
It’s finally time to look at Charlie Kaufman as a serious screen artist. The scribe who gave us Being John Malkovich and Adaptation has always been imposingly intelligent, clever, and inventive in both his conceits and plots, but it was easy to question his heart. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind finally shows that he has more to offer than left-field premise and ambitious narrative structure.
