Monday, February 12, 2007
A confession: I adore “Irreplacable”, the latest single from Beyonce. The phrasing is wonderful. Beyonce sings with a taut precision that perfectly captures the underlying tension beneath the lyrics: she says this guy is irreplacable, but her repeated, adamant lyrical insistence of this fact belies her claim. Certain phrases delivered in succession (“To [...]
Given the fact that Martin Scorsese stands a good chance of winning the Best Director Oscar in a few weeks, I thought it might be a good time to ask: To what degree is Scorsese responsible for the Iraq war?
Okay, that’s absurd. More specifically, and more seriously, I’m bringing up the issue of violence [...]
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Mike asked me awhile back to write something about Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man.” I read the book a few years ago and found it a ripping read, the kind of big idea book that actually delivered the goods.
The book is based on an influential article Fukuyama wrote [...]
“[The novel] is an exercise of make-believe that, like yoga or a religious festival, breaks down barriers of space and time and extends our sympathies, so that we are able to empathise with other lives and sorrows. It teaches compassion, the ability to ‘feel with’ others. And, like mythology, an important novel is transformative … [...]
Saturday, January 20, 2007
The idea of consumption is something I often puzzle over. There is the anti-materialist expression: “You are not what you own”. I tend to agree with this, in so far as my worth is not connected the status of any particular objects I own. But in a more abstract sense, I do [...]
Thursday, January 4, 2007
I don’t have much of a review of the film, at least on par with Mike’s reviews. I enjoyed it whole lot more than I thought I would. It’s an action film about illegal diamond mining in Africa with some unexpected plot twists, powered by Leonardo DiCaprio’s finest performance in recent years. [...]
Friday, December 22, 2006
From Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, in which fifty-two year old Clarissa contemplates a moment from when she was eighteen:
“It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation [...]
Sunday, December 17, 2006
I have been haunted for some time now by the notion that I am somehow less human for not finding the time or inclination to write fiction, learn an instrument, or create something that was not there before, preferably in a manner which exerts a profound influence on the rest of humanity. If I [...]
Monday, December 11, 2006
Mel Gibson’s latest film Apocalypto, like his last film The Passion of the Christ, is coming in for criticism due to its excessive violence. Here is Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, in an excerpt from his review that he read with considerable indignance on NPR last Friday:
Gibson unblushingly intends “Apocalypto” as a [...]
Saturday, December 9, 2006
Question: What is the ethical obligation of the West to the people of Darfur?
Here in California there are now ads on TV in which several actors pose as “persons on the street” and read excerpts of letters from the people of Darfur that speak of numerous horrors. At the end of the ad the [...]
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