December 2010
28 posts
“Any literary judgement consists in trumping up a set of rules to support an...”
– George Orwell
Contest: What is Wrong with This New York Times...
Still, the message that the year sent about quality and originality is real enough that studios are tweaking their operating strategies. Sony Pictures Entertainment, the studio behind “The Social Network,” is trying to bet more heavily on new directors with quirkier sensibilities. To reboot its “Spider-Man” franchise, for instance, Sony hired Marc Webb, whose only previous film was the indie...
I Can't Stop Myself: My War Against Somewhere... →
I Can't Stop Myself: My War Against Somewhere... →
Does anyone know the exact date when the present tense became the official tense of writers straining for edginess?
Is it edgy because it’s a retro thing? A throwback to writers in the 60’s and 70’s who actually understood the english language well enough to take the occasional license with their verb forms?
Or is it edgy because it’s RIGHT! NOW! As in this, this...
“Esquire’s Stacey Grenrock Woods Questions Aziz Ansari on self-proclaimed...”
– Read it all. Now. Here.
“To watch it is to slowly succumb to a kind of corporate poison that spreads...”
– Jeff Wells on Little Fockers
Accentageddon! I deal with The Tourist and the... →
Cavalcade of Schlock Self-Justifications Rolls On
Yesterday, we had Michael Bay’s contribution to the pantheon, explaining that he makes Transformers films out of concern for the toymakers who would be unemployed without him.
Today, joining the parade, the formerly hugely well-regarded director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck explains that making a big budget studio star vehicle was out testing his boundaries, as an artist.
The NY Times...
The March of Book Self-Promotion Begins →
Modern Arts
Michael Bay on how he came to reconcile himself to the inevitability that much as it pained him, he had to make Transformers 3:
I was gonna do my small movie I keep talking about, and the studio just said—the true story is, they took me to Vegas, they wanted to celebrate it breaking $400 million domestic, they gave me a martini, they gave me another one, I don’t really drink two martinis, they...
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I handicap the Grammys at Le Awl. Deathmatch is on between Zambora and Paul Winter Consort. Two flautists enter; only one will leave. Get in on the action here.
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