*I WROTE THIS A LONG WHILE AGO
“What did you expect?”
William Stoner, of the novel Stoner, asks himself, reassessing his life’s trials at its tail end. He had been a failure in marriage, in parentage, and in professorship by most standards, and yet where we could find sadness, we find the calm of a principled life. The book’s lessons of tempered expectations, as well as other things, have stuck well with me in 2016.
It’s a quietly revolutionary book that gets my highest recommendation.
As a kind of movie dude, people are always asking what I think/thought of the Oscars. both the controversies and the winners. I’ve always seen the value of the awards. When I was a kid, the Oscars winners list was a valuable roadmap of cinema. In fact, besides the AFI top 100, there probably isn’t a more utilized list. So when the awards roll around, I take it as a chance to demonstrate certain values I hold in modern movies.
All that said, I’ve been burned out by the controversy. I’m frayed so far that my gut reaction to common “What do you think of the lack of diversity in the Oscars this and last year?” rejects my old high school dreams.
Why would you want to win an Oscar?
When did we think that the Academy/Hollywood was anything more than a den of the rich? Do people think it’s an institution of good? It’s not a just industry or even a sensible one? Making films is somewhat a fool’s gambit, and one that should be rigorously questioned. Films are a luxury item of the very wealthy pale ruling class.
I don’t want to push aside very valuable concerns, I just think that maybe filmmaking isn’t something to be 100% proud of.
END RANT
Media of the Week
- Stoner (above)
- Zootoopia
My roommate Max shares my concerns with the very charming new Disney movie.
Sometimes you don’t know if you’ve moved forward or permanently screwed up your life. The short little novel about a young Texas writer coming to California demonstrates why the prettiest girls don’t make good wives and the best pancakes are always back home.
I went to this very cool show at the Largo. Five men in Elizabethan garb performing Shakespeare sort of. Pretty spicy stuff. Only it’s all made up, conceived on the spot, an extrapolation of a title suggested from the audience. It was the most I’d laughed since the wake. Contrary to Max’s opinion, performing made up Shakespeare in front of hundreds of people is something I would never in a million years of practice be able to do.
Ti West made my personal favorite horror movie, The House of the Devil, so I’m for sure gonna see all his movies. For someone who knows a solid amount about the Jonestown Massacre, this film left me very uncomfortable in its specificity.
Growing up, I was super into the Giant Squid. I read books. I took classes at the academy of sciences. I was into it.
On my family’s trip to Ireland, my dad and I took boat out into the Dingle Bay. Early in the morning, I peered into the green water and saw a white mass of flesh. Scared, I ordered my dad back to shore. At a museum later that day, my parents took a photo of me with a model squid with much glee.
In eighth grade, Japanese scientists took the first photo of the Giant Squid, which had pretty much been my life’s goal until that point. I cried that day.
In high school, I discovered that Dingle Bay had an Architeuthis sighting two hundred years ago.
It’s a part of my life I revisit every four years or so.
Tagpro is a fantastic time-wasting game, with an excellent community that recalls that joyous nights of Halo 3.
The new EP grew on me. Aside from the very cool “Can’t Stop Fightin'” it felt full of deep cuts. Nonetheless, the songs on III are whisky-soaked joys.
- What We Do in the Shadows
This is the funniest movie I’ve seen all year.
- Emotional Mugger
This album has an absolute ripper of a song, but it needs to be earned through listening some of the most bizarre pop west of the Mississippi. This album is noisey and dirty and super nuts. Have a go at it.
The Life of Joe 