Amadeus

the patron saint of mediocrity ABSOLVES YOU

Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham Asylum

In game logic, when your hero is in a cut scene, he becomes the ultimate pussy and is taken out by 3 goons after slaughtering a couple hundred of them single handedly. This is not Batman.

In game logic, once the screen goes black, something is going to pop up and scare the shit out of you or what bad guy was there a second ago will have disappeared. This is not Batman.

In Batman, you aren't worried about taking on 8 guys at once, you're worried about losing your combo meter.

More later.

Jackie Chan's Project A 2

What is this movie? A sequel thematically unlike its predecessor? A ode to silent comedians? A good kung fu movie? A political statement about colonialism, China's relationship and history with Hong Kong, socialism, and the police?

I don't know.

This could be the "best" Jackie Chan movie, if only in its coherence, not in its stunts or fight scenes. Why does John Woo get acclaim and Chan doesn't? This film is pieced together better than Hard Boiled, but film cannon will never savor over Chan the way it does a lot of other filmmakers.

There's the state of Chan's movies in America. Most are edited, poorly translated and dubbed with the same actors over and over again. They're relegated to studios that put out pointless trash. The Criterion Collection this isn't. Do movies need some sort of serious undertaking in our economics (in our DVD library) before they can be studied academically or on the merits of filmmaking?

Ken Burns' The National Parks: America's Best Idea

Burns' documentaries are exercises in emotional manipulation. Not that all documentaries aren't that, nor all movies. The problem is Burns' effectiveness and the simplicity of his technique. The transparency of the manipulation is evident, but does it matter? With series like the Civil War and The War, Burns was approaching large, heavy subjects with plenty of human emotion to draw on.

But how do you make the emotional connection with the National Parks? The same way he does with everything else. Poignant photographs, with lots of scenic spaces and figures in silhouette, inviting the viewer to place themselves there. It could be anyone's.

Simple emotional contact with nature. A picture of a gutted forest can make anyone feel ashamed. It should. There's a certain evil-figure looming above, industrious capitalists ready to feed upon the Earth. It's more black and white than war.

The title is a problem. It's a problem that the interviewees seem aware of, addressing it directly. They agree, but with stipulations. The best idea since we became a country. One of the best idea. Why did Burns stick with the title?

There's also the constant reminder from Burns' gallery of interviewees of the whole democratic embodiment found in the National Park system. This is where Burns looses a lot of interest, in the repetition of ideas and emotions that won't mean much for the casual observer. The stories of the people involved in the park are interesting, but even then it seems a repetition of the same struggles. We're introduced to a place and then a person or two. You can see where it goes.

Burns could be the most consistent filmmaker ever though. He works like a TV series often does, reusing style and assets that worked on previous shows. You can watch a documentary he made 20 years ago and nothing has changed. The titles have the same style, the format is the same, and the film stock is so similar that watching the NP felt like looking into a recent past where Burns was a big deal in pop culture. Now he's starting to feel antiquated. The talent is still there. He can still pack an emotional punch. But where's the change? It's easy to invite an attack on Burns' America, where change doesn't seem to come soon enough, a lot like real life.

Lenny Bruce is Dead by Jonathan Goldstein

all the thoughts that spin and wane in your head that amount to nothing have been stamped into a book about a horny jewish kid surrounded by colored, directionless people.

i like how the book begins without any mention of sex, almost like if it was tarnished with it, someone would stop reading, so he had to wait until they're pretty invested to whip out the weird shit.

if a stranger wanted to sit around and talk about failed relationships, his family, and his penis for an hour.

used all three persons, how clever. i liked the emotion. i liked the chronology.

we can talk about pickles, pillows, pizza, television, roller skating, stuffed animals. it will always have to do with his penis.

i like the fragments. i just don't like him. he seems like the kind of guy who wants to be the straight man so no one will think he's weird or dislike him. and he'll make little jokes under his breath and hope someone notices and if they don't he'll just go in the back and jerk off in a bathroom stall. which happens a lot.

"Mimi coughed out a beautiful white dove and then she died of a heart attack and then the dove died of a heart attack." 122

liked the flow and texture. he can get things laminated, perfect. but i couldn't get past the high probability that he wrote the book with a hand in his pants.

"Ayyaeah."

this book smells like the tiniest book store selling incense and little gold pendants

"butterfly wings of ass sweat"

your penis should not have more personality than you.

"They were talking about how sometimes you can reach a wonderful truth based on a lie and, at five in the morning, they held hands." 130

there is nothing poetic about your penis.

is heather honey? their love story could be a movie, it couldn't. it is a secret from the rest of the world.

shaddap you face

A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons

last paragraph pg 92: "We looked at all the pictures and then put the envelope away. I run across it every now and then but I've not opened it up. I don't need to, knowing what's in it. Knowing what's not in it. The next time June visited us I took just as many pictures of her, and I kept on taking them. Those I don't mind looking at. I can stare at those long enough to see what I want to, see her mine. It's just a matter of seeing what you want to see. People do it with hearing, thinking, and saying all the time. But seeing's harder, especially when you know that an old bulldog is never going to get you confused with her mama, but a little girl might. If you stay by her, she might."

a book of guesswork, flat jokes, sparse detail, elusive characters,

it is either a poem too long or a novel too short.

she has a beautiful voice through the female character, but no matter how simple you make a man, it doesn't seem a woman can quite capture his psyche (and vice-versa), and this book is no exception. the book alternates the main male and female voices per chapter. the last chapter is told in omniscient third person with thought italics for the characters involved.

the whole book is like blowing up a balloon for so long you think your lungs are gonna give out. then it's nearing close, you get to the last chapter, tie the sucker to a string, and wait for it to float. the whole last chapter is a dead balloon on a string. then you have to put a scissor through it and throw it out.

this is just to say

every little big atom of art that enters your brain is an icy plum. it's how we make a living.