is considered by many to be the first great Western epic, and established some of the cliches which later became so well known, such as the circling of the wagons in preparation for an "Indian Attack".
After nearly two decades spent on British soil, Bill Bryson -bestselling author of The Mother Tongue and Made in America- decided to return to the United States. ("I had recently read," Bryson writes, "that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another,so it was clear that my people needed me.") But before departing, he set out on a grand farewell tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home.
Veering from the ludicrous to the endearing and back again, Notes from a Small Island is a delightfully irreverent jaunt around the unparalleled floating nation that has produced zebra crossings, Shakespeare, Twiggie Winkie's Farm, and places with names like Farleigh Wallop and Titsey. The result is an uproarious social commentary that conveys the true glory of Britain, from the satiric pen of an unapologetic Anglophile.
This marked the first time a wrestler had come from one win behind to claim the yusho on the final day since Asashoryu defeated Hokutoriki in a playoff in May 2004.
there is certainly much to admire in this 1958 meditation on aging, recollection and resolve, ... Gunnar Fischer's stark black-and-white photography is rich and stunning, the performances are natural and pitch-perfect, and the narrative is carefully and exquisitely tailored.
Tasked with solving an impossible double murder, detective John Finch searches for the truth among the war-weary ruins of the once-mighty city of Ambergris. Under the six-year rule of its inhuman gray cap masters, Ambergris is slowly crumbling into anarchy. The remnants of a rebel force are dispersed, their leader, the mysterious Lady in Blue, missing. Citizens are being interned in camps. Collaborators roam the streets keeping brutal order. But Finch also has to contend with new forces rising, like the enigmatic spymaster Ethan Bliss, and the contamination of his partner, Wyte, who is literally disintegrating under the strain.
In this powerful and poignant novel, the past and the future, the cosmic and the gritty, collide. What will happen if Finch solves the case? What will happen if he doesn’t? And will Ambergris ever be the same?
is a compelling experience, a fungalpunk nightmare pullulating with dark, phantasmagorical transformations: it works equally as a stylish detective story, a perverse example of the New Weird fantasy subgenre, and an effective metaphor for the dehumanising effects of occupying forces and totalitarian regimes.
In Balthazar, little is numinous. We are placed in a hard, corporeal world of rucked, muddy fields and of things and objects, some of them signifiers of a modernity Bresson finds wantingDVD Talk says, "Its appeal is as basic as a silent melodrama, or a bittersweet Chaplin film, minus the overt sentimentality." Roger Ebert considers it a "great" movie and opens with this:
Robert Bresson is one of the saints of the cinema, and "Au Hasard Balthazar" (1966) is his most heartbreaking prayer.Senses of Cinema says,
Balthazar is a parable of sin and suffering, but barely a religious one. The Biblical echoes in it in fact seem referential (not reverential).... This Bresson creation, the donkey Balthazar, is one of the most intriguing and powerful in all cinema.Slant Magazine says it "might be the most rewarding film in the upper reaches of virtually every last "greatest film ever" poll". Time Out says that "the film is perhaps the director's most perfectly realised, and certainly his most moving."
The Howling is such a potent reworking of its age-old subject that it’s easy enough to understand how it could spawn six or more sequels over the next fifteen years.Moria gives it 3 stars. Roger Ebert gives it 2 stars and a review that's one of the least informative I've ever read.
For those old enough to enjoy the books, however, the action is large-scale and awesome. The 3-D isn't essential to the viewing—it neither adds much depth nor throws things out at you, and feels like an afterthought. What does add depths are the suggestions of a larger mythology connecting Earth and Mars that seems like it might be fun to explore more of. Let's hope we get that chance.Leonard Maltin says,
no movie so rich in imagination and so skillfully staged could or should be dismissed out of hand. If you have even the slightest curiosity about John Carter, I’d encourage you to see it.The Christian Science Monitor gave it a C+ and called it "fun-free". The Hollywood Reporter says
the film will likely delight sci-fi geeks most of all, but there's enough here for general Disney audiences as well to generate solid box office worldwide.Slant Magazine hated it, saying it's "not just boring, but ugly, ungainly, and nonsensical." Film Journal says, "It's too good a movie to dismiss outright, but not memorable enough to build a big fan base of repeat viewers."
D-503 has a soul!
In the future, in a glass-enclosed city of absolutely straight lines, nameless "numbers" -survivors of a devastating war- live out their lives devoid of passion and creativity. The Benefactor gazes down perpetually and sees all. Then, suddenly, D-503, a mathematician who "dreams in numbers," makes a shocking discovery: he has an individual soul!
WE is D-503's passionate adventure in the nightmare world of "unfreedom."
Working in a variety of formats, Brakhage’s films are exceedingly expressionistic abstractions, ranging from amorphous collages of vaguely superimposed imagery of his life and family, to direct manipulation with film stock scratched and splattered with paint.My Mind's Eye has an interview from when Brakhage was 60 in which he says, "one of the most vibrant ways to be dedicated to the arts is to be highly suspicious of every historical or inherited aspect of it". An article at Criterion's site says
...
Unlike traditional filmmakers, Brakhage wanted to divest consciousness from its representative trappings to allow for an unfettered vision of the subjective experience.
In his best-known pronouncement, he summons the movie viewer to “imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective...How many colors are there in a field of grass to a baby unaware of 'Green'? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye?” Although he readily admits that any actual return to a state of “innocent,” childlike vision is impossible, lhe persistent project throughout his vast oeuvre has been to guide the eye in a journey of “untutoring,” using every possible cinematic tool as leverage for that journey.Poets.org says, "Through his insistence on exploring the bounds of perception, poets and other artists felt deeply connected to Brakhage’s work." The Guardian obituary says
For Brakhage, the goal of cinema was the liberation of the eye itself, the creation of an act of seeing, previously unimagined and undefined by conventions of representation, an eye as natural and unprejudiced as that of a cat, a bee or an infant.
Can so many well-turned paragraphs and craftsmanlike chapters really add up to a bad book? They can and they do, when the motor's missing. C+
he remains a singular archetype in rock history, part of a band that would have been first-ballot shoo-ins in any Rock and Roll Hall of Fame devoted to the real history of the genre. The Monkees weren't the first packaged rock band, but they might have been the best, and no Monkee seemed more comfortable with this legacy than Davy Jones.SF Gate says,
The Monkees star Micky Dolenz has been left “bewildered” by the death of his band mate Davy Jones because the star was the youngest and healthiest of the group.Rolling Stone opens with this:
Davy Jones was the grooviest of the Monkees, which makes him one of the grooviest pop stars who ever existed.CNN:
Despite their undoubtedly contrived origins, they turned out to be one of pop's finest bands, arguably the most underrated in rock history.
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