Thursday, July 30, 2009

Victory Over the Future









These are from a series of watercolors titled "Landscapes of the Future" by Pavel Pepperstein, my favorite artist featured at the Venice Biennale this year. Pepperstein's work was part of the Russian pavillion's "Victory Over the Future" group exhibition.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Welcome to Earf...


So I actually saw Orphan last night (I already heard you hated it Nate) and I have to say, it was everything a stupid horror flick should be. I mean we're not talking Drag Me To Hell here but it is a film that really does serve it's purpose. In a nutshell I enjoyed it, and to be honest I don't feel one ounce of pathetically self imposed pseudo-intellectually superior guilt for saying so. Some films are just made in the name of idiocy for idiocy, and I have to admit that every now and then I find it quite healthy to indulge in such idiocy. There's got to be a medical journal somewhere that makes a claim for scary movies. Whats so wrong with going to a movie with a chick, getting a little tense, hiding it from her, and then smooching when it's all over. It's at least gotta be good for your colon.

With that being said I don't know what kind of stupid darkness lurks in the soul of Roland Emmerich but whatever it is, it no longer entertains or heals on any level. 2012 is sure to be the bad movie of all bad movies, the scum of all scum, the dirt of all dirt, and sadly probably the biggest disaster moneymaker of all disaster moneymaker's. What could possibly be next..?

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

TV's Most Daring and Brave Individual

Roger Carstens, Past Tense (2009)

"After the congressional screening one of the military guys took me aside and asked what our security detail was like. I told him it was all right, he then said, "they're gonna come after you and they're gonna kill you."

He's doing this for us. May our children grow to remember his name...

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

"I see the universe..."

So Jackie and I just finished watching the final episode of Battlestar and I have to say given a bit of time passing since it originally aired, I think it's gotten better.

To describe how good I think the finale of Battlestar Galactica is seems to be quite a difficult proposition and I don't intend to get it right, but an effort still seems warranted. The ending to this show could be said to be "good", and I don't mean good in the proverbial human sense of "good" in an intrinsic opposite to human "evil". But rather I mean "good" as just something that is boundless by both human construct and linguistic restrictions... aka: something that is pretty fucking tight.

--Take care, gentle "spoilers" may follow.--

To know the face of God is to know madness. I see the universe; I see the patterns. I see the foreshadowing that precedes every moment of every day. It's all there. I see it and you don't, and I have a surprise for you: I have something to tell you about the future... - Leoben Conoy

What Moore and Eick have done is put something together of tremendous geek magnitude that still speaks within the dialogue of primetime cable television. This story from beginning to end transforms itself from a War on Terror era sci-fi drama into a sort of 21st century television bible. It's soul (if believed in) is as persuasive an argument for alternative religion in our society as something like the crazy New Age movement in the 70's, or fucking Mormonism (incidentally both of which were at the core of the original show). It is a piece that speaks on multiple intersecting levels almost mimicking it's storyline of interplanetary travel between celestial bodies and possibly even alternate dimensions. Good and evil are blurred to a point where vengeance, wrath, and justice are all rendered irrelevant. If that point is not believed then please consider the empathy one feels towards Baltar by the shows resolution. Not unlike the Bible itself, the characters in this gospel are all fallible, yet at a certain point everyone has to own up and be good Christians, don't they?

The show ultimately boils down to the nearly rhetorical question of "Is this all that I am?". This of course is well chartered territory, yet it's difficult to name another current or past television show that has outlined itself as smartly, and articulately as Battlestar Galactica. At times the show goes so far beyond it's own means and dazzles the engaged viewer in ways Rod Sterling, or Gene Roddenberry could only dream of. What would any of us say to our creator (or creators) if we had a chance? Would you benevolently embrace, or righteously question?

"I saw a star explode and send out the building blocks of the Universe. Other stars, other planets and eventually other life. A supernova! Creation itself! I was there. I wanted to see it and be part of the moment. And you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull! With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. With ears designed only to hear vibrations in the air. I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way!" - Jon Cavel

I'd write more, but for some goddamn reason this goddamn blog won't let me switch my goddamn type out of goddamn italics. At this moment I think I'm siding with Cavel...

Monday, July 13, 2009

NEW!



This is not my response to Nate; it just needs posting here. I'm not saying I've made my mind up on it either.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Tight.

With the high voice of the black man riding above the others, no head falsetto here but complete, out of the honest breast, a baritone voice brought over years of woodshedding up to this range... he was bringing brown girls to sashay among these nervous Protestants, down the ancient paths the music had set, Big and Little Anita, Stiletto May, Plongette who loves it between her tits and will do it that way for free--not to mention the Latin, the German? in an English church? These are not heresies so much as imperial outcomes, necessary as the black man's presence, from acts of minor surrealism--which taken in the mass, are an act of suicide, but which in its pathology, in its dreamless version of the real, the Empire commits by the thousands every day, completely unaware of what it's doing...
-Gravity's Rainbow

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

I never thought I'd have to do this, but here goes:

I haven't heard much of Stephen's explanation - nothing coherent, anyway - as to why he liked "You Don't Mess with the Zohan." I also haven't seen the movie. However, I feel the need to state the case for never seeing it. I don't know if Stephen even plans to recommend watching the film in his rebuttal, or if he simply intends to defend having watched it high one time on Watch Instantly and not hating it. Still: he wasted his time, and he's going through a phase or something now where he gives everything too much credit, and that's my argument.
Reasons why Zohan seems bad:

1) The title. There are so many things wrong with the title.

2) Judging by the trailer, one of the major jokes seems to be that Zohan makes old women horny. If Mel Brooks couldn't make horny old women funny in The Producers, why should I trust Adam Sandler to do it?

3) Judging by the trailer and the poster, another major joke seems to be that Zohan wears cutoff jorts. Jorts aren't funny, they're cool and practical. I can not laugh at jorts.

4) There are just so many other movies you can Watch Instantly, like "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed."

Your move, Williams.