Double Reading

… the winner of the best line from a Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith review goes to David Edelstein over at Slate, where, in “The Passion of the Sith: I dream of Jedi” he wrote:

McDiarmid isn’t the subtlest of satanic tempters. With his lisp and his clammy little leer, he looks like [...]

In my continual stop-and-start of book reading (I recently started, then stopped, Infinite Jest, then I started, then stopped, Speculum of the Other Woman [for the third time]), and now I’m starting yet another book. This time, though, I need to finish it since I’m seeing the movie it was based on in a couple [...]

Last year I was a bad Seattle-ite and didn’t get around to going to any of the Seattle International Film Festival showings. I tried going to see The Corporation, but I didn’t understand the whole pass/buy-your-ticket-in-advance concept back then and I ended up not seeing it when I wanted. But that was last year. And [...]

Watching the movie Closer tonight seemed to tie together a lot of thoughts I’ve been having about various things lately. Allow me to elaborate (in a bit).
First, I’ll say that I loved the movie. I wasn’t sure whether I would, given that the movie had some non-hype hype… that is, although I guess it wasn’t [...]

What is the deal with these supposed dark chocolate M&M candies that were supposed to come out to coincide with the release of Revenge of the Sith?? I can find the stupid Flash-heavy promotional site (click on “Choose the Dark Side” on the left for more information), but I can’t find the chocolates anywhere in [...]

Okay, I won’t do a full-fledged review since it’s almost 3 a.m., but let it be said that: yes, I saw Revenge of the Sith at midnight; and no, I didn’t love it.
In fact, I was rather surprised that the initial reviews were so good. There was some dialoge that was just too cheesy for [...]

(this is a mix CD that I made for my friend Troy a couple of months ago)
Because this mix CD needs a Philosophical Introduction

“Come Into My World” (Fischerspooner remix) by Kylie Minogue from Fever
This song serves two purposes: 1. the phrase “come into my world” can represent the fact that by listening to these [...]

Lynch follows themes found throughout American fiction, especially that with a Puritanical background:

He follows an intrinsically American moralistic obsession with the ideas of innate depravity (13).

Lynch’s villains… are drawn from the same archetypes that populate American fiction (13).

… effigies of anomie, incubi of chaos, are particularly American demons (14).

American national identity: that of the individual [...]

After seeing Mulholland Drive, I honestly figured that it would be David Lynch’s final film. It basically synthesized aspects of all of his previous movies into one very bizzare film. I assumed that with the completion of that film, Lynch would spend most of his time and energy on his davidlynch.com website.
Well, I was wrong.
As [...]

FYI — I finished reading Perfevert in the Pulpit. I’ve concluded that I’m horribly lazy when it comes to this idea of “blogging the book,” as I’ve only managed to do notes on the first chapter of the book. Oh well. I do intend to get notes about the rest, it just may take a [...]