tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54759584965841604152024-03-13T00:43:43.713-07:00Benjamin the Ass"Benjamin was the oldest animal on the farm, and the worst tempered. He seldom talked, and when he did, it was usually to make some cynical remark—for instance, he would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies." - Animal FarmBenjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.comBlogger589125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-24003251835836379482017-12-31T20:13:00.000-08:002017-12-31T20:13:05.179-08:00Eat Gay Love
Call Me By Your Name is
not a gay movie. Or rather, it is not gay in the way we define gayness
today.
The critically-acclaimed film is being compared to Brokeback
Mountain, Carol, and Moonlight, but this is a category error. All of
those movies's characters struggle not just with themselves and each other, but
against a larger, hostile culture that tries to make Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-62680825573979111192016-03-30T21:33:00.001-07:002016-05-09T15:57:12.351-07:00Alien v Predator
Whoever wins, we lose.
As much I want to put all the
blame for Batman v Superman: Dawn of
Justice’s many and complete narrative failures on Zack Snyder's shoulders, it would be unfair to do so. The ungainly title
as much as anything else indicates that DC comics is trying to do with one film
what Marvel did with five and bring its major stable of characters together. Batman v Superman is Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-84916004367532548022015-07-13T18:18:00.000-07:002015-07-13T18:18:01.534-07:00All the Feels
The most remarkable thing about Pixar's miraculously great Inside Out on a storytelling level is how it would seem to have no antagonist. And not in the slightly relativistic sense that 'in real life, there are no bad guys.' That applies here, but it remains that there is no single person working to thwart our heroes, in part because there aren't even any clear-cut heroes. Joy is the de Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-11682900411496509582015-02-21T19:00:00.000-08:002015-02-21T19:00:01.945-08:00Oscar PredictionsLong story short: Birdman has the momentum, but the Academy doesn't like comedies, much less black comedies, and Boyhood's got a lot of good will. Boyhood will take the major awards, with Birdman and Grand Budapest Hotel dividing a lot of the others. The Theory of Everything is a dark horse candidate for a lot of these, but despite its inconceivably strong Golden Globes showing, I can't Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-67631058058008831502015-02-21T13:24:00.003-08:002015-02-21T13:24:59.674-08:00A Brief History of Time-Spanning Biopics
The Oscar race this year is unusually heavy on biopics, with special attention being lavished on the most crushingly mediocre. It's worth unpacking, then, what exactly makes a good biopic, since there do seem to be so precious few of them.
To try to fit an entire life into a feature-length movie is impossible, so the question of how to deal with figures whose life stories are so well known Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-18778698283066650582015-01-16T21:26:00.000-08:002015-01-16T21:26:33.562-08:00Pale Imitation
I was expecting The Imitation Game to be anodyne Oscar-bait, but I wasn't expecting it to be irritating to the point of being offensive. But so it is, by treating Alan Turing's homosexuality as a mid-film plot twist and then acting like that constitutes psychological character exploration.
The movie acts coy about Turing being gay, with a cop at the beginning of the movie looking at the Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-89114672804680066862014-11-08T07:36:00.000-08:002014-11-08T07:36:05.235-08:00Intergalactic Planetary
Christopher Nolan's movies have tended to be plotty puzzle boxes that delight in staying one step ahead of the audience right up until the end. This worked, just barely, in 2009's mind-heist Inception but became too ungainly for its own good with The Dark Knight Rises a mere two years ago. Interstellar represents a turn away from that towards a more straightforward style making Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-86446749883105984312014-05-16T21:30:00.002-07:002014-05-16T21:30:51.059-07:00Notes on Godzilla
Because it's quicker than an essay.
- The opening credits are the best I have seen in years, since Watchmen at least. Big, exciting music set to blocks of classified text that are swiftly redacted leaving only the cast and crew, all superimposed over "stock" footage that I only realized toward the end was in fact giving us a condensed version of the movie's Godzilla's origin...
- ...which itBenjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-30032819190016770232014-03-23T10:50:00.000-07:002014-03-23T10:50:46.328-07:00Driving Each Other Crazy
Many a short play revue are organized around a theme. Love, for instance, or the number ten. In Neil LaBute’s Autobahn, the unifying characteristic is the automobile, that symbol and begetter of American sprawl and freedom. The car is not a thematic interest, though, only the setting. Big Intimacy Group’s recent production of the short play cycle, directed by Rob Mueller, doesn’t belabor this Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-73548225316819136942013-07-06T22:52:00.000-07:002013-07-06T23:16:01.817-07:00Once More, With Feeling
'Pretty durned good' is not meant to be a put-down. Yet for Once, the darling of critics and the Tonys, I can't help but feel a little disappointment. The ads promised transcendent, romantic rapture. What I got instead was a mostly rote tale of masculinity crisis, vigorous life by enormous talent. Not life-changing, but pretty durned good.
The story, adapted from a well-received indie filmBenjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-75171765740468503612013-01-12T13:06:00.003-08:002013-01-12T13:08:04.144-08:00More is Les
The reception of Les
Mis, and the reception of the reception, is almost more interesting than the movie itself. Curmudgeons, with David Denby leading the
charge, have reacted coolly to the movie’s bald appeals to emotion, while Megan McArdle, at least one Andrew Sullivan reader, and other more enthusiastically weepy viewers have celebrated its passion, forthrightness, and lack of ironic Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-83120099549325933402012-11-25T20:48:00.000-08:002012-11-25T20:49:15.323-08:00Pun Nintend(o)ed
(Some spoilers follow.)
Wreck-It Ralph should be viewed as less a movie than a cultural artifact of the early 21st century. It is not a bad movie, by any means. Its construction is sound, its technical ability accomplished, its celebrity voice casting surprisingly successful (I typically find Sarah Silverman grating, but here, no longer able to just be as obviously "offensive" as Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-43848151007465544562012-10-17T21:45:00.000-07:002012-10-17T21:45:18.097-07:00Golden Fleecing
Art doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's a reaction--a commentary, an interpretation, a criticism--of the world we live in, and it can't help but be shaped by the material conditions of its creation. Most people know this, practically take it for granted. What gets less attention is how subsequent events shade our understanding and response. Argo was ostensibly intended as a taut and Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-32492135344805295132012-10-03T08:03:00.000-07:002012-10-03T08:06:17.564-07:00Who Controls the Past, Controls the Future
"It's a precise way of describing a fuzzy process," says Looper's Bruce Willis about time-traveling and its implications for the future. He's actually being quite modest. Most time-travel stories must wrestle with the creation of a time paradox, the most elegantly simple of which may be that of the original Terminator (in which Kyle Reese is sent back in time by John Conner to Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-33499378857751998412012-09-23T11:15:00.000-07:002012-09-23T11:15:34.495-07:00Fortune of Soldiers
Americans were not the only ones serving in Iraq.
It's a fairly obvious observation, but one that I don't recall being much considered during the darkest days of that endless war. True, we often spoke of our faithful allies, the British, but even that term 'British' itself is an elision. For, as writer Gregory Burke notes in the program for Black Watch, imported for the second timeBenjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-28283281885762162212012-07-23T12:28:00.000-07:002012-07-23T12:28:51.693-07:00Why So Serial?
With Heath Ledger dead and the Joker thus removed, the deck was stacked perhaps impossibly against Christopher Nolan to ideally conclude his Batman trilogy. The last film literally left him hanging and the character was such a wild popular success that his absence was always going to be felt whether the role was re-cast or the story re-tooled. I'm shooting this elephant in the living room nowBenjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-51357221659337071672012-07-01T20:02:00.000-07:002012-07-01T20:02:27.306-07:00Damon the Dude
The Williamstown Theatre Festival opened last week with The Importance of Being Earnest, done in a Damon Runyon-esque Guys and Dolls aesthetic. I was assigned to do a piece about Runyon that ended up not being needed (and would have needed to be drastically cut anyway). I present it with little alteration.
Damon Runyon was a journalist and sports writer, who became
best known for his short Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-14173438770683809242012-06-13T10:29:00.001-07:002012-06-13T10:29:18.965-07:00On the RoadThis is just a programming note. I'm en route to the Williamstown Theatre Festival, whose literary department I'll be interning with for the next couple months. It's going to be terrific fun and a great opportunity, but the workload--I'll be helping to work on seven productions and much more besides--means I'm not going to have time to read or watch much else, and certainly not to write about it.Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-11458625743937401532012-06-11T23:37:00.000-07:002012-06-12T06:10:57.270-07:00Pretender of the Faith
Every culture has a creation myth, a story that explains the origins of the cosmos. Vividly detailed and fantastical, they work well enough as symbols and allegories, but as literal, beginning-to-end narratives they are convoluted, illogical, and absurd. (To take only the most familiar example, three days separate the creation of light and the sun in the book of Genesis.) The Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-80916947890703438982012-05-31T10:12:00.001-07:002012-05-31T10:12:27.114-07:00Stranger Than Fact
Richard Linklater is great again? And so is Jack Black? And Matthew McConaughey? It's unbelievable, but it's true. That could be said to apply to their newest film Bernie, which is derived from actual events but goes to great lengths to test the plasticity of the designation "based on a true story."
Based on a 1988 Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth, Bernie tells the Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-63788486640372738862012-05-19T11:21:00.001-07:002012-05-19T11:21:44.290-07:00The Summer Movie as Democrat Election Parable
The Avengers is a great summer movie. I don't need to elaborate on why, for if you are reading this you likely have already seen it and either do not need or do not want convincing. A.O. Scott, however, even when praising the film for its entertainment value, is queasy about the cold corporate calculation of it all.
“I’m always angry,” [Bruce Banner] says at one point, and while “The Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-27351056775651873412012-05-18T12:02:00.000-07:002012-05-18T12:02:51.669-07:00Viewing the Past With Eyes Wide Shut"Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the liberal, who wishes to replace them with others." - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Charles Murray has historically promulgated racism and profoundly stupid culture war claptrap, but he has a recent piece for The New Criterion about today's supposed lack of powerful, enduring art that's Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-9566347351340377452012-05-10T10:18:00.000-07:002012-05-10T10:18:26.613-07:00Moral Minority
A 2009 San Francisco protest against gay marriage.
(David Paul Morris/Getty Images)
Ross Douthat congratulates the gay marriage movement on President Obama's announcement of support yesterday. He does so with a bare-knuckled back-hand:
[O]ver a longer time horizon, the most enduring victories are often won by movements and factions that succeed in branding opposing views as not only mistaken Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-45253309037326247772012-05-02T14:58:00.000-07:002012-05-02T14:58:34.284-07:00Heart of Daftness
Andrew Sullivan is getting anxious about black people's IQs again:
The authors note correctly that IQ is a function of a cultural construct, the ability to succeed in middle class Western capitalist society. So I'm not sure why they would deny that such big differences do exist across the world and can be explained by lack of economic and social development. The Flynn effect shows that IQ can Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-2409602782070390122012-04-18T18:37:00.001-07:002012-04-18T18:38:58.910-07:00Fool for Christ
Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a great Christian movie.
I feel a little guilty saying that, but hell, Easter was only a couple weeks ago; 'tis the season for forgiveness. But no, really, I watched it last week for the first time since it was in theaters, and aside from the painfully bad comic relief provided by the three gargoyle sidekicks, it is really quite good. It's one of the Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0