“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.” (Kilgore Trout) – Kelvin is a psychologist sent to a space station orbiting the planet Solaris, which in a startling pre-biblical way is covered by a raging, formless sea. Something has gone awry on this scientific mission, and Kelvin is tasked with investigating the crew before […]
Yesterday, a new component of the annual Edinburgh International Film Festival made its appearance on the internet in association with Mubi. Alongside its usual programming, the EIFF has this year concocted a virtual counterpart, Project: New Cinephilia. If all goes according to plan, it looks like interview and Q&A content from the EIFF itself will spill […]
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.” (David Foster Wallace) It is hard to witness the simple acrobatics of Certified Copy and […]
A look back at some favorite films from 2010.
This biopic covers the life of acclaimed cattle management genius Temple Grandin, who embraced her autism on its own terms and over time discovered how to translate her unconventional perspective on the world into startlingly insightful glimpses into animal behavior. Grandin came of age in the 50s, when autism was still considered the crippling emotional […]
Notes on Carlos and terrorism: 1. I find Assayas’ films tricky because I seldom have any expectations when sitting down to watch his latest film, whatever it might be. This makes thinking of Assayas as an auteur a difficult proposition, as by definition, an auteur is someone for which we generate a specific set of […]
Minnelli’s Some Came Running is generally considered a melodrama because of the way it pits classy against dingy, elegant against tawdry, and pastoral against fully-orbed CinemaScope kitsch. Likewise, its production was marred by a clash motivated by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin’s disdain for Minnelli’s boorish focus on minute set details like wallpaper prints and […]
Soft Skull Press is putting together a series called Deep Focus, which pairs “the smartest, liveliest writers in contemporary letters” with whatever films they want to write about. So far I can see Lethem on They Live (hope he talks at length about the fight scene), Christopher Ryan on Lethal Weapon, Matthew Spektor on The […]
In a recent interview about her latest book, Marilynne Robinson began with the following few ideas: In Absence of Mind, your main argument is that the influential popular scientist-writers of our age (Wilson, Dennett, Dawkins, Pinker, et al.) fail to acknowledge the spiritual impulses, conscience, compassion, and other felt experiences, via the human mind, that […]