Control

Yeah, I'm probably out to lunch with Kashin. That's what you get when you don't watch puro anymore, you just read about it.

Just edited mine so it actually makes sense

I'm bizarrely intrigued by the upcoming Bellator event. Mighty Mo! Also, is Blagoi Ivanov any good?

GOLDFINGER is an astonishingly steep step down from FRWL. It's got a lot of fun stuff (Odd Job, Pussy Galore), but it's cartoonish and silly. WITH A VENGEANCE might be my favourite of the bunch

While I haven't read it myself, the wife is a big fan of Robert McCammon's Speaks the Nightbird.

So I guess he'll be Stephen Colbert without the implied scare quotes around his name? Could be interesting.

You know, I can't be arsed to find it now, but there was a recent article on Verhoeven in which the author basically said that it's hard/frustrating to reconcile his satire with the fact that he obviously loves gratuitous sex and violence. It is a kind of bind--just try to enjoy the exploitative aspects of his film, and you run afoul of his satire, and vice-versa.

So it might be true of action/adventure movies more generally, but it really strikes me that Cameron's action films are meant to be a collection of brilliantly executed set-pieces/action scenes. And each one is quite different. I mean, that's obvious at the end, when you get tunnel chase + quest for Newt + Alien queen mecha battle roar~! But it's true earlier, as well. The action keeps moving, but it doesn't seem monotonous or overwhelming (like a Michael Bay film might) because of the way he constantly switches up the situation and the characters involved. I used to think that ALIENS and TERMINATOR 2 were these two SF-action masterpieces from Cameron, but rewatching both I think ALIENS is the far stronger of the two.

You can really see the influence of this movie on Del Toro, especially PAN'S LABYRINTH. The idea of seeing a terrible point in history through the eyes of a child is used, there, too, as is the lens of unreality, though obviously with BEEHIVE it's much less pronounced. The scene with the monster in the real world is really memorable--I wish I had something more to say about it. I'm just so captivated by how the film shows the little girl finding such beauty in something that is supposed to elicit fear. The lead actress is amazing, and I was surprised to see that she wasn't in more.

BLOCK A: Kendo Kashin Akebono Suwama Takao Omori Kento Miyahara Osamu Nishimura BLOCK B: Go Shiozaki Joe Doering Jun Akiyama Zeus Yutaka Yoshie KENSO Winner: Shiozaki Tie-breakers: First Tie-Breaker -7 Second Tie-Breaker (if still tied) - 1200 I'm assuming that Go makes it to the finals, so I went with Kashin as his opponent since A) I don't think he'd beat Akebono to set up a match w/ Akebono, B ) I think they'll save Suwama for a defense, and C) they've no reason to push the other three. I'm probably wrong, though, since maybe they'll have him beat Suwama, and then he'll have to build himself up to a much-anticipated (?) defense later in Go's reign. And, you know, Kashin stinks.

Feels like you watched a different movie than me. It wasn't perfect by any means but it was far from terrible. Can't get behind that sentiment. You're right that it wasn't far from terrible: it was, in fact, firmly rooted in the centre of terribleness, probably beside BATMAN & ROBIN or something. I received free tickets and the film still wasn't worth it.

and A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke). One of these is NSFW, BTW. Those are two films I've wanted to see for a while. Images aside, how are the movies themselves?

They'll probably just form their own company, or throw their career away in Muto's fed

Also, really, I'd say the first 30-40 pages of Dick's novels are usually the weakest. He rarely starts off strong. I might suggest SCANNER as a first book

I dunno if I'd agree with that--his last books (after FLOW) are all fairly sensibly plotted (of what I've read, at least: SCANNER, VALIS, and TRANSMIGRATION). Dick is still having a lot of fun with narrative, but the cohesion in those is way beyond most of what he put out before.

Definitely have FLOW MY TEARS too high, though. Great narrative voice, fuller characters, but the plot is nonsensical, even by Dick's standards.

Also:

Listomania! Man in the High Castle A Scanner Darkly Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said The Transmigration of Timothy Archer The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch Ubik Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? VALIS Martian Timeslip Clans of the Alphane Moon

VIDEODROME would certainly make the final cut. It's one of my favourite films, and it'd ensure some Canadian content.

Whats the topic?Having had a class in each, suggestions msy vary. But definitely metropolis and some german expression horror to start. And a trip to the moon No set topic, but I'd probably hit the "cultural studies" Big Three of race, gender/sexuality, and class/economics. It's a summer course, so we're talking 9-10 films tops. METROPOLIS was definitely the starting point I had in mind.

So I applied to teach a Cultural Studies course on Horror and Science Fiction films. While I'm pretty sure I won't get it (the application date + the starting date don't add up, which makes me think that the university already has an internal candidate in mind), it has made me think a lot about what films I would teach. If you were a student signed up for a Cultural Studies course on Horror and SF films, what would you want to study?

This list is kinda great, actually, minus all the ties. Good variety, stuff you'd expect on any 2013 list and stuff that you wouldn't.

Fuck off, first of all, the Chicago Manual of Style, which is the worst citation style imaginable, and second, my chosen career path, since it's led me to have such passionate opinions on things like academic citation styles.

I was more enthusiastic about 2013 music during 2013. Now I feel more like there was a whole shitload of good stuff, but not as much great stuff as I previously thought. Nothing is as shit-kickingly awesome as that Big Business album, though.

This is no way to do a DVDVR "best of" list! The house method is to trickle out the results, a few posts a day, for about four to five days, and then mysteriously disappear for a week or so. And then post a couple more times, maybe getting up to the top twenty. And then maybe give up and ask someone else to post the rest. Damn your efficiency!