Two extraordinary movies and Daniel Day-Lewis is simply incredible in both of them: Lincoln and My Left Foot. Watching the...
Full Post • Posted December 29, 2012
So I’m not sure if the Christmas episode is the end of the season or not, but I’ve watched all...
Full Post • Posted December 29, 2012
I saw The Hobbit with my brother the Friday it opened. We saw it in 48 fps XD digital. My expectations were...
Full Post • Posted December 27, 2012
Without realizing it, I’ve watched quite a few TV seasons recently. I suppose the seasons rack up when you watch...
Full Post • Posted December 27, 2012
So in the dark months of autumn, movies offered little solace. I was watching: Cromwell, Bernie, Stories We Tell, Spider-man....
Full Post • Posted December 26, 2012
So the Beav and I saw the new Anna Karenina, thought it was ok, then went home and watched the Garbo version....
Full Post • Posted December 26, 2012
Part of my year-long effort to become familiar again with science fiction and fantasy books. This one was well done....
Full Post • Posted December 26, 2012
Riding on reindeer in Christmas suits....
Full Post • Posted December 22, 2012
If we are going to be damned let us be damned for what we really are. — Jean-Luc Picard, "Far...
Full Post • Posted November 28, 2012
I've justreread_Notes from Underground_ for a class I'm teaching and it remains as troubling and fascinated as when I first...
Full Post • Posted November 21, 2012
Windows is shutting down, and grammar are On their last leg. So what am we to do? A letter of...
Full Post • Posted November 20, 2012
Post wipe, sitting with Neith waiting for respawn so we can wipe again. Damned dogs…...
Full Post • Posted November 12, 2012
Watched this with the Beav out of the blue, and it was ok. It is a John Hughes reprise, a Pretty...
Full Post • Posted November 8, 2012
I found Milton interesting early in his life, but as he got older, I was less and less interested in...
Full Post • Posted October 28, 2012
I wait for P. T. Anderson’s movies and, aside from Punch Drunk Love, have never been disappointed. Magnolia is one of the best...
Full Post • Posted October 27, 2012
Panda-manium! (On a camel!)...
Full Post • Posted October 21, 2012
Immortals, Margin Call, 12 Monkeys, In Time, Kattpacalypse ...
Full Post • Posted October 21, 2012
A history of the Massachusetts colony’s early years that focuses on the way English colonization altered Native Americans’ and the...
Full Post • Posted October 21, 2012
What is the good life? This book looks through the humanistic tradition–mostly the European but with passing attention to the...
Full Post • Posted October 21, 2012
It is no failure in a human being not to be an intellectual. — Stanley Cavell...
Full Post • Posted September 13, 2012
Great film that I really enjoyed. I reviewed it for a friend at Fruits Unheard Of. You can find my...
Full Post • Posted September 12, 2012
On n'est plus au XIXieme siècle. Tu ne peux pas écrire les romans de 650 pages qui parlent de lovely...
Full Post • Posted September 9, 2012
Back to Stormwind for a relaxing night of brother time....
Full Post • Posted September 7, 2012
Fair warning: I really didn’t like this movie. I just don’t see the appeal of a movie that offers up...
Full Post • Posted September 5, 2012
I was flipping through my movie log for the last four or five months and was shocked to see how...
Full Post • Posted August 25, 2012
Sometimes the hardest thing about keeping this movie log is just naming what it is I actually saw because what...
Full Post • Posted August 22, 2012
So I haven’t seen a Woody Allen film since Matchpoint, which I liked quite a bit. This one is fine. I...
Full Post • Posted August 15, 2012
Oddly light book. Reads fast and is fun enough. What interests me is this: the book reads like something written...
Full Post • Posted August 15, 2012
I wanted to read some westerns on my trip through the southwest, and this one was on my shelf from...
Full Post • Posted August 12, 2012
As summer draws to a close, this is on my short list of the best movies I saw. I know,...
Full Post • Posted August 11, 2012
Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Dark Knight Returns Batman was disappointing. A rough mash-up of the Bane story and Miller’s The...
Full Post • Posted August 11, 2012
Solid movie. The disaffected outcast indie movie is one of the most mannered around, but this take finds air to...
Full Post • Posted August 11, 2012
Paul Verhoeven‘s film is much better than I remembered. It moves quickly and really highlights how much movies today–however flashy...
Full Post • Posted August 11, 2012
Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements from Arsenic to Zinc was a spontaneous purchase in the airport. And...
Full Post • Posted August 11, 2012
Rereading Robinson Crusoe, I have the same reaction I had the last time: I get to the point where he’s about...
Full Post • Posted August 11, 2012
Daybreakers Watched this for the second time with my brother on vacation. The futuristic vampire angle seemed spot on given...
Full Post • Posted July 9, 2012
Laurence Anyways This movie accomplishes more than any movie from Québec in the past year. And it attempts even more....
Full Post • Posted July 9, 2012
Les Adieux à la reine A costume drama about Marie Antoinette’s lectrice in the three days surrounding the storming of...
Full Post • Posted July 9, 2012
Moonrise Kingdom The Beav loved this movie. And that’s good enough for me....
Full Post • Posted July 9, 2012
I’d wanted to read How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer but...
Full Post • Posted June 19, 2012
Paul Krugman is a public intellectual of the first order. It’s good to see that the type isn’t lost to...
Full Post • Posted June 18, 2012
I admire Berry and enjoy his essays. He is a conservationist in the way I wish more environmentalists were (cf. A...
Full Post • Posted June 18, 2012
So I’ve seen a series of movies recently, all of which deserve more attention than I’m going to give them...
Full Post • Posted June 15, 2012
A couple weeks ago, I rewatched this season on a tear. Now I’m not saying it’s any good, but it...
Full Post • Posted June 15, 2012
Taking Big Medicine to the Outlands, the Dwarven Throne Room, then some Diablo....
Full Post • Posted May 28, 2012
Mildred Pierce, Galaxy Quest, Toucher le ciel I can never be accused of lacking variety. And yes, I watched these...
Full Post • Posted May 28, 2012
Housekeeping. Read this because I hadn’t. Interesting. ...
Full Post • Posted May 28, 2012
A book we read in one of my classes. A well-done young adult novel that went over well but sent...
Full Post • Posted May 28, 2012
A Separation, Young Adult, General Orders No. 9, The Laramie Project, The Celluloid Closet, The Silence of the Lambs ...
Full Post • Posted April 29, 2012
…the only classification of the novel that I can understand is into that which has life that which has it...
Full Post • Posted April 27, 2012
The Lord of the Rings Watched this out of curiosity and liked it actually. This adaptation faces the same challenges...
Full Post • Posted April 27, 2012
Title says it all....
Full Post • Posted April 24, 2012
Me and Brother out and about with new toons, doing recruit a friend after an account catastrophe....
Full Post • Posted April 22, 2012
England: An Illustrated History by Henry Weisser I realized that I have no sense of English history. I mean I...
Full Post • Posted March 14, 2012
Winter: Five Windows on the Season by Adam Gopnik I wanted very much to like this book, but Gopnik has...
Full Post • Posted March 14, 2012
After the catastrophe, a new toon: Speaks!...
Full Post • Posted March 13, 2012
Also rolled a druid. ...
Full Post • Posted March 13, 2012
I’m rewatching the films my students will be presenting for their oral presentations in my literature class. They are: [Lost...
Full Post • Posted March 4, 2012
A few films I’ve seen. Nothing special here. All movies with some one good thing in them but not great...
Full Post • Posted March 4, 2012
The Beav bought me this book after reading it in French. It’s a memoir of Stefan Zweig’s youth and early...
Full Post • Posted March 4, 2012
So Big Medicine has joined the crew. God save his soul…Kickin’ back and chillin’ at the inn....
Full Post • Posted February 16, 2012
I ate up a couple afternoons one weekend watching these two movies, both of which are completely worth it. Now,...
Full Post • Posted February 15, 2012
Picked Graff’s book up as a companion to the textbook I selected for a couple of my classes. It was...
Full Post • Posted February 15, 2012
I read this book because it was about transference, a topic vital to teaching. I found myself remembering that Freud is...
Full Post • Posted February 13, 2012
Thou hast here an honest book; it doth at the outset forewarn thee that, in contriving the same, I have...
Full Post • Posted February 12, 2012
So a few weeks ago, in a 100% family run, we all became Kingslayers. More recently, I hung out with...
Full Post • Posted February 12, 2012
Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since...
Full Post • Posted February 10, 2012
Carnage by Roman Polanski is based on a play whose popularity I do not understand. Everything is well acted and...
Full Post • Posted February 9, 2012
Hugo by Martin Scorsese is a Mary Poppins movie. It wraps a healthy dose of history education in a sugary...
Full Post • Posted February 9, 2012
A fairy tale movie that manages to be both completely of the seventies and completely derivative of Cocteau. I liked...
Full Post • Posted February 9, 2012
The last week of winter break I watched the first season of Justified. It was on Netflix, so the price...
Full Post • Posted February 9, 2012
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien I decided to reread this book during the last week...
Full Post • Posted February 5, 2012
Moon by Duncan Jones I’d wanted to watch this for a while because good sci-fi is so hard to find,...
Full Post • Posted January 21, 2012
Third Gilles Carles that I’ve seen, and I think he’s great. This film is huge and watchable. A difficult combo...
Full Post • Posted January 14, 2012
Still like Tintin and hope that this makes him better known in in the States. I don’t like him being...
Full Post • Posted January 14, 2012
XXIV i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better...
Full Post • Posted January 13, 2012
More holiday movies: The Devil Wears Prada was good but Streep was in it much less than I remembered. Never...
Full Post • Posted January 13, 2012
Over the holidays I skimmed some movies I’d already seen. Nothing much to say here. Most were disappointments. They include:...
Full Post • Posted January 11, 2012
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