OHL: 2015

by Brian Crane

December 2015

Emerson on Journaling

Our life looks trivial, and we shun to record it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson...

Full Post • Posted December 20, 2015


Harvard Art Museums

This summer when the Beav and I went down to Concord, we took a day to go see the renovated...

Full Post • Posted December 19, 2015


Fantastic Four

Unless you are Oedipus or David Copperfield, your story should probably jump to the interesting stuff right away rather than...

Full Post • Posted December 16, 2015


Marvels and Mirages of Orientalism

I didn’t realize it was possible to have so many orientalist paintings on display without having at least aspects of...

Full Post • Posted December 15, 2015


Montaigne on Natural Speech

The speech I love is a simple, natural speech, the same on paper as in the mouth; a speech succulent...

Full Post • Posted December 14, 2015


Free Fall

I watched this because Max Riemelt was playing gay and after watching him in Sense8 I was a bit crushed...

Full Post • Posted December 13, 2015


Great Expectations

A book about a kid who wants all the wrong things and gets most of them. I only barely liked...

Full Post • Posted December 12, 2015


The Trouble with Normal

I read this book late. Gay marriage is legal in North America. The politics denounced by Warner have won in...

Full Post • Posted December 11, 2015


David Altmejd, Flux

The best show that I saw this past summer was of David Altmejd’s sculptures at the Musée d’art contemporain. Each...

Full Post • Posted December 10, 2015


Wilde on Ruin

The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to...

Full Post • Posted December 9, 2015


Between the World and Me

I’ve been wondering what to say about this book. So much rightful praise has been written elsewhere, and there’s no...

Full Post • Posted December 8, 2015


The Scarlet Letter

I’ve read and taught this novel many times, and so reading it now is often an exercise in curiosity: what...

Full Post • Posted December 7, 2015


You Are Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)

When I first saw The Guild it was a revelation. I was playing World of Warcraft with my family every...

Full Post • Posted December 3, 2015


Ford on Multitasking

I am a pretty good writer and a pretty good editor and a pretty good businessman but I find it...

Full Post • Posted December 2, 2015


Mistborn: The Well of Ascension

The follow up to Mistborn: The Final Empire offers the best second act I’ve read in a long time. Very...

Full Post • Posted December 2, 2015


Stein on Honesty and Gossip

Oh hell, she said, listen I am fairly well known for saying things about anyone and anything, I say them...

Full Post • Posted December 1, 2015


November 2015

The Luminaries

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton engages with the realist novel most obviously through its stable of peculiar characters and its...

Full Post • Posted November 4, 2015


The Lowlands

A book about a network of women building lives in those spaces left open to them by political conflicts and...

Full Post • Posted November 1, 2015


October 2015

The Matrix Trilogy

I rematched this series of movies for the first time since they were in the theatre. (I’d seen the first...

Full Post • Posted October 31, 2015


Man of Tai Chi: Second Viewing

On a second viewing this film holds up well. The plotting is much tighter than I remembered and, as a...

Full Post • Posted October 30, 2015


Birdman

I liked this when I saw it because of the moments of magical realism. They walked a tight rope between...

Full Post • Posted October 29, 2015


Madame Bovary

I don’t know what it is, but I just don’t like the story of Madame Bovary. This adaptation, which is...

Full Post • Posted October 28, 2015


The New Rijksmuseum

A film that documents the massive renovations of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Even after extensive cuts, it’s a long film,...

Full Post • Posted October 27, 2015


Theory of Everything

The Hollywood trope of intelligence as a disability is the mirror image of the Hollywood trope of intelligence as a...

Full Post • Posted October 26, 2015


Aliens

Watched the director’s cut of Aliens, which I’d never seen. Realized two things. First, the story of the longer version...

Full Post • Posted October 25, 2015


Alien 3

I disliked Alien 3 when it came out and have never watched it a second time. My brother convinced me...

Full Post • Posted October 24, 2015


Fight Club

^include(Fight Club Cover Image)^The movie hews close to the novel everywhere except where it counts: the end. The novel is...

Full Post • Posted October 23, 2015


The Maze Runner

Pretty guys taking turns running through Shelob’s lair. Back in camp they spend their time keeping the bad seed from...

Full Post • Posted October 22, 2015


The Kingsmen

Abercrombie people playing ironic British spies in an episode of TLC’s What Not to Wear. This film sits halfway between...

Full Post • Posted October 21, 2015


Une Nouvelle amie

I find François Ozon’s embrace of his influences fascinating. Hitchcock and Sirk are powerful ancestors and many filmmakers would run...

Full Post • Posted October 20, 2015


Only Lovers Left Alive

This movie is better on repeat viewings. It’s a hard bright gem of a movie dressed up as a genre...

Full Post • Posted October 19, 2015


Mr Turner

Turner barely speaks, mostly grunts. I’d like to see the script. People walked out as the movie played. An odd...

Full Post • Posted October 18, 2015


Pina

Wim Wenders filming dance. It’s breathtakingly beautiful to watch and deeply moving....

Full Post • Posted October 17, 2015


Proust

Edmund White’s biography of Proust is like his fiction: dense, intellectual and gossipy. He always seems to be watching you...

Full Post • Posted October 16, 2015


Stranger at the Lake

A French queer sex-on-a-beach drama. (Yes, that’s a thing apparently.) This one feels like a scary version of Presque bien...

Full Post • Posted October 15, 2015


Far From the Madding Crowd

I like Thomas Hardy and have a weakness for costume drama. So I won’t try to be objective about this...

Full Post • Posted October 14, 2015


Interstellar

Science giving Nolan a reason to tell a story out of order again. Pretty great movie despite the fact that...

Full Post • Posted October 13, 2015


A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

A movie about entertainment that is profoundly intellectual. I walked in knowing nothing about what I was seeing—the Beav had...

Full Post • Posted October 12, 2015


Hawthorne on Bookkeeping

No Man can be a Poet & a Book-Keeper at the same time. – Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter ...

Full Post • Posted October 10, 2015


Montaigne on Reading Well

An able reader often discovers in other men’s writings perfections beyond those that the author put in or perceived, and...

Full Post • Posted October 4, 2015


Terminator: Genisys

This is a Terminator movie. So I knew what I was getting into. The story structure was fixed by the...

Full Post • Posted October 4, 2015


September 2015

American Transcendentalism

-Book Cover

Gura’s book paints a portrait of the brahmins behind the Brahmins in antebellum Boston. Or, to say it differently, this...

Full Post • Posted September 21, 2015


Reading Montaigne. Finally.

I've wanted to read Montaigne's essays for awhile but the sheer size of the volume has been an obstacle to...

Full Post • Posted September 20, 2015


Cicero on a Teacher's Authority

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle for those who want to learn. — Cicero, Montaigne: The...

Full Post • Posted September 20, 2015


Montaigne on Keeping Pace with Students

It is good that he should have his pupil trot before him, to judge the child’s pace and how much...

Full Post • Posted September 20, 2015


Late Summer Ducklings

It sounds like a Chinese dish but is actually a video....

Full Post • Posted September 7, 2015


Tinderbox and Good Intentions

Tinderbox is a great place for good intentions....

Full Post • Posted September 7, 2015


August 2015

Mistborn: The Final Empire

An oddly non-mythological fantasy novel that reminds me of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi (think The God Makers rather than Dune). It’s...

Full Post • Posted August 29, 2015


Northanger Abbey

When I lived on the island, I could get to work by foot, bike or metro. The walk was long,...

Full Post • Posted August 17, 2015


Mad Max: Fury Road

This was the very best of the movies I saw as part of the Blockbuster Marathon. The stakes here are...

Full Post • Posted August 16, 2015


Web Dialogue: A Sample

Mark Bernstein has a long post collecting various thoughts and questions about writing with links. In the longest segment of...

Full Post • Posted August 12, 2015


Jurassic World

This movie was terribly enough written that I almost walked out. I didn’t, because blockbuster marathon, but when it was...

Full Post • Posted August 11, 2015


Sense & Sensibility

I’ve never liked Jane Austin’s novels. Every sentence always seemed to be written perfectly straight up and down without passion,...

Full Post • Posted August 9, 2015


Faulkner Hypertext Online: First Impressions

The Faulkner hypertext that I’ve been making in Tinderbox and that I’ve spoken about a few times is now online....

Full Post • Posted August 8, 2015


Cartier-Bresson in Drummondville

^include(Cartier-Bresson-Dummondville-Photo-Museum)^The Beav and I were in Drummondville, he had something to do, suggested I might be interested in the photo...

Full Post • Posted August 8, 2015


Damages, Season 4 & 5

I love Glenn Close too much not to have finished this series, but I hated it more and more each...

Full Post • Posted August 7, 2015


Tinderbox Export: First Reaction

I take back everything I’ve ever thought or said about Tinderbox export. It is quite simply magical. I’m stunned. More...

Full Post • Posted August 7, 2015


Tinderbox Export: Later that night

…I’ve completely revised and updated a website that saw light of day for the first time early this evening….. …I...

Full Post • Posted August 7, 2015


Avengers: Age of Ultron

Marvel has been everywhere these pages few years (and years and years) and have been hard at work importing a...

Full Post • Posted August 7, 2015


Battle Cry of Freedom

It’s hard to comment on the explicit content of an 800 page history. What I’ll say instead is that I...

Full Post • Posted August 6, 2015


Ant-Man

I almost didn’t watch this one because I really wasn’t interested, but I forced myself because it was on my...

Full Post • Posted August 5, 2015


Ant-Man

I almost didn't watch this one because I really wasn't interested, but I forced myself because it was on my...

Full Post • Posted August 5, 2015


Summer Blockbuster Marathon

The second week of my Montreal vacation, I decided to see all the summer blockbusters I’d never drive into the...

Full Post • Posted August 4, 2015


Honest Links

I’m working on Faulkner. That text is an argument but also a description of a situation and a history of...

Full Post • Posted August 2, 2015


July 2015

Home Sweet Home

Some friends who live in the heart of downtown Montreal went away on vacation and asked the Beav and me...

Full Post • Posted July 29, 2015


The Imitation Game

Another movie about a man afflicted by an intelligence that is a disability. This sort of thing is the mirror image...

Full Post • Posted July 26, 2015


Faulkner Hypertext

Last year was a busy one at school and I had to set the Faulkner hypertext I was working on...

Full Post • Posted July 23, 2015


A Streetcar Named Desire

L’Espace Go, an experimental theatre that takes risks, staged A Streetcar Named Desire this past winter. Their production was defined...

Full Post • Posted July 22, 2015


Goodbye HenriCat

For nine years, HenriCat shared our home. When I arrived in the evening, he met me at the door. When...

Full Post • Posted July 15, 2015


José & Pilar

I didn’t know much about José Saramago as a writer other than that I’ve read without liking his novel Blindness. This...

Full Post • Posted July 14, 2015


José & Pilar

I didn't know much about José Saramago as a writer other than that I've read without liking his novel_Blindness_. This...

Full Post • Posted July 14, 2015


Les Aiguilles et l'opium

This piece set the story of John Coltrane, Jean Cocteau and a Quebecois voice actor spinning around each other on...

Full Post • Posted July 8, 2015


The Diary of Anne Frank

An adaptation of the Diary that focused on the physical book rather than its author and, so, made Anne recede...

Full Post • Posted July 7, 2015


Catton on Angry Men

There’s nothing more brutal than a gang of angry men. — Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries...

Full Post • Posted July 6, 2015


The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies

The Hobbit movies all fail but this is the best of the three. (The first was awful, the second left...

Full Post • Posted July 5, 2015


Thoreau on Why He Went to the Woods

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and...

Full Post • Posted July 4, 2015


Daredevil

I stopped watching this series early on, and then, encouraged by my brother who loved it, and the positive attention...

Full Post • Posted July 1, 2015


June 2015

Flamethrowers, The

Everything in Rachel Kushner’s book is carefully written–the words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters–and yet the ideas and action of the book...

Full Post • Posted June 30, 2015


John Wick

John Wick is violent, simple, and flashy, and so it feels very contemporary. Yet, it is also–in a way that...

Full Post • Posted June 29, 2015


Love Is Love

Imagine: A Rainbow Flag....

Full Post • Posted June 28, 2015


Textual Deconstruction

Lots of great political news coming out of the US Supreme Court this week, but the decision on health care...

Full Post • Posted June 28, 2015


Ozias Leduc

The museum at St. Hillaire has a small gallery space attached to the library and often shows interesting collections. This...

Full Post • Posted June 27, 2015


A Wise Man's Fears

^include(A Wise Man's Fears Cover Image)^I’ve tried three times, and I can’t get through this book. It’s the sequel to...

Full Post • Posted June 26, 2015


The Martian

This was a completely random purchase at the bookstore. I’d never heard of it but read the first few pages...

Full Post • Posted June 25, 2015


House of Cards, Season Three

The first season of House of Cards was extraordinary television. Frank’s and Claire’s ambition, their intelligence and their controlled advance...

Full Post • Posted June 24, 2015


On Writing

A great read, but the memoir is better than the writing advice I think although (0r perhaps because) those recollections...

Full Post • Posted June 23, 2015


The Suffering of Young Werther

A short novel that with allowances for changes in dress and economics feels like it could have been written yesterday. I...

Full Post • Posted June 22, 2015


Grave Peril

When I was a kid, I loved book series, and one of my favourite book memories is reading Lloyd Alexander’s...

Full Post • Posted June 21, 2015


Dune

Dune was one of the most important books I read in my early teens. I reread it, studied the appendices,...

Full Post • Posted June 20, 2015


WWZ

An archive novel organized without persistent characters. It’s an assemblage of moments that compound into an account of an event...

Full Post • Posted June 19, 2015


Maclean on Just Getting Started Already

Many of us probably would be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for...

Full Post • Posted June 1, 2015


May 2015

iCloud Catastrophe

When the new photo app dropped, I decided to try out the iCloud photo library. This meant upgrading my iCloud...

Full Post • Posted May 23, 2015


Stars in the Country

Stars live by the river. They gather at night to watch cities burn orange beyond the horizon. ...

Full Post • Posted May 11, 2015


Lines, Circles, Homes

A line is not a circle. The difference between my old apartment and my new home....

Full Post • Posted May 10, 2015


Stevens on Poetry that Bites

Poetry is a Destructive Force That’s what misery is, Nothing to have at heart. It is to have or nothing....

Full Post • Posted May 9, 2015


April 2015

The Good Lord Bird

A novel about the life of the lone surviver of John Brown’s Harper’s Ferry raid as told by the survivor,...

Full Post • Posted April 25, 2015


EBooks

So I've been reading (more on that later) and I have a dilemma: eBook or paper? The options are pretty...

Full Post • Posted April 22, 2015


Richard III

I saw this play in translation. It was well done and interesting. Yet, somehow, the actors delivered lines in a...

Full Post • Posted April 18, 2015


King on Plot

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice. — Stephen King, On Writing...

Full Post • Posted April 17, 2015


March 2024 2015

Homeowner

So, every piece of paper in the world has been signed (in triplicate), and the Beavand I are now homeowners....

Full Post • Posted March 29, 2015


Walking Dead Season Three

Almost impossible to watch because I hate all of the characters except Glenn and Michonne. I end up rooting for...

Full Post • Posted March 29, 2015


The Awakening

-Book Cover

A book that feels alive and current and that is so much better than I remembered it. Just as important:...

Full Post • Posted March 23, 2015


Hardy on that Dress

In making even horizontal and clear inspections we colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes...

Full Post • Posted March 4, 2015


Fair Copy Blogging

When you're stuck, how do you tidily copy out a draft of a blog? For me right now, it means...

Full Post • Posted March 2, 2015


Benjamin on Copying Draft

Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what...

Full Post • Posted March 1, 2015


February 2015

January 2015

What’s up?

Blogging has been scarce these past weeks. Initially the hiatus was about travel: a vacation followed by holidays with family...

Full Post • Posted January 27, 2015


Dracula

I’d never actually read this novel, so around Halloween I picked it up. I liked it, especially the late confrontation in...

Full Post • Posted January 14, 2015


Back (Again)

I can't think of the last time I've travelled so much is so short a time. It's been really great...

Full Post • Posted January 13, 2015