Snowmen made of plastic cups....

Everything bad gets shot at in America, says John Cole, and everything good too. – Sebastien Barry, Days Without End...

A man's memory might have only a hundred clear days in it and he has lived thousands. Can't do much...

It's a miracle to realize that somebody loves you. — James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk ...

Scrub fields, blue sky, and the last of the autumn leaves. Winter’s not here, but he’s looking out from these...

I more or less randomly watched this movie on Netflix and was happy to discover that it was shot in...

Evil is not simply a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be endured. – Flannery O'Connor ...

Upon seeing a usually sullen journalist, reporting with uncharacteristic energy: Est-ce qu'il a bu? Il a l'air content. — The...

Tickets in hand and too excited to account for my excitement. Pina Bausch's "Cafe Muller" and "Rites of Spring". Ottawa....

I felt the pressure of the water striking the stones and the steadfastness of their resistance, of what seems like...

This show has an extraordinarily ugly vision of the world. Cruelty is everywhere and everywhere it bleeds into a sadism...

This film was surprisingly boring. The problem? Almost every major plot point turns around arbitrary events that have no basis...

I first heard aboutLuca Guadagnino's adaptation of André Aciman'sCall Me by Your Name early last winter and have been waiting...

Equals is a Gattica rehash insofar as it uses mid-century (read: old fashioned) modernism to represent a medicalized and bureaucratic...

This film has a great premise, good effects, strong performances and exciting set pieces. Its story presents, on the one...

Godspeed Nelsan Ellis....

This past winter I finally sat down and watched through all the available seasons of_Game of Thrones_. My reactions were...

I cannot define my satisfaction…yet it is so, I cannot define my life…yet it is so. — Walt Whitman, "To...

All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their delivery nor resist it — Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself,”...

So I made the leap to my fancy new flat HTML blog site…and now I'm back on WordPress. The experience...

This movie refuses to pretend to be anything other than precisely what it is: a camera that stares.In practice that...

The last few months I've been working on moving this site off WordPress. That meant transferring all the posts to...

At the same time as I was finishing up work on the new version of my site using Tinderbox, a...

When it comes to export, most of our applications are like car dealers. They offer a limited set of models...

When I was a kid, I loved Mad Libs. For those who don’t remember, here is how they worked. Someone...

The simplest way to organize a text is to pick up a pen or pencil and to write it on...

When first learning Tinderbox, I thought of my notes as mini-word documents. When they were ready, I expected to be...

Writing the letter is easy. All I have to do is: • create a note • name it • write...

Once you have a concrete example of the output you want in hand, it’s easy to create an export template...

To do these following steps, you’ll need to have made the Text Pane Selector visible. If you haven’t yet done...

Up to this point, creating an export template has been pretty simple. You’ve written a sample and then turned it...

Writing the letter is easy. All I have to do is: • create a note • name it • write...

Tinderbox’s export will surely be frustrating if you ever only needed the standard word-processor style export (called “print”) of the...

In the examples, I’ve dealt with so far, I’ve actually avoided the case that Tinderbox itself assumes to be the...

I wanted to give at least one example of an output that is not defined by the printed page and...

All of my examples so far have imagined that you want to export single notes one-by-one. In reality, this will...

HTML export functions exactly the same way as my other examples, and yet for many of us, I think it’s...

Let me tell you about people my age. The worst thing is others assume you have developed your character by...

For awhile now, I've been working to migrate this site off of WordPress. This has happened behind the scenes and...

Oh, there are a lot of lousy people in the world. Also, a lot of terrific people. You've gotta remember...

…each was, for the other, the dwelling place that each had despaired of finding. — James Baldwin, Another Country...

Posting has been slow here. Partly it's because of standard end of term business. Mostly it'sbecause I'm experimenting with the...

This. Exactly this: “Let's hope that human can learn to an infinite extent.” [sic] btw...

All our efforts cannot even succeed in reproducing the nest of the tiniest little bird, its contexture, its beauty and...

The production of_Caligula_I saw recently has been on my mind on-and-offforthe past few weeks. In the play, Caligula is always...

Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks was one of the first films I fell in love with when, in my first semester of...

None writes so ill, that he gives not some thing exemplary, to follow, or fly. — John Donne...

I am afraid of my will. It is so strange and so strong. — Jane Camion, The Piano...

^include(The Rain Cover)^I stumbled across this short dance film years ago. I hadn’t seen it since, but for some reason,...

…every real question is fruitful… — Marilynne Robinson, Absence of Mind...

There are few things in nature that astonish me more or that I find more beautiful than the simple impossibility...

This is the second of James Purdy’s novels that I’ve read and I was not prepared for how different it...

^include(In a Shallow Grave cover image)^In a Shallow Grave is the first novel I’ve read by James Purdy, an author...

I have often noticed this flaw, that instead of gaining knowledge of others we strive only to give knowledge of...

^include(Rogue One Image)^I was never tempted to watch Rogue One in the theatre and wasn’t sure I’d even watch it...

Every story is the story of somebody’s bad luck. — Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys...

I stumbled upon this book seven or eight years ago in a used book store just down the street from...

Nussbaum offers an explanation and a defence of the contribution that imagination and emotion can make to public discourse. In...

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of...

^include(Raylan First Image)^I loved the seasons of Justified that I’ve watched, and reading this novel is like hearing the TV...

This production featured incredible performances. By the dinner scene, Benoît McGuinnes had become a tour de force, and the other...

The Mower The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, Killed. It had been...

The neighbouring village had a temporary stoplight for a few weeks as road crews did some work on the bank...

According to cliché, there’s no “I” in team. There is however an “i” in “poise” and that “I”—let’s risk pretension...

I don’t like crime fiction. I knew this, and this book—which is as weird to me as The Sound of...

Iron Fist was a comic character I loved when I was a kid even though he was marginal and even...

The Beav: “C’est n’importe quoi…” Me: “Yep” I’m not at all sure what the appeal of this story is supposed...

Oddly boring and ponderous movie. Yet its style—the color, the editing, the script—is all over the map. Everything but Joseph-Gordon...

I was sick unto death, but there is nothing like dancing to keep one holding to some thread with this...

When first writing about Hell or High Water, I skirted talking politics except for an oblique reference to Trump’s supporters,...

The show has been changing bit by bit each season, and at this point it’s become something completely different from...

In December 2016, I was breaking up my much-too-large iPhoto library and creating archives for the pieces when my iMac...

I first read Call Me by Your Name as I flew to Rome in December 2009 to work on a...

I was worried this movie would be melodramatic and sentimental, but it’s not. Not counting credits the film is only...

To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance. — Jean Genet, A Thief's Journal...

A tightly scripted and beautifully photographed western set in the America a subset of Trump’s voters think they’re living in....

A small film offering a convincing portrait of what life is like in a moment when what you knew and...

This show proposes that a story might emerge from a mash-up of the popular sensations alluded to by its title...

After a season where they were only incidentally students, the kids are back in school. They meet incoming freshmen, discover...

Sunday wasn’t a great day, and as the afternoon wound down, I flipped over to Netflix to see if anything...

I haven’t read, hadn’t even heard of the text being adapted here—Austin’s “Lady Susan” and called a novella in the...

I find everything about the Beats fascinating. Yet oddly (and I would have thought impossibly), I also simultaneously find most...

“Realism was the last thing the nineteenth century did completely. Anybody can understand that there is no point in being...

Romance and the gothic, two dominant modes in the American novel, loom over Washington Square and frame expectations for how...

Don’t undervalue irony, it is often of great use. — Henry James, Washington Square...

When I was doing my BA, a friend told me a story about her younger brother. As I remember it,...

Todd Haynes’s Carol offers so careful and so powerful a reading of Highsmith’s The Price of Salt that it acted...

Aliens arrive at twelve different sites on Earth. They are unavoidably menacing—their ships hover impossibly over land and sea, they...

This novel was frustratingly close to a do-over of Leviathan Wakes. Yes there was variation—a different world in the Belt,...

This is the season that broke my binge. The script and direction are under control in a way they weren’t...

In a show like Teen Wolf, House of Cards or Damages, first seasons, which are powerfully suggestive but also necessarily...

On the surface, Season Two of Teen Wolf throttles back on the guys-in-the-locker-room gayness of the first season, while doubling...