"When did time begin, and where does space end? Is life under the sun not just a dream?"
I've been thinking about death a lot lately, I think because the inclement weather and the smoke from the Canadian wildfires have me thinking about the end of the world, about the fact that my life might be more than half over not because I'm ill but because I might essentially outlive the planet, and I find myself wishing for more time,…
"Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage in the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric."
–Theodor Adorno, "Cultural Criticism and Society"
"Adorno does not wish to negate representation; on the contrary, he argues that the aesthetics of post-Holocaust poetry are of a particular 'barbaric' character... Adorno is attempting to describe a new form of poetry which is stylistically and thematically awkward. The language is necessarily unstable because it…
Fascinating modern reimagining of the wuxia: instead of bendy swords we get Andy Lau in a muscle suit, but everything else is there, from the choreography to the spirituality, characters moving majestically through the air and contorting themselves in seemingly impossible ways while the core of the film rests on a Buddhist bedrock of human interconnectivity and consequentialism.
Running on Karma perfectly embodies something very specific about Johnnie To that never ceases to compel me about his filmography. This was…
"The things you have taken are going around, spreading happiness. Even if you want to remain alone, you are connected to others no matter what. The connection that began with you is holding everyone together whether you like it or not. You are not alone. Tonight is a wonderful, long night that you have given to us."
"Hey pretty girl, time to wake up."
There was a time not too long ago when if you asked me what my favorite movie was I might have told you Mulholland Drive. There's a lot going on in the film and I certainly won't claim to understand all of it (something I might have done when it was my "favorite movie"), but I do have a reading of it that seems to answer a lot of the questions it poses,…
In a selfish attempt to cope with his separation anxiety, a sociopathic student abuses his relationship with his mentally unstable best friend in order to throw his future away on a single day of raucous debauchery.
