“By the mid-’80s, at a meeting of the New York Society of Film Critics, [Pauline] Kael leaned over to Richard Schickel and whispered, sadly, ‘It isn’t any fun anymore.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Remember how it was in the ’60s and ’70s, when movies were hot, when we were hot? Movies seemed to matter.'”
— Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, by Peter Biskind
A nod to Kierkegaard and Walker Percy: existentialist tomfoolery, political satire, literary homage, word mongering, a year-round summer reading club, Dylanesque music bits, apocalyptic marianism, poetry, fiction, meta-porn, a prisoner work-release program.
Søren Kierkegaard
Walker Percy
Bob Dylan
Literature & History
Letters from an American
Beau of the Fifth Column
This American Life
The Writer’s Almanac
San Diego Reader
The Stranger
The Inlander
Adoremus
Charlotte was Both
The Onion
From Empty Hands
Ellen Finnigan
America
Commonweal
First Things
National Review
The New Republic
All Manner of Thing
Gerasene Writers Conference
Scrutinies
DarwinCatholic
Catholic and Enjoying It
Bad Catholic
Universalis
Is My Phylactery Showing?
Quotidian Quintilian
En pocas palabras
William Wilson, Guitarist Extraordinaire
Signposts in a Strange Land
Ben Hatke
Daniel Mitsui
Dappled Things
The Fine Delight
Gene Luen Yang
Wiseblood Books
© Copyright 2020 Korrektiv Press. · All Rights Reserved · Admin
Die Hard (1988) was pretty fun.
No argument there. But fun ain’t quite the same as mattering, and 1988 was 30 years ago.
Um. Come Christmas, DH matters a whole fuckin’ lot, Hans.
At least around the JOB household…
JOB
For some reason Siskel and Ebert came into my mind in the last few days, but I don’t know Shickel. I’ll look him up when I’ve had some more to eat as I have a headache.
The headache is not caused by the radiator sounds in the hotel. Are any of you – and I don’t know how many contributors there are – familiar with that in hotels or is this one notorious? It may simply be that they can’t afford to heat the building and are trying to get me to turn it off but it continued in the other room I was in – and this one to an extent – throughout the night when I have it turned off. It is the most violence I have ever experienced really, which is not an invitation to more. I assume it is from the room next door – there have been non guest rooms next to me in both rooms – although it’s not exciting to think that someone might be crouching in there the whole time I’m here. It is very loud, and in fact I have lost quite a bit of hearing in one ear because of it, and when it starts I have to put ineffective ear plugs in or leave the room. It’s incomprehensible to me how someone can do it, unless, say, it’s from downstairs and they can disassociate from it.
So sorry for your suffering. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a rough experience with radiator sounds. Just the occasional clank.
I assume the hearing in one ear is because I sleep on the same side and it was the exposed ear although now I sleep under the covers. I have things against the door – there is no internal lock.
I thought the other day after seeing someone apparently killing a flea, like gods to wanton schoolboys are we to the ‘flies’, they kill us for their sport.
One of the men on the front desk does also resemble photos of Reggie Kray. [The internet was cut off when I went to post this, but it’s quite true, which is not to say that he is himself a serial killer.]
Or, they kill us for there’s port – a couple of bottles of blue liquid was handed over by a guest earlier, although they said it was gatorade.
And why wouldn’t fleas be Gods or more so than humans. Herman Melville, I read, says that why would God want to outlive his creatures?
Do any of you wear a dental flipper? They’re uncomfortable when you don’t feel well.
Perhaps the person in the radiator room or wherever wants to be my sole confidante.
I do not wear a dental flipper. I hope there are no serial killers in your vicinity. The comments do not sound fey. I am sorry for your suffering.
These comments might sound fey but it is quite a stressful environment, as it is in London, although this is more violent in one sense.
Can’t argue with you there. Roma? First Man?
I’d like to think that the ongoing technological revolution has brought us new forms of entertainment, and that’s the reason movies don’t matter any longer.
But … the success of Grand Theft Auto matters, I think, but in a way that is painful to ponder.
On the upside, there’s plenty of quality cinema from the XXth Century I haven’t seen yet. I watched Andrei Rublev for the first time last week. There’s a movie that matters in every sense of the word.
Oh, yes, plenty to look back on, just as there are surely many great books even further back. I’m sure some people would argue that YouTubers broadcasting their lives to millions of subscribers is a more immediate form of artmaking and narrative than anything Hollywood ever produced, and that this is a good thing. I am not convinced.