The formal two-year anniversary of this blog was sometime back in November; as I was traveling then I couldn’t put up a commemorative post; this year-end dispatch will have to do as substitute marker for that occasion. 2013 was a busy year for blogging here, though I blogged on fewer occasions than I did inContinue reading “The Year That Was, Here, On This Blog”
Category Archives: Movies
‘The Road’ and the Centrality of Love for Existence
How can a difficult read be an easy one? It can be easy because the difficulty is compelling and seductive, because ‘difficult’ does not mean ‘obscure’, because difficult can be worthy of admiration. A few days ago, when I saw John Hillcoat‘s The Road, based on Cormac McCarthy‘s novel of the same name, I had not yetContinue reading “‘The Road’ and the Centrality of Love for Existence”
The Post-Apocalyptic Zone of Moral Instruction
During a Facebook discussion in response to my post yesterday on The Road, my friend Maureen Eckert wrote: I am never sure what to make of “post-apocalyptic porn.” On the one hand they seem to be thought experiments about the “State of Nature.” On the other, they seem to tend to express exaggerated exasperation withContinue reading “The Post-Apocalyptic Zone of Moral Instruction”
John Hillcoat’s ‘The Road’: Bleak and Unsparing
John Hillcoat’s The Road is a faithful cinematic adaptation of Cormac McCarthy‘s bleak vision of a post-apocalyptic world. It is almost unrelentingly grim because it is unsparing about the bitter truths of a world in which food and morality are both in short supply: existence is a mere step up from the eventual slow deathContinue reading “John Hillcoat’s ‘The Road’: Bleak and Unsparing”
Jesse Pinkman and Eklavya: Teacher-Student Relationships Broken Bad
The grand old Indian epic Mahabharata contains, among its thousands of stories, several which unsettle us by their moral ambiguity. One such story is that of Eklavaya. The Wikipedia entry for him notes: He is a young prince of the Nishadha, a confederation of jungle tribes in Ancient India. Eklavya aspired to study archery inContinue reading “Jesse Pinkman and Eklavya: Teacher-Student Relationships Broken Bad”
American Horror Story and Torture Porn
Last night was Fright Night. I had plans to watch the opening episode of the third season of American Horror Story, a show that despite its disappointingly concluded first season and its at times too-lurid second season still manages to hold considerable promise for me. But I was going to watch Paranormal Activity first; somehowContinue reading “American Horror Story and Torture Porn”
Lech Majewski’s The Mill and The Cross: A Beautiful Moving Tableaux
The Mill and the Cross, Lech Majewski‘s 2011 film, like Pieter Bruegel the Elder‘s The Procession to Calvary, the painting that inspires it, is beautiful to look at. It might be hard to know what to make of it in a conventional movie-viewing sense, but the cavalcade of gorgeous images that it parades before ourContinue reading “Lech Majewski’s The Mill and The Cross: A Beautiful Moving Tableaux”
Walter White’s Rage Against The Dying Light
Ross Douthat ponders the question of what makes Walter White the target of such sympathy–and perhaps even affection– even as it became clear that his criminality and amorality had run amuck: The allure for Team Walt is not ultimately the pull of nihilism, or the harmless thrill of rooting for a supervillain. It’s the pullContinue reading “Walter White’s Rage Against The Dying Light”
Breaking Bad and the War on Drugs
A video made by the Brave New Foundation and titled ‘What Breaking Bad Reveals About the War on Drugs‘ is making the rounds these days. It is brief, well worth a watch, and made up of rapidly edited clips from the show. It features the following screen legends–designed in Breaking Bad’s trademark ‘chemical elements letters’ style–thatContinue reading “Breaking Bad and the War on Drugs”
Breaking Badder Than I Thought
Almost exactly a year ago, I speculated about how Breaking Bad would wrap up. I wondered about Walter White‘s eventual fate: [P]erhaps the writers will give Walter a glorious back-to-the-wall-defending-his-family-shootout kind of death, saving them from the depredations of a ruthless set of ganglords, thus redeeming himself in spectacular fashion even as he loses hisContinue reading “Breaking Badder Than I Thought”
Samir Chopra 