In one of the opening scenes of Joe Carnahan‘s The Grey Ottway (Liam Neeson) considers committing suicide, sticks a gun barrel in his mouth, and then decides against it. Later, in the movie’s final scene, after a harrowing journey through the Alaskan wilderness necessitated by an aircraft crash that has seen his band of fellow survivorsContinue reading “Once More Into the Fray: Stepping Back From Suicide”
Category Archives: Movies
The Sunday Evening Movie, Blues-Killer Sans Pareil
It’s a strange business to have written about ‘The Sunday Evening Blues‘ on this blog, in such plaintive fashion, because for many years, Sunday evening was the time of the week that promised a very particular form of entertainment: the Sunday evening movie, for many years, an institution in the life of any Indian householdContinue reading “The Sunday Evening Movie, Blues-Killer Sans Pareil”
Quick, I See Political Furore, Pass Me the ‘Healing Balm’
Kevin M. Kruse‘s Op-Ed in today’s New York Times opens thus: Steven Spielberg, whose “Lincoln” biopic opens Friday, recently said he hoped the film would have a “soothing or even healing effect” on a nation exhausted after yet another bitter and polarizing election. [link in original] I have heard that line, or variants of itContinue reading “Quick, I See Political Furore, Pass Me the ‘Healing Balm’”
The Snowtown Murders: John Bunting and his Barrels
Snowtown (aka The Snowtown Murders) is one of the most difficult movies I’ve ever seen. It took me three viewings to finish watching it: I called the first one off because the accumulated horror and dismay had become too much; I restarted it hours later, stopped again after a few minutes, and then finally, onContinue reading “The Snowtown Murders: John Bunting and his Barrels”
‘The Master’: Coming Undone And Putting It Back Together
One way to ‘read’ Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master is as an enormously ambitious, technically brilliant cinematic riff on Ron Hubbard and Scientology, on a time fertile for cults and messianic healing: post-WWII America, when broken men–post-traumatic stress disorder is as old as war–drifted back home, and were, just as many other Americans, looking forContinue reading “‘The Master’: Coming Undone And Putting It Back Together”
Bridging Partisan Divides with Patriotism? No Thanks.
Have you, dear reader, seen the latest cinematic masterpiece making the rounds of YouTube channels, ‘Americans, Fuck Yeah‘? (I lie ever so slightly; the actual title is just ‘Americans’.) Directed by James Stafford and starring musical maestro Kid Rock and actor and director Sean Penn, it aims to bring Americans together, to bridge partisan divides,Continue reading “Bridging Partisan Divides with Patriotism? No Thanks.”
The Extravagant, Space-Time Distorting Business of Time Cleaning
This morning Jason Read of the University of Southern Maine posted the following photograph on his Facebook page (due to Tom McGlynn, to whom I owe thanks for letting me reproduce it here). Jason added: Just looking at it makes me want to write a bad science fiction novel about the unglamorous, dangerous, and low-payingContinue reading “The Extravagant, Space-Time Distorting Business of Time Cleaning”
Gus Fring: Breaking Bad’s Management Consultancy Guru
Yesterday, while writing on the corporate deadliness of The Wire‘s Stringer Bell, I noted in passing, some structural resemblances between that character and Breaking Bad‘s Gustavo ‘Gus’ Fring. But, in many ways, Gus goes well beyond Stringer in bringing the corporate to the corner. In particular, in his channeling indiscriminate violence into murderously well-directed andContinue reading “Gus Fring: Breaking Bad’s Management Consultancy Guru”
Baltimore Dispatches – III: Stringer and the Deadly Suaveness Of the Drug Trade
In New Zealand, you can get GPS-guided tours of locales used for Lord of the Rings action; tourists snap them up by the dozen. In Baltimore, the city of The Wire, you can get walking and driving tours that take you to Wire locales (like Season 2’s union-run shipping docks, for instance). It’s a pity theyContinue reading “Baltimore Dispatches – III: Stringer and the Deadly Suaveness Of the Drug Trade”
Baltimore Dispatches: The Cask of Amontillado and the Terrors of Immurement
This Columbus Day weekend, I am ensconced in Baltimore, which has meant that, among other things, my thoughts turned to Edgar Allan Poe, the city’s most distinguished literary son, one of a select group of writers whose work I was first exposed to via comic books, and someone who, to put it mildly, gave meContinue reading “Baltimore Dispatches: The Cask of Amontillado and the Terrors of Immurement”
Samir Chopra 