You shall die

by your own evil creation!

And when it fights,

fight back with right minds.

Should God create another Eve,

and I another rib afford.

Fuck it,

then.

Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket,

unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder.

He learned no lesson. He acknowledged no mistake.

The Corner - 6.5/10. You ain't had the five seasons it took to be 'The Wire,' but you had six hours to be something. You ain't, though.

The extinction of the self.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… And Spring - 7.5/10. You can't know peace until you know life, fools.

Manufactured feeling.

Art & Copy - 6.5/10. Sometimes a history, sometimes a hagiography, sometimes a biography, and sometimes the process, but never enough about one to be anything at all. Not linear to the point where it seems to be talking to itself, or at least only to people in its own industry. It seems like one of those movies that 'finds the story' as it's being filmed, but by then it's too late. A collection of talking points, although interesting, that don't altogether say anything.

People do like they feel, they go on sometimes practically forever, some of them.

Pat & Mike - 5/10. Such an odd movie. Long, unspoken and spokeless passages where we watch Katherine Hepburn play sports. Her chemistry with Spencer Tracy is not there as it was in 'Guess Who's Coming To Dinner' or 'Adam's Rib,' perhaps because she is not Herself, but demure and sullied by being around a certain man. The Ralph Bellamy type. Her fire is gone and, let's speak honestly, fire is what she is.

If you think it needed doin',

then I guess it did.

Dictionaries do not exist to define,

but to help people grasp meanings.

Some things,

you just got to wake up on.

Adventures

in far-off lands.

An act

of genitalia.

Remedied

by right angles.

It's dark

and hell is hot.

If you want to know more,

then you are alive.

In spite of all

attempts at holding on.

Boy, you were fractured.

Holiday Inn - 6/10. Unlikeable men compete for a woman they can each use for their own benefit. A showcase for Astaire's dancing and Crosby's singing, I shouldn't complain. This being my first Crosby movie, he's a surprising stiff hat.

The God Fart-icle.

Angels & Demons - 6.5/10. Surprisingly enjoyable? Less of a plot than the first one, which makes all of the running around and shit easier to take because it's less outright stupid, while still being pretty stupid. I secretly enjoy that Langdon is an outright atheist hero in a movie that my mom probably likes.

Ass ass.

Ninja Assassin - 3/10. Relentlessly stupid. The very opposite of 'V for Vendetta.' One giant fight scene, the whole of which is not particularly interesting and, worse, boring, using the 'Transformers' template of a collision of bodies blurring into each other.

My dad liked it.

Charlie Bartlett - 2/10. "Jake Epstein, the football captain, joined a football team to prepare for the role." Thanks, Jake. Offensively stupid. A Harmful Movie. The villain is decent-but-wrong, deserving of more compassion than the drug-dealing, needy, opportunistic dipshit asshole that makes up the title. Turns a good actor bad. Uses the threat of suicide as blackmail. Gives Kids Prescription Drugs And That Makes Him Popular. Is another movie that stars Kat Dennings.

Hang tighter, spider-monkey.

New Moon - 4.5/10. Better and stupider than first.

Ruin it with a lie.

Thief - 6.5/10. An early monologue sets a stage which is never acted upon. Christ. I'm some college asshole writing shitty essays. Early monologue good, rest of movie 'taut thriller,' thanks for that, Michael Mann. I want Tangerine Dream to soundtrack all of movies.

Deciding what is true and what isn't.

Red - 7.5/10. My favorite of the trilogy and the most incomplete.

All us.

Precious - 8.5/10. For all of the terrible things, for all of the trauma, there's an incredible amount of humor to be found. And not that stupid, profound, Pollyanna keeping-a-smile-about-it shit. It's fucking funny in the way Gran Torino is fucking funny. The best comparison I can give is that movie, with what is probably a simple, plain story only adorned by it being told fucking well. Gabby Sidibe is beyond wonderful, pure empathy on screen, with an authenticity that only comes from being it.

As though to breathe

were life.

Where quality

is something we consider.

We are the most

impassioned ugly people.

That's not writing.

That's typing.

The creation of a polite word

always signifies a major fucking.

So close to reality

that it could be ours.

If it's a lie,

then we fight on that lie.

You'd rather live in shit

than let the world see you work a shovel.

Ever since she got AOL,

my mom's been really into religion.

Can't do something smart,

do something right.

Foolish.

Burdensome.

An energy that you could forgive

for being wrong.

Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide

hardly seems worth doing.

An appearance of solidity

to pure wind.

You wish

to fight god.

If God creates,

then artists define.

Let your feelings slip, boy.

But never your mask, boy.

They don't think it be like it is,

but it do.

A loving god.

Hoop Dreams - 6/10. Three hours and 250 hours of footage, and we don't really have any idea who these people are. Gates has a baby and we don't know until he's holding it. His mother graduates from nursing classes and we didn't know until she got her diploma. The two boys slowly give up on their dream and we don't know it until they come out and say it. The movie doesn't ask any questions of its characters and no quarter is given. The only thing to be felt in the movie is the look on Agee's face when his father is around, both when he liked him and when he didn't.

I want

your revenge.

A serious film

made by deeply unserious people.

Nothing but what I put in there.

Dreamgirls - 6/10. Doesn't know where its story is. There's an anger in Effie bigger than any one person, but she's shuttled around, backwards and forwards until she's off the screen and rather than have her leave finally and eloquently, the only story to that point with any substance, any solid arc, she comes back, even more buried. It becomes more about a time and place than a person or thing and, honey, this ain't 'Nashville.' Also, the music blows.

People say they want to know the truth,

but what they really want to know is that they already know the truth.

Too lazy

to be anything other than myself.

There's no God, but there's you.

Fearless - 8.5/10. A man survives a plane crash. His body makes it back to earth, but his soul is left to wander. There is a look in Jeff Bridges eyes of knowing that is something like Jesus must have had. The movie makes an interesting point, if I'm reading it right, that the only way to live is to know you can die. "Look behind you! Remember that you are but a man!," etc. Otherwise, we just wanderin'.

It needed more Arcade Fire.

Where The Wild Things Are - 7.5/10. A movie for kids, if kids were daft enough to get its message, which is sort of cynical of me to presume, I guess. Max is confronted with himself and is excited and aggravated and confused and bored in different measure. He's not so much a king as a parent, looking at himself and realizing that he needs to fucking grow up a little. The movie's about kids and how they do, but it's not about Childhood, and the Triumph of Imagination as suggested in that trailer, and I'm not asking that it be, but it doesn't feel final -- there was no crescendo, no grand realization, just that boredom that comes with playing a game too long. As a friend suggested, and I paraphrase -- it was a nice film, but I wanted a movie.

You ask

that I not be human.

It's not going to stop.

So just give up.

Who was not only dull.

But the cause of dullness in others.

We dare to go into the world

where there are no names for anything.

Spending life ignoring

the other side of the story.

Spend a lifetime

as a model of the phrase.

Trying to sum it up

with one quotation.

Here is us.

On the raggedy edge.

There you go.

Giving a fuck when it ain't your turn.

We have traveled this way before,

And there is much to be learned.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell.

You must be true

to the physics of the lie.

The poetry

of logical ideas.

All sorted out then.

The Invention of Lying - 4.5/10. People can't tell a lie so much as they are obsessively compelled to say exactly what they are feeling at any given moment. As such, it plays out like a common and very poorly fleshed-out skit. As a testament to its inability to piece itself together, it starts off with a non-sequitur narration that explains what sort of world this is because it certainly can't use storytelling to that effect. Half into it, it escapes sentimentality and turns into The Life of Brian and suddenly becomes very funny, but then it stops being The Life of Brian and it stops being funny. It falls into the same trap as Idiocracy in that it's a great conceit that could have played for days, but it tries to paste it all into the outline of a romantic comedy.

I don’t think I have really.

I don’t see that change is always good. A lot of people think that change for some sake is good, but it’s not true, you know. Sometimes the old shit is better and you invent yourself out of a good time.

Old: I've got to dookie.

New: I'm going to dookie.

If you don't have anything nice to say,

start a band.

Johnny Horsecock.

Extract - 7/10. Sometimes you got to fuck up your life to set it right. Broader comedy than his previous efforts, but without the bigger ideas of 'Office Space' or 'Idiocracy.' It's very likeable, and a better movie than 'Idiocracy,' but it's just not very deep.

Some folks'll.

Some folksn't.

Once a crowd chased me for an autograph.

"Beat it," I said, "go sit on a tack!" "We made you," they said.
"Like hell you did," I told them.

And I sought in him a war

which I had escaped.

The dreamer, the unwoken fool.

High on a hill in El Dorado.

A year past, you ain't heard much of sound.

Now you hear everywhere.

My father said to me, "But you can't swim."

And I've never dreamed of the sea again.

With credibility,

comparison.

It won't be complicated.

It won't be interesting either.

A man can't

just sit around.

We don't make art.

We use it up.

But he didn't.

So he died.

I love my dead gay son.

Cherry Blossoms - Hanami - 6/10. One hundred and twenty-seven minutes. A husband 'looking' for his dead wife in the afterlife isn't an uninteresting idea, and yet.

If wishes were fishes,

the seas would be empty.

There's so much involved

in just maintaining.

What is our aversion

to doing what we want to do.

The myth of America.

Weighed down by too many dreams.

If you can't explain it simply,

you don't understand it well enough.

I cannot make you see the color red.

I can only make you want to see it.

We're just as happy.

That's why we're unhappy.

Well.

I won't do that.

Young blood!

If given the chance, spit fire!

It's not a matter of understanding.

If you feel it, you feel it.

If I should fall from grace with god,

then fuck him anyway.

A horrific news item

retold by small children.

We lie.

We tell you things.

The struggle itself

is enough to fill a man's heart.

Crepitation.

To make a crackling sound.

Love

is why you're starving.

Creative

morality.

The deep is in riot.

The coastline is quiet.

The earth's gravitational pull

ain't got shit on us.

A few deities praying for me.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - 7.5/10. Herein, I compare 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' to 'District 9.' While 'District 9,' through its two hours, essentially keeps you at arms length from its star, Sharlto Copley, whether through documentary footage that treats him as though he's dead, or being held captive, or running, or in an unreal situation, or in fucking battle armor, its pacing guides you, letting him slip further and further away from the initial impression of him, piece by piece, until you're right there beside him. 'Diving Bell,' in contrast, literally has you inside of the character for three-quarters of the movie, but never lets you know him. That is its flaw.

He was an honest man, he didn't deserve any.

District 9 - 8.5/10. The Matrix.

The greatest!

The Gold Rush - 8.5/10. This version is the 1940's re-do with narration, which is fantastic, and proves the writer in Chaplin. On the Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin divide, I fall well clear on Chaplin's side - with two forks and some bread, he brings more of a sense of wonder than Keaton could do with a runaway train or hurricane.

Essays

sung in rhythm.

I think with my eyes open and closed at the same time.

Eyes Wide Shut - 7.5/10. "Kubrick was not so much interested in capturing reality as he was an impression of reality." That fits, I guess.

Everything dies, baby, that's a fact.

But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.

To be sure.

Lawdy be.

Morality is simply

a matter of opinion.

The closest I’ll ever get to doing anything like that

is on a piece of paper.

She was a really cool kisser

and she wasn't all that strict of a Christian.

Countless lives lost.

Ponyo - 7/10. While I usually put the blame on myself for coming away from Miyazaki unsatisfied, I'm going to put this one squarely on him. The first three-quarters are wildly imaginative and so it is unfortunate that everything that happens is thin and surface-level. There is no story. There is no one here that we grow to know.

With a sound

like fiction.

Experiments

in telling the truth.

To each

in his own time.

Belongs

to no one.

Those who kick down the doors towards progress

are trampled under foot by the rush to go through them.

Fuck you, Adrian Tomine.

Paper Heart - 7/10. There was a comic book I read called 'Blankets.' It was of a batch of late '90s, early '00s indie comic books that defined 'real' as 'boring.' To wit: an IMDB user who uses these words to describe this movie: 'Paper Heart doesn't have any real direction, but neither does life.' What's my point. Oh, yeah. I thought 'Blankets' was based on a real story. After reading the book, which is long, and boring, I excused the deeper recesses of it being boring by chalking it up to being real, and I guess if it really happened, then there's some kernel of truth to be gained. But at the end of the book, the author admitted that it wasn't real. Which maybe it's my fault. But it means there wasn't any kernel of truth to be gained. It was just fucking boring. Anyway. This movie wasn't boring. But neither was it real. And it passing itself off as real, by mixing it with real-defined-as-real stories, which are wonderfully handled, the moviemakers end up just defrauding the entire thing.

Some people can't see the front

to want to be it.

When you grow up,

your heart dies.

If I'm all fangs and all lies and all poison.

If I'm really what they're saying.

I forgot to review this.

Why We Fight - 8/10. Now I can't remember why.

And that's

to be loved.

Everybody's

somebody's.

Beautiful women, and those that only look that way.

White: The Three Colors Trilogy - 7.5/10. A complicated revenge fantasy where the guy doesn't really seem to want to hurt the girl, he just wants her to say what he knows she feels.

The long story and the short story are the same.

They just don't like you as much.

The Smiths??????

500 Days of Summer - 8/10. Another movie I feel I have to ask forgiveness for its transgressions before I can recommend for it, uh, being a really good movie. To keep it short, it peppers a v. v. compelling love story with trailer-made moments that more serve to get people to see it than for me to like it. Stock wise little girls, bright colors, a fair amount of set design, whimsy, Morrissey, and IKEA fill out the edges. To its credit, it forgets and you forget to focus on any one of those things for any amount of time. It makes me wonder if I want to be hard on it because it places what I'll offer up as a universally-appealing story on the shoulders of a certain type of people in a certain type of place in a certain type of culture.

Language

as design.

Make your bed the river, young girl.

I know you can't swim, but I'll tuck you in.

Big ideas

aren't necessarily great ideas.

Outside, we heard hammers.

Noises sound like the end.

So we take to memories

[like] layers of clothes.

What I Know v. What You Know

Epistemology

stunts discourse.

The infectiousness of a truth

is not contingent solely on just how much sense it makes.

No field but art

gives meanings to things.

Memories.

Furniture.

So long, gay boys.

The Hangover - 5/10. Douchebags.

It's in this light.

Away We Go - 7/10. On the edges of the movie, it's annoying, stilted, and intentional, but the further it goes, the less it needs to impress upon you how funny it thinks it is. It's got an honest center that makes me want to forgive a good portion of what I saw.

Swing from the rafters, shouting those songs.

Gone unsung for far too long.

This tornado loves you.

My love, I am the speed of sound --
I left them motherless, fatherless.
Their souls, they hang inside-out from their mouths,
but it's never enough:

I want you.

I could love you real good.

Yes, like no other would.

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact

that flags do not wave in a vacuum.

I can't explain to you what red is without having seen it.

But I can make you want to see red.

Never makes a song

that feels anything less than the world to them.

Smells like the future.

Street Fight - 8.5/10. A soft spot for decent people up against indecent people. I hate to use the word, but inspiring, and serves as a nice reminder that you don't have to change anything about you in order to succeed.

You only like it

because you recognize it.

You tell american kids how beautiful democracy is and you've got to ask yourself the question,

if democracy is so damn good, why we got to go all over the world trying to ram it down people's throat with a gun.

'Cause it all comes out wrong,

unless I put it in a song.

Someone said it could be good,

but no one would own up to having said it.

Everything

out of context.

I have a job.

There's nothing I like less

than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.

He likes her for her anger.

She likes him for his calm.

It doesn't count.

It's too easy to luck into liking something.

Remembering

becomes a courageous act.

Are ideas invented,

or discovered?

I loved you,

but I at least like her.

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints,

and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.

If you can beat that last bit out of them,

they ain't fighters at all.

The name is only important if, in knowing it,

things become more clear.

It's not real. It's the movies.

Beyond the Sea - 6/10. Has no idea what it wants to be. Starts off almost deconstructionist, but that very quickly turns into a gimmick turns into a flight-of-fancy musical turns into a this-happens-and-then-this-happens chain of events straight-faced biopic. It can't figure itself out and so leaves us without a sense of who he is. Maybe that's the point. I don't know.

Is the sea.

Spirited Away - 7.5/10. I've got the same problem with Miyazaki that I have with Almodovar: I enjoy watching their movies and they leave me not knowing what the fuck they were all about. To their credit, I'd rather blame myself than them.

I go whole weeks

without thinking about you.

Another fool playing

songs that don't matter.

Everything new

is dangerous.

Just droppin' in to pass y'all a note.

Babel - 3.5/10 - This movie fucking sucked.

A repeated insistence

that this is not a life.

If you don't understand,

then you're not him, are you?

Failing

to describe a feeling.

It is easy to tell art is successful

if the art itself is the best way to articulate its own purpose or qualities.

What now?

You keep going.

Thanks for the adventure.

Up - 8/10. Even the fucking short made me tear up.

I have no wants.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice - 8/10. A nice line between not saying what you mean and not believing other people when they don't say what you think they should say.

There's no history

but what people say.

Glory is acquired by virtue

but preserved by letters.

The history of the world

is the biography of great men.

Too low they build

who build beneath the stars.

Unabashedly

herself.

The kitchen sink.

Billy Liar - 7.5/10. Yorkshire lad finds it easier to lie than to become it. Youthful indecision in the style of everything afterwards.

Can I ask you a question.

Do you dream?

That's dedication.

Anvil: The Story of Anvil - 7.5/10. Subject matter on par with 'The Wrestler,' except, uh, funnier, I guess. I want to make a movie about it being okay to give up on your dream.

I always try to not remember

rather than forget.

Ahh.

The joke has come upon me.

What's worse?

Passing it off as truth or passing it off as fiction?

People who vote for talent vote once.

People who vote for 'cute' vote twice.

What will become of us who want to believe

but cannot?

When they cancelled the project,

they almost did me in.

Slavic deity

of whom much has been speculated but little can be said. It is indicated he was a dark and cursed god.

And none on this earth will ever get what they want.

And that is beautiful, or close enough.

I've got one things to say to the future's absolute poor:

I've got mine -- fuck you.

It's in our hearts, it's in our heads.

It's in our love, baby,
it's in our bed.

A bookmark

need not be a fancy thing.

'Til we've lost our voice,

we'll make a joyful noise.

It's time you decided what it is you believe in,

even if all you have to choose from are fictions.

Don't be.

We're just saying goodbye.

Monument

to memory.

It's not that I dislike anyone.

It's that I don't like anyone.

Ehh.

7/10.

You never seemed to pull the thread.

When the study asked you to indicate “some of the fundamental beliefs, concepts, philosophy of life or articles of faith which help carry you along or tide you over rough spots,” you wrote: “Hard to answer since I am really not too introspective. However, I have an overriding sense (or philosophy) that it’s all a big nothing—or ‘chasing after wind’ as it says in Ecclesiastes & therefore, at least up to the present, nothing has caused me too much grief.”

Maturation

makes liars of us all.

One brilliant woman from the Stanford Terman study had been pre-med in college;

when she was 30, a vocational survey identified medicine as the field most suitable for her. But her ambitions were squashed by gender bias and the Great Depression, and she ended up a housewife. How, the study staff asked her at age 78, had she managed the gap between her potential and her achievement? “I never knew I had any potential,” she answered. Had she ever thought of being a doctor? Never, she said.

You were clearly depressed, he observed,

and yet full of joy and vitality.

“I’ve answered a great many questions,”

you wrote in your 1946 survey. “Now I’d like to ask you people a couple of questions. By what standards of reason are you calling people ‘adjusted’ these days? Happy? Contented? Hopeful? If people have adjusted to a society that seems hell-bent on destroying itself in the next couple of decades, just what does that prove about the people?”

But you said your parents’ divorce was “just like in the movies,”

and that you someday “would like to have some marital difficulties” of your own.

“It’s very hard,” Vaillant said,

"for most of us to tolerate being loved.”

All I really want to do.

I ain't lookin to compete with you,
Beat or cheat or mistreat you,
Simplify you, classify you.
Deny, defy or crucify you.
All I really wanna do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

No, and I ain't lookin to fight with you,
frighten you or uptighten you,
drag you down or drain you down.
Chain you down or bring you down.
All I really wanna do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

I ain't lookin' to block you up,
shock or knock or lock you up,
Analyze you, categorize you.
Finalize you, just advertise you.
All I really wanna do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

I don't want to straight-face you,
Race or chase you, track or trace you,
or disgrace you or displace you.
Or define you or confine you.
All I really wanna do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

I don't want to meet your kin,
Make you spin or do you in,
or select you or dissect you.
Or inspect you or reject you.
All I really wanna to do
is, baby, be friends with you

I don't wanna to fake you out,
Take or shake or forsake you out,
I ain't lookin for you to feel like me.
See like me or be like me.
All I really wanna do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

What happened to you?

You grew up in a kind of fairy tale, in a big-city brownstone with 11 rooms and three baths. Your father practiced medicine and made a mint. When you were a college sophomore, you described him as thoughtful, funny, and patient. “Once in awhile his children get his goat,” you wrote, “but he never gets sore without a cause.” Your mother painted and served on prominent boards. You called her “artistic” and civic-minded.

As a child, you played all the sports, were good to your two sisters, and loved church. You and some other boys from Sunday school—it met at your house—used to study the families in your neighborhood, choosing one every year to present with Christmas baskets. When the garbageman’s wife found out you had polio, she cried. But you recovered fully, that was your way. “I could discover no problems of importance,” the study’s social worker concluded after seeing your family. “The atmosphere of the home is one of happiness and harmony.”

At Harvard, you continued to shine. “Perhaps more than any other boy who has been in the Grant Study,” the staff noted about you, “the following participant exemplifies the qualities of a superior personality: stability, intelligence, good judgment, health, high purpose, and ideals.” Basically, they were in a swoon. They described you as especially likely to achieve “both external and internal satisfactions.” And you seemed well on your way. After a stint in the Air Force—“the whole thing was like a game,” you said—you studied for work in a helping profession. “Our lives are like the talents in the parable of the three stewards,” you wrote. “It is something that has been given to us for the time being and we have the opportunity and privilege of doing our best with this precious gift.”

And then what happened? You married, and took a posting overseas. You started smoking and drinking. In 1951—you were 31—you wrote, “I think the most important element that has emerged in my own psychic picture is a fuller realization of my own hostilities. In early years I used to pride myself on not having any. This was probably because they were too deeply buried and I unwilling and afraid to face them.” By your mid-30s, you had basically dropped out of sight. You stopped returning questionnaires. “Please, please … let us hear from you,” Dr. Vaillant wrote you in 1967. You wrote to say you’d come see him in Cambridge, and that you’d return the last survey, but the next thing the study heard of you, you had died of a sudden disease.

Dr. Vaillant tracked down your therapist. You seemed unable to grow up, the therapist said. You had an affair with a girl he considered psychotic. You looked steadily more disheveled. You had come to see your father as overpowering and distant, your mother as overbearing. She made you feel like a black sheep in your illustrious family. Your parents had split up, it turns out.

In your last days, you “could not settle down,” a friend told Dr. Vaillant. You “just sort of wandered,” sometimes offering ad hoc therapy groups, often sitting in peace protests. You broke out spontaneously into Greek and Latin poetry. You lived on a houseboat. You smoked dope. But you still had a beautiful sense of humor. “One of the most perplexing and charming people I have ever met in my life,” your friend said. Your obituary made you sound like a hell of a man—a war hero, a peace activist, a baseball fan.

In a big cup, I put my hand

and took out the heart of a Cordovan girl.

Reason for being.

Ain't nothin' else to do.

A piquant, striking word

occurs to history almost always delayed.

Employee discount

at the Baby Gap.

Perhaps, in another reality.

Star Trek - 7/10. Hello, you flawed and entertaining motherfucker.

As a sidenote, I don't know if Chris Pine made a great Captain Kirk, but he did make a great Green Lantern.

Motherfucker ain't love a buffet

like this motherfucker is love a buffet.

Because you know how to feel,

and knowing how to feel is more important than how you feel.

I stared you down so hard,

I burned your shadow to the wall.

Keep it secret

like fire.

My love,

I am the speed of sound.

They split up.

One day, according to Karr, he broke her coffee table. She billed him a hundred dollars. He paid her and said that the remains of the table were now his. Karr told him that she’d used them for firewood, and that all he’d bought was “the brokenness.”

As subtle

as those three names will allow.

Hang tight, spidermonkey.

Twilight - 4/10. Vampires give piggyback rides.

Wolverine - 4.5/10. Sigh.

I don't care

what they say about us, anyway.

Weak-willed.

Dedicated sinners.

More like

Thomas Pynch-one off, shorty, ha.

Betray a great thought

by simplifying it.

There's a thief

in your language.

Secrets

don't keep.

I could've told you.

I'm not an idiot.

Looks to everywhere

as temporary.

I plan to have a whole army by the time that I'm through

to load they guns with songs they haven't sung.

If you dare to share your heart,

we'll nod our head to its beat.

But you taught me how to dream

and so I also thank you.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.

The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

Independent pornography.

Snow Falling on Peters.

Shirtless werewolves

hate sexy vampires.

Honey,

I like the way you talk.

Well,

I'll be.

They don't own us.

They bought and sold us.

With everyone on board,

we can only sink faster.

Oh, lie:

I thought you were golden.

I don't know

what anything's supposed to be.

Salvation or shame.

With fuck all in between.

Rock

for sustainable capitalism.

Fucking

goof.

It's not enough to say 'I love you'

because you don't know what it means.

It's not enough to like it.

You must like it for the right reasons.

And love,

natürlich.

If we ain't in love,

then we fucking.

Here I stand,

protesting infinity.

She

doesn't belong to you.

My people,

let pharoah go.

Money don't grow on trees.

But for paper, people change colors like leaves.

Man,

shine.

A subtle sense

of the fitness of things.

Man.

I keep farting.

The internet

provides self-awareness.

Good captain,

what say the seas.

As long as you don't know no better,

I won't push the issue.

I'm still as stupid as anyone,

but I know my mistakes.

The outline to

a complicated dream of dignity.

Here comes a candle

to light you to bed;
here comes a chopper
to chop off your head.

It contains pop culture references.

Monsters Vs. Aliens 3-D - 5/10. It's not funny, so people say it in a funny voice. Manages to turn a novel conceit into some 3-D self-empowerment shit.

This guy.

This fuckin' guy.

Waiting to be forgotten.

Adventureland - 6.5/10. Nothing seems to happen naturally.

Dead in the hull, tied to the wheel.

Nosferatu (1922) - 3/10. Far too familiar. One boring fucking icon.

And I buried my heart. And I buried my heart.

The Count Of Monte Cristo (1934) - 6.5/10. Oh, movies. Robert Donat plays his Dantes with such nonchalance and underlying glee that he hardly seems to care that he's been wronged. So he'll have to excuse me if I don't either.

Nothing on the front lines, sir.

The enemy seems to be celebrating... Christmas...

Created this in others,

but could not believe it in himself.

You ain't never seen Doctor Martin Luther King

with no messy jheri-curl in his hair.

She takes her time and doesn't feel she has to hurry.

She no longer needs you.

We made a deal in the car:

You stay angry, I'll feel nothing at all.

Just when you're about to learn to smile again,

I'm going to be the one to teach you how to cry.

I've got

other people's memories.

Salazar, Luis Cervantes

I would like to say goodbye to mom and my brother, brother, sister, Chelsea, Danny, Johnny, Tito and Sylvia. My heart goes is going ba bump ba bump ba bump. I love my children, Roxanne, Roseanne, Melissa, and Louis. I miss them; I will take them with me in my heart. I will keep them in my heart. Thank you Mrs. Dyson for praying for me and everyone that has been praying for me. God loves everybody and myself. I can't say this correctly. Let's see. That's all right. I guess that's it.

He cursed

like a billiards player.

That doesn't make sense.

That just rhymes.

Fucking doomed.

Fucking doomed, fucking doomed, fucking doooooooooooooooomed.

Baby's first gif.

Phenomenal cosmic power!

Itty-bitty living space.

If it's any consolation,

I don't begin to understand them.

And I figured,

why couldn't I have the whole damn day.

I'll write you a letter tomorrow.

Tonight, I can't hold a pen.

Question:

Why do people say boring shit.

Because I believe that one can only relate with

another living creature by completely destroying it.

When hell freezes over,

I'll stroll that, too.

Cameras

can't capture me.

Art, man.

This is only funny to me.

A lie.

Mostly.

Yeah.

Probably not.

This isn't some kind of metaphor.

God damn, this is real.

Just because we were young.

Doesn't mean we were wrong.

I just farted.

That shit stinks.

And said that we were his friends

even if he wasn't theirs.

Accident

into.

Blissfully removed

from the burden of context.

Middle-class

morality.

I trust the reader will

understand that what may well have seemed like conscious objections, they were in reality: simply a request to honor his strength and speed.

Neologisms.

I Love You, Man - 5.5/10. Desperately wants to create a new word. Everything's overeager. Paul Rudd is better as a douche. Jon Favreau is a great douche. Andy Samberg is an unexpectedly great straight-man. Those my thoughts, y'all.

I never saved anything for the swim back.

The Colors Trilogy: Blue - 7/10. 'Last Tango in Paris' with loneliness instead of sex. Well, some sex. Also, everything's blue, what the fuck???

If I can't curse,

I won't stay.

Better Homes

And Fartin'.

I guess it comes down to

what kind of world you want to live in.

Old people are annoying.

The Sunshine Boys - 5/10. 'My Favorite Year' for an era in time I'm not particularly fond of.

Tender-hearted 'cause it's been kicked around.

Marty - 6/10. So anyway, I watched this.

Is something to be.

Topper - 7/10. Grant, Bennett and Young are so contagiously delightful that it's a shame that the movie had to tie them all down to a plot.

No one's allowed to have an interesting face.

Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3 - 4.5/10. Aside from some craggly foreheads, it's not particularly entertaining or smart.

That's your guiding star, isn't it.

What's of use.

I talked with a girl the other day

who told of being held up at gunpoint, but was more afraid of being alone.

To say we're inherently good

is to discount how smart we are in coming up with it ourselves.

If we find ourselves reaping

a strange and bitter fruit that sad old man beside you keeps feeding to young minds as virtue.

Not even in the face of Armageddon.

Watchmen - 6.5/10. The highest compliment I can give Zack Snyder is that he's made a movie worthy of being talked about. Not just because it's good or bad in equal measure, but because it's not easy to dismiss as bad and it's harder to qualify as good. It's become a watermark for adaptation and why and why bother and what can be changed and what can stay the same and whatever the fuck. So with all of that in mind, he does fuck up. He just doesn't fuck up everything. He continues to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how people behave but, the source material being what it is, just touching on it is all that really needs to happen in order for me to dribble in my pants and occasionally - occasionally - when Snyder isn't jerking himself off through the camera lens or telling his actors 'no, no, say that stupider,' he pulls something great off. Rorschach screaming 'you're locked in here with me' is fantastic and heart-thumping and what's more, it's not dwelt on. That's Snyder's whole fucking problem. '300,' the source, is a story about casual violence. '300,' the movie, is about yelling a lot. Anything that's throw-away or peppered in become centerpieces. He makes highlight-reel movies, big signs and blinking lights pointing towards 'Are you watching this? This is a big moment. You should be watching this.' You take that Rorschach-in-prison moment and compare that to Rorschach's final failure to compromise and how it's dragged out and wringed of everything final until it's empty of all emotion, and Nite Owl wailing over the whole ordeal. Snyder knows how to make a movie, but he can't create a story. The dramatic pile-ups in 'Watchmen' don't have any sort of impact because they're not crafted. They just hang there, tied up over loose ends. The biggest insult I can throw at Zack Snyder is that he turns 'Watchmen' into what it's not supposed to be - a big comic book movie, with heroes and Saturday-morning supervillains (and, to his credit, an ending that actually makes more sense in the grand scheme). He forgets that 'Watchmen' is a human drama played out on a global scale with people who are not entirely us. He has made a movie with clearly defined bad guys - the distant planet and the smug, emotionless toad, and the good guys cry over each other's graves. I will not watch the movie again and come away relating to a new character each time, as I do with its source. The movie doesn't allow for that complexity. He's given us a shining example of what a pure adaptation looks like when it's put together by someone who doesn't entirely understand it. He's given us the 'cool moments' without giving it any sort of heart.

I will never write this much again.

His head was a faucet

leaking love, laughter and lies.

First we take Manhattan,

then we take Berlin.

Important enough

that you need some sense of being able to abandon it.

You can't treat it

like any other thing.

Failing

to describe a feeling.

Things I'm giving up for lent.

I'm giving up on love.

A hell of a knack for killing a conversation.

The Last Detail - Carl Kane's breasts/10. There's little here I don't love. Like 'Down By Law,' a cast of characters united by circumstance rather than a real, careful liking, and when the circumstance ends, so does any connection they have to each other. It's like getting stuck in an elevator and telling the other person exactly who you are and then walking out without saying goodbye.

Dear girl who gave me a brownie,

I love you.

She was last seen flying out of Cadmus

riding atop Grokk, the Living Gargoyle.

It's taken us years

to find in ourselves the strength to concede.

And where for five months he ran free

and replayed his only fond memory.

Historically oppressed. Repeatedly marginalized.

Made to stand on stupid lines.

You need not find a cure

for everything that makes you weak.

I won't pretend that we're on the winning end.

But when did that matter before anyway.

How strange it is

to be anything at all.

And when her spirit left her body,

how it split the sun.

Do his poot smell like mine?

You don't have to lie.

I pinch.

I pinch to feel.

It's one of those singing and dancing towns.

The Music Man - 7.5/10. Robert Preston is wonderful as a sleaze, but I don't buy his change of heart. It seems inappropriate for the man to not have to talk his way out of it.

Muffins.

I got some.

The idea of learning is to be bigger, not smaller.

Born Yesterday - 8.5/10. Everyone in this movie is dimmer because Judy Holliday is beside them.

I just like the way

these words look on the page.

As we would lay and learn

what each other's bodies were for.

Can't convince a boy

a girl's not pretty.

I remember nothing about it

except that I enjoyed it.

A fundamental misunderstanding

of how people behave.

Had finally got up the guts

to outgrow me.

She kept secrets of pride locked so tight in her heart,

it killed a part of her before the rest was gone.

I've got secrets

you don't know.

That indicate to me that in order to survive,

she had to be interesting.

We both love this game so much,

we can hardly fucking stand it.

Unfortunately, nothing did.

The Magical Mystery Tour - 4/10. Ringo is still my favorite.

Drink to the dead all you still alive.

We shall join them in good time.

As in the beginning,

the end.

From torched skyscrapers,

men grew wings.

It cost too much,

staying human.

And me wan' go home.

Coraline - 6.5/10. Direct descendant of 'Beetlejuice,' which is an unfortunate comparison because the anarchy and everything-goes spirit of that movie had a welcome place in an impressive, but surprisingly humorless 'Coraline.'

It makes as much sense

as anything else I've ever heard.

A Lady's Age happening to be questioned,

she affirmed she was but Forty, and called upon a Gentleman that was in Company for his Opinion; Cousin, said she, do you believe I am in the Right, when I say I am but Forty? I ought not to dispute it, Madam, reply'd he, for I have heard you say so these [last] ten Years.

I start fightin' a war,

I guarantee, you'll see something new.

I will lead you him to whom you love.

Destiny - 4/10. Fritz Lang. Where 'Metropolis' made its point halfway through and then continued to make that point, 'Destiny' marks its intent in the title and insists on going from there. The final act turns interesting and almost slapstick as the dame becomes desperate and begs the old and disabled and the waiting to die for to take her lover's place, them refusing it on the basis of 'at least it's still life,' but that's an hour and some minutes into an otherwise boring movie.

I would tell you everything

if you stopped asking questions.

We feel,

as if truth were a matter of personal taste.

What's the point of giving you any more artworks

when you don't understand the ones you've got.

The most overrated virtue.

Honesty.

Life might very well lack purpose, and it might very well be a struggle.

But that doesn't mean you have to be an asshole about it.

For a eunuch, you seem to be quite in love.

It wasn't my heart they clipped!

You want to rule the world.

I only want to enjoy it.

My watch is not broken.

It is the times that are broken.

Girl, who you been pootin' on?

You best not be pootin' on me.

Fuck a Snuggie.

Just as much telling you what's good

as figuring out what good means.

You're going to turn into a

taco bell.

The beat generation.

Wendy and Lucy - 6.5/10. The world deigns to keep you at your level + hipster drama.

Forgotten to remember what we've chosen to forget.

Waltz With Bashir - 8.5/10. 'It will be no excuse to say: I was just following orders.'

All the looks of love

were staged.

Old man river.

He don' give a fuuuuuuuuh.

I love you more

'cause I'm bigger.

Fuck this band.

Because they swear too much.
It's an obvious ploy.
And irresponsible.

Maybe freedom's just another word

for no one left to kill.

When people ask what I been doing.

I tell them I been pootin'.

And I forget stuff.

The Wrestler - 6.5/10. Oddly cliche and generic, save for a few genuinely sweet character moments. It mostly serves as an elegy, a fantasy wish-fulfillment of wayward professions whose time was once and may be again. It makes a hero out of someone too stubborn to not fuck up, which the movie hides from us for the longest time because he's such a damn sweetheart, now isn't he.

What'll it be, mac.

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut - 7/10. In brief: Richard Donner made Superman I and II back-to-back, but was taken off after the release of Superman I for whatever reason and was replaced by Richard Lester, when little of the film remained to be filmed, making it campier, which the original director derided.

It's been a long time since I've seen the original release as anything more than wallpaper, so forgive me if I'm mistaken. On the whole, the movie seemed to be neutered, to lack the comedy and camp that made Superman II better than Superman I in the first place. It's fantastic being able to see more footage of Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent, whom I adore, and Margot Kidder's Lois Lane becomes sort of adorable, which isn't a word I would have used to describe Margot Kidder's Lois Lane. Having Brando there is better than not, and the movie makes a stab at the end for a more dramatic conclusion to the Superman and Lois Lane relationship, but then bites itself in the ass by trying to erase that with what remains the campiest aspect of the Superman movies. Between the two versions of the movie, both of which are great in their own right, there's probably one that's only slightly better.

Girl.

You got me all interested in your pootin'.

Latest news.

Obama raises hand, lifts a nation. (link to t-shirt)

Highlight-reel

culture.

Let me begin

with some sentimental appeals to our national myths; assorted cliches coined by the state; the ideological shorthand meant to sweep your private doubts away.

What would that say about me

if I got offended.

If the devil looked just like you.

In the Valley of Elah - 8/10. Tommy Lee Jones plays Batman to his son's murder, and finds out his son was an ounce a dick. I would have preferred the thing was more about 'finding out who the members of your family really are' outside of the context of who they are to you, rather than 'what war'll do to you, man' but Paul Haggis. Otherwise terse and Jones is fantastic.

White folk.

30 Days of Night - 7.5/10. Better than its source material, which couldn't fit tension into its 80 pages. Could have been tighter and slower and better and more Thing-esque, but I'll take it fine.

Slut.

Mamma Mia! - 2/10. What a magnificently awful movie.

4-eva.

My Bloody Valentine 3-D - 6/10. I didn't know who the killer was until the end and it was in 3-d.

On evenings

when we got together to listen to music and challenge each other in wild games of hearts.

Pusscake.

Gran Torino - 8.5/10. Manages to be exactly what you expect and not at all. Surprisingly sweet, wholly affecting, hilarious and, if it is his last movie, I couldn't imagine one more fitting. Above all else, despite everything the movie says, all the lines it tries to cross, it is one of the most family-friendly movies of last year and one of its very best.

Willenium.

Only 991 years left.

Just abandoned.

Synecdoche, NY - 8/10. Hey, man, that was pretty good.

More.

Jam-packed full of ideas, good ideas, about art and artists and I guess regular motherfuckers, too, but who gives a shit about them. Charlie Kaufman's flaws in the past have been sacrificing a certain amount of character development for the sake of his ideas, which is a sort of half-assed criticism, really, and it's still there in this one, though lesser. He managed to cram in all of his ideas and have his most fleshed-out character so far, even if it falls short of understanding itself. It shows how smart Charlie Kaufman is that he ends up making that part of the point of the movie anyway. I'm waiting for the day I can talk about Charlie Kaufman movies without talking about Charlie Kaufman.

Like taking out stitches

with a fork.

An expensive

way of knowing.

Every artist

wants to be a different artist.

Done right by what's done right by you.

It Happened One Night - 6.5/10. Fascinating to watch simply for seeing where the screwball comedy conventions came from. The rapid-fire dialogue isn't as fast as it would become, nor is it as clever and Clark Gable practices the mannerisms that Cary Grant would later steal. Fun to watch as a specimen, but not entirely memorable or that well thought out.

Mantrap.

You fell in.

Changing

my dialogue.

Never

without a reason.

Dangle.

Miller's Crossing - 8/10. I watched this a long time ago and had no affection for it and then i watched it again and it was all right there.

Fat Larry's

is now an Indian Restaurant.

Busy

with virginity.

Baby, I've got to go.

Baby, I've got to know.

Marion Cobretti.

Commando - 6/10. I've been holding this up for years to be some sort of 'Cobra'-level event, but it only manages to be half as bad as that one is. I watched it on AMC and apparently I missed him cutting off the top of some guy's head? so it's probably a point lower than it should be.

Taylor Swift.

I would wait for marriage because that's what you fucking want.

Taylor Swift.

I am serious in fucking love with this bitch.

Dear Girl at Fat Larry's,

I put a dollar in the tip jar, but you didn't see me do it. I thought about taking it out and waiting until you saw me, but I decided against it. That would be fake, and I want our relationship to be real.

Your boy.

Dear Zachary: A Letter To A Son About His Father - 8/10.
T
E
A
R
J
E
R
K
E
R.

Stop inviting walls

into wide open spaces.

Dear Girl at Fat Larry's,

You asked me what I wanted.
I wanted to say 'you.'
I got a 99 cent burger instead.

Resolution:

Suck more dick.

Robert Redford sings the blues.

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button - 6.5/10. Shy of affecting. You'll have to understand I'm a hard ass nigga.

Enclosed, you'll find your mother.

My Favorite Wife - 6/10. Grant and Dunne are more than fine, but the movie simply doesn't aim for any high notes.

Hey, guys, I didn't make this pizza.

It was delivered by Pizza Hut.