This Ticket limits our liability. Read It.

 By reading the enclosed, Reader (hereby referred to as Reader) agrees to imdemnify Batman (hereby referred to as Writer) from the following:

 Resolved: that these are not movie reviews, and therefore Writer reserves all rights to spoil every plot turn, line of dialog, and gratuitous Matthew McConaughey casting that he sees fit, not only with the movie in question, but with any movie he has seen, heard about it, or simply made up, even if Reader really, really was going to see that one, but couldn't figure out how the Netflix queue works.

 Resolved: that these are not reviews, Reader will not hold Writer responsible if Writer does not convey if a movie is Good (hereby defined as Good) or Bad (hereby also defined as Good). This is largely because Writer isn't sure either.

I feel ambivalent about the Oscars, I just don’t feel ambivalent enough.  What I really want is to feel nothing, and instead, I hate them and love them, which is coincidentally how I feel about articles about the Oscars.  They are a collosal con, and I want my cut.  When I made a film years back, I confess to a practice Oscar speech or two, even though it was a film that wouldn’t be even be seen, let alone awarded.  I believe it went something along the lines of: “Ladies and Gentlemen.  Collected before me are all the worst type of hypocritical sycophantic liars, and now I’m finally one of you!  Stop looking at me!  I love you all!  This award is meaningless, to myself and anyone in the world, and I’m keeping it!  Thank you, and get out of my way!”

Wanting an award you detest is bad enough, but entertaining the notion of a best anything is just plain odd.  Even if we could agree to that an Aristotelian material cause of beauty could lead to a formal cause of truth, Hume correctly points out that matters of fact, standing in opposition to relations of ideas, makes The Curious Case of Benjamin Button just fucking impossible to sit through. (more…)

There’s nothing better than seeing a movie in another country.  I’m sure someday, I will regale you, gentle reader, with the tale of the Cinema Les Halles, one of the only multiplexes in Paris that shows 1) crappy American films and 2) crappy American films in VO, (version originale), English with French subtitles.  It’s a place where Date Movie is transformed into Sexy Movie, and where they don’t know that they shouldn’t show 16 Blocks for any reason.  Nevertheless, I spent all morning practicing, and it’s really the only French I know: ‘says-ee-em bloc’.  So, two years from now, when I’m in a post-apocalyptic Paris, fighting over the last can of saucisson, and the pretty girl in the yaourt aisle, asks, looking wistfully through her bangs, “Savez-vous quelle etais la cause de la fini de la civilisation?”, I can reply, correctly: “16ième blocs.”

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