Finnegans Wake: Book I, Chapters 1-4

From the very first page of Finnegans Wake , I knew I was in for a rough ride. Beginning in the middle of a sentence that will eventually be...

Kingdom of Heaven (Ridley Scott, 2005)

I've been meaning to write a defense of the director's cut of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven  (one of my favorite movies of th...

Life of Brian on Friday Night, Saturday Morning

It's a  Life of Brian  kind of day, to my surprise. My blogging buddy Ryan over at The Matinee chose the film for his l atest Blind Spot...

L'Argent (Robert Bresson, 1983)

[This is my March entry for my Blind Spots selections] Robert Bresson famously referred to his non-professional actors as models, and he eve...

Steven Spielberg: Munich

An act of American obliviousness sets in motion the events of Munich . At the 1972 Olympics, a group of American athletes stumble across som...

Steven Spielberg: War of the Worlds

It's just as well that War of the Worlds  was hobbled upon its initial release by the lingering effects of Tom Cruise's infamous cou...

50 Book Pledge #10: Geoff Dyer — Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room

I received a review copy of this for Spectrum Culture, which I requested the second I heard about the book's existence. It didn't di...

Reading Diary: Finnegans Wake

Reading Log Book I, Ch. 1-4 I had not planned on keeping a running journal of my reading of Finnegans Wake , James Joyce's final, most e...

50 Book Pledge #9: Suzanne Collins — The Hunger Games

I feel toward this book and its subsequent adaptation the way I do about Jurassic Park : both have amazing conceits and advantages unique to...

The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012)

The characters of The Hunger Games  all have dirty fingernails. This is the primary insight to be intuited from director Gary Ross' ince...

My Night at Maud's (Éric Rohmer, 1969)

As my first experience with Éric Rohmer,  My Night at Maud's  struck me instantly with its gift for dialogue. As highbrow and probing as...

The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)

My love of the handful of Jane Campion works I've seen inexplicably failed to get me to watch The Piano  with any speed. Happily, I fina...