When you’re not a professional film reviewer, when you don’t live in New York, when the only advance screenings you attend involve a doctor doing something untoward—when these things are true, trying to write about a new film can seem almost useless: The pros get all the good meat, and you’re left to dig around [...]
David Sklar’s claim that “people don’t care about URLs” (via Full Stop Interactive) seems like a wild overstatement, even taking “people” to mean “average” people. At one point, he might have been right, but people who know what’s up with URLs have long been training others, through the kind of informal technical support so many of [...]
The piece below first appeared in April 2005 on One Blog Two Blog, a concept blog that featured Jay Fanelli and me each responding to a prompt in 600 words or less. The prompt for this piece was “Best 86ed Idea in 86 Years,” a response to the Red Sox first World Series win in—you [...]
Metaphilm saw fit to publish my piece on Pixar’s Up (2009), more or less on the occasion of the film’s release on DVD and Blu-Ray. In the piece, I argue that Up presents a kind of statement, by Pixar, on the role of animation in our contemporary entertainment culture. I feel very lucky to have [...]
My write-up of Knowing (2009) made it into Issue 66 of Bright Lights Film Journal. In the piece, I describe Knowing as challenging viewers to think about the September 11th attacks with critical distance, rather than with the usual emotional charge. I’m thrilled to have it in the company of the other Bright Lights writers.
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