just an observation, but…
The world of 2009′s The Road is by definition one without meaning: an unspecified cataclysm has radically altered the earth, leaving is sunless and all but lifeless. Plants and the lifeforms directly dependent on them are long dead; the more adaptable end of the food chain has dwindled to a few brutal survivors consuming the last scraps of nourishment, [...]
Avatar is an extremely pretty and well-meaning film that suffers from the same core problem that plagued Drag Me To Hell, another mostly enjoyable 2009 film: both were written in the early/mid-90s, a different cultural epoch for both the horror and fantasy genres. Drag Me To Hell was somewhat disappointing because the marketing: had me [...]
As a kid I was a sucker for the patriotic or counterculture fist-pump, the humanised enemy representative who receives a grand rescue by White America Man, who is raging against the machine of Evil White Men Who Won’t Listen To Humanistic Reason And Probably Smirk A Lot, thus signifying that White America in the audience [...]
The X-Files: I Want To Believe 2008 It’s 1995, and I’m watching X-Files with my parents, while my dad (who was one of the five people watching from the very first episode) explains the backstory. Three years later, it’s a half-dozen college students crowded around a 10-inch dorm room tv, and I’m the one explaining [...]
In his only novel, Australian Nick Cave out-Southern Gothics William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor with his ur-swamp tale of total corruption, the degradation of all life and complexity into unthinking muck.
January 24, 2010
R
