July 2010
Atul Gawande on Hospice Care →
Gawande, last seen singlehandedly altering the course of the health-care debate, has produced another piece of stunning reportage. This time he covers hospice care: end-of-life treatment that focuses on quality of life rather than prolonging it regardless of suffering.
Speaking as someone whose extant grandparents are all in various stages of medical care - one who has a live-in nurse, one with...
“I was asked after doing The Dark Knight whether I felt any particular pressure...”
– Christopher Nolan (edited by me a tad).
Coming out of Memento, Nolan knew that the film would be too complicated for some people. Movies are an implied contract: if I do this mental work in following characters, joining in their dilemmas, etc. then I expect such and such result. Some people, when...
WatchLast but not least, the Sharktopus trailer.
How Bill Murray ended up in the Garfield movie
From the August issue of GQ:
I didn’t make that for the dough! Well, not completely. I thought it would be kind of fun, because doing a voice is challenging, and I’d never done that. Plus, I looked at the script, and it said, “So-and-so and Joel Coen.” And I thought: Christ, well, I love those Coens! They’re funny. So I sorta read a few pages of it and thought,...
Inception was the best movie I've seen in years
Go to the theaters and see it ASAP; it is one hell of a ride.
If you are still on the fence, you can ask me questions to try and figure out if you will like it.
Countdown to Nolan-mas: Following & Memento
See the intro for details about this series of essays. The next entry, on The Prestige, will run tomorrow.
If you want to (re)watch Following or Memento, both are available on Netflix Instant Streaming.
Shot over a year of Saturdays, Following was Nolan’s first movie. Ultra-low-budget, the whole thing had to be made around everyone’s regular Monday-through-Friday jobs. Most of the...
Countdown to Nolan-mas: Introduction
The best irregularly-scheduled holiday ever is almost here: a new Christopher Nolan movie!
One of the most successful directors working today, it’s astonishing to think how recently Nolan burst onto the scene. His first big movie, Memento, only came out ten years ago in 2000. In less than five years time, he moved from smaller dramas to rebuilding a franchise now worth billions. And now -...
Anonymous asked: How did you do the sidenotes on your text posts?
2nd Grade Journal
This is my journal in the 2nd grade, when I was just 7 years old. I found it while cleaning out my closet this weekend, and it amused me enough to share here. I took care to accurately type down every misspelled word, mangled sentence, and broken storytelling logic - and I promise you will laugh.
Greg
Today is Thursday.
Greg
East Antioch Elementary was the school I went to.
Today is...
Some of the early Inception reviews...
Devin at CHUD: 10/10
The advertising for Inception presents the film as a dream-based heist thriller, which is true enough in a larger sense. But the heart of the movie is psychoanalysis presented as kick ass action. Nolan’s interest in dreams doesn’t come from the surreal nature of them (in fact very early on Nolan, who wrote the script, presents an in-universe rule that makes the...
Word of the day: Pronoia
According to Wikipedia:
The simplest definition of Pronoia may be to say that it is the opposite of paranoia. A person suffering from paranoia suspects that persons or entities (e.g. governments) conspire against them. A person enjoying pronoia feels that the world around them conspires to do them good.
“It is also their general practice to deliberate upon affairs of weight when they...”
– Herodotus describing the Persians, excerpted from a selection in Alan Dundes’ Every Man His Way.
Other great tidbits:
“Of all the days in the year, the one they celebrate most is their birthday.”
“Their sons are carefully instructed from their fifth to their twentieth... 