I haven’t been adding posts about my film writing to this website thus far–mostly because I don’t think anyone is really using this website much. That’s okay. I should still go ahead and post some links here just in case someone wants access to some of what I throw into the cultural abyss. To see everything I’ve published on the cultural webzine PopMatters, click HERE. There’s a lot there. For some recent things, click on the following links:
- On Infinity in Miranda July’s Me, You, and Everyone We Know: This is a great film. My take on it has to do with ideas about good and bad infinities, for example in the writing of Hegel, and uses the images of the line and the circle as they figure into the film.
- What Does Perception See? On Fighting as Perception in Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu Films: I take seriously Lee’s famous statement recommending that we “Be Water.” I apply some of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking about perception to an understanding of the cliches of the Kung Fu fight scene and their expansion in Bruce Lee films.
- Breaching Closure in Pasolini’s Teorema: This is a troubling and fascinating film. I look at the issue of systems of thought and feeling that require the sense of closure while relying upon something that lies outside of the circumference of that closure (like Christianity, capitalism, touch, sense).
- The Narrative Voice in Scorsese’s Shorts: Scorsese has a fascinating way of dealing with narration (literal and implied).
- Performing Race in James Whale’s Showboat: A look at how Black and White are performed within this film. Showboat takes a fascinating and not always enlighten approach to the issue of race but we too often ignore its subtleties.
- The Erotic Disruption of the Self in The Comfort of Strangers: Strangers are strange….and yet strangely comforting. They reveal the strangeness in ourselves.
- Buridan’s Ass and the Problem of Free Will in The Great Escape: My original title for this was “Determined to Be Free,” which I still think is superior. Still this title tells you exactly what you are getting: a philosophical examination of free will through one of the great escape films.
- “Just Don’t Believe in Truth:” Cassavetes’s Husbands: Why do we assume extreme emotions (like anger, hostility, fear, revulsion) are more authentic than others? What kind of bullying behavior are we possibly engaged in when we insist that someone just “be themselves”?
- Choosing Experience in Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry: A film about suicide. This is one of those topics in which we often feel the need to offer an airtight reason for not committing suicide. That sometimes leads to bad thinking (as I try to suggest with respect to Camus and Schopenhauer). This film gives us a chance to think again about an issue we fear contemplating.