theraygunwing
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07/28/12, 17:14
agreed |  | Bobby Fischer Against the World (2011)
07/28/12, 16:20
I hate it when people play psychiatrist like that. Why not just say "he's crazy!", or "what an idiot!". But I guess that's the way it is now, we consult the DSM for better insults. | | Cloud Atlas - trailer
07/28/12, 16:01
(well, not just American journalists, but to me, and to the majority of cultured people in the world, the US represents the epitome of vulgarity and anti-intellectual sentiment) | | Cloud Atlas - trailer
07/28/12, 16:00
it's more a reaction to American journalists who review crap like Cloud Atlas | | Cloud Atlas - trailer
07/28/12, 15:59
I should add that this was not a response to dairyqueenlatifah, who was using the word "pretentious" totally correctly. | | Cloud Atlas - trailer
07/28/12, 15:58
Yeah, I only got about 45 seconds in. I haven't read the book, but it looks pretentious (and I'm not one to use the word pretentious in the typical American manner, that is, as an anti-intellectual insult, I believe I'm applying it correctly here). The original New Yorker review:
"Mitchell’s virtuosic novel presents six narratives that evoke an array of genres, from Melvillean high-seas drama to California noir and dystopian fantasy. There is a naïve clerk on a nineteenth-century Polynesian voyage; an aspiring composer who insinuates himself into the home of a syphilitic genius; a journalist investigating a nuclear plant; a publisher with a dangerous best-seller on his hands; and a cloned human being created for slave labor. These five stories are bisected and arranged around a sixth, the oral history of a post-apocalyptic island, which forms the heart of the novel. Only after this do the second halves of the stories fall into place, pulling the novel’s themes into focus: the ease with which one group enslaves another, and the constant rewriting of the past by those who control the present. Against such forces, Mitchell’s characters reveal a quiet tenacity. When the clerk is told that his life amounts to “no more than one drop in a limitless ocean,” he asks, “Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”
And here's the last paragraph of the NYT review:
"To write a novel that resembles no other is a task that few writers ever feel prepared to essay. David Mitchell has written such a novel -- or almost has. In its need to render every kind of human experience, ''Cloud Atlas'' finds itself staring into the reflective waters of Joyce's ''Ulysses.'' Just as Joyce, in the scene that takes place in the cabman's shelter, found the hidden beauty of cliché-filled prose, so Mitchell does with his Luisa Rey story. Just as Joyce, in the late scene in which Bloom and Dedalus finally sit down together, explored the possibilities of a narrative driven by interrogation, so Mitchell does with his ruthlessly grilled ''fabricant,'' Sonmi-451. ''Cloud Atlas'' is friendlier than ''Ulysses'' but far less fallibly human. If Mitchell's virtuosity too often seems android, one suspects this says less about his achievement and more about the literature of formal innovation. This is a book that might very well move things forward. It is also a book that makes one wonder to what end things are being moved."
It's very typical in the US among people who read literature (or what they consider to be literature) to admire Ulysses, but to never even bother attempting to understand Finnegan's Wake. It's a culture therefore that celebrates good technique and polite ambition but cannot recognize real genius, and it is for those great works of art which it cannot understand that it reserves the word "pretentious" (used incorrectly). | | Furry - Student Film [HD]
07/21/12, 23:16
It looks like the title sequence may contain a reference to Louis Wain. | | Chugging a 40 oz of Old English
07/16/12, 14:50
LOL you are SO right | | 2012 Gathering Of The Juggalos Infomercial
07/16/12, 14:47
Be A Part of History! As it All Goes Down! | | 2012 Gathering Of The Juggalos Infomercial
07/16/12, 14:34
whoa, I was not prepared for Prozak | | 2012 Gathering Of The Juggalos Infomercial
07/16/12, 14:22
from youtube:
"I really hope the terrorists don't launch a nuclear attack on this place. There would be no one left to serve me at Taco Bell." | | Kid has a vhs accident
07/13/12, 23:47
this is the most, the most most most most mooost damaged tape I own!!! | | Sharks eats other shark.
07/11/12, 00:02
oh my god! what da fuck! aw yeah dude! | | Prometheus Special Effects
07/10/12, 03:26
idk, it was just such a lousy film. I mean, totally bogus science in a horror film is fine (even in a horror film with sci-fi elements, like Alien, or The Thing). But this wasn't really a pure horror film, it seems like someone tried really hard to develop a compelling sci-fi plot, and they failed horribly. and why shouldn't we expect good big-budget science fiction? it's been done. Minority Reporty is a pretty good example. | | Goosebumps - Grindhouse Trailer
07/08/12, 17:31
lol, you're right | | Just Melvin, Just Evil (2000) complete film
07/08/12, 02:27
incredible. watch till the end for the funeral footage, which is absolutely amazing. | | Curious Developments in Gabrielle Chana Saga
07/07/12, 15:50
she looks kind of like David Lynch | | Glenn Beck's 'Unelectable' Stand-Up Comedy Jokes for Laughs DVD trailer
07/05/12, 16:47
this is true | | Dubstep Baby Beatbox
07/05/12, 14:34
haha what an asshole | | Christian dubstep
07/05/12, 14:31
wow, this is the worst dubstep I've ever heard. five stars. | |
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