The Darjeeling Limited is good

I just watched Darjeeling Limited and it turns out it's really good. Why didn’t anyone tell me?

"Anderson is still a maddeningly cool filmmaker. He's remote from his characters, which makes him remote from his movies. There's also a way in which he uses race as a novelty, suggesting an assertively white-kid view of the world."

Paging Dr. Obvious: Salon.com needs you in the operating room STAT. (What? Somebody please teach me how to use that expression.) Saying that about Wes Anderson is like complaining that Jane Austen’s novels are all set in drawing rooms or that gold is maddeningly expensive. That’s just how it is. The sun provides heat. This movie is about the white-kid view of the world. And who doesn’t want to spend two hours seeing the world through the eyes of a rich globe-trotting expat? It’s Henry James, if only Henry James didn’t take for boring eternity to read. It’s not an oppressive colonizing of normativity, it’s “normative fan fiction,” and it’s beautiful.

“I give this painting a bad review because Whistler doesn’t seem to love his mother.” – overheard at Salon.com’s great-great-great-great-grandfather (just a physical salon).

The Darjeeling Limited is a movie about literature, and it’s better than most short stories. The two best parts of this movie come close to being the two worst parts: one, the scene where Owen Wilson takes off his bandages and the brothers say that he’s still healing. First you’re like, “really??” Then you’re like “oh. The metaphoric and the literal have been caught in the world’s most charming feedback loop. Well played.” It’s Nick Adams making coffee, coffeemaker design courtesy Marc Jacobs. And a Rolling Stones B-side playing in the background that I’m going to download right now.

The other best part is the scene toward the end where the train goes by and you see all the individual compartments, like the frames of a film strip. Oh yeah, did I mention this is also a love letter to the magic of cinema? That's right. Fuck you, Salon.com.

Then, as a final twist, Angelica Huston as the mom says something about trying to communicate without any words, and you realize what this is: a short story written by the smartest kid in your senior-year fiction writing workshop, who you were jealous of at first, but by the end of college have come to admire not even begrudgingly, translated into cinema.


Wes Anderson: dude is for all time. I blogged it. No turning back.

The best book I've ever seen II

I guess we're a tumblr now.

Callback:

Exclusive video of the inside of my heart:

Exclusive: Video of inside of Barack Obama's heart

This was definitely filmed using tiny cameras placed inside Barack Obama's heart. Technology these days! It's crazy.

Country songs/vids about the Internet

even these dumb-dumbs know what it's about and exactly how it works.

B.W.S.S.

B.W.S.S. stands for "Busy Writing Short Story." It's the txt slang kids are using when they get trapped in a feedback loop between the real and the figurative that's so intense they just have to write a short story. Like:

Cassandra: Did you watch the inauguration?
Ashton: No, I had to finish this chapter on the Civil War.
Cassandra: How did that feel?
Ashton: a mixture of relevant and irrelevant.
Cassandra: B.W.S.S.

or

Kimmy: Hey, what are you doing?
Shaun: Making a poster for global capitalism.
Kimmy: But that poster reads "msilatipac labolg"!
Shaun: Oh no! I inverted the whole thing! And it didn't take effort, just me not paying attention...and a little luck.
Kimmy: Also, when you think about it, none of it really matters. Everything is the still same, especially our essence.
Lenore: B.W.S.S.

Get the picture? It's really helpful. I wish it were around when I was putting generic Visine called "Artificial Tears" in my eyes in a parking ramp at the Mall of America and I heard on NPR that Ronald Reagan died (true!).


Anyway, here's what's getting all my best BWSSs right now:

Mirror Box Therapy

It's a treatment for phantom pain. It works by the patient putting their amputated limb in the hole of a "mirror box" (pictured above), then moving the non-amputated limb in front of the mirror while watching the reflection. The image in the mirror tricks the patient's brain into thinking the absent limb still exists, and this alone cures the pain.



Want to know more about it? Let me help you with a link I found.

Also, these FAQ bits are great for people like me (people who love to BWSS):
from a blog:

1) Are there any known side effects?

None have been reported yet.
Things that can happen - depending on the condition are:
Lorimer Moseley reported a patient that was so distressed seeing the amputated limb move again that he had to withdraw from treatment.
Another interesting phenomenon is Dysynchiria - if you touch the unaffected limb and watch the reflection pain is felt in the affected limb.

from mirrorboxtherapy.com:

Can I do myself harm using mirror box therapy?
Mirror therapy is not a placebo effect as it reconditions and retrains the brain to normalise its function. It is important to understand that asymmetrical movement, keeping one limb intentionally still whilst moving the other and simultaneously looking in the mirror at the virtual image may worsen the condition.

If we have different BWSS styles and you can't see where I'm coming from, here are some S.S. plot pitches I came up with involing mirror box therapy:

• mirror box therapist looks at images of estranged family every night


• mirror box therapist writing book about life of the Jewish mind before Holocaust


• mirror box therapist's young mistress introduces him to Second Life


• mirror box therapist who is a liar/believes lies too easily


• mirror box therapist protests the building of a large mirror-covered corporate headquarters in his community


• mirror box therapist gets really into magical realism


• mirror box therapist goes tubing down a big two-hearted river

it's endless.

Happy BWSSing!

Oscar Fever

Check out this snapshot of Norm Coleman that a citizen journalist captured on her cell phone:





Some would question our right to intrude on politicians’ private lives and to place them under media scrutiny 24/7, but if you ask me he should not have been wearing that shirt in the first place.

Do you ever stop to think about the way political humor has changed since Photoshop? I still don’t have Photoshop, so I almost never think about that. The bad thing is that I have to use Paint when I want to manipulate images, but the good thing is that I still understand the world's representation to be in fundamental harmony with the world's truth.

I’m thinking about asking for Photoshop for my birthday, though, as soon as I'm ready to turn wise beyond my years. Just like Benjamin Button. (A funny joke is to end every sentence, “just like Benjamin Button.” An example sentence: “That old man looks like a tiny baby!”)





Is it me or does this movie look so stupid? It should probably be nominated for the Oscar for Stupidest Looking Movie.

And this movie should be nominated for the Oscar for Greatest Title:




I think it's about a hotel for dogs.



Imagine how much this poster would have shaken your foundations, making you question whether cinema can ever truly be “radical” when forced at every level to compromise with the Hollywood system, if only I had Photoshop.

John Updike Finally

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