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Dan Carlson
Los Angeles, California

I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of certain TV shows — for starters, "The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "The Zeppo," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April Is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day," "An Echolls Family Christmas," "Look Who's Stalking," "The Garage Door," "Charlie Gets Crippled," "Wind Sprints," and "Corner Boys" — you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings, or at any rate a heartfelt attempt to interpret them. I guess I was made to be a film critic.

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« Oh, The Fools Of April |Main| Lee Of The Baha'i »

April 2, 2006

I Have Spent More Than Half A Lifetime Trying To Express The Tragic Moment

By Dan Carlson

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Can I just say: Finally.

Basically, I'm going to pretend that most of the second season of Lost never happened, like the Matrix sequels or the Bush administration. Last week's "Lockdown" episode featured movement on the Henry Gale plot (I never trusted that guy), some slight progression with the love-hate-animal-attraction between Jack and Sawyer, and even a reappearance from Libby the Trashy Tail Section Girl, who has got to know that Hurley's rich back in the States, since no sane woman would tease any man with the strip-down wardrobe show Libby gave Hurley in the hatch back in the day.

It was the first good episode in weeks, not least because it dealt with Locke, one of the three genuinely rounded characters in the bunch. Locke's flashback also had an actual bearing on the current island situation, something the writers forgot about with the stupid Charlie-can-see-ghosts and the-island-gave-Jin-magically-restored-sperm plot lines. You know Locke's heart was gonna get broken about 45 minutes in, but that didn't make it hurt any less. Killer. Great stuff.

They've only got five more episodes this season to turn things around, and I think they can do it. Pull J.J. Abrams off postproduction and publicity for Mission: Impossible 3, since that thing's gonna be huge regardless. Let him write and produce one of the few good shows on network TV. The show needs him.

Also, in the interest of turning you, dear reader, into an all-around better person, I'm inaugurating the Quote of the Day. It won't always happen, but when it does, be prepared to change for the better. And now:

"Hello."

"AHH!"

"Why'd you scream?"

"I meant to say hi."

"What happened?"

"I misspoke."

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Comments: 2

enekbue

Good work!

Jul 11, 2007 1:09 AM

gzdhbwb

Good work!

Jul 19, 2007 4:18 AM

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Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
— Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
— John Stuart Mill

We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
— G.K. Chesterton

We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.
— Me, Fall 2003

There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.
— Stephen King

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— Ask the Dust, John Fante