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Dan Carlson
Houston, Texas

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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« How Could It Be Raining At Indian Wells? |Main| A List Of Classic Cowboy Sayings From Western Films And TV Shows That Have Taken On New Meaning In The Aftermath Of Brokeback Mountain »

May 22, 2006

See, It's A Homonym. They Sound The Same.

By Dan Carlson

A note to Adelphia Cable Co., the faceless entity upon whom I rely for TV and Internet service and which has proven itself to be on occasion pretty stupid:

Perusing the cable listings on Friday afternoon, I saw that Crash was airing on one of the dozen or so HBOs I get (which is awesome). I highlighted the program to read the little info box you guys work up for movies, mainly out of curiosity/indignation/resignation that whoever writes these little blurbs gave the film a four-star rating. So I hit "Enter" on my remote to tune in, hoping I was just in time for that totally awesome scene. You know, the one where that guy figures out he's kind of a racist. That one.

Anyway, to my surprise, I was greeted not with the image of Sandra Bullock crying and hugging her maid (right), but by shirtless and scar-chested Elias Koteas, who was working himself into a sexual frenzy photographing an accident scene while James Spader drove them slowly by a pile of wreckage.

So, I guess what I'm saying to the programmers at Adelphia is this:

Crash and Crash are two very different films. Try not to mix them up.

Also, while we're at it, you keep mixing up The Rookie and The Rookie. English is a fairly limited language, and from time to time you're bound to find multiple films with the same title. Don't get confused, fellas. This is turning into scheduling anarchy.

That's all.

Thanks,

Daniel Carlson

P.S. Try to keep the Internet service from messing up. It's really annoying. Thanks. -DC

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"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
— Pauline Kael

"Film lovers are sick people."
— Francois Truffaut

"I hope I strike a blow for chubby bald men everywhere. I hope they rise like an army."
— Paul Giamatti, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 12/14/04

"Let others praise ancient times, I am glad I was born in these."
— Ovid

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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

Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.
— Ask the Dust, John Fante