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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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March 17, 2008

Review: Funny Games

By Dan Carlson

Really not as bad as you think it will be. While I admit that I'm more desensitized than some, I should point out that none of the real violence occurs on screen. None. Aside from a slap across the face and a couple hits to a leg, it's all in your head. Which is, I guess, its own kind of punishment.

Seriously, though, it's pretty terrifying, and the dog dies. Don't see it unless you're writing a freshman-level paper on violence in the media.

Click here for the review.

Comments: 2

Kevin Longrie

Also (SPOILER)

The Watts wielding shotgun scene, you see it happen, but then it's made insignificant. So it's like the violence didn't even happen.

(END SPOILER)

Mar 17, 2008 12:20 PM

boo

Dan,

Great great review. You are so insightful with your reviews, and this one is no exception.

Kudos!

Boo

Mar 17, 2008 12:48 PM

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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

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— 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.
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