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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I've got another retrospective up over at Pajiba, this one as part of our Hangover Theater section. I take a look at the mesmerizing, gleeful crap that is The Secret of My Success, which has got to be among the best hangover viewing available.
Questions? Comments? Complaints?
Drop 'em in the mailbag.
"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
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
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
One of the reasons I remember this film is because Helen Slater apparently fell in love with MJF during filming. He dumped after shooting was over, and sources say she never really got over him.
I have a weakness for movies where the leads fall for each other in real life - like "Time after Time" (Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen) and "Days Of Thunder" (Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise)
Always enjoy your reviews.
Sep 10, 2008 4:54 PM