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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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« Finish The Sentence: An Open Poll |Main| November 2008 »

November 25, 2008

In Living Color

By Dan Carlson

I knew that Google's archive of Life magazine photos had launched, but I didn't get sucked into it until John posted about it the other day. He warned that visitors to the site should be ready to "lose a few hours," and he was right. The scope and number of searchable images is staggering.

But the thing that strikes me most about the archive is the chance to stumble across a color shot from an era typically remembered in black and white. It's a stirring reminder that these people and places and events that have been transformed into the pop history of the 20th century were real, living things, and looked just like things do now. Everything from film quality to hairstyles has a way of making the past seem otherworldly, but some of the photos in this collection make it feel more real. (One of the best examples of this is seeing a color photo of soldiers in World War II, which has in modern times been rendered in movies has having a kind of permanent burned-out sepia look, something that Steven Spielberg has never quite come out and apologized for.)

Here are some great samples:

lifewar.jpeg


lifemlk.jpeg


liferuth.jpeg


The rest of the archive is here.

Comments: 3

Kizer

The sultan of swat...

Nov 26, 2008 9:14 AM

Carisse

wow yes! I completely agree! The type of photo changes its grip tremendously!

Dec 7, 2008 8:46 AM

Carisse

wow yes! I completely agree! The type of photo changes its grip tremendously!

Dec 7, 2008 8:46 AM

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Words of Wisdom

"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