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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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November 20, 2008

It Was All I Could Do Not To Make A "Vampire Layer" Pun: An Online Transcript

By Dan Carlson

Sis: "He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn't sleep."
guess what that's an excerpt from!
me: oh my goodness
my diary!
Sis: ... i'm so sorry i snooped!
i couldn't help it!
me: seriously is that twilight
Sis: haha, yes
me: b/c i'm about to murder someone it's that bad
Sis: the slate review had that that excerpt in it as a reason why the author hasn't read the book
hehe
those lines are enough to make dan brown and nicholas sparks cry
me: ok i usually don't like dana stevens, but now i will read the review b/c that's awesome
Sis: http://www.slate.com/id/2205013
interesting
that's weird that the female character might actually want to be a vampire
and it's so wrong to have vampires who can go out in daylight. CHEATING.
at least sookie has spunk
and on that note, i'm going to dinner

Comments: 13

I'm reviewing it for the paper this weekend (the film). Working title of my review: "Tween of the Damned"

Constance

I think the movie should be called, "Cedric Diggory and the Chamber of Hormones"

And no, it's not very clever but Harry Potter hysteria was adorable and did not, to my knowledge, involve hormonal teenyboppers swooning over a pale, creepy stalker with abandonment issues!*

* Harry Potter isn't a stalker.

Is there anywhere I might hide (a cave, or basement perhaps?) so that I might wait this whole tween vampire melodrama out? How many books are there anyway? Please tell me its not a Harry Potter sized series.

Malinda

Is it sad that I was just happy to see Cedric alive and kicking again? Well, wait, are Vampires alive?

Sarah, I think there are only 3. Meanwhile, just think about the Book 6 movie coming out in July.

Aubrey

There are 4 books. I somehow read all of them. They are horrendous, but I'll be seeing the movie because it's going to be such a trainwreck.

I didn't make the Pattinson/Cedric connection until just now. I knew the guy looked kind of familiar, but I didn't give it much thought, since Twilight looks like the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

The Real Sarah C.

I would just like to point out that the above Sarah C. is not the one who is the "Sis" of Daniel. Sorry if that confused you, Malinda.

Yeah, Mr. Diggory can act every now and again. I'm waiting with bated breath for his indie film, How To Be, to hit theaters. It's film festivals and I've heard mostly good things.

As for Twilight, I love all things vampire but my love may have run out with this movie and book series.

Ooh, sorry about the Sarah C. confusion. I will now be known as Sarah W. C.

Actually, I don't like Sarah W. C. After thinking about it, it sounds dumb. My last name is Connor, I'll use that. (Yes, Sarah Connor. Feel free to make Terminator jokes.)

If you can, also check out James Wolcott's piece in the latest Vanity Fair:

"No portrait in fine-fingered elegance (“Finished with the last bite of lasagna, I lifted a glass and chugged the remains of my milk”), Bella rues the disparity between his spectral aura and her clay form. “He looked like a god. I looked very average, even for a human, almost shamefully plain.” Yet Edward is captivated by Bella’s heavenly scent (“You smell so good in the rain”) and craves her company (“I crave your company”), his “cold, marble lips” intended only for her hot little pucker."

If you can get somebody to read it aloud, even better.

If you can, also check out James Wolcott's piece in the latest Vanity Fair:

"No portrait in fine-fingered elegance (“Finished with the last bite of lasagna, I lifted a glass and chugged the remains of my milk”), Bella rues the disparity between his spectral aura and her clay form. “He looked like a god. I looked very average, even for a human, almost shamefully plain.” Yet Edward is captivated by Bella’s heavenly scent (“You smell so good in the rain”) and craves her company (“I crave your company”), his “cold, marble lips” intended only for her hot little pucker."

If you can get somebody to read it aloud, even better.

If you can, also check out James Wolcott's piece in the latest Vanity Fair:

"No portrait in fine-fingered elegance (“Finished with the last bite of lasagna, I lifted a glass and chugged the remains of my milk”), Bella rues the disparity between his spectral aura and her clay form. “He looked like a god. I looked very average, even for a human, almost shamefully plain.” Yet Edward is captivated by Bella’s heavenly scent (“You smell so good in the rain”) and craves her company (“I crave your company”), his “cold, marble lips” intended only for her hot little pucker."

If you can get somebody to read it aloud, even better.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/12/twilight200812

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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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Things to Know

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