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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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« Passages: How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken |Main| My Musical Year In Review, 2008 — 6 »

January 12, 2009

Review: Last Chance Harvey

By Dan Carlson

As disappointing as you'd think.

Click here for the review.

The comment thread also allows me another opportunity to show just how sad and stupid some commenters can be. I spend 1,300 words talking about why the movie isn't good, and then a commenter named Xtreme writes, "Well written Daniel, but I can't say you've made me want to watch this one. Sounds as exciting as "About Schmidt"."

If this is some elaborate hoax designed to make me slowly lose my mind, congrats to whoever orchestrated it. Now please call it off. It's already hard enough to make it as a writer, and I don't know if I want to try and do it in a world where people can so powerfully miss the point of a simple film review.

Comments: 3

janellest

hahaha, you poor poor man.

ok i'll call it off. the infliction of agony is one of my most exquisite pleasures, but not at the expense of a good writer when there are so many bad ones. i'll take my hedonism elswhere.

Jan 12, 2009 3:54 PM

Dan

And to think we bonded over blind horse divers, all while you were pulling the strings on my nervous breakdown.

Jan 12, 2009 5:00 PM

Spender

I read this article and immediately thought of you. I think that you'll enjoy it

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-g-kellman/the-snark-ascending_b_156809.html

Jan 14, 2009 1:40 AM

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Random Quotes

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