Several Thursday eves ago my two older sisters and brother took me for a night on the town to celebrate Baby Sister’s 21st birthday. The night had all the makings of a Ha Sibling Extravaganza: tears, laughter, self-congratulatory remarks, Scotch, … Read More
In the two years since tragedy struck Beirut with the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the mourning Lebanese people have tried to resist discouragement to create a better future for Lebanon. February 14 marked the two-year anniversary of the killing, as hundreds of thousands came out to protest en masse, condemning the brutal car-bombing and calling for a peaceful solution to their country’s problems.
There’s a pretty big leap between late-night homework and posing nude in some magazine. This is the story of how it happened. I was up late one night finishing a paper that I hadn’t had the wherewithal to start in … Read More
First Voice Message: Today, Friday, the 3rd, 4:27 a.m. — The sounds of Manhattan circa 3 a.m., most noticeably an earnestly diegetic purring. — Hey, man, I know it’s been awhile. — Palpable, nay, precocious, slurring — I’m calling to … Read More
_Nature, God, or whatever you want to call the creator of the universe comes through the microscope clearly and strongly. Everything made by human hands looks terrible under magnification—crude, rough, and unsymmetrical. But in nature, every bit of life is … Read More
When Cornel West speaks, his body seems to perform its own kind of abstract reasoning. The gestures imply an inductive process that stands in relation to what he is saying but that is untethered by mere words. His signature gesticulation … Read More
There’s a house a half an hour south of town, built of stones my father hauled from down the road in his old Ford Fairlane. He built it for my mother when she asked. A rare man sees the monument … Read More
Dear Readers, Have you stopped to think about the biblical roots of idiocy? The disciples really were the prototypes for the moron in front of you at the supermarket who takes so long to write a check that you can … Read More
I didn’t find Funny Games particularly scary on a visceral level. I’m not saying this to suggest I have a hard stomach for movies like this. I don’t. I over-think them and too often imagine what it would be like to be in the characters’ shoes. I try to freak myself out. Funny Games invites its audience to do just that – freak itself out. Funny Games establishes a genre that marries horror with documentary.
More than any other contemporary filmmaker, Wes Anderson has succeeded in crafting his own highly original, instantly recognizable universe. Inhabited by quirky characters usually depressed on some level or other, the world of his films is quite the whimsical place.