Everything about Southland is well-done. The everyday, the dealing-with-shit, even chasing bad guys, none of it is tarted up, we’re not told what to think of it. It shows, it doesn’t tell.
The way they cleared that house this week? Kudos to them! It was slow, deliberate, and very quiet.
And Michael Cudlitz’s Cooper cracks me up. “I’m not an addict. I’m not one of these people like your mother’s friends up in Beverly Hills with their ennui, and their Vicodin, and their white wine.”
Ennui! White w(h)ine! So. Good.
[Ouroussof] raises the specter of nostalgia only to demolish it, a one-paragraph tempest.
Why Nicolai Ouroussoff is Not Good Enough, Alexandra Lange for Design Observer (via John)
“A one-paragraph tempest”! Come on, you guys; that’s great.
Mr. DiCaprio, having grown perhaps overly fond of his accent from “The Departed,” brings it along for the ride, and it spreads through the movie like a contagious disease. Teddy’s partner (pahtnah), Chuck Aule, played by Mark (Mahk) Ruffalo, is supposed to be from the Pacific Northwest but he seems to have left all his R’s back in Seattle.
All at Sea, Surrounded by Red Herrings, A.O. Scott, NYTimes
Cracking up over here. My favorite part of the review might be “Something TERRIBLE is afoot.” You and I both know all-caps like that is a set-up and he follows through quite well.
And then Fanny cuts her hair off and walks the heath, in the snow, reciting a Keats poem and weeping. Campion could have saved that bit by cutting to credits after the affecting wide shot of Fanny crossing a lea and her teenage brother dutifully trailing her, but she didn’t, so the movie squanders its promising beginning with a conclusion straight out of a term paper.
Yes, that. Straight to credits would have, for me, made the too long, too heavy scenes…worth it? Less noticeable at the very least. Fanny reading his work is something we already know she does: that groundwork’s been laid; on the heels of his death, she’s sure to continue but we don’t need to see it.
…you can’t just say, ‘Oh, I can’t work, I’ve got to go and cook a meal.’ You have no choice but to address the demons.
Sade re: writing “Soldier of Love” with the band in the studio. (via goldenfiddlr)
So good (go listen). Looking forward to getting the album.
What color were dinosaurs? Well, at least one of them had a feathered mohawk tail in a subdued palette of chestnut and white stripes.
Study Offers Insight Into Dinosaur Colors
THAT is an intro paragraph. (:
Jack Bauer will want to return for another season of 24 just so he can download schematics and track vehicles on it. Bond will have one. Jason Bourne will have one. Some character, in a Tron like way, might even be trapped in one.
Stephen Fry, iPad About.
(:
I would like to know how it feels for my desperation to get louder.
Bill Withers (“Still Bill” trailer) after reciting the Thoreau quote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
I kept thinking, how am I going to produce a human being who has arguably the greatest single idea that any human being has ever had? And I slowly realized I couldn’t. Because he was the grandfather of evolution and I’m an actor. But I do know about loss and madness. Those are the things I share in common with Charles Darwin. I know what it feels like to lose people.
Paul Bettany (Hero Complex: ‘Legion’ Star Paul Bettany raids the mini-bar.)
That.
USC football will certainly not fall off the map. Nobody is writing here that, without Carroll, Los Angeles will become UCLA’s town.
“Despite this season’s woes, Ben Howland’s star shines bright” - Bill Dwyre
Yes, well, a girl can dream, can’t she?
Item the second: really? Howland “has earned the trust and great expectations of sports fans in Los Angeles”? Uh…are you even in Los An…oh, I see “From Palo Alto”. Carry on.
…it can be hard to accept that what our hero actually needs is to have everything taken away, be it by fire, flood, divorce or zombie uprising.
Burn it down, John August (via)
Music is nothing more than resonant light.
Robert Schumann (via Listen Magazine)
Teacher said, “You can’t” - big mistake.
PLB ← the coolest mom I know (apart from my very own!) upon receiving a request to sum up her life in six words for the person introducing her at a conference whereupon she’s to receive an award for being the awesomest teacher of the year.
Mr. D sipped his Diet Coke. “Yes. Well, as you young people say these days: Whatever.
Dionysus, “The Sea of Monsters”, Rick Riordan.
Re-reading the Percy Jackson books before finally reading the last one.
We changed our style several years ago on plurals like this. Here’s what the current “plurals” entry in The Times’s stylebook says:
But do not use apostrophes for plurals of abbreviations without periods, or for plurals formed from figures: TVs, PCs, DVDs; 1990s, 747s, size 7s.
“Words We Love Too Much”, Philip B. Corbett, NYT
To which I say: it’s about damn time.
