One of the things I do best is accept criticism and rejection. I can listen to a roomful of people spend an hour eviscerating a story I spent a month working on and walk out with a smile on my face, anxious to get back to work; I collect and display the rejections slips I receive in response to stories I worked on for six months; and rather than say something that will start a fight, I’ve learned to hold my tongue when the high school kids at the gym make fun of me for wearing glasses when I play pickup basketball. Why am I telling you this? Because I want there to be no doubt that the following response is born from a need to challenge the fallacy of one reader’s response rather than attempt to settle the score.
In a January posting praising Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I included a footnote decrying QuentinTarantino’s Death Proof for being poorly written. My critique garnered the following reader comment: “I find it really fascinating and somewhat sexist how people dismissed “Death Proof” as too talky. “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction” are predominantly dialogue films but since the characters are either entirely or primarily men, we somehow find their just-as-inane dialogue as “Death Proof” to somehow be more relevant…” (Note: my post and the complete response can be read here).
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WARNING: THERE ARE SOME SERIOUS SPOILERS IN THIS ARTICLE.
I think I’ve seen enough of Willem Dafoe’s ass. How many more movies must I be subjected to his hip writhing and facial contortions? I’ve seen him have sex with Madonna. I’ve seen him have sex as Jesus Christ with Mary Magdalene. I’ve seen his ass so much, that I’m pretty sure I know his ass better than my own. It’s true. I hardly ever look at my ass, but I see Willem Dafoe’s ass at least once a year. The sad thing is Dafoe’s ass is not the most disturbing thing about Antichrist .
Lars von Trier wrote and directed Antichrist. He wrote it during a self-proclaimed depressive period in his life. The production was plagued with bouts of his crying and an inability to commit to the film both physically and intellectually; yet he still succeeded in making one of the most baffling horror films of the decade.
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I finally got around to seeing Alice in Wonderland . I had waited until my fiancée was able to see it with me, aren’t I sweet? I saw it in 2D because 3D is dumb. Hopefully the rest of the world will feel the same soon and we can phase it out of our lives, sadly I know this won’t happen.
In the 2D theater there was almost no one there. A few stragglers showed up once the previews began. My fiancée, a friend and I were all excited. My fiancée and friend because they of course had read the books and watched the classic Disney film. I, as you can guess, have never read the books. (Begin collective sigh over my sad childhood. Why didn’t my mother love me and read Alice’s tales to me? Probably because she didn’t love me.)
Going into the film, my only knowledge of the story is from watching Disney and the few Alice references I’ve heard throughout life. I did know there were two books: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. And according to Wikipedia there have been at least 25 film and TV adaptations of the book including one musical porno. (And because I’m very dedicated to my blog, I’m searching for clips from this film. For research only of course.)
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I was recently accepted to a PhD program I applied to at the end of last year, and as part of my acceptance, I’ve been awarded a teaching fellowship. At first I will be given only freshman composition courses, but as I gain more experience I will have the opportunity in subsequent years to oversee literature courses. In explaining this to me the director of graduate studies told me I could teach either American or British literature, depending on what I was more familiar with. I’m more familiar with British literature, which made me realize for the first time my peculiar situation: I’m an American writer who’s spent the majority of my study on texts that were not produced by other Americans. Yes, on my own time I’ve read almost as many books by American authors as foreign, but if I had to quantify the breakdown of my academic focus, I would estimate that 75% of the novels I’ve studied were by foreign authors.
What conclusion can be drawn from this fact?
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