Totally agree that Wonder might've benefited from a more crisp and less frequent articulation of its sentiment. I feel that my read of it is rare, and can't help but think Malik made it more opaque, even as it's also insistent, than it should be.

Agreed that Wonder's characters, for all the opportunities the Malik/Lubezki style presents for poetic textures to emerge, often feel more locked into one thesis and less round than in his best stuff (including New World). I think our differing esteem for the Wonder thesis might come from what we think that thesis…

I have to push back against the consensus that To The Wonder was minor Malick with little point. It's about God—some kind of faith or other that love is the central binding force in the universe, be it Christian or otherwise—and the difficulties we suffer when we try to love people or vocations or breakfast or…

Forgive me if this seems didactic, but it's worth cooling this subject down a little by remembering one thing: 'deporting' foreign nationals here on a temporary work visa back to where they have a house and family is a different use of the word than when you uproot poor people from their lives and ship them to…

It's gross, but there's nothing unconstitutional about managing alien workers and contractually protecting your brand.

What I do know more about is such contracts, and I think this is standard. What's sinister as all fuck, though, is that no one thought to address how dangerous a report to the State Dept. has become. It reminds me of the flap recently with the white neighbor threatening his black neighbor to call in a noise complaint…

I'd love to see transparent books from a festival like this. I don't know much about the economics, but it sure sounds a lot like exploitative art shows and college basketball to me. Bands, forget filthy *lucre*, we can provide you with *exposure.*

The only thing shocking about this news is that Kosinski is anywhere near the project. He took the resurrection of a cult favourite…featuring Bridges reprising a charming early role…and an original DAFT FUCKING PUNK SOUNDTRACK…and turned it into a movie I can't for the life of me remember. His other big work was…

Are you privy to evidence I am not? What I've seen in the public record, including the phone transcript between NP and the alleged victim, make it sound much more like 'everyone got drunk but far from unresponsive drunk, and then two guys at best made some iffy decisions and one girl made some that would be hard to…

He's such a bizarre success story. He excels at the bad-postured, dumpy stoner milquetoast kinda vibe, but then he whips out all these heavy-hitting depths and tender bits within roles you doubt will furnish them. Unlikely but deserving star. Really pumped he's getting a showcase with this piece.

Oh, shit. You're right, it's right there. My bad. Just skimmed and missed it.

Wrong. He does not defend paedophilia. And you're toying with a syntactic technicality instead of confronting the flimsy, misconstrued evidence on which he's being (what I'm arguing is) falsely charged.

Oh. That's actually all I wanted to know. Don't be a dick. 'Who is a dumb celebrity nobody Islamophobe' and 'are we on solid ground convicting a central figure in the rise of a frightening cultural regime of something as rancid as paedophilia by hysterically mis-hearing something he said in the context of more…

I'm actually kinda old. Please, someone? I really, really, really don't want to Google this person if I can help it.

If you can tolerate fraudulent means to get generally favourable ends, then fuck you particularly, JMP, because you're an embarrassment to our alma mater.

Agree on all counts. But left sites are cheerfully trafficking in this innuendo bullshit. Calling someone a pedophile is a whole nother level of heavy. Let's convict him for his actual wankstainery. We can't throw around comparisons between the alt-right and the Reich while we drift towards the tactics of the Reign of…

So you're content with publicly branding a shitty public figure right at the center of the current shitty zeitgeist something vile and untrue because you're *too busy to know the details*? Jesus fucking Christ. How much double-standard can we apply before it bites us in the ass?

Proud exemplars of leftist virtues, all of you.

Am I the only person who has never heard of this woman before? Why does her repellent opinion matter?

I find the ongoing trend of willfully misinterpreting Yiannopoulis' actual comments in the pedophilia flap and/or trafficking in splashy outrage headlines, all without interrogating the material first, to be really unnerving. If you listen to and read all the relevant material I think it's very hard to conclude that…