It could be. I know in my hometown nearly all of my friends are straight, mixed circumstances through college, but when we moved across the country we were right at the age where straight people our age were mostly having kids and not really meeting new people. So it's been highly circumstantial for us.
Mixed. It's been different in different cities I've lived, though I'd be afraid to generalize from that, because a lot depended as much as on where we were in our lives as on the general vibes from the cities. I can easily see a group of guys like this spending more of their time in gay circles than straight, even…
Oh god, for me the best part of that terrible date was the oncologist telling him it wouldn't work, then quibbling over the bill: "Well, you had two drinks, and I only had one…." I cracked up, because what an awful person to drop that just after telling the guy the date was a bust; and yet, what a perfectly written…
For your assignment, I want you to apply the statement "acknowledging realistic cultural differences between black and white culture" back to the statement "quentin writes better black characters than spike lee", and then talk to me about knee-jerk reactions.
I only went to see The Spectacular Now because a friend suggested it while we were out, and it looked the least bad of the movies showing that day. I'm glad I did: both the leads are terrific, and even though I could quibble about a few things (framing device, ending), it's otherwise really thoughtful and well worth…
Coulda been worse. Over on Buzzfeed he said that he thinks Quentin Tarantino is "the best black screenwriter" (and "Quentin may write better black characters than Spike", yikes). He's getting rightfully torn apart for that.
But Piper more than makes up for it with his line reading: "You? You're okay. That one? Real fucking ugly."
Of the many things that were terrible about the original film, I was surprised at just how terrible Louise Fletcher is. You'd think the role would be a soft pitch right into her Nurse Ratched zone, but she's consistently awful throughout the movie.
That same FilmComment link has Barton Fink as the 2nd worst Palme d'or winner of all time. 2nd worst. Barton Fink. The Coens' best movie. I do not understand this.
Seriously? This is a thing that happened?
Nice try, Harvey.
Nah. I found it… dull? …as if the whole film were beige and I was staring at a wall for two hours. I barely remember it, and I didn't care much while watching it.
Ah, here's the article. Worth a read, and that screenshot of Mo'Nique speaking "Italian" ("Eat you whore") makes me crack up every time.
On Precious: I know a lot of people hate it (especially in retrospect), but it seems weird to criticize it for distastefulness when Daniels was pretty explicit about his debt to John Waters, especially. Jim Emerson over at Ebert's site did a great analysis of Precious as a stealth remake of Female Trouble. …
He looks uncannily like Sen. David Vitter, so the sex scandal thing is spot-on.
The Kingdom of Redonda is one of my favorites: it may have been created whole-cloth by the turn-of-the-century, British/Afro-Caribbean author M. P. Shiel. After Shiel passed the title of King on to a friend, the story gets even crazier, and it's worth reading the wiki on its contested title ("Scott Home's claim to…
How many times has that ever happened?
Just finished Dambudzo Marechera's Black Sunlight and Chris Ware's Building Stories (both great!), and I'm about halfway through the collected fiction of Lu Xun (mixed bag: some great, some really dated). I think next on the list is going to be Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, then Miguel Syjuco's Ilustrado.
Co-sign to everything here. I can't think of a dialogue writer I enjoy reading more than Gaddis, even though I don't share his worldview. A Frolic of His Own is similarly great.