Great article! I was just attempting to articulate what distinguishes the writing on BB from other, lesser shows, and your description of the plot-character dialectic sums it up beautifully. Too many series today try to cram in too much plot, too many twists—at the cost of emotional resonance and 3-dimensional…

I would never call this song "aggressively boring, annoying, and uncomfortable" or "the worst song in the world". I would call it bland, perhaps relentlessly mediocre—it's Soundgarden at their commercial peak, attempting a lazy Beatles homage. What's truly offensive is Anthony Jeselnik picking some arbitrary, easy…

Mutant Allegory
Marvel movies make me feel exploited, and old. You know you're a full-fledged adult when the childhood/early adolescent pulp of your age demographic emerges as ubiquitous, mainstream entertainment. Every toy, cartoon, and comic - every childhood attachment - is now being mined for million$. I'm a…

Great, thanks for the tip, Fancypants!

Seamless Shifts
I'm a neophyte to this new wave of Korean genre films-I've only seen Old Boy and The Host-but I found that this review provided a useful introduction, giving me a list for my Netflix queue. I'd like to see more of these films, and how they supposedly turn on a dime, shifting tone and genre references…

Yeah, "ecstatic" is definitely an apt description.

I agree. My adoration for his films is always heavily qualified. I'm glad I saw Irreversible, but I don't know if I need to see it again. Provocation, as a conscious style, is easy and even exploitative (especially when you dress it up in sexy, young hipster trappings). But at least his work makes me feel…

Agreed. I've been a member of the local Zen temple for a few years, so that wasn't intended as a rip on Buddhism. Challenging, complex works of art can be interpreted in many, many different ways. I was just amazed by how this film mirrored psychoanalytic ideas-the whole narrative is literally just a disembodied…

Well, Buddhist reincarnation may be the explicit content, but the whole point of psychoanalysis is locating the author or artist's unconscious, unintentioned meaning. I doubt that Noe has ever read Zizek, although it's possible, since Zizek's pretty trendy these days. But it could be argued that even Buddhist…

"Stoner Metaphysics"
Enter the Void feels like a more mature work to me than Irreversible-intense, but not as intentionally unpleasant. And regardless of Noe's actual, declared vision, I found this film to be an uncanny manifestation of Lacanian, psychoanalytic themes, a la Slavoj Zizek: "When one indulges in…