I've never had an issue with the projection at AFI at all.

We had to read Democracy in America in high school, which is fine, but I don't think anyone got a whole lot out of it. Whereas, Douglass's Narrative is so accessible and viscerally powerful that I think it would stick with all high schoolers in the same way Elie Wiesel's Night (which was assigned in my high school…

Douglass is a great writer. The passage where he's looking out on the Chesapeake and he contrasts his enslavement with the freedom of the ships is just beautiful and heartbreaking.

Yeah, it's pretty badass. I am pumped for that 70mm screening of The Master. Hoping to check out the 70mm print of Lifeforce, too.

Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - This should be assigned in every high school in America. I'm sure it is in some, but it wasn't in mine. It's accessible, well-written, and a powerful first-hand account of the dehumanizing institution of slavery. Also, he has negative things to say…

Glad to see you liked Rosetta. Did you happen to watch the interview with the Dardennes on the Criterion disc? They go into great detail about how difficult it was to keep consistent light when filming in the trailer, and it makes you realize how much thought and work goes into their stripped-down style.

I missed a digital projection of LoA last fall due to work, and I felt terrible about it. And then along comes the AFI Silver with their amazing 70mm Spectacular! This place is a 10 minute walk from my house. I'm livin' the good life these days.

It's been my experience that firefighters spend most of the day sitting around waiting for something to do. So, really, you did them a favor!

The highlight of my weekend by far (and certainly one of the highlights of my year) was seeing Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm. Seriously, if you ever get this opportunity, snatch it up!

What's funny about Taleb is that he built his reputation solely on the fact that he bet against the market. That's it. That's the totality of his great insight.

@Miller:disqus As far as I recall, the meat-tracking app is not mentioned in the book and is probably an example Morozov came up with on the fly.

@avclub-0f0d67e214f9fef69b278e3d08114da9:disqus I haven't watched that video, but the horsemeat app is most likely something that Morozov came up with himself. Morozov is constantly arguing against things which don't yet exist anywhere except in his own head. This is definitely his oddest quality.

Morozov's tactic is to chip away at the Silicon Valley techno-optimism consensus more than it is to advance a particular theory. Morozov cites approvingly to Jane Jacobs multiple times, and clearly sees himself in the same tradition as her. He essentially takes a "Question Everything" approach. That leads down a few…

I think that's a good description of solutionism. For Morozov, it's about the elevation of technology over everything else. It's the idea that something can be done; therefore, it should be done.

Yeah, I have a huge crush on Beaton.

Thanks for the reminder that I need to read this book.

Its notebook-like proportions make it look quite sharp on a bookshelf, but otherwise it's not a book I'd feel compelled to go back to very often.

Speaking of director's autobiographies, have you ever happened to read Bergman's The Magic Lantern? I picked it up at a book sale a few months back.

I've only read a couple new books this year. The better of them was most certainly To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, Evgeny Morozov's takedown of the Big Data, "let's fix everything about you, even problems you didn't know you had" mindset. I read the book back in March, and I've…

Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Emperor
Isaiah Berlin's Karl Marx: His Life and Environment
Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons
Seth's Wimbledon Green