The anbaric journal of Dan Slevin, gentleman, of Newtown
Satirist George Saunders speaking at the Brooklyn Academy of Music back in January:
He aims to “take his reader by the shirt and fling him; you send him 15 feet and you’re done. And I don’t think it’s in your power to control what he’s feeling as he’s flying through the air.”
I first heard of George Saunders when he was interviewed by Jesse Thorn at The Sound of Young America. I am now on a mission to find and read as much as I can.
[via Gothamist]
A little late, but still recommended, Jane Campion remembers Janet Frame and making An Angel at My Table, in The Guardian:
Each room and even parts of rooms were dedicated to a different book in progress. Here and there she had hung curtains to divide up the rooms like they do in hospital wards to give the patients privacy. On the desk where she had last been working was a pair of earmuffs.
“I can’t bear any sound,” she explained. “The double bricks haven’t worked. I think I will have to move.”
Screenwriter Ronan Bennett criticises Martin Amis for his questionable positioning on present day inter-cultural relations (and other commentators for essentially giving him a free pass):
As a novelist, Amis is free to do whatever he wants with his characters, but the hijackers’ steps on the road to 9/11 repay investigation. Reducing the motivation of the enemy to bloodlust leads nowhere, as the experience of the British in Ireland proved. The result will be wrong and it will be cliche. It may be, given Amis’s spectacular powers, flamboyant, but that will only make it flamboyant cliche. Horrorism. Death cult. Thanatoid. Striking words but poor substitutes for understanding, reason and real knowledge.
I am a big fan of Amis’ writing but I confess to being uncomfortable with some of the positions he is taking at the moment.
"... contains plenty of diverting comic moments while never losing sight of the human stories unfolding close at hand, reminding us that Social Workers may well be the heroes of the 21st century."
0.3The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian...
2008-06-22 12:45
"... chugs along at an excellent pace and the whole thing is sprinkled with plenty of wit."
0.32008-06-19 15:30
"The usual cross-cultural misunderstandings occur but the characters all grow on you, much like India grows on our hero."
0.3
"Shyamalan has obvious talent as a director: he has an eye for an arresting image and has seen enough Hitchcock to construct effective set-pieces but he can’t write dialogue that human beings can actually say which continually drops the audience out of the moment."
0.3You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008)
2008-06-16 11:00
"There are plenty of jokes per minute and the relentless teasing of Israelis for their love of fizzy drinks, hummus, disco and hacky-sack is pretty entertaining."
0.3
"I was one of many who found Crash to be appalling, un-watchable, rubbish but Elah (perhaps because it doesn’t try and do so much) is better."
0.3
"... a bit of a noisy mess, but far from disastrous."
0.3
"Clumsily condensed and fussily directed, Brick Lane never quite overcomes it’s own clichés."
0.3
"... I think the reason why Happy-Go-Lucky fails is the lack of empathy for the characters (possibly caused by Leigh not having actors like Brenda Blethyn and Timothy Spall to make the emotional connections for him)."
0.3
"Not enough Charlie Watts for my liking but that’s a minor quibble."
0.3
"... it appears to be about four women in Manhattan, not too bright, not too nice and not too deep, who are looking for love, success and shoes."
0.3Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the...
2008-05-23 18:00
"Entertaining and a little sloppy (in a good way) ..."
0.3
"... an adorable confection, easy to praise and a pleasure to recommend."
0.3
"... a highly entertaining action movie that is only let down by a not-quite-big-enough set-piece at the end."
0.3
"... the images are ravishing, the performances are uniformly excellent and you could do a lot worse on a wet weekend."
0.3
“Gosling’s performance is a thing of wonder but it wouldn’t be half as successful without great work from Paul Schneider, Emily Mortimer and Patricia Clarkson to play off. Kudos to them all. Not to be missed.”
0.3
"I think the key to Dylan is that he is less complicated (and at the same time more complex) than the world would have you believe and he fully deserves a work of art as fine as this one in his name.
0.3
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