Posts Tagged ‘2017’

Haiku Review: ‘Columbus’

December 27, 2017

It’s that post-Christmas-pre-New Years holiday stretch, which means you need safe but solid movies to burn through with relatives. Are they tired of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy 2’? Do they like the most *gentle* of gentle coming-of age dramas? Then BOY have I got a staff pick for you.

Columbus posterArchitecture buffs
Look at some buildings, bone once
Sounds bad but it’s not!

A note before we really dive in here: ‘Columbus’ is a tedious movie. Let’s be super-clear about that upfront! It’s not boring, which would imply disinterest. But baked into the DNA of this relatively doable 105 minute (which easily feel like 170) movie is this “take your time” philosophy that, if you’re not onboard, may put you right to sleep. But this is sort of the point? (Editor’s note: GREAT REVIEW ALREADY, HENDOG.) What I’m trying to say is 1) the tedium feels pretty deliberate 2) it’s hardly a bad thing and 3) it may actually be the most powerful thing about this movie. Beauty in tedium! In an era where everything happens now, yesterday, that’s sort of nice.

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Haiku Review: ‘A Ghost Story’

July 15, 2017

Nobody could have predicted it, but here we are: a weird little indie made for $100,000 toppled ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ at the box office last weekend. How? Who? What? Say goodbye to your loved ones, children, and join us in a communion with the dead.

A-GHOST-STORY-via-A24

Casey Affleck dies
Existentialism lives
Letting go is hard

That’s not really a spoiler, by the way, Casey Affleck dying. The call sheet for ‘A Ghost Story’ listed just two actors (Affleck and Rooney Mara) and a bed sheet — one of them had to wear it, right? These are performers already adept at playing figurative ghosts; playing a literal one isn’t the biggest stretch.

After dying in a car accident, Affleck finds himself…well, becoming a ghost. His mortuary sheet becomes a spectral shroud, his modest South Texas rancher a haunted house, and his wife, Mara (she’s “M” in the credits; he’s “C”. The names aren’t important) the bereaved widow struggling to move on. Until she’s compelled to leave. Which is when this nitrous-fueled little tone poem really kicks into second gear.

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Another Day of [Lifting Fog]

March 28, 2017

You don’t have to, but listening to “Another Day of Sun” as you read the first however many words of this essay on…self-doubt? (idk) might help you get in the proper headspace. Your funeral either way, dude!

The scariest thing about penning a new Lifting Fog Post™, aside from the forever concern that I’ve “lost my mojo” (Editor’s note: it was never there to begin with), is addressing how much time has inevitably passed since the last one. Now in the Early Days™, this wasn’t much. Hiatuses lasted about a week depending on how many ‘OC’ episodes I’d decided to burn through, and apologies were easier when the act hadn’t yet been abolished by the 45th President of the United States.

Then time wears on and those silent weeks become silent months, become silent years. Suddenly it’s 2015, ’16. The fans are out there clamoring for new #content and I’m over here*, paralyzed by self-doubt and/or women who wisely fled the country. I couldn’t write even if I tried, and I definitely didn’t try!

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Posted in Junk Drawer | 2 Comments »