Books Archive
- Jun 16 2010Follow the Character1
- Dec 28 2009Tweet!0
- Oct 2 2009Agonizing Anticipation0
- Sep 16 2009Say Hello to My Little Stranger — Sarah Walters, The Little Stranger (2009)0
- Oct 31 2008Thomson Twinge2
- Oct 28 2008Alive, Kicking, and Delivering Just Desserts0
- Sep 15 2008Words to Live by0
- Sep 15 2008On David Foster Wallace1
- Aug 27 2008The Psychopathic Chicken (and Other Lessons of Evolution)3
- Aug 25 2008The Private Language of Monkeys1
- Dec 26 2007Can the Left Find God?2
- Feb 9 2007RIFF: Reading Is Fucking Formidable0
- Oct 26 2006Evolved Sexuality1
- Sep 20 2006Cock Tale — Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2006)0
- Sep 15 2006Demon Dog Dump0
- Apr 5 2006Uncovering Iron John0
- Nov 30 2005Building a Film-Book Library0
- Oct 11 2005War Without End0
- Jan 26 2005Pity the Rich Genius0
- Jun 29 2004Critiquing Critics0
- May 12 2004When Movies Mattered0
- Mar 19 2004Auster and Stone Reader0
- Feb 2 2004Why Music Matters0
- Sep 24 2003Paul Auster's Locked Room2
- Jul 17 2003Two Holes in One — Holes, novel (1998) and movie (2003)1
- Jul 15 2003Has Michael Lewis Struck Out? — Michael Lewis, Moneyball (2003)0
Recent Entries
Looking Forward
Atom Egoyan has been on some kind of losing streak. Since his breakthrough masterpiece The Sweet Hereafter in 1997, his fiction features have gone from dense and compelling if awkward psychological dramas (1999’s Felicia’s Journey and 2002’s Ararat) to blunt,...
All Dressed Up and No Place to Go
In the 10 years since I saw it in the movie theater, I’ve regularly planned to return to M. Night Shyamalan’s follow-up to The Sixth Sense. I wanted to see if it’s as strong as I remembered, and — as...
Attaboy, Jim
In my hastily keyboarded notes after seeing Inception last weekend, I spent much time faulting Jim Emerson for his dismissal of Christopher Nolan and of the movie. Emerson made sweeping, unsupported generalizations in the service of his obvious dislike of...
Christopher Nolan’s Dead Women
In at least four of Christopher Nolan’s seven feature films, the plots and/or fixations are initiated or propelled by the death of a man’s spouse or girlfriend. Considering that Nolan’s primary thematic interest is obsession, isn’t this a little strange?...
Incepted
In taking down Christopher Nolan’s Inception, Jim Emerson writes: “[W]hat this movie’s facilely conceived CGI environments have to do with dreaming, as human beings experience dreams, I don’t know. ... [T]he movie’s concept of dreams as architectural labyrinths — stable...
Christopher Nolan's Dead Women