Boyhood - Richard Linklater

According to Salon, Boyhood "isn’t quite like anything else in the history of cinema". I disagree. Like, a lot. There was one part of Boyhood that I felt I hadn't seen before (sure, a lot of it in Skins&nbspand teen movies, but what makes them any lesser than Boyhood?), and I'll get onto that in a while.

Oscars Challenge 2K15

I'm trying to watch every Best Picture nominee (and a few others) this year before the Oscars happen on... the 22nd of February. Wish me luck!

My Muppet Show (or, A Fantasy Reboot)

Dear whoever (or should I say whatever? In case you're Gonzo. Or a gonzo journalist),

Obviously, you're rebooting the Muppet Show. How could you not? A vaudevellian-variety-talk-something show full of "frogs and dogs and bears and... whatever" is ripe property for rebooting, even if a movie was only made last year. So, in some sort of order, I have a list of demands for you:

Dreams of Sleeping Past (Midday): On Superhero Movies

Superhero movies bore me. That's not to say they're unworthy of being Art or Culture or whatever the term is today (god knows I don't judge on that-in my pantheon of good stuff, an obscure children's fantasy rubs shoulders with Pale Fire, a dramedy-musical with Wes Anderson): I've just never watched a superhero movie without falling asleep.

Pale Fire - Vladimir Nakobov

Before I start, I'm going to admit it: reviewing Pale Fire makes me feel like a fool. What do my prettied words mean when the whole book was against prettied words?

Rating: six stars

We Are the Best! - Lukas Moodysson

We Are the Best! is very much like finding a new type of comfort food. It's nothing that challenges you (too much), but you instantly love it. It doesn't aim to start a revolution, but it does aim to be satisfying.

"Je suis Charlie": The Artistic Value of Charlie Hebdo

Source 1: NSFW. Captions read "Mohammed: A star is born!" "The film which shook the Muslim World". Mohammed's speech bubble reads"And my ass? You like my ass?"

Before we start, let's get one thing out of the way. France is not the final bastion of free speech: Charlie Hebdo's predecessor was shut down due to a joke about Charles de Gaulle's death (that kind of thing would be legal today, in case you were wondering, though I don't know if the French would be as quick to play that card).

Source 2: Text reads "Tragic dance in Colombey. One Dead."

"I don't know if I should take a husband or a wife": Krazy Kat and Gender

I received Fantagraphics' first collection of Krazy Kat recently and, flipping through it, I was struck by how modern the notions of gender are. At one point, Krazy complains that they "don't know if I should take a husband or a wife" (October 1915). Despite the heteronormative ideals clearly present in that statement, it strikes me as similar to the new genderfluid movement - a movement that aims to free people from the gender binary.

Medium Snobs! & Other Musings Too Unpolished To Put Into A Seperate Blogpost

We all know that there is a contingent among those who consider themselves cultured who believe that certain styles, genres, mediums and the like are somehow 'less worthy' of being literary (I'm talking specifically about the narrative form right now-I have even less expertise in the fine arts than I do in the narrative form!). There has, however, been a kickback recently against this snobbery, to the point that Slate's Music Club declared "bragging about omnivorousness has become its own kind of snobbery". Honestly, I find this snobbery (if it can even be called that) far preferable to the old kind of snobbery, which I feel was based in classist assumptions of low and high culture.

I forgot to mention this at the time, but my New Year's Resolution is to post 100 blogposts this year, which is both over 5x more than I did last year, and me posting every 3.65 days. So expect far more posts this year!

Does anyone else find the rapey-ness of Alan Moor's work disturbing? I actually had to abort my reading of Watchmen due to finding it too problematic - not that I was overly enjoying it anyway-I was finding it a slog and, essentially, un-fun. I know it's important and such, but good god To Kill A Mockingbird was much more culturally important and  fun. In case anyone doesn't like my criteria of media having to be fun, I find enjoyment is critical to my enjoyment of media.

And now, I leave you with the immortal words of Kermit the Frog, "write your own ending".

Superheroes' Superpesonality

The title of my post is a lie. Superheroes do not have well-defined personalities, and that's part, or most, of their appeal. Their blankness allows them to be placed in any sort of situation-like how a Wonder Woman comic can be anything from a myth-themed epic to a "hip" '60s adventure set in Greenwich Village. They adapt. Wonder Woman's a particularly good example for this, because she isn't static (not even her origin story, unlike Batman or Spiderman).

God Help the Girl - Stuart Murdoch

God Help the Girl aims to be a complex reflection on the creation of music, mental illness and eating disorders. For the most part, I felt it succeeded. It's a twee little thing, but it works well (I do seem to have a fondness for twee, so take your tolerance for it into account).