Last summer Nathan Fielder’s new TV show The Rehearsal premiered on HBO. This was Fielder’s first television program since his Comedy Central show Nathan For You aired its final season in 2017, and fans of his unique blend of reality TV tropes and cringe comedy were eager to see what he would come up with … Continue reading Rehearsals: The Fielder Method & Meta-Media Mania
Tag: film
City Scenes: Mediated L.A. Spaces
In Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard refers to Los Angeles as a "perpetual pan shot": more a cinematic circulation of hyperreal fantasy than a space-bound city of definable dimensions. This association is strengthened by how the city's sprawling urban landscape is typically traversed, rendered as a steadily-streaming assortment of images scrolling through the letterbox framing of … Continue reading City Scenes: Mediated L.A. Spaces
City Scenes: Toronto Cinema Spaces
Film venues and screening spaces are among my favorite fixtures of the urban mediascape. For me, the crown jewels of Parisian cultural superiority are not the sidewalk cafe tables but rather the abundant cinemas (and also the multi-story bookshops that seem to be all around). Toronto also has a strong film culture and a number … Continue reading City Scenes: Toronto Cinema Spaces
Anthropocene Imaginaries: Climate Fiction as Communication Infrastructure
Early reviews for Adam McKay’s new film Don’t Look Up are out, and they are decidedly mixed. This new movie seems to continue McKay’s trend of real-world-oriented comedies that engage with current socio-political events. McKay has transitioned from broad comedies including notable collaborations with Will Ferrell to a series of based-on-a-true-story/ripped-from-the-headlines entertainments. His films adopt … Continue reading Anthropocene Imaginaries: Climate Fiction as Communication Infrastructure
Belcourt Appreciation & Pandemic Media Memories
For the Thanksgiving break last week I visited my family in Nashville. My parents have only been in Tennessee for a few years, so there’s not much personal history connecting me to the place, but after having lived there through the first 18 months of the pandemic returning this time felt like a true homecoming. … Continue reading Belcourt Appreciation & Pandemic Media Memories
Thoughts on Nomadland and the 2021 Oscars
I finally got around to watching Nomadland this weekend, just ahead of the film’s anticipated Oscars triumph. My viewing was belated for a number of reasons. For one, the fact that the film was only available to stream on Hulu, necessitating that I create a Hulu account, made it easy to avoid. Secondly, I am … Continue reading Thoughts on Nomadland and the 2021 Oscars
Paris, Texas: Cinematic Space, Emotional Landscapes, and American Environments
Paris, Texas is a film about space. Space that you move through and space that you move beyond. The spaces between people, both inner and outer. It is a film utterly fixated upon landscapes: geographical landscapes, symbolic landscapes, and emotional landscapes. It offers one of the most evocative depictions of American environments in narrative cinema. … Continue reading Paris, Texas: Cinematic Space, Emotional Landscapes, and American Environments
TENET Redux: 22 Theses on Nolan
Some responses to my previous TENET post have complained that the essay is bloated, confusing, and pretentious. Ironically, these are also some of the most common criticisms of the film itself. In acknowledgment of this feedback (and as an exercise in padding my post count with repurposed content), I have prepared the following “Twitter thread” … Continue reading TENET Redux: 22 Theses on Nolan
TENET: Christopher Nolan vs. Entropy
TENET is a preposterous film. The central conceit of the plot, the rapid-fire delivery of exposition through muffled dialogue, and the mixed-chronology action set pieces are all jaw-droppingly confounding. The fact that it functions as a movie at all is a testament to something, though I’m unsure how much that something has to do with … Continue reading TENET: Christopher Nolan vs. Entropy
City Space as Projective Medium: From Coronavirus Quarantine to Urban Uprisings
The current confluence of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic and popular political demonstrations has provided strikingly urgent examples of how city space may be actualized as a projective medium. By “projective medium” I mean to describe a repurposing of urban environments wherein public space serves as a canvas not only for the circulation of artistic representations … Continue reading City Space as Projective Medium: From Coronavirus Quarantine to Urban Uprisings