When the latest Emmy nominations were announced two weeks ago the lineup mostly comprised the usual suspects of buzzy TV titles that have dominated online discourse over the past year. However, one nominee stood out to me precisely because it had been entirely absent from my media awareness radar: something called Jury Duty, which apparently … Continue reading Rehearsals part 2: TV Trials & Consumptive Complicity
Tag: film
City Scenes: Toronto Cinema Spaces pt. 2
Last month I made a return trip to Toronto. It was my first time getting to experience the city in Spring/Summer mode (all my previous visits have been in late October/early November). I also brought with me past impressions and unfinished business from recent trips, especially the cinema locations I wasn't able to visit last … Continue reading City Scenes: Toronto Cinema Spaces pt. 2
Rehearsals: The Fielder Method & Meta-Media Mania
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
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