3/5 Stars
Daniel Day-Lewis continues to prove he's worth his weight in gold to the movie industry's dignity. As seen in many of his more recent films, he has the ability to ascend a scene to a place just out of reach of credible negativity ("Because it is my name!").
Rather than pissing away another promising performance, Winona Ryder takes her role as Abigail Williams for a ride on the Crazy Train, which by the end has her looking far worse than Ozzy ever has. She dug deep on this one and deserves credit.
Puritan rage is the most terrifying form of passive-aggressiveness I have ever seen. Those little pilgrims are dangerous, it's no wonder the Indians bailed after a short fight. But in all seriousness, this window into the conservative "fear of what's different" state of mind is unnerving to say the least. History repeats itself as we all know, and it can't be denied by saying this was an isolated incident in a different time.
McCarthyism seems so much less original now...
Really the only problem I had with the film was how much of the dialogue seemed scripted. Apparently Arthur Miller was a better playwright than screenwriter.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
The ART: Article 1 - "Preamble"
The Articles of Rational Thought (The ART)
I haven't decided if it's worthy audacity or chronic douchey-ness that possessed me to name a series of blogs (rants) The Articles of Rational Thought, but I'm doing it nonetheless.
Fighting pretentiousness with pretentiousness: One man's mission to change the diet of American personality. There's your one-liner.
I'll continue for those of you with attention spans immune to the current National Infection: Twitter.com. This epidemic of narcissism is a much more pressing issue than global warming, especially since I’m pretty sure Twitter is an Al-Qaedan plot empowering America to become so self-involved that we don’t notice them walk into the White House and take an Obama.
Twitter is to vanity what Viagra is to an aging sex-addict; it’s an enabler and we’re all junkies.
We need some rules here, something to guide us through this chaotic shit-storm communication has turned into. What happened to quality over quantity? Do we all think that everyone we know is so desperate for hourly auto-biographies detailing how we Scooby-Doobed the whether or not to have a bagel mystery from this morning? Either America suffers from a much more terrible case of the "wish-I-was-famous" complex than I thought, or Adam and Eve weren't mislead by a snake and we're all just descendants of two greedy naked people and self-indulgence is embedded in our DNA. (They were Americans... right? Of course, and Jesus would have been white. Hmm... I guess we're all still a little shaky on second grade geography and social studies).
Riddle me this: which is worse, the fact that we use text slang like LMAO (laugh my ass off) more regularly than we breathe, instead of wasting those precious seconds that go into creating an original response in our pseudo-conversations; or, the fact that we actually understand this growing vocabulary of neutered phrases being repackaged in this sudden obsession with acronyms?
Or that both incriminate my texting history? Hopefully my phone records are never subpoenaed for hypocrisy.
The English language is being refurbished and actual words may be just a bit too drawn out to survive. LOL is meaningless. It has the connotations of an ampersand. You did not make me "laugh out loud." You did fail to deserve more than an ampersand in return. Maybe keep it to yourself next time.
But here I am, blogging. I'm a contributor. Fighting pretentiousness with pretentiousness. I'll replace yours with my own. I've never said I wouldn’t preach to you about getting off your pedestal whilst climbing atop my own.
This is my point. The counter-culture is just as pretentious as the establishment they loathe, you know who I'm talking too: liberals, Democrats, progressive-ists, whichever pigeonhole you’ve decided to crawl into. We may be the lesser of two-evils, but that doesn't mean our own brand of bullshit is any less annoying. Organic isn’t a lifestyle just as much as “git-r-dun” isn’t an acceptable response to anything. I’m not telling you to eat pesticide soaked tomatoes, just tone it down a bit. Get off your free-range high-horses, but continue to not paint the Confederate flag on the hoods of your cars; I still appreciate that.
We all need to center ourselves a little closer to the proverbial ham of the sandwich; politically, socially, anything you can add -ly to the end of. Admit that both sides are full of shit and move on like a successful divorce; or marriage. Either way you'll probably only have sex a few more times in your life.
PS
Follow me on Twitter at Twitter.com/WordsofTheEnemy.
I haven't decided if it's worthy audacity or chronic douchey-ness that possessed me to name a series of blogs (rants) The Articles of Rational Thought, but I'm doing it nonetheless.
Fighting pretentiousness with pretentiousness: One man's mission to change the diet of American personality. There's your one-liner.
I'll continue for those of you with attention spans immune to the current National Infection: Twitter.com. This epidemic of narcissism is a much more pressing issue than global warming, especially since I’m pretty sure Twitter is an Al-Qaedan plot empowering America to become so self-involved that we don’t notice them walk into the White House and take an Obama.
Twitter is to vanity what Viagra is to an aging sex-addict; it’s an enabler and we’re all junkies.
We need some rules here, something to guide us through this chaotic shit-storm communication has turned into. What happened to quality over quantity? Do we all think that everyone we know is so desperate for hourly auto-biographies detailing how we Scooby-Doobed the whether or not to have a bagel mystery from this morning? Either America suffers from a much more terrible case of the "wish-I-was-famous" complex than I thought, or Adam and Eve weren't mislead by a snake and we're all just descendants of two greedy naked people and self-indulgence is embedded in our DNA. (They were Americans... right? Of course, and Jesus would have been white. Hmm... I guess we're all still a little shaky on second grade geography and social studies).
Riddle me this: which is worse, the fact that we use text slang like LMAO (laugh my ass off) more regularly than we breathe, instead of wasting those precious seconds that go into creating an original response in our pseudo-conversations; or, the fact that we actually understand this growing vocabulary of neutered phrases being repackaged in this sudden obsession with acronyms?
Or that both incriminate my texting history? Hopefully my phone records are never subpoenaed for hypocrisy.
The English language is being refurbished and actual words may be just a bit too drawn out to survive. LOL is meaningless. It has the connotations of an ampersand. You did not make me "laugh out loud." You did fail to deserve more than an ampersand in return. Maybe keep it to yourself next time.
But here I am, blogging. I'm a contributor. Fighting pretentiousness with pretentiousness. I'll replace yours with my own. I've never said I wouldn’t preach to you about getting off your pedestal whilst climbing atop my own.
This is my point. The counter-culture is just as pretentious as the establishment they loathe, you know who I'm talking too: liberals, Democrats, progressive-ists, whichever pigeonhole you’ve decided to crawl into. We may be the lesser of two-evils, but that doesn't mean our own brand of bullshit is any less annoying. Organic isn’t a lifestyle just as much as “git-r-dun” isn’t an acceptable response to anything. I’m not telling you to eat pesticide soaked tomatoes, just tone it down a bit. Get off your free-range high-horses, but continue to not paint the Confederate flag on the hoods of your cars; I still appreciate that.
We all need to center ourselves a little closer to the proverbial ham of the sandwich; politically, socially, anything you can add -ly to the end of. Admit that both sides are full of shit and move on like a successful divorce; or marriage. Either way you'll probably only have sex a few more times in your life.
PS
Follow me on Twitter at Twitter.com/WordsofTheEnemy.
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