Last week when I posted my musings on critical responsibility, I got into a discussion about it with a few other friends who are aspiring writers. The question we discussed was, If you’re a creative person hoping to publish or promote your own work, should you be reviewing other people’s content publicly, especially is your […]
Managing expectations can play an important part in the extent to which I enjoy a movie, especially a mediocre one, and make no mistake, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice falls into that category. Everything that has been said about its unnecessarily long run-time and overly convoluted plot is on point. I didn’t seek out reviews […]
It’s funny that I sometimes forget just how shamelessly Twitter is about self-promotion. Someone follows me, I’m like, oh, new follower? Let me see who it is! Oh, a DJ. Why would you want to follow me? That’s right, you just want me to follow you back. That’s how this works. Then we can pay no further […]
On Wednesday, I posted a review of the horror film We Are Still Here. As with all my blog entries, to try to increase traffic I put up links on both Facebook and Twitter. I figured maybe a few other film or horror fans would read. I use Google analytics, at this point the number […]
Bret Easton Ellis recently tweeted that Art House Horror was quickly become his least favorite genre. As a horror fan, I see his point. There has been a lot of good stuff in recent years in this particular niche. Ti West’s The Innkeepers and House of the Devil were stand outs. Let the Right One In […]
On Friday, we sold the reel lawnmower I insisted we buy after moving into our house, and I experienced a strange kind of pang when we let it go. My wife is trying to clear out things we don’t use anymore, and this was one of those items. We’d purchased it with the best intentions. I’m the one […]
Lately I’ve been making my way through The Great Movies reviewed on Roger Ebert’s website. Sometimes I’ll watch and then read his review, but I prefer to read his review and then watch to see whether I agree with his assessments. So far I’ve watched (or re-watched) the first five on the list (which were really the last five […]
I agree with Sherman Alexie about not ritualizing writing habits. The more you ritualize, the more excuses you give yourself to not do it. Is that an accurate paraphrase? My writing habits have changed over the years, and I have allowed myself the overindulgence of ritualization, but I find now that avoiding ritual has resulted […]
“It’s one of the worst tendencies of human nature to assume the best of people.” If ever a writer/director put the philosophy driving his movies into dialogue, this quote, coming midway through Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth, is among the most accurate. Alex Ross Perry makes films about ugly people. There’s no getting around […]
“The Waiting Room,” which appears in Whiskey Island issue 67, is the last of my second-person nonfiction narratives, for now at least. Most of these narratives focus on neuroses and my working through them, and “The Waiting Room” is no exception—the focus here being hypochondria. I got the idea for this piece while reading an […]