After the opening shot of a dilapidated house, Beasts of the Southern Wild begins mise-en-scène with a tight close-up of the house’s interior, the screen filled with small brown crossed legs, a cluttered dirty floor, and a small brown hand holding a … Continue reading “Beasts of the Southern Wild – The Romance of Precarity I”
This film should have been a choice text for me; I love post-apocalyptic stories that end badly. But the heaps of critical praise the film has garnered don’t even seem to notice it as a dystopia. “This movie is a … Continue reading “Beasts of the Southern Wild – The Romance of Precarity II”
Last weekend I had a first encounter with the multimedia juggernaut that is Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Started online by Jeff Kinney as a web comic, with daily entries exploring the world of middle school angst and pranks, the … Continue reading “Diary of a Racist Kid”
Season Three of HBO’s therapy verite series is now airing, so of course I am glued to the tube. This season’s analysands — whose sessions grants us a fly-on-the-wall view of — are especially engrossing. Jesse, the promiscuous, talented gay teen; Frances, the narcissistic mid-career actress; and Sunil, the postcolonial melancholic.
