for what it is and not as a comment on my life

The blur of time that passes is you, the viewer. • Wright Morris

"Your watch history would give Leonard Maltin an aneurysm" - chrometung

how to explain pictures to a dead hare

sometimes things need a lot watching - sergeant jack graham, shadow of a doubt

After taking in 24,000+ waning films I only wanna wax about pictures I've been taken by. These bees beeing them pictures. 🔎 where you might see them

“TOO MUCH ANALYSIS DEFLATES THE SOUFFLE“

if you download the reelgood app little badges will appear over these posters telling you where you can watch them reelgood.com/userlist/QvPQDQFgWn9hM

one free month of MUBI from me to you

de gustibus non est disputandum

Dear Madam, you have seen this play;
I never saw it till today.
You know the details of the plot,
But let me tell you, I do not.
The author seeks to keep from me
The murderer's identity,
And you are not a friend of his
If you keep shouting who it is.
The actors in their funny way
Have several funny things to say,
But they do not amuse me more
If you have said them just before;
The merit of the drama lies,
I understand, in some surprise;
But the surprise must now be small
Since you have just foretold it all.
The lady you have brought with you
Is I infer, a half-wit too,
But I can understand the piece
Without assistance from your niece.
In short, foul woman, it would suit
Me just as well if you were mute;
In fact to make my meaning plain,
I trust you will not speak again.
And---may I add one human touch?---
Don't breathe upon my neck so much.
At the Theatre: To the Lady Behind Me by A. P. Herbert

“Criticism is in a bad, or sad, state. We have no criteria to go on. The critical points of reference are very immediate and therefore have no perspective. I recently read a volume on literature in which there wasn’t a single reference before 1900. One would have thought this was not possible.” • Robert Hillyer in The Writer Observed

"a gnomon,
Our science is from the watching of shadows."

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That's the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that.”

It is comparison that makes men happy or miserable.

Jaws was never my scene and I don't like Star Wars

"To keep our minds unreflective of a world of horrors, we distract them with a world of trifling or momentous trash."

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that ’round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—
● Edgar Allan Poe

I believe that most people see too many movies. And certainly the critics. When they say that a movie is great, they mean it’s great in relation to other movies they have seen. They’ve lost their overview. They are clubbed by more and more new movies. They just don’t know, they are lost in it all. They have forgotten what really stinks, which is almost everything they view. ● Charles Bukowski, The Captain Is Out To Lunch And The Sailors Have Taken Over The Ship

To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large—this is an experience of inestimable value for everyone. ● Aldous Huxley

A story is impelled by the necessity to reveal: the aim of the story is revelation, which means that a story can have nothing—at least not deliberately—to hide. This also means that a story resolves nothing. The resolution of a story must occur in us, with what we make of the questions with which the story leaves us. A plot, on the other hand, must come to a resolution, prove a point: a plot must answer all the questions which it pretends to pose. ● James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work

“...the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don't like it; I can see this is good and, though at present I don't like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don't like it.” ● W.H. Auden, A Certain World: A Commonplace Book

“Baedeker carries the sign language still further into the sublime realms of art. When he wishes to say that a picture is good, he uses one star; if very good, two stars; when, in his opinion, it is a work of transcendent genius, three black stars shine on the page, and that is all. So with a handful of stars and daggers the whole of art criticism, the whole of literary criticism could be reduced to the size of a sixpenny bit — there are moments when one could wish it.” • Virginia Woolf, Craftsmanship

Is this how it works now? Do we just let film-makers create identities for us that we can buy for $12.99? Is that what identity costs? Or is it how you put the units together that counts? Does a zombie film plus and experimental Parisian inner-city heist film make you a different person than two Hollywood romantic comedies do? Would either of these poeple get on with the person who has every series of their favourite SF TV show on DVD, arranged in such a way that their edges make one Picture on the shelf? You can string this stuff into lines of cultural DNA that can be seen without any kind of microscope, until anyone looking at you shelves can use this information to establish "who you are" and whether or not they want to have sex with you. Can't people just desire you because of your breasts any more? Maybe they do, sometimes. But if your cultural DNA can't link up with theirs then they'll fuch you and leave before you wake up, just like everyone said they would. Or you'll do the same to them, because they like alt country music two years after is was fashionable, or they own Titanic on DVD. ● PopCo by Scarlett Thomas

give me the LB subscription i'll never give my self