Compromise and Conceit
Infernal adventuring…
recent posts
- Putting the Third Wave of anti-Trans Panic in its Historical Perspective
- The Bone Temple: A Clockwork Orange with zombies (without zombies)
- Shadows of the Firstcome: Unwelcome visitors
- Stranger Things season 5: About Vecna’s vision for Will
- Stranger Things season 5: Why is everyone so angry at each other?
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Category: Movies
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Last night I watched Salt, the Angelina Jolie spy movie. This is basically an action flick, with maybe 12 seconds of character development at the beginning that is only required as background explanation for a cold look near the middle of the movie, and a brief explanation at the end. After that Angelina Jolie kills…
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The 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans is a fun movie, with some interesting hat-tips to modern RPG theological theories and excellent monsters; it is, moreover, a vast improvement on the original. Of course it butchers the original greek myth, but who cares about that? Greek myths are there to be fiddled with. This…
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This movie was, frankly, pretty stupid, though quite fun. It’s by Cristopher Nolan who made The Prestige so it should be good, but it was too self-consciously complex, if I bothered to trace the story through all its complex layers I’m pretty sure it would have huge internal holes in it, and most annoyingly the…
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I was a big fan of the movie The Descent, which pits a group of young women cavers against a colony of blind flesh-eating proto-humans in a dark and claustrophobic cave nightmare. This is the kind of movie that you really need to pause regularly, and it combines all of our worst fears – claustrophobia,…
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This semester I’m teaching a course on Global Crime and Public Health as a special lecture series (in fact I should be preparing material now instead of posting here). This course represents a culmination of 15 years’ research experience in the service of a general model of what constitutes a “good” response to the public…
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I’m a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, having read all the stories, including his famous meeting with Harry Flashman, VC, and seen at least part of the classic Brett[1] television series, which is generally acclaimed as the best of the lot. I think Holmes is an important character in the pre-history of both steampunk and…
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This is basically Mamoru Oshii (of Ghost in the Shell fame) does dogfights. Great movie. Didn’t understand anything though. And what’s with the dog?
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According to the Guardian today, at a recent convention Gary Kurtz, the writer of Return of the Jedi, revealed the original plot to the movie, which was that Han Solo would die halfway through in a raid, Princess Leia would have difficulty adapting to her new role as leader, and Luke Skywalker would walk off…
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Based on the Robert E Howard novel of the same name, this movie will probably attract the usual ire of Howard fans, who worry perenially that his work will be mocked in film – a fear I can understand, though I don’t agree with it. In any case, in this situation it doesn’t matter, since…
Compromise and Conceit 