1. Tennessee
So I spent the last week in Tennessee, which is why this article’s getting to you late. It was a beautiful week with a beautiful lady, over far too quickly. Anyrate, I went down there and got to experience some of the strangeness that happens below the Mason Dixon. My first time to the south and I guess I’m not sure what to make of it yet, especially because I had a much larger reason for being there than simply sight-see or whatever people do when they go to the south. I ate grits, went to Dollywood and an underground lake, which brings me to my next point . . .
2. Dollywood!
How does one even begin to describe Dollywood? Well, it’s an amusement park. There are rides and shows and all sorts of super expensive food that’s surely terrible for you. I got only a sort of abbreviated experience there but it was hilarious and awesome, despite the heat and crowds and rain. I mean, I saw someone walking around with shit in their pants, standing in line, even. Not something you see every day.
Also, you’ve seen that people of Walmart site, yes? There should be something similar set up for Dollywood. I guarantee it’d have a million hits by tomorrow. I mean, these are not your average humans walking around, but strange hybrids of something beyond human comprehension.
3. Cloud Atlas Trailer
Released earlier today is the first look at Cloud Atlas, directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, based on the novel by David Mitchell. The novel is quite impressive and worthy of all the accolades it received way back in 2004. I read it last year and absolutely loved it. While this movie seems to be putting more emphasis on a love story than I remember from the novel, it looks extremely awesome for so many different reasons. It is an amazingly ambitious novel and this looks to be a very ambitious film.
4. Phil Jourdan
Author of Praise of Motherhood, man behind Slothrop, and overall madman extraordinaire! I just wanted to include here that I like Phil and he amuses me greatly.
5. The Dark Knight Rises
Probably you’ve all seen it and if you haven’t, why haven’t you? I mean, there’s even a review by us over here.
Certainly not the best of the trilogy, mostly because nothing’s quite as good as The Dark Knight, but a very fitting conclusion to the Batman story. And Bane is just uncontrollably awesome! That voice! The heavens do break above it! I want to live in it, bask in it, let it consume me!
Bane aside, there was some real clunkiness here. It’s extremely somber, almost a requiem, really. And Catwoman, although never named Catwoman, while being played well by Miss Hathaway, also had the misfortune of having the worst dialogue of any character in any Nolan film. It was very Adam West-Batmanesque, where she’d kick someone and say some lame oneliner that no one ever wanted to hear. And she’s not the only one who was given things like that to say, but she is the most frequent offender. Despite the cheesiness of this at times, it was a deeply satisfying film and a good endpoint to the series.
There are political things happening in the film and some may harken it to the Occupy Movement, which it clearly doesn’t represent, especially since it was written before there even was an Occupy Movement. Bane is a propagandist and a terrorist and is so believable and breathtaking that it’s hard to not get taken in by him. What we have in The Dark Knight Rises is very much retells the French Revolution and then the Reign of Terror. The message here, if there’s meant to be one [and probably there's not] is somewhat conflicted by various characters, which is as it should be. Ideas should be different even among the key players of the same team.
Anyrate, this, of course, leads into the least favorite thing of the week, something that’s garnered national attention and spawned all sorts of insipid debates. The massacre in Colorado is a tragedy, of course, and it should spark national debate, but only in terms of improving life, not in laying blame on one another. This is something that should bring us together rather than further separate us.
Also, Christian Bale’s awesome.
Edward J Rathke
edward j rathke lives here and there, finds his name in print occasionally, but mostly stares at the walls and waits for stories to fall out. His debut novel, Ash Cinema, was published by KUBOA Press.
