2011 in games

1. Dark Souls(dev. From Software)[40+ hours; not beaten]
2. Gemini Rue(dev. Joshua Nuernberger)[7 hours; beaten]
3. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3(dev. Capcom)[100+ hours]*
4. Dead Island(dev. Techland)[15 hours, not beaten]
5. Dungeons of Dredmor(dev. Gaslamp Games)[1+ hour; not beaten]
6. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim(dev. Bethesda)[6 hours; not beaten]
7. The Binding of Isaac(dev. Edmund McMillen & Florian Himsl)[8 hours; not beaten]
8. E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy(dev. Streum On Studio)[2 hours; not beaten]
9. Deus Ex: Human Revolution(dev. Eidos Montreal)[2 hours; not beaten]
10. Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition(dev. Capcom)[170+ hours]
11. Saints Row: The Third(dev. Volition)[15 hours; beaten]
12. L.A. Noire(dev. Team Bondi)[12+ hours; beaten]

Need to play: Battlefield 3, Gears of War 3, King of Fighters XIII

*No point in ranking vanilla Marvel.

"Made" Films of 2011

Film Socialisme(dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
WATCHED TWICE

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo(dir. David Fincher)
WATCHED TWICE

Kaboom(dir. Gregg Araki)
WATCHED FOUR TIMES

Love Exposure(dir. Sion Sono)
WATCHED TWICE

Mysteries of Lisbon(dir. Raul Ruiz)
WATCHED TWICE

The Tree of Life(dir. Terrence Malick)
WATCHED TWICE

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives(dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
WATCHED TWICE

Up on deck: Go Go Tales
Missed the cut: Cold Weather, Hobo with a Shotgun
Might have been wrong: Certified Copy

"Made" Films of 2010

Dogtooth(dir. Giorgos Lanthimos)
WATCHED TWICE

Father of My Children(dir. Mia Hansen-Løve)
WATCHED TWICE

"Missoni"(dir. Kenneth Anger)
WATCHED FIFTEEN+ TIMES

The Runaways(dir. Floria Sigismondi)
WATCHED TWICE

Tron: Legacy(dir. Joseph Kosinski)
WATCHED 2.75 TIMES

Wild Grass(dir. Alain Resnais)
WATCHED TWICE

Up on deck: "I'm Here", "Lady Blue Shanghai", Shutter Island, True Grit

Still haven't seen: 45365, Audrey the Trainwreck, Boxing Gym, Life During Wartime, Ne Change Rien, NY Export: Opus Jazz, Our Beloved Month of August, Secret Sunshine, The Strange Case of Angelica

Missed the cut: Amer, Around a Small Mountain, "Brodyquest", Iron Man 2, It's Kind of a Funny Story, MacGruber, "Runaway", Soul Kitchen, Tooth Fairy

Fell by the wayside: Everyone Else, The Exploding Girl, The Girl on the Train, The Other Guys, The Social Network, Vincere

Might have been wrong: "Carlos", Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Nope, not wrong: Somewhere, Inception

Shutter Island

Talk about a movie that lives and dies by its ending. I need to rewatch it one of these days just to make sure it still works as a whole and everything preceding the finale isn't just marking time before the big reveal. But Jesus Christ, the ending kind of kills me. I don't think it's necessarily DiCarpio that does it for me. It's more the idea and the way Scorsese handles the "event." DiCarpio's wailing is just part of the soundtrack for a haunting set of shots. The couple of times I've seen the ending, I thought Ruffalo was fighting back tears just from the way his muscles fluctuate in his face, but I'm not so sure if that's true. But isn't that what acting is? Seeing something that's not really there.

The Kids Are All Right

People have compared this to sitcoms to death so let me partake. While watching this, I thought, 'this could easily be a very special episode of "Full House",' and then I thought, 'I wish this was a very special episode of "Full House."' I'll save the preaching about how "Full House" is a wonderful slice of familial fantasy and boneheadedness for another occasion, but really, this thing has a tendency to come off as pat bullshit quite often. It's interesting to note that according to Annette Benning she told the director that she didn't want it to come across as too earnest, which is an honorable position, but what other than its lesbian leads differentiates this from a myriad of other dysfunctional family dramas(that might actually be the point; a family with two mothers and no fathers can be just as bland as any other)? Well, good acting for one, but not from the two actresses portraying those said lesbian leads. Benning and Moore just seem to cry a lot. Mark Ruffalo, however, is great just for the sheer gusto he displays when he gets the opportunity to say, "Shut the front door." Mia Wasikowska is also quite good at being pissy and angsty as the teenaged daughter. The biggest fault with the film is its reluctance to dive in when things get messy. It seemed as if the screenwriters didn't want to tread that water just because they'd be afraid of possibly drowning in it and instead, conclude on a rather dry and boring note. Despite its simplistic nature, the hint at messiness has still made the film stick with me for some reason.

2010 in games

1. Team Fortress 2 Mann-conomy Update(dev. Valve)**
2. Limbo(dev. Playdead)
3. Battlefield: Bad Company 2(dev. DICE)
4. Heavy Rain(dev. Quantam Dream)
5. Final Fantasy XIII(dev. Square Enix)
6. Bloody Good Time(dev. Outerlight)
7. Pirates, Vikings, and Knights II 2.3(dev. PVKII Team)**
8. Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch(dev. Cutman Team?)
9. Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker(dev. Bioware)
10. Alpha Protocol(dev. Obsidian)*
11. Mega Man 10(dev. Capcom)*
12. Red Dead Redemption(dev. Rockstar San Diego)
13. Mass Effect 2(dev. Bioware)
14. Super Mario Galaxy 2(dev. Nintendo)
15. Alien Swarm(dev. Valve)
*Have not completed.
**Not a full release.

Need to play: Bayonetta, Bioshock 2, Dead Rising 2, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Dragon Quest IX, Etrian Odyssey III, Fallout: New Vegas, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Mega Man Zero Collection, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, Neo Geo Battle Coliseum, Pac Man Championship Edition DX, Professor Layton, Scott Pilgrim, Starcraft II, Super Meat Boy, Super Street Fighter IV, Vanquish, Yakuza 3

The Social Network

Two shots stick out in my mind ever since I saw this. It was of the Winklevoss twins before and after visiting the Harvard president. It was a rather scant amount of time that both these shots were on screen. The shots basically decapitated the twins with the frame and focused solely on their suits and ties while still providing limited information of the background. It was an unusual shot in a film full of usual shots. That's not to say that the film looked bland or wasn't shot impeccably. If anything, Fincher should probably direct everything and anything just on the basis on his ability to make uncinematic material cinematic. These shots are also perhaps the pinnacle of Fincher's visual wit within the film. These shots provoked more thought in me than anything else in the movie. Really. It got me thinking about the simple differences between Mark Zuckerberg's fashion and the Winklevoss'. How the Winklevoss twins seem to be perpetually in suits and ties, while Zuckerberg always dresses casually, even at his own deposition. It also speaks volumes of the way capitalism in the modern digital era is. These shot cut off probably the most defining feature of any human, the face, and all you get are a pair of suits. Anybody could fill those suits. The Winklessvoss twins' idea wasn't revolutionary. That's why Facebook is still afloat. And I believe I read somewhere that the real Zuckerberg said if he didn't make Facebook, someone else would have. Its this ability to replace that is a chief characteristic of the Internet age and the anonymity that is a result of that. What makes your Facebook photo album of you and your friends getting drunk special from the myriads of others? Someone defriended you? You can always find someone else to fill that spot in order to get your friend count back up to what it once was. These two shots show how powerful mise-en-scene can be and why we need more directors with eyes like Fincher's.

Note: I plan to write more on this film in relation to Fincher's previous two offerings.

Milk of Sorrow

I was reminded of The Headless Woman while watching this. In that film, I was more interested in the white-skinned protagonist's brown-skinned help and here, I was more interested in the brown-skinned protagonist's white-skinned employer. When you win, you can't win. Only shot that made an impression on me was a shot of a floor scattered and covered with pearls with the protagonist and her employer slowly picking up the pearls mainly because the actress that portrays the protagonist's employer has a grace of movement in this shot that is often afforded to actors and actresses in Rivette. In regards to the whole, it's arthouse up the ass and has a dead-serious fable quality to it that I frankly found kind of annoying.

Amer

I can't comment on how giallo this supposed homage to giallo is due to my experience with the genre only limited to a few Argento films and even then, I'm not sure if any or all of those are actually categorized in the genre. I do know that the film contains some tripped-out lighting that is reminiscent of the kind in Suspiria and disembodied black-gloved hands make an appearance that are a hallmark of the genre (or are they?). Every shot in this bad boy drips of sex, menace, and, several times, both. The framing of the shots often dismembers body parts and it both dehumanizes and heightens the sense of physicality involved with mundane gestures. The film works best when it generates suspense out of seemingly thin air and the danger is imagined instead of reality. Plot doesn't matter here since the film goes straight to the jugular of the subconscious through pure stylistic bravado. This is one seductive and sinister experiment that is surpisingly successful.

Piranha 3D

Jerry O'Connell portrays "not" Joe Francis and Christopher Lloyd plays the Doc Brown of man-eating fish instead of time travel and they both seem to be giving performances in the movie I signed up for. The special effects aren't much to look at with the exception of Riley Steele. Ving Rhames's last stand with a boat propeller is glorious but sadly cut short for obvious reasons. The film is what it is except when it isn't. At one minute, the film seems to want me to take pleasure at the sight of Eli Roth getting his head smashed in by a speed boat and at the next moment, it wants me to give a shit about the plight of Elizabeth Shue and her dumb kids. I'm indiscriminate when it comes to horror victims. I wanted them all as food for the fishes. Unlike such fare as, say, Snakes on a Plane, it never builds to a transcendent stupidity like I wanted it to and the violence is actually pretty dang grody and didn't lend itself well as fodder for derisive laughter. Forgettable except for O'Connell's character "not" inspired by the creator and producer of the "Girls Gone Wild"(TM) series's final words, which will haunt me for ages.

I Am Love

All the shots scream art and they are but not of the good variety. Only one shot got to me and it was a shot of the daughter up real close and you couldn't see her ears and can barely catch a glimpse of her hair. It was just face. It was intriguing in a humane way, if that makes sense. A bevy of shots from various angles of buildings, food, and such does nothing for me.

The drama is melodrama, but the heightening that comes along with the territory is less about emotion and more about the sensation of artistic significance. Brother obviously wants to go down in history as the next Visconti since you get the vibe that he's just doing a loose modern-set re-staging of The Leopard with this. The current of time is touched upon and is symbolized, strangely enough, by the Indian dude from The Life Aquatic. In an interesting twist (if you're being generous), the one that can't handle that the times are a-changin' is not either of the patriarchs but the son. And what happens to that son is designed to generate some extraneous drama and make some pronouncement about how time is unfair or some such nonsense.

The film is chiefly about an extramarital affair. The way this enterprise blossoms can best be described by myself like this: just imagine the scene in Ratatouille where the critic eats the titular treat, replace the critic with Tilda Swinton, replace the pack of cooking rats with a slightly goofy-looking Italian dude, and replace the critic's nostalgic reverie with Tilda thinking about "making love" to the Italian dude and you get an idea of this film's approach to romance.

Tilda's performance is impressive in terms of actorly dedication. She learned to speak another goddamn language for this part. Some looks on her face got to me near the end, but I've never liked her as much as I did in Benjamin Button.

The ending, with the swelling of music to disproportionate levels, tears and gestures signifying "big emotion," is obviously intended to have you experience a bunch of disparate feelings rushing through you all at once, but all it did was underline how much I didn't care.

Winter's Bone

John Hawkes is fucking fantastic in this. He plays a character that people that you don't want to fuck with in the locale that the film takes place in don't want to fuck with. It's the meatiest role of the pack, but it's also probably the easiest one to fuck up. The film is worth seeing simply to watch Hawkes craft a character that comes across as both utterly tragic and deserving of said tragic quality. He's a character that you wouldn't want to spend time with, but you also don't want to see him go. I know, I know. People have been praising the shit out of Jennifer Lawrence, but really, John Hawkes is the best thing in this movie. No contest. Lawrence is decent, but all she does is don a convincing drawl and act appropiately feisty in some scenes. This is kind of a lame criticism, but it also doesn't help that she'd look more at home on the set of a TeenNick show than this movie. She's too much of a cutie pie to blend in in this world-weary, wringled face setting, but maybe, that's the point.

The film itself took me by surprise in ways that I was appreciative of and not so much. I was expecting something akin to Frozen River, where our poor female protagonist does some dumb shit in order to make a buck, but thankfully, that wasn't the case. I was also expecting it to get more grueling as it went along and continually placing our protagonist in more horrific situations, but it didn't do that, either. The film is, for all extents and purposes, a mystery yarn and the resolution to said mystery is, well, rather anticlimatic. That's not that big of a deal. It's just that the film has all these ingredients for something more dramatic, I guess, and it doesn't deliver. When a character wields an axe within the film, my heart got pounding and I was expecting some serious shit to go down, but like the film as a whole, it dissolved basically into nothing. Just watch the damn thing in order to see the beauty of John Hawkes's performance.

2011 in film

1. Kaboom(dir. Gregg Araki)
2. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives(dir. Apitchatpong Weerasethakul)
3. Love Exposure(dir. Sion Sono)
4. Tree of Life(dir. Terrence Malick)
5. Film Socialisme(dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
6. Mysteries of Lisbon(dir. Raul Ruiz)
7. Cold Weather(dir. Aaron Katz)[in the middle of a rewatch]
8. Go Go Tales(dir. Abel Ferrara)
9. Tuesday, After Christmas
10. Transformers: Dark of the Moon(dir. Michael Bay)
11. Fast Five(dir. Justin Lin)
12. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo(dir. David Fincher)
13. Jane Eyre
14. Hall Pass(dir. Farrelly Brothers)
15. Hobo with a Shotgun
16. Unknown
17. The Ward(dir. John Carpenter)
18. Terri(dir. Azazel Jacobs)
19. Beginners(dir. Mike Mills)
20. Poetry(dir. Lee Chang-dong)
21. 13 Assassins(dir. Takashi Miike)
22. Cave of Forgotten Dreams(dir. Werner Herzog)
23. Tabloid(dir. Errol Morris)
24. Drive(dir. Nicolas Wending Refn)
25. Paul(dir. Greg Mottola)
26. Your Highness(dir. David Gordon Green)
27. Heartbeats(dir. Xavier Dolan)
28. Road to Nowhere(dir. Monte Hellman)
29. Super 8(dir. J.J. Abrams)
30. The Myth of the American Sleepover
31. Putty Hill
32. United Red Army
33. Certified Copy(dir. Abbas Kiarostami)
34. Meek's Cutoff(dir. Kelly Reichardt)
35. Bridesmaids
36. Sucker Punch(dir. Zack Snyder)
37. Winnie the Pooh
38. Source Code(dir. Duncan Jones)
39. The Housemaid(dir. Im Sang-soo)
40. Horrible Bosses
41. Just Go With It(dir. Dennis Dugan)
42. Colombiana(dir. Olivier Megaton)
43. The Green Hornet(dir. Michel Gondry)

Need to see: The Adventures of Tintin, Bellflower, City of Life and Death, Contagion, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, Hugo, Jack & Jill, House of Pleasures, Into the Abyss, Margaret, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Melancholia, "Mildred Pierce", Miss Bala(?), Restless, Sleeping Beauty, The Skin I Live In, Tetsuo: The Bullet Man, War Horse, We Need to Talk About Kevin

2010 in film

1. Visage(dir. Tsai Ming-liang)*
2. Amer
3. Dogtooth(dir. Giorgos Lanthimos)
4. Around a Small Mountain(dir. Jacques Rivette)
5. The Girl on the Train(dir. Andre Techine)
6. Wild Grass(dir. Alain Resnais)
7. "Missoni F/W 10-11"(dir. Kenneth Anger)**
8. Everyone Else(dir. Maren Ade)
9. True Grit(dir. Coen Brothers)
10. Shutter Island(dir. Martin Scorsese)
11. MacGruber
12. The Other Guys(dir. Adam McKay)
13. "BRODYQUEST"
14. The Father of My Children(Mia Hansen-Love)***
15. Tron Legacy(dir. Joseph Kosinski)
16. "Runaway"(dir. Kanye West)
17. It's Kind of a Funny Story(dir. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck)
18. "I'm Here" (dir. Spike Jonze)^^^
19. The Exploding Girl(dir. Bradley Rust Gray)
20. Soul Kitchen(dir. Fatih Akin)
21. The Social Network(dir. David Fincher)
22. A Prophet
23. Vincere(dir. Marco Bellocchio)
24. October Country
25. Catfish
26. Exit Through the Gift Shop(dir. Banksy)
27. The Runaways
28. Tooth Fairy
29. I Love You Phillip Morris
30. Iron Man 2(dir. Jon Favreau)
31. Rabbit Hole(dir. John Cameron Mitchell?)
32. Never Let Me Go(dir. Mark Romanek?)
33. Unstoppable(dir. Tony Scott)
34. Somewhere(dir. Sofia Coppola)
35. The Fighter(dir. David O. Russell)
36. The Kids are All Right(dir. Lisa Cholodenko)
37. Predators(dir. Nimrod Antal)
38. Machete
39. Alamar
40. 127 Hours(dir. Danny Boyle)
41. Hadewijch(dir. Bruno Dumont)
42. White Material(dir. Claire Denis)
43. Restrepo
44. Winter's Bone
45. Centurion(dir. Neil Marshall)
46. Tangled
47. Toy Story 3(dir. Lee Unkrich)
48. Inception(dir. Christopher Nolan)
49. The Town(dir. Ben Affleck)
50. The Ghost Writer(dir. Roman Polanski)
51. Survival of the Dead(dir. George A. Romero)
52. The Human Centipede(First Sequence)(dir. Tom Six)
53. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps(dir. Oliver Stone)
54. The Paranoids
55. Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench
56. Another Year(dir. Mike Leigh)
57. Let Me In(dir. Matt Reeves)
58. Sweetgrass
59. Vengeance(dir. Johnnie To)
60. Blue Valentine(dir. Derek Cianfrance)
61. Black Swan(dir. Darren Aronofsky)
62. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World(dir. Edgar Wright)
63. How Do You Know(dir. James L. Brooks)
64. The Milk of Sorrow
65. Lourdes
66. Ondine(dir. Neil Jordan)
67. Mother(dir. Bong Joon-ho)
68. The A-Team
69. Step Up 3
70. "Carlos"(dir. Olivier Assayas)`
71. Date Night(dir. Shawn Levy)
72. Hot Tub Time Machine(dir. Steve Pink)
73. Killers(dir. Robert Luketic)
74. The Crazies
75. Twelve(dir. Joel Schumacher)
76. Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl(dir. Manoel de Oliveira)
77. Inspector Bellamy(dir. Claude Chabrol)
78. Extraordinary Measures
79. Easy A(dir. Will Gluck)
80. Samson and Delilah(dir. Warwick Thornton?)
81. Enter the Void(dir. Gaspar Noe)
82. The American
83. Fish Tank(dir. Andrea Arnold)
84. The Secret of Kells
85. Buried
86. Lebanon(dir. Samuel Maos)
87. The Good, the Bad, the Weird
88. Greenberg(dir. Noah Bambauch)
89. I Am Love
90. Hereafter(dir. Clint Eastwood)
91. Piranha 3-D
92. Jackass 3D(dir. Jeff Tremaine)
93. A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop(dir. Zhang Yimou)
94. "The House That Drips Blood on Alex"^^^
95. The Killer Inside Me(dir. Michael Winterbottom)
96. Bluebeard
97. The Tourist
98. Grown-Ups
99. Alice in Wonderland(dir. Tim Burton)
100. Assault Girls``
*Has no U.S. release yet.
**Advertisement.
***Only had a theatrical release in L.A. and N.Y.
^Only had a theatrical release in N.Y.
^^Only had a theatrical release in N.Y., but also came out on DVD.
^^^Short.
`Miniseries.
``Only came out on DVD in U.S.

Need to see: 45365, Audrey the Trainwreck, Boxing Gym, Life During Wartime, Ne Change Rien, NY Export: Opus Jazz, Our Beloved Month of August, Secret Sunshine, The Strange Case of Angelica

30 for a Decade - Film

30 movies worth seeing from the last decade because the future is now.

Beau Travail
The Black Dahlia
A Christmas Tale
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dance Party, USA
Don't Touch the Axe
Golden Door
Friday Night
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
The Holy Girl(Warning: No subs on trailer)
I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
In the Mood for Love
Lilya 4-Ever(Warning: Movie might cause suicidal thoughts)
Marie Antoinette
Miami Vice(Warning: Linkin Park in clip)
Minority Report
Mulholland Drive
Mutual Appreciation
The New World
Pistol Opera
Pola X
Punch-Drunk Love
Reprise
The Royal Tenenbaums
'R Xmas
Speed Racer
The Story of Marie and Julien(Warning: Spanish subs on trailer)
Suicide Club(Warning: Violence.)
Talk to Her
The Virgin Suicides

Possible Noteworthy 2010 U.S. Releases

Air Doll(dir. Hirokazu Koreeda)
The American(dir. Anton Corbijn)
The Assassin(dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Biutiful(dir. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
Black Swan(dir. Darren Aronofsky)
Carlos the Jackal(dir. Olivier Assayas)
The Certified Copy(dir. Abbas Kiarostami)
Cold Weather(dir. Aaron Katz)
Enter the Void(dir. Gaspar Noe)
Faust(dir. Aleksandr Sokurov)
The Fighter(dir. David O. Russell)
Fish Tank(dir. Andrea Arnold)
The Girl on the Train(dir. Andre Techine)
The Grand Master(dir. Wong Kar-Wai)
Greenberg(dir. Noah Baumbach)
The Green Hornet(dir. Michel Gondry)
Green Zone(dir. Paul Greengrass)
Grown Ups(dir. Dennis Dugan)
Hadewijch(dir. Bruno Dumont)
Hereafter(dir. Clint Eastwood)
Hot Tub Time Machine(dir. Steve Pink)
I Am Love(dir. Luca Guadagnino)
Inception(dir. Christopher Nolan)
Iron Man 2(dir. Jon Favreau)
Jekyll and Hyde(dir. Abel Ferrara)
The Killer Inside Me(dir. Michael Winterbottom)
Lebanon(dir. Samual Maoz)
Lords of Chaos(dir. Sion Sono)
The Lost City of Z(dir. James Gray)
Meek's Cutoff(dir. Kelly Reichardt)
Mother(dir. Bong Joon-ho)
Nailed(dir. David O. Russell)
Never Let Me Go(dir. Mark Romanek)
The Other Guys(dir. Adam McKay)
Paul(dir. Greg Mottola)
Predators(dir. Nimrod Antal)
A Prophet(dir. Jacques Audiard)
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World(dir. Edgar Wright)
Socialisme(dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
The Social Network(dir. David Fincher)
Somewhere(dir. Sofia Coppola)
Shutter Island(dir. Martin Scorsese)
Tetsuo: The Bullet Man(dir. Shinya Tsukamoto)
Tooth Fairy(dir. IDK IDC)
The Town(dir. Ben Affleck)
Toy Story 3(dir. Lee Unkrich)
The Tree of Life(dir. Terrence Malick)
True Grit(dir. Coen Bros.)
The Turin Horse(dir. Bela Tarr)
Untitled Mike Leigh Project(dir. Uhh...)
We Need to Talk About Kevin(dir. Lynne Ramsay)
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger(dir. Woody Allen)
Your Highness(dir. David Gordon Green)

Short Story: I Don't Want Ya(title a work in progress)

What’s your favorite flower? His was a dandelion and he had a garden full of ‘em. He tended to them. He cared for them. Some might even say he loved them, but his life wasn’t just sunshine, soil, and flowers. There was a lot of sadness. A lot of anger.
His residence was near a military base and whenever they practiced bombing, the dirt on the hill would shake out of its place and cascade onto his precious dandelions. Some would hope that this practice bombing was an attempt to become more accurate in order to limit civilian causalities in a real combat situation, but he thought they merely did it just to piss him off. After a day of bombing, he would always go out to his garden and try to rescue his dandelions from the freshly created sea of dirt drowning them. He didn’t feel this process was futile until the bombing started to increase to the point that it occurred every single day along with his fits of rage. After breaking plates and other shit around the house for a good week or so, he realized he had to do something about this so he decided to write a strongly worded letter to the military. He was especially proud of his salutation that read, “Dear assholes.” The tone of his letter only got increasingly vitriolic after that and some who would have looked at it would have thought he was a raving lunatic. He partly was, given how his demeanor turned sharply bipolar due to the seesaw effect the bombing had on his disposition. The joy he received from planting a new batch of dandelions quickly turned into anger and sadness when he saw his beautiful flowers get buried along with his happiness.
After the letter was sent, a week went by without bombing. He felt they got the message and spent the days drinking cheap wine and reading gardening manuals. Maybe, I should plant some cacti he thought one of those days. Then a letter from the military came. He opened the envelope feverishly, expecting to find the apology he deserved. His eyes stared at the letters on the page and he was shocked to see the words that they formed: “With great pleasure, I am to inform you that you have been selected to be a part of our elite fighting task force.” He was drafted? He looked at the date he had to report for duty and it was only three days away. He crumpled up the letter furiously and threw it in the wastebasket. The bombing started up right as the paper hit the bottom of the basket. It went on all day and night, making him sleep deprived and erratic. When the day came to report for duty, he decided to go, not to report but to complain. To fight for his civil liberties as a citizen of the United States of America.
He drove for two hours on a road sandwiched between dry, arid desert before he pulled into a gas station to fill up his car. He was amazed by how far the base was due to how capable the bombing was in shaping the landscape of his background. While waiting for his car’s thirst for fuel to be quenched, he looked at a little girl in the backseat of a SUV. She was staring at him. She smiled and waved and he responded with the same. He was happy once again, a feeling that was foreign to him for the past three days of his life. This quickly changed once he saw her father’s haircut. The design of it annoyed the shit out of him. It was the complete antithesis of his beloved dandelion’s. All the hair was shaved except for the top. He felt hair should be round and all-encompassing of one’s skull. A sponge in case one’s brain fluids started to leak. In a fit of passion, he took the gas nozzle quickly out of his car and had the drizzling gasoline fall onto his face. He then grabbed a cigarette out of his pocket and pressed it to his lips and lit it. He waited for the cigarette to wither away to a tiny snub before his face promptly burst into flames. The father of the little girl frantically got in his SUV and drove away in fear of the entire gas station turning into a devouring inferno. The lover of dandelions ran into the station’s convenient store and screamed at the cashier, “Empty the register and give me the money!” The teenage boy stared at him for a good two minutes before realizing that this situation will not melt away along with this crazed man’s face. He handed him the money and the man with the burning face ran out the door towards the harsh desert. He ran away from his car, the gas station, his life, and civilization. He splashed his newly acquired money against his face and watched the dollars burn and glide down to the ground like leaves in a forest fire.
When the police discovered his body in the middle of the desert, they found a vulture nibbling on the toes of his left foot and dandelions surrounding his body as if they were Mother Nature’s version of a chalk outline. His whole body was badly eaten away by the hungry sun except for his face. His face was pretty much the same as it was when his organs still functioned except it was pitch black and his lips were frozen in a smile. So what’s your favorite flower?

Top 20 Songs of the Millenium...

Inspired by Pitchfork... maybe.














Obviously a work in progress...

Oh Best of the Decade Project...

Another retarded list thing. This time I'm keeping a list of what I consider the best films of the decade and I will seperate them by categories: definitely, probably, and maybe. Definitely means that they would definitely end up on my "official" best of the 2000's list, while probably is less likely, and maybe is even more less likely. Here we gooooooooo.

Definitely
I Don't Want to Sleep Alone(dir. Tsai Ming-liang)
Mulholland Drive(dir. David Lynch)
Reprise(dir. Joachim Trier)

Probably
Don't Touch the Axe(dir. Jacques Rivette)
Fay Grim(dir. Hal Hartley)
Femme Fatale(dir. Brian De Palma)
Marie Antoinette(dir. Sofia Coppola)
Miami Vice(dir. Michael Mann)
Minority Report(dir. Steven Spielberg)
The New World(dir. Terrence Malick)
Pistol Opera(dir. Seijun Suzuki)
Punch-Drunk Love(dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
Platform(dir. Jia Zhangke)
Rachel Getting Married(dir. Jonathan Demme)
The Royal Tenenbaums(dir. Wes Anderson)
Talk to Her(dir. Pedro Almodovar)
The Virgin Suicides(dir. Sofia Coppola)
The Wayward Cloud(dir. Tsai Ming-liang)

Maybe
2046(dir. Wong Kar-Wai)
The Black Dahlia(dir. Brian De Palma)
Donnie Darko(dir. Richard Kelly)
Flight of the Red Balloon(dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Friday Night(dir. Claire Denis)
George Washington(dir. David Gordon Green)
The Girl From Monday(dir. Hal Hartley)
Golden Door(dir. IDK)
Goodbye, Dragon Inn(dir. Tsai Ming-liang)
INLAND EMPIRE(dir. David Lynch)
The Intruder(dir. Claire Denis)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou(dir. Wes Anderson)
Little Children(dir. Todd Field)
Offside(dir. Jafar Panahi)
Public Enemies(dir. Michael Mann)
Speed Racer(dir. Wachowski Brothers)
Synecdoche, New York(dir. Charlie Kaufman)
Tropical Malady(dir. Apicha...)
Twentynine Palms(dir. Bruno Dumont)
War of the Worlds(dir. Steven Spielberg)
What Time Is It There?(dir. Tsai Ming-liang)
You Don't Mess with the Zohan(dir. IDK)

Need to watch/rewatch:
Bad Education
The Beat That My Heart Skipped
Birth
Cache
Che
A Christmas Tale
Collateral
The Company
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Esther Kahn
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Far From Heaven
Gommorah
In the Bedroom
In the Mood for Love
In Praise of Love
Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2
Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Manchurian Candidate
Ocean's Eleven
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Pride and Prejudice
Requiem for a Dream
The Science of Sleep
Sparrow
Syndromes and a Century
Trouble Every Day
The Truth About Charlie
Volver
Zodiac
and more...

Oh Speed Racer: The Missing Link?