It’s got an amazing cast, each of whom I absolutely adore. The director directed some of them in Bridesmaids, which is absolutely hilarious. The editors were responsible for 40-Year-Old Virgin and Anchorman, two favourites. But don’t slam me as anti-f…
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A Puff of Absurdity: On Ghostbusters
It’s got an amazing cast, each of whom I absolutely adore. The director directed some of them in Bridesmaids, which is absolutely hilarious. The editors were responsible for 40-Year-Old Virgin and Anchorman, two favourites. But don’t slam me as anti-f…
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Truth is Like Poetry
… and people fucking hate poetry.
It’s a line from the excellent film The Big Short, which is brought to us by Adam McKay, the director known for goofball comedies like Anchorman and Step-Brothers. But it’s nothing like that. At all.
It’s listed o…
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Justice and Hatred
I had an online discussion at Dawg’s Blawg about the primary theme of Tarantino’s newest film, The Hateful Eight, and it got a bit too provocative to manage a sincere response in the window of a comment, so I brought it here. Unfortunately I can’…
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Lives of Others
I have this poster on the wall of my classroom: It’s important to know. It’s necessary to understand how things work. And then it’s vital to act rightly in the face of the truth. That’s the message in The Lives of Others, a gripping film with one of the best
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Economics of Happiness
The 60 min. documentary, Economics of Happiness, is being offered free to watch online for the month of August. It’s a thoughtful look at how we could be living if we could only let go of consumerist culture that hasn’t made us particularly happy in the first place!
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Celebrity Impact
So Harry Styles advises us to avoid SeaWorld if we care about dolphins, and everybody’s talking about it. This could just be the needle that broke the camel’s back; many groups have been trying to stop the hunt of dolphins since The Cove first aired. Or it could be, as
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Revolution, the Film
I saw and wrote about this movie two years ago, but it’s being released to a wider audience now. About ten years ago, Rob Stewart was making the film Sharkwater under his questionable conviction that, “If people knew shark populations were decreasing by 90%, they’d do something.” A question from the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Mad Max: Reality Road
It was so close. First, a mini-comparison: It wasn’t as gripping and shocking as the original Road Warrior, and my son called it before we went in: more explosions and less rapey. People don’t accept casual rape scenes in movies like they did in the 80s. This is a good
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Newsroom: On Journalism, the Environment, and Sexism
I just finished watching the final season of The Newsroom as it appears catching up on shows is becoming a personal tradition on the first day of any holiday. It was a cringe-worthy six hours with a few redeeming story-lines. Here be ton o’ SPOILERS including the fact that it ends
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Ethos – a 2011 Documentary
“Our ethos is all that we currently hold to be true. It is what we act upon. It governs our manners, our business and our politics.” – Howard Zinn Directed by Pete McGrain, and hosted by Woody Harrelson, this 68 minute film explores how we got here and what to
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Brief Hiatus
I’ve been busy gardening, and then I took a break to check out NYC. The entire album, Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, played in my head on a loop while I was there. It was a nice distraction from the provincial election stuff, and the NDP couldn’t ask me for
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Downloading
I’m a movie-junkie, and I’ll happily pay to watch. That’s why I’m love Netflix. But sometimes there are movies people want to see that aren’t on Netflix. They’re out there, but not in a format that can offer remuneration. So people download. It seems like such a reasonable thing to
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Celebrating Talent
Convalescing from a wicked cold that’s beating the crap out of me, I watched a trio of movies about amazing musicians: Joe Strummer, Ginger Baker, and Sixto Rodriguez. In the films, other musical geniuses were highlighted along the way. What a delight! But as Ginger, Jack and Eric talked about
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Enviro-Optimists vs Doom-Mongers: Another Wentian False Dichotomy
Margaret Wente, in her latest discourse, thinks the reason the environment’s being ignored is because of all the pessimists making us too depressed about it all. She splits all environmentalists into two camps: “But the biggest divide is really between the purists and the pragmatists, the pessimists and the optimists
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Our Rape Culture: Rehtaeh Parsons’ Unfortunate Legacy
And another one gone – a victim of assault and revenge porn enacted and filmed by a bunch of teenaged boys who had more power than they might have ever imagined: they could kill from a distance. As Elizabeth Renzetti says of these double-barrel assaults, they are, “not just an
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: Charlie Brooker on “Kony 2012”
Charlie Brooker’s rant about the Kony 2012 viral video, as seen on the British comedy program 10 O’Clock Live last week, including the round-table discussion that followed. Along with countless millions of others, I watched the “Kony 2012” video recently, but unlike most, was completely creeped out by it. In
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