the eyeball
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The Eyeball #28: Movie Binge
My family was recently out of town for a five days, leaving me home alone with over 800 pages (no exaggeration) of student work to read and comment upon. My reward for getting through a day of writing about free…
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The Eyeball #27: Apocalypse Now Redux
“The purpose of war is to kill as many of the enemy’s civilians as you can until they surrender.” –Col. John Harbert John Harbert was my grandfather, my hero, a veteran of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
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THE EYEBALL, The Rumpus DVD Column: #24 Nicolas Roeg’s First Five Films
Years ago I happened upon a series of arresting images on cable. There was a young Mick Jagger cavorting in a bath tub with two svelte beauties. A child wearing a fake mustache. A still image of Jorge Luis Borges…
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THE EYEBALL, The Rumpus DVD Column: Synecdoche, New York
These movies pass through our lives, take up two hours of our time, and go along their merry way. Recently I enjoyed Preston Sturges’s The Lady Eve, Orson Welles’s masterful Touch of Evil, and a collection of Pixar shorts. I…
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THE EYEBALL: This was, is, and will be Spinal Tap
I recently read on some blog somewhere in the bloggy blog blogosphere a reference to certain movies as “wallpaper.”
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THE EYEBALL: Illusions
Remember when The Illusionist and The Prestige both vied to be the winter 2007 movie about magicians? No? Anyway, transport yourself back to those fabled days of January and February 2007. I know what you’re thinking. You were too busy…
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THE EYEBALL: Rashomon
One weird symptom of watching old movies, for me at least, is that I find myself imagining what the original audiences thought of them. I suppose this goes back to the anecdotes I’ve heard about The Great Train Robbery (1904),…
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THE EYEBALL: Nude Caboose
Yesterday I had the pleasure of interviewing Guy Maddin, the great Canadian auteur and subject of previous Eyeball posts. We spoke for about an hour and a half; he was so generous and real that I ended up just wanting…
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THE EYEBALL: Pig Hunt and Lost Season 4
Tuesday night I had the pleasure of reading a short story at therumpus.net’s Seattle launch party, prior to a screening of the film Pig Hunt. Director Jim Isaac served up guns, blood, taxidermy, boobs, motor bikes, hippies, wild boars, and…
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THE EYEBALL: Burn After Reading and The Iron Giant
Oscars, whatever. I had two comfy movie-watching experiences this weekend. On Friday I watched the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading with my wife and yesterday sat down with my son to watch the Brad Bird animated movie The Iron Giant.…
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The Eyeball: Lord of the Rings
Last Friday I was laid up with some kind of nasty stomach bug that left me prone most of the day. What better time than to revisit Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring? It was literally the…
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The Eyeball: Fellini’s Amarcord
I Remember Last night I met up with some of my former Amazon colleagues, guys who, like me, served tours of duty on the DVD team, to watch Fellini’s Amarcord at Siff Cinema. The faces, rumps, busts, and girths of…