Category Archives: cinema

someone please make this movie

I have a very vague – call it abstract – memory of watching the beginning of this movie, but it seems not to exist, so I guess it was a dream. The main character is a spy’s only daughter. Daddy … Continue reading

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Billy Budd

Last night I watched Peter Ustinov’s adaptation (1962) of Herman Melville’s story Billy Budd. In 1797, a young merchant seaman is drafted onto a warship, where his sweet nature is admired by all except Claggart, the cruel master-at-arms, who resents … Continue reading

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questions of emphasis

In Sherlock episode “The Lying Detective”, the phrase serial killer is uttered many times, always stressing the first word – as if the second were a given, even when (for the speakers) any killings are hypothetical. That impaired my enjoyment of … Continue reading

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exporting transcendence

In the film and TV series Limitless, a drug makes the protagonist temporarily super-intelligent. In the episodes I’ve seen, it’s not established whether any skills learned with the drug remain when it wears off. I imagine that you’d want to … Continue reading

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Use of Symbols

In Marvel/Netflix Daredevil episode 11 “The Path of the Righteous”, [spoiler] drugs [spoiler] and takes her to a secret place. When she wakes up, he sits facing her and puts a large pistol on the table between them, “to get … Continue reading

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were-worms?!

Watched The Battle of the Five Armies. How many ways would the author be appalled? Puppy-love between a canonical Dwarf and a non-canonical Elf. Their pheromones cannot be compatible. There’s a Laketowner named Percy, a family name from France. (The … Continue reading

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Awake how often?

The protagonist of the TV series Awake lives in two worlds: one in which his wife died in a car crash, and one in which their son died instead. As we see it, he spends a day in Hannah’s timeline … Continue reading

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