With Andrea Arnold's work on it butchered, my initial suspicion that BIG LITTLE LIES S2 would be a pointless cash-grab seems to be bearing out.
Generally haven't kept up with Mueller gossip outside a few key moments, but n+1 has an impressive summary of both the report and the sequence of events leading to it. Interesting in the same way that international politics is, with the U.S. verging on rogue state status.
(^I posted the above on 7/23, unaware of the hearings going on today, 7/24)
Nick Pinkerton celebrates Doris Day.
Steven Pinker and the classic "ideology of no ideology."
Break up Disney.
Always interested in the behind-the-scenes work of YouTubing, and the young people who devote their lives to it.
I always think back to Rosenbaum's total shutdown of APOCALYPSE NOW whenever the subject comes up. I used to adore the film, but reading his legitimate grievances against made me feel ashamed that I'd overlooked its ethnocentrism. I don't think I've returned to it since. Here, Phuong Le elaborates on how the metaphysical obsessions of the film are also bound up in Orientalism. The eternal conflict between good and evil -- which itself seems oversimplified -- is not an appropriate topic when it concerns subject matter that is inherently political and tied to a real, specific place. Taking place in a foreigner's misinterpretation of Vietnam, APOCALYPSE NOW balloons with unearned self-confidence, pushing Vietnam and its people out of the frame, favoring US soldiers in fashionable distress.
The terrible story of Keith Davis Jr., the first man shot by BPD after Freddie Gray's death -- and one whose survival has made him a prosecutorial target in the long years afterward. Kelly Davis, his wife, refuses to concede any territory at all on the subject of his incarceration. Through her efforts, she has exposed husband's trials as prominent displays of Baltimore injustice. I dearly hope for both of them that this ordeal ends soon.
The "loveable" Japanese Communist Party.
08/01 BONUS:
This EVA essay, by Willow Maclay, creeps me out plenty without even revisiting the last two episodes -- which, naturally I'm now tempted to do...
Probably always game for a Christopher Doyle interview, whether or not there's much new info in it.
Do the PERSONAL SHOPPER parallels need explication?
Pair this spectacular Ajit Singh chapter on China's well-considered Communism with this essay on the return of economic planning. In the overlap, you see the beginnings of a multipolar world freed from the (un-)free market's totalitarianism, opened up into material abundance with maybe -- just maybe -- the smallest chance of blunting ecological catastrophe. I don't think any of this is inevitable, but these are the trends I'm keeping an eye on if anything's going to get better. Or should we keep hoping the US military will have a change of heart and cease operations in the name of climate justice?
