Sweet Emulsion
Aloha
Go Away: An Introduction [updated: 6/8]
Grades. Sweet, Sweet Grades.
2008 Films (by grade)
2007 Films (by grade)
2006 Films
(by grade)
2005 Films (by grade)
2004 Films (by grade)
Toronto Film Festival
2004
2003 Films
(by grade)
Toronto Film Festival
2003
2002 Films
(by grade)
2002 Comments
Toronto Film
Festival 2002
2001 Films
(by grade)
The A.V. Club
Varsity Blues
2004
Toronto International Film Festival
2003 Toronto International
Film Festival
2002 Toronto International
Film Festival
2001 Toronto International
Film Festival
2000 Toronto International
Film Festival
1999 Toronto International
Film Festival
Les Destinées Sentimentales
The Gene Siskel Film
Center
Music Box Theatre
Doc Films
Facets
Block
Cinema
Friends, Cypriot, Countrymen
*If the look of this site seems familiar, it’s because I blatantly
ripped off Mike D’Angelo’s The
Man Who Viewed Too Much, my default homepage for the past several years.
He also rocks the pages of Esquire and Las Vegas Weekly, and
plays poker like this.
*Remember
the episode of The Simpsons where a health-conscious Homer compresses
a pound of spaghetti into "bar form"? Consider the capsules at Theo’s
Century Of Movies, an elegant shorthand that squeezes volumes into a tight
space.
*A blogging crossfire: On the right, Victor
Morton from the Washington Times, the only hardline Catholic moralist you'll
meet who loved (or, for that matter, saw) Irreversible. On the left,
Ryan Wu, a law-talking
guy whose passion for cinema, the Red Sox, and civil liberties speak to a deep,
doomed romanticism.
*More blogs! My dear friend Donna
Bowman—full-time theology professor, part-time critic for The Nashville
Scene and The Onion A.V. Club, and all-the-time wonderful—shares
her wisdom on the things that interest her, which is to say everything.
And if that's not cosmopolitan enough for you, there's Missy
Schwartz, undisputed queen of the urbanites.
*In a startlingly monastic feat of web construction, Michael
Sicinski appears to have quietly developed his site for two or three years
before blindsiding everyone with an embarrassment of riches. And he does it all without the need for one of those new-fangled "blogs" I've been hearing about.
*My friend and fellow Chicagoan J. Robert
Parks has launched a new film blog. I wonder if he can find the time between
teaching, tutoring, and freelancing to update it frequently, but he's off to
a rousing start. (It's a marathon, not a sprint bud—this site, for example,
was pretty much dead after a few months.)
*Alt-weekly circuiteers will remember Steve Erickson’s work from
such publications as The Nashville Scene, The Chicago Reader,
The Boston Phoenix, and City Pages . But he also writes the occasional
long-player for his Chronicle
Of A Passion website, which also includes extensive links and a selection
of Serge Daney’s translated criticism.
*Charles Odell dedicates most of his weekends to devouring the New York
film scene, and then grades the shit out of them at the Chateau
du Cinema.
*Not only is Bryant Frazer’s
Deep Focus the snazziest personal website around, he also writes excellent
long reviews, with a special taste for cult and lowdown genre fare.
*Greg
Murphy and myself co-moderate the most influential movie-nerd discussion group of our time. (Its members know each other so well they don't even have to post anymore.) Mark Pittillo helps facilitate the greatest movie-nerd poll of our time. They used to live in the same city. Now they have blogs.
*Scott Renshaw retired his hugely popular The Screening Room website
for the cash-in he deserved at the Salt
Lake City Weekly.
*Inspired by my own half-assed attempts to launch a site, my Kubrick-loving
pal Zach Ralston has added commentary
to his rapidly gelling work-in-progress. [Update: Now he's just doing ratings, too.]
*What the hell was the Academy thinking? Ask Ken
Rudolph, member of the foreign-language committee for over two decades.
His site features thoughtful, obsessive journals every year on Outfest, AFI,
the behemoth Seattle International Film Festival, and an inside look at the
foreign-language screening process.
*The influential and collegial critic Jonathan
Rosenbaum has retired from his post at the Chicago Reader. That's called gettin' out while the gettin' is good.
*A Paulette and proud of it, New York Magazine’s David
Edelstein litters his cutting criticism with turns-of-phrase that make me
want to hang up the skates.
*Other voices in the profession-killing world of
Internet criticism: Keith Uhlich and the gang at The House Next Door, Ed Gonzalez and friends at Slant magazine, Karina Longworth and chums at Spout, Paul Clark and buds at the Screengrab, one-man link machine David Hudson at Greencine, and former/part-time/future print media dinosaurs Michael Atkinson, Glenn Kenny, and Dave Kehr.
*And speaking of dinosaurs, some critics I like actually still make money doing it! Crazy! So here's to you, A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis of the New York Times, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune, and Roger Ebert of the Sun Times. And may your buyouts provide you with the golden parachutes you deserve...
* I like television a lot these days, too. And for that, I turn exclusively to seasoned pros Alan Sepinwall, Daniel Fienberg, Mo Ryan, and the T.V. Club.
River Rats
* So yeah, I play some cards online, but now that I have a baby girl, I'm limited mostly to low-limit turbo sit-and-go tournaments. (The WSOP dream has burst like the poker bubble.) And now that Full Tilt Poker is Mac-compatible and open to U.S. business, I play there exclusively. The username: "steamy mctilt."
* When they're not whining about bad beats and calling each
other donkeys, the poker forums on a few sites are actually pretty useful. The
book publisher 2+2 hosts the most well-regarded forum,
though it can be frustrating to navigate. In addition to his blog, pro Daniel
Negreanu also sponsors a forum, which is naturally loaded with DN fanboys,
virtually all of whom are total douches.
* In addition to Negreanu, there are a number of other pro
sites/blogs out there: Yale grad and unashamed "math guy" Matt Matros' The Making Of A Poker Player deviates from other poker strategy books
in that it actually contains some prose. Like the book, his indispensible online
journal details hands and
situations that he's actually experienced, rather than discussing them in the
abstract. The only other poker blog I track with any regularity is You Can't Miss What You Can't Measure, featuring the fine, witty, acerbic writing of Shane "shaniac" Schleger. And I still find Antonio
Esfandiari's site a hoot (check out the "rocks
and rings" section).
Questions? Comments? Bring it on, mutha******!
This site was officially launched on March 25, 2002
