Campbell Andrews > Recent Status Updates

You buried the lede, David. sheesh.

about 80% of the time he should replace “gay” with “ambiguous”

he’s better on #metoo but he’s ignorant of the pervasiveness of porn

Bordwell invokes today’s sexual mores, but he has otherwise forgotten about sin; this, among other deficits, blinds him to the lasting power of the gangster film. He imposes a sexual reading that diminishes camaraderie and plain ol’ friendship.

oh wow is he ever bad on Scorsese

but then this: "Most of us lead lives of limitation, hardship, disappointment, and a lack of glory. So sex can be our relief and release—we feel it's what we deserve and event the best time we will ever have. We have glorified it as a flag of freedom." This is exACTLy right; and yet he does not even imagine it can be otherwise. there is a moral hole at the center of his vision.

Bordwell asserts the movies give us “a deeper sense of our reality but a growing uncertainty over our psychic integrity” this is bullshit, albeit fertilizing; has anyone ever engaged with their senses, over the course of their life, and not been simultaneously enraptured and disoriented?

There's enough trenchant insight and historical recovery to overcome the ridiculous stuff— like Thomson positing the Oceans movies are gay. first, who cares if they are? second, on the evidence that they feature men who admire each other? Thomson, like our reductive dominant culture, assumes "gay" now means "Men who aren't f*cking women."

“Most men worry that their penis is not big enough.”

Thomson swims in a sea of retarded sexuality, like he’s running around hoping to be prescribed Viagara

Thomson is good because he makes moviegoing personal. but he often misreads culture because he takes too short a view. trends don’t make civilizations; sad as it makes me too, the movies now look like a blip. a glorious blip.

there is a lot of wisdom in this book, much of it the commonplace variety

Love reading to the dog... but this is less a novel than the ruminations of a dying writer

I know this is a book about writing but too much of it is given to recounting other works

“If reading really does increase empathy, as we are constantly being told that it does, it appears that writing takes some away.”

Everybody’s a sop

I think I recognize Mary’s dilemma but I honestly do not know where this is all headed (though I see lots of possibilities)

gross

The conception of these stories is exquisite, like somebody’s finally saying aloud things we’ve all been thinking. The execution of the stories is less satisfying.

the truck discovery is my favorite passage so far

dangit this story is one I’ve thought of writing... he gets the horror, but toes the line.

The Era feels like a George Saunders pastiche. The destination is better than the execution

we excuse violence in part bc we enjoy the vicariousness of imagining what we ourselves can’t do

a fantastic tale that really begins on page 123

Wonderfully rendered, clumsily plotted

I have enjoyed this narrative but the story really starts on page 121

Fully admit I’m reading this bc it’s Scorsese’s next movie

More truth on this page than in most books

extended LOL. kind of thing I’ll think of years from now and still chuckle