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Although still relatively new, the MMK Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt am Main has established itself as one of the world's most important museums for contemporary art.
Since opening in 1991, the museum on Braubachstrasse has set a trend with its post-modern architecture becoming an integral element and point of focus for Frankfurt's cultural and social scene. The MMK's collection includes more than 4,500 works of international art dating from the 1960s through to the present day.
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007
One Hundredth Post
Arriving in Australia in February 2006 (a year and a half after finding out I was selected as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar) we found Canberra to be a delightful place to live. Not at all like the stuffy and boring place it's made out to be. Okay, maybe a little boring but we spend most of our free time these days at home in our garden anyway! Canberra is beach deficient and you can't blame a sea loving people for holding that against the place, but otherwise I'm convinced that people who live here perpetuate the myth in order to keep away the masses. A pretty dull place to visit, but a great place to live!
As a Rotary scholar I visited clubs around the district speaking about myself, where I'd come from, what I was studying and why I chose Australia. I have been truly honored to represent this organization and have seen that Rotarians do their best to make their communities better places.
If you've been following my blog since last year you'll have seen LOTS of animal photos. At one point I think that there might have been more birds, kangaroos, bats and possums appearing on my blog than yours truly, but my fascination with the wildlife is never ending! I just found this photo of my niece Teagan from when the family was visiting in September 2006. It must be one of the cutest things ever and I have to include it here...
Lest you should think that one can let a two year old go 'round schmoozing with wild animals, I should mention that this photo was taken in a petting zoo...
Studying at the ANU for my masters was a great experience because I shared it with interesting people from all around the world. Graduating earlier this year was really the culmination of waiting to come to Australia and all of the effort put in last year. Brian and I both felt on some level that we were ready to leave Australia once I was finished but alas, I am sensible enough to not pass up good opportunities that come my way. I'm still at the ANU working as a research fellow in sustainability education and really enjoy my job. I do have flickering visions of a PhD (and my supervisors toss in a "Dr McMillin" for good measure every now and then) but I'm happy where I'm at so I don't see any need to pursue a doctorate at the moment.
So, in summary, it has been an amazing experience to live and study abroad for an extended period of time. Australia is great; uncrowded, full of wide open spaces, awesome beaches, kangaroos and koalas, Asian food and fairly environmentally conscious folks. The politics though aren't all that much better than those back home. It's bloody hot in the summer and words like "bloody" have crept into my vocabulary. Sometimes I feel like I fit in but once I open my mouth they know I'm not from these parts.
Speaking of vocabulary, see if you can translate this:
This arvo I felt a bit crook and chucked a sickie, fair dinkum, eh? Chucked me esky and me swag in the ute and went walkabout with me mates out in woop woop. We'd just put some snags on the barbie and cracked a stubbie when we noticed a bloody pom hooning about in his budgie smugglers and whinging that his chook carked it. Reckon he had a kangaroo loose in the top paddock. Struth!
Crack the code and win big!
Now memory lane wouldn't be any fun without photos so I've sifted through about six thousand photos(!) to bring you the last year and a half in pictures (not an easy selection process I might add). I've made a slideshow and posted it on a Picasa web album.
The highlights of the photos include my time at the ANU and in Canberra, friends and family, the best of the Australian animals, visits to Rotary clubs, our Tasmania cycle trip, McMillin holidays around Australia (and Fiji) and some of the national parks we've been trekking in.
If you want to see the slideshow full screen and be able to vary the speed, click on the following link:
6 comments:
Jen! Congrats on surviving downunder. Do you now say 'tom-AR-to'? Tulips are MY fave flower too. Send me a hi res shot of you and your BF for the http://www.bikefriday.com/galleryReplyDelete
Teagan says "thank you. I love those places!" (honest, that's what she said) :) Of course, she is particularly fond of the picture of her feeding the kangaroo. She knew it was her right away (but then again, any kid in pictures is her, in her mind)ReplyDelete
Thanks darlin'! What a ride!
I finally caught up your blog. I makes me miss both of you more. But what a great adventure. Love JanReplyDelete
This afternoon, I was feeling a bit under the weather, so I called in sick, grabbed my cooler, packed my bedroll, threw em in my pickup truck and headed out to parts unknown with my friends.ReplyDelete
We parked and threw some brats on the grill, when we noticed someone obviously English, acting like a nut, wearing a bathing suit and bitching about how his chicken died. We figured he wasn't packing all his marbles, fer real!
Congratulations! You've won a trip to OZ!
Just kidding, but really, thanks for your efforts in translating my silly story. Nice job! Are you really an Aussie bloke and didn't tell me?


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PacSun.com - Totally Rad Tank
Show off how rad you are! Volcom tank gives you two rad styles to choose from. White tank features printed sunglasses down front with brand name and logos scattered. Pink tank features printed "Thank You For Being So Rad" on front. Both have printed brand name on back side.
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Sunday, December 19, 2010
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I am a dedicated breeder of quality Lhasa Apso. All my dogs live in the house as my pets first and foremost. Puppies are sometimes available to approved homes only. You can contact me on 01354 659 838 or email at apso AT tantra-apso DOT com If you email, please tell me about yourself and why you want a dog. I do not answer emails that just ask me questions. Phone calls are preferred.I certainly will not agree to rehome a puppy without talking to the person interested.


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|Betsy Easter
Bernice Cavenaugh and Betsy Easter, December 8, 1999. Interview K-0279.
Confusion, Fear, and Recovery: A Mother and Daughter Face the Flood: Bernice Cavenaugh and her daughter, Betsy Easter, describe enduring Hurricane Floyd's flooding and its aftermath. They tell a story of fear, confusion, and frustration that reveals a lack of preparation, disorganized and inequitable government compensation, and significant challenges to community bonds.
Interviewee: Bernice Cavenaugh, Betsy Easter Interviewer: Charles Thompson, Charles Thompson
Duration: 01:34:03 Annotated Excerpts: Listen to and read all 10 excerpts.


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American moral decline has been discussed for as long as there has been an America. Conservatives have long noted how certain cultural shifts throughout our nation's history have redefined social norms, transforming or even damaging traditional American values. They're often right, as concepts like the sanctity of life, the institution of marriage and the importance of faith have all been under assault for decades.
But have we been too narrow in defining our traditional values? What, exactly, are American values? How are they unique to this country?
If socialism has defined much of Europe and the world for the last century, a healthy respect for the separation of the public and private sectors has long been a distinctly American value. But not according to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB has tried to prevent the Boeing corporation from opening a new plant in right-to-work South Carolina, contending that the company's decision to not to expand an existing unionized plant in Washington for the same purpose amounted to an illegal retaliation against union workers. The NLRB's board members are appointed by President Obama.
Last week, Senator Jim DeMint blasted the Boeing hold-up by the NLRB as "anti-American and anti-Democratic." South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley agrees with DeMint: "This is an issue that may have started in South Carolina, but we want to make sure it never touches another state… This goes against everything we know our American economy to be."
The very notion that a government-backed agency can decide which states private corporations are allowed to do business in is not only absurd—it is indeed un-American. The Economist notes the unprecedented nature of this situation: "The 1935 National Labour Relations Act has never been construed so broadly. Boeing is not actually reducing the amount of work it does in Washington… It is not closing the factories where the strikes occurred, nor is it sacking the strikers. It is merely choosing to add capacity in a state where labour relations are more cordial."
If the NLRB decision is allowed to stand it will set a new unprecedented low in how private businesses are allowed to operate in the US—and it will become yet another troublesome mile marker in America's moral decline.
If respect for the free market is one of our most cherished traditions so is our reputation as one of the most civilized nations in human history—and it has long been a standard American value that this country does not use torture. John McCain might be wrong about many things but as a former prisoner of war who was tortured by the Viet Cong, the Senator has always been right on this issue. Said McCain in 2008: "Water boarding is torture… Under President Reagan we passed anti-torture acts… The Israelis do not use torture… and if we use torture then we cannot differentiate ourselves from the enemy."
McCain cites Reagan as taking the moral high ground on this issue and indeed one of the last times we prosecuted anyone for waterboarding was through Reagan's Department of Justice—which insisted that the practice was indeed torture.
The Bush administration turned Reagan's definition on its head when it began describing waterboarding as an "enhanced interrogation tactic," an Orwellian term if there ever was one. Last week, potential 2012 GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum not only heartily endorsed "enhanced interrogation" but claimed that McCain "doesn't understand how enhanced interrogation works."
The truth is that social conservatives of Santorum's stripe apparently have no clue how American values work, as they now have typically become the most enthusiastic champions of torture, cheering its use and condemning anyone who deplores it.
When Osama Bin Laden was killed it was suggested that waterboarding may have had something to do with the intelligence gathered to complete this mission. We've since learned that any such intelligence gathered using waterboarding is questionable at best, but the immediate impulse to defend torture—while insisting it isn't torture—is indicative of a Republican Party that it has lost its moral scruples.
Of course, Republican defenders of torture love to pull out the doomsday scenario: If you had the chance to save thousands of lives by waterboarding a detainee, would you do it? Well, yes, in fact, and there's very few tactics most patriotic Americans wouldn't endorse to save the lives of their fellow countrymen including torture or worse.
But the question never really has been about whether or not interrogators should be given extra leeway in some highly improbable hypothetical situation—but whether allowing the use of torture should now be the official policy of the United States. A majority of Americans in both political parties, starting with George Washington and at least through Reagan, have always said "no." But in 2011, a significant portion if not a majority of Republican voters say, enthusiastically, "yes."
Neither Democrats or Republicans have the exclusive rights to morality, American or otherwise. But both parties continue to do grave damage to some of the most cherished values that have always made this country great.


text: Lippy Girl Vegocentric Vegan Lipstick - Abraca-Bam 5g £6.25 Was £12.50 saving you 50% 62 reward points UK Delivery £1.95 - Free when you spend £15 In stock -This product will ship tomorrow if ordered today. Multi-buy discounts Buy 3+ Buy 5+ 3% off5% off 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 Add to basket 100% Secure Shopping Vegan Vegetarian Product code: 8141 Description Contents Ingredients Usage Reviews Questions Description Lippy Girl Vegocentric Abraca-Bam is a long-lasting, moisturising lipstick which comes in a 100% recyclable aluminium tube. Lippy Girl Vegocentrics are simply the best vegan lipsticks, they do not contain any bee products, polybutene or petroleum. This premium line of amazing vegan lipsticks are made with organic, wildcrafted natural oils, waxes and only natural mineral pigments. Lippy Girl lipsticks are made with certified organic castor seed oil, jojoba seed oil, carnauba wax and shea butter for the smoothest, creamiest finish. This lipstick is also super pigmented with natural minerals. Lippy Girl lipsticks use a base of organic shea butter making them softer than other lipsticks with a beeswax or polybutene base. Contents Lippy Girl Vegocentric Vegan Lipstick - Abraca-Bam 5g Ingredients Ricinus Communis (Castor) Seed Oil*, Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil*, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter) Fruit*, Copernicia Cerifera (Carnauba) Wax*, Euphorbia Cerifera (Candelilla) Wax, Citrus Aurantium Dulcis (orange) Peel Oil*,Tocopherol, may contain (+/-) Mica (CI 77019), Tin Dioxide (CI778161), Titanium Dioxide (CI 77891), Iron Oxides (CI 77491, CI 77492,CI 77499), Manganese Violet (CI 77742), Calcium Aluminium Borosilicate, Silica *. *Certified Organic Ingredient. Usage The first application is fairly sheer, the colour is buildable for extra intensity. It is recommended that you only raise the bullet in the tube minimally when applying, as they are very soft and creamy. Alternatively, use a lip brush. Reviews Below are reviews of Lippy Girl Vegocentric Vegan Lipstick - Abraca-Bam 5g by bodykind customers. If you have tried this product we'd love to hear what you think so please leave a review. Leave a review Score Comments Name Email Submit review Questions & Answers Below are questions that bodykind customers have asked us about this product. If you want to know more about this product please don't hesitate to ask us a question. Ask us a question Question Email Confirm Email Submit question


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Wouter Weylandt's death affects Boulder's Garmin-Cervelo
The death of Belgium's Wouter Weylandt in Monday's Giro d'Italia hit home in Colorado. He was the best friend of Tyler Farrar, the sprinting star of Boulder-based Team Garmin-Cervelo. They trained together, and Farrar returned to their base in Belgium Tuesday.
Weylandt's death put Garmin-Cervelo's David Millar in the lead heading into Tuesday's race, but it's obvious he didn't feel right about wearing the ceremonial pink jersey. In a statement Monday, Millar said:
"I love cycling, and I've always been enchanted by the epic scale of it all; it was why I fell in love with it as a boy. Yet Wouter's death today goes beyond anything that our sport is supposed to be about; it is a tragedy that we as sportsmen never expect, yet we live with it daily, completely oblivious to the dangers we put ourselves in. This is a sad reminder to us, the racers, what risks we take and what lives we lead.
"Wouter was a sprinter; this means he was one of the most skillful bike-handlers in the peloton. For this to have happened to him shows that we are all at risk every single kilometre we race.


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The George Gund Foundation was established in 1952 as a private, nonprofit institution with the sole purpose of contributing to human well-being and the progress of society.
Over the years, program objectives and emphases have been modified to meet the changing opportunities and problems of our society, but the foundation's basic goal of advancing human welfare remains constant.
History of the Foundation
The George Gund Foundation was created in 1952 because Mr. Gund believed the private foundation concept provided the most positive, farsighted vehicle for intelligent underwriting of creative solutions to social ills in a manner which would not be limited to his own lifetime.
Grantmaking until Mr. Gund's death in 1966 primarily reflected his personal commitment to institutions that had been important in his life.
The Foundation's assets grew considerably following Mr. Gund's death in 1966, and the Foundation hired its first staff in 1969. At that time, the Foundation began to develop priorities and guidelines that reflected not only Mr. Gund's interests but also new areas of commitment.
Today, Mr. Gund's vision is carried forth through the continued involvement of the Gund family in the Foundation's work. His son, Geoffrey, is currently president of the board which now includes both second and third generation family members.
The Foundation has made grants totaling $722 million since its inception.


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Bible Study Guide Grades 1-2
Bible Study Guide Grades 1-2 Primary Teacher Guide Unit 2 Lessons 157-182
Bible Study Guide Grades 1-2 Primary Teacher Guide Unit 2 Lessons 157-182
Your first graders and second graders can study through the entire Bible with Primary Student Pages while the teacher uses the (required) Primary Teacher Guide.
The Primary Student Pages, along with the Primary Teacher Guide, take the teacher and students, step by step through the lesson. Because students in the first grade and second grade differ so widely in reading level, we have created a Teacher Guide/Student Page combo that works in situation where the students barely read at all or where students read well OR in situations with a mixture of the two!
Contains 26 lessons. Purchase one Student Pages set per student and one Teacher Guide for the teacher. Please do not photocopy.
Note: The Primary Level is the only level that REQUIRES both a Student Page and Teacher Guide. Please don't forget to purchase a Primary Teacher Guide.


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A+ Research & Writing for High School and College Students
A+ is a step by step guide to researching and writing a paper. Here you can learn how to find information online and in the library. A list of links to other online resources about research and writing is also provided.
All Words
All Words will provide the English definition of a work and translate that word into Dutch, French, German, Italian or Spanish. There is also a section to assist you with crossword puzzle challenges.
Search for a word and find its definition and history. Dictionary.com includes biblical names, chemical elements, computer terms, and games! A thesaurus and translating tool are also available.
Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet
This is an extensive site on all thing Shakespeare, including an online biographical timeline, critical resources, an annotated guide to scholarly online resources, performance and festival information, and links to Shakespeare's works in full-text online format.
Thesis Builder and Online Outliner
This site is designed to help you "draft a clear thesis statement for your persuasive essay". Simply fill in your topic and supplementary statements and the site will create an sample thesis statement or outline for your consideration.


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Review: Mahogany2.0
After their first successful teaming in Lady Sings the Blues, Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams made a more old-fashioned woman's pic, Mahogany. If Lady Sings the Blues proved a disgracefully inauthentic version of Billie Holiday's life that found some virtues in the pairing of Ross and Williams, Mahogany is on firmer footing as a popular entertainment with realistic edges breaking into its wish-fulfillment fantasy, festooned with Ross's melancholy, aspirational hit song "Do You Know Where You're Going To?" The film is an enjoyable guilty pleasure in its first half because the chemistry of the leads is so potent. Ross is tiny, nervy, and funny, while Williams is big, smooth, and slightly dangerous; they work together visually and emotionally, and the cold Chicago milieu adds a lot of gritty pep to their interplay (there are a few sharp digs at that city's rigid racial divisions). But once Anthony Perkins enters the film as Sean, a jerky, unnerving high fashion photographer who takes up Ross's ambitious fashion designer and starts to corrupt her, the film seems to lose its focus, and even its mind; it really doesn't know where it's going to.
Apparently there was a lot of trouble on this picture, which went through two directors before Ross's svengali Berry Gordy took over. Gordy's unreflective obsession with Ross does her no favors as the film goes on: Her scatty narcissism is hilariously revealed in a high fashion montage midway through where Ross's good girl Tracy becomes the famed international model Mahogany. The film seems like it's heading toward all-out camp for a while, but it goes in a much weirder direction as Perkins's character takes over. It's a cruel role for the actor, and the script seems to be uncharitably trading on insider gossip about his gayness and attempts to go straight. At first, Perkins's Sean is portrayed as a man who gets fixated on his models, but it is soon revealed that he can't even get it up for La Ross (a nasty, uncomfortable scene). Things get more uncomfortable still when Perkins tussles with Williams over a gun, a bizarrely prolonged sequence where the Perkins character seems to be begging for rape (Williams put the gun in his mouth). Later, Ross drips white candle wax on her skin at a decadent Roman party…it's difficult not to get the sense that Gordy is contrasting black common sense and healthy impulses with white sexual ambiguity and sterility. Even a charming last-minute happy ending can't quite redeem all the mess and unidentified dread, but it's still a shame that Ross, Williams, and their attempt at mainstream black glamour sputtered out after only two films.
Cast: Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Perkins, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Nina Foch, Beah Richards Director: Berry Gordy Screenwriter: John Byrum Distributor: Paramount Pictures Running Time: 108 min Rating: PG Year: 1975 Buy: Video
Interview: Nadav Lapid on Synonyms and Our Conflict with Existence
Lapid discusses how he sought to confront audiences with questions about belonging, nationalism, and identity.
Nadav Lapid is one of the most exciting Israeli filmmakers to emerge in recent years. His first two features, Policeman and The Kindergarten Teacher, are hypnotic studies of the nature of power and resistance. His latest, Synonyms, tackles similar issues, but Lapid's approach to his material here is almost as obfuscating as it is illuminating.
Tom Mercier, in a phenomenal screen debut, plays Yoav, a twentysomething Israeli who exiles himself to Paris, refusing to speak Hebrew or return to his homeland. Yoav is intense and enigmatic, whether sharing stories of his military experiences or practicing a form of wordplay while walking, head down, through the streets of the French capital. Whether he wants to or not, everyone is drawn into his orbit, from the young couple (Quentin Dolmaire and Louise Chevillotte) who finding him naked and helpless in the bathtub of an apartment adjacent to theirs, to the various men who work security at the Israeli embassy.
At this year's New York Film Festival, Lapid sat down with me to discuss Synonyms and how he sought to confront audiences with questions about belonging, nationalism, and identity.
While there's a narrative to Synonyms, it feels deliberately very episodic, creating emotions and moments of high drama but also ambiguity. What was your approach or purpose to tell this story in this way?
I arrived at the conclusion that I might be a strange person, because people find unusual and irregular things in the way I construct my movies. Policeman was divided into two parts, which was normal to me, but people found that strange. I try to be as close as I can to what I see as existence. And existence, as I see it, is composed as a series of events, and these events are composed of one single melody. Synonyms doesn't have a classic narrative line, though its narrative is simple: Yoav gets to a place that he thinks will be his salvation and he's disappointed. But even if the narrative structure isn't classical, the film is one movement, or melody, even though it has a thousand variations.
I admire how deliberate the film is in its depiction of and ideas about storytelling. Yoav narrates photos, and he gives—and takes—stories from Emile, Quentin Dolmaire's character. How do you find meaning in art, or inject meaning into it?
When we create art, there's this desperate attempt to create stories that, on one hand, are full of beautiful storytelling moments. They may be the only way we have to communicate ourselves, our essence, and our past. On the other hand, there's something very artificial in the way art and life tell stories. It's as if we treat the world as if it has suddenly stopped and nothing is happening except for the stories we tell. The other person is only the ears. As we know in real life, everything is mixed, so we can tell a story with only words. Our body will deconstruct it, or reconstruct it, or give it another meaning. There's something artificial in this desire to detach this moment of storytelling from the person.
In cinema, there are stories, but they have a peculiar relationship with the actual moment. Maybe this is also true of the storytelling of my film. It's a classical narrative: Yoav arrives in the big city, tries to find success, and in the end is rejected. Maybe this is the peculiar, unique, singular thing, and it's the film interfering with this simple narrative line? It spoils this naïve attempt to just tell the story. There's something naïve and interesting that movies that are applauding their own stories. It touches only a thin layer of life.
There's a specific emphasis on language, words, contrasts, and meanings in Synonyms. How did you land on the specific words you incorporated into the film.
I think that I tried to keep a certain balance between accidental and instinctive choices. I had this picture of Jackson Pollock hitting a painting in an accidental, or automatic, way, like the surrealists. I was also interested in the texture of words. Words have bodies and organs. I was walking, and talking to myself, and I can't imagine how people looked at me! But I tried to feel and let my tongue lead me. And at the same time—and this is the nice thing about words—you can't only reduce them to syllables. They have meanings, and the meanings have choices.
Are you into wordplay? Do you do crossword puzzles or other word games?
No. I read, and when I read books, I'm fascinated by words. I can't bear the idea that people say that art cinema should be without words, and that words aren't cinematic. There are films of acts and films of words. I think it comes from the fact that people treat words on a content level, and their only role is to mean or represent something. If you detach words from the story, or don't want to say something by using words, then life changes.
Do you, as Emile suggests in the film, drink before writing to ward off the fear?
I drink when I write my shooting plan. I encourage myself to be courageous—to not to fall to convention.
I loved the dancing in the film. The women outside the bar, the nightclub scene with Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam," and even a scene of Yoav dancing alone in his apartment, though he almost looks like he's fighting. A scene of Michel and Yaron fighting is like a form of dancing, too, no?
I like when people dance by themselves for the audience in films. They come to the camera and say, "Here I am, look at me!" On another level, Synonyms goes further; it dances by itself with complicated mise-en-scène and trashy music. You cannot classify me! I am this and I am that. I'm fancy mise-en-scène and "Pump Up the Jam."
Your film is, of course, erotic, not just because of Yoav's often naked body, but his relationship with Emile is homoerotic, and his passion for Louise Chevillotte's Caroline is palpable. She's so sexy just sitting on the couch looking at Yoav or playing her oboe. How did you approach this element of desire?
When I think about desire, I'm guided by the idea that we all have a body. I'm trying to create movies where the existence of sex and the possibility of sex is in each and every second—rather than creating a film where there are sex scenes. There are sex scenes in my films, but they're not the hottest scenes in my movies. There's a permanent existence of the body, and that has a sexual potential. I sound like a new French philosopher! I'm not like this at all!
Speaking of bodies, how did you work with Thomas Mercier on the role of Yoav? Was there guidance you gave him to elicit this remarkable, full-bodied performance?
Tom was like a miracle. The work was intense but easy once he was cast. I bought him a French dictionary and I wanted him to study five new words each day and five new synonyms for each word. That was the work. He understood it so well. He prepared for a year because he was the thing itself. He was a judo champion and then became a dancer. He had a tenderness and fragility, and was very sexual, but he also had a violence and fury. You feel it. He could explode at any second. He was limitless.
All of your films address issues of desolation and madness. Why are these such key themes in your work?
I think my films are about people that take themselves very seriously—not in an ego way, or a stupid way, but in a way where they feel as if they understand or grasp something and follow these things until they find hell in paradise. They follow it until they recognize the deeper truth. But when you follow a principle to the end, it puts you in conflict with existence. And in odd moments, you lose your sense of humor and why life has humor.
You also explore issues of identity and nationality. There are ideas here about birth and corruption, the individual versus the masses, citizenship and rights. It seems like you deliberately set out to make viewers puzzle over lots of things.
I think Synonyms is broadly a political film. For Yoav, his national identity and Israel is like a dragon that he should kill and destroy and fight against—this mythological enemy. And, as you know, these mythological enemies are always yourself. Like Rosemary's baby—the devil is inside you. But the film is attracted and seduced and fascinated by all the elements of nationalism. I read somewhere that Synonyms is anti-nationalist, but I wouldn't define the film so easily. The moment in the metro where Yaron is humming the Israeli national theme—it creates a polemic in Israel, but [Yaron] has his problems. At the same time, it's a powerfully charismatic, embracing moment. He's humming the hymn of a nation that was annihilated. Whatever it means, I'm on the opposite political pole. I think the film has a right to flirt with nationalism while condemning it. You can't hate a country if you're not attracted to it.
The 20 Best Zombie Movies of All Time
If zombies seem infinitely spongy as functional allegories, it's their non-hierarchic function that retains the kernel of their monstrousness.
Zombie movies not only endure, but persist at the height of their popularity, neck and neck with vampire stories in a cultural race to the bottom, their respective "twists" on generic boilerplate masking a dead-eyed derivativeness. For the zombie film (or comic book, or cable TV drama), that boilerplate was struck by George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, and its subsequent sequels established a loose conception of the undead threat: lumbering, beholden to no centralized authority, sensitive to headshots and decapitations.
If, according to Franco Moretti's "The Dialectic of Fear," the vampiric threat (at least as embodied in Count Dracula) operates chiefly as a metaphor for monopoly capital, binding those English bourgeois interlopers to his spell and extracting the blood of their industry, then the zombie poses a more anarchic, horizontalized threat. In post-Romero, hyper-allegorized zombie cinema, the hulking undead mass can be generally understood as the anti-Draculean annihilation of capital. Flesh and blood are acquired but not retained; civilization is destroyed but not remodeled. If zombies seem infinitely spongy as functional allegories for this or that, it's their non-hierarchic function that retains the kernel of their monstrousness.
At their apex of their allegorical authority, zombies may fundamentally destroy, as attested by our favorite zombie films of all time. But that doesn't mean their inexhaustible popularity as monster du jour can't be harnessed to the whims of real-deal market maneuvering, their principally anarchic menace yoked to the proverbial voodoo master of capital. John Semley
20. Night of the Comet (1984)
Night of the Comet's scenario reads like the bastard child of countless drive-in movies, in which most of humanity is instantly reduced to colored piles of dust when the Earth passes through the tail of a comet that last came around—you guessed it—right about the time the dinosaurs went belly-up. Then again, just so you know he's not adhering too closely to generic procedures, writer-director Thom Eberhardt irreverently elects a couple of pretty vacant valley girls—tomboyish arcade addict Reggie (Catherine Mary Stewart) and her blond cheerleader sister, Sam (Kelli Maroney)—and a Mexican truck driver, Hector (Robert Beltran), to stand in for the last remnants of humanity. With regard to its bubbly protagonists, the film vacillates between poking not-so-gentle fun at their vapid mindset, as in the Dawn of the Dead-indebted shopping spree (obligingly scored to Cindi Lauper's anthemic "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"), and taking them seriously as agents of their own destiny. Lucky for them, as it happens, that their hard-ass old man taught them how to shoot the shit out of an Uzi—and look adorable doing it. It also doesn't hurt that Eberhardt filigrees his absurd premise with grace notes like the cheeky cinephilia informing early scenes set in an all-night movie theater. Budd Wilkins
19. The Living Dead Girl (1982)
In The Living Dead Girl, the gothic ambience that elsewhere suffuses Jean Rollin's work smashes headlong against the inexorable advance of modernity. The film opens with the vision of bucolic scenery blighted by the scourge of industrialization: rolling hills sliced up by concertina-capped fences, billowing smokestacks visible in the hazy distance. When some dicey movers deposit barrels of chemical waste in the family vault beneath the dilapidated Valmont chateau, a sudden tremor causes the barrels to spring a leak, reanimating the corpse of Catherine Valmont (Françoise Blanchard) in the process. Despite the gruesome carnage she inflicts on hapless and not-so-hapless victims alike, it's clear that Rollin sees the angelic Catherine, with her flowing blond tresses and clinging white burial weeds, as an undead innocent abroad in a world she can no longer comprehend. The flm builds to a climax of Grand Guignol gruesomeness as Hélène (Marina Pierro), Catherine's girlhood friend, makes the ultimate sacrifice for her blood sister. It's an altogether remarkable scene, tinged with melancholy and possessed of a ferocious integrity that's especially apparent in Blanchard's unhinged performance. The film's blood-spattered descent into positively Jacobean tragedy helps to make it one of Rollin's strongest, most disturbing efforts. Wilkins
18. Messiah of Evil (1976)
This debut feature from future Lucasfilm writers Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz stars Mariana Hill as Arletty, the emotionally vacant daughter of a disappeared artist (Royal Dano). There's a hushed quality to Messiah of Evil, all the better to hear the waves crashing in the distance. Nobody shouts until they're about to die, usually at the hands of cannibal mobs. A super-chill dandy, Thom (Michael Greer), and his two girlfriends, Laura (Anitra Ford) and Toni (Joy Bang), join Arletty in an attempt to unravel the mysteries afoot in this secluded, unfriendly location, and as Thom busts a move on Arletty, the girlfriends disappear into the ominous blackness. Among the film's more haunting elements: photorealist faces peering through windows and a wall weirdly painted with a full-size escalator. At any moment, this empty house seems as if it could warp into a nightmarish shopping mall—one of many bizarre evocations of a film that cannily mixes Lovecraftian dread with Antonioni-esque alienation. Erich Kuersten
17. They Came Back (2004)
They Came Back is a triumph of internal horror, and unlike M. Night Shyamalan's similarly moody freak-out The Sixth Sense, Robin Campillo's vision of the dead sharing the same space as the living isn't predicated on a gimmicky reduction of human faith. Campillo is more upfront than Shyamalan—it's more or less understood that the presence of the living dead in his film is likely metaphoric—and he actually seems willing to plumb the moral oblivion created by the collision of its two worlds. Though the fear that the film's walking dead can turn violent at any second is completely unjustified, the writer-director allows this paranoia to reflect the feelings of loss, disassociation, and hopelessness that cripple the living. It's rather amazing how far the film is able to coast on its uniquely fascinating premise, even if it isn't much of a stretch for its director: Campillo co-authored Laurent Cantet's incredible Time Out, a different kind of zombie film about the deadening effects of too much work on the human psyche, and They Came Back is almost as impressive in its concern with the existential relationship between the physical and non-physical world. Ed Gonzalez
16. Zombi (1979)
Zombie lacks Romero's allegorical undercurrents and horror-comedy hybridization, substituting instead a streamlined narrative that owes a substantial debt to H.G. Wells's Island of Doctor Moreau and an all-encompassing mood of claustrophobic desolation. Taken on its own terms, it works quite agreeably as a visceral blow to the breadbasket, with one of the most outrageous and apocalyptic final scenes in the entirety of the subgenre. Some of the film's most inventive shots are from zombie-cam POV, as the dead rise, shake off clods of dirt, and slouch toward the mission church. Attacks come fast and furious now, setting a frenzied pace that later zombie films like Evil Dead II and Dead Alive will utilize to infinitely more comic effect. By film's end, only one couple remains, fighting their way back to a crippled ship. Adrift on the open sea, they catch a radio broadcast from New York. As it will in every mid-period Fulci film, hell has broken loose, and zombie hordes have overrun the outlying boroughs. In the fantastic final shots, as the panic-stricken newscaster narrates the zombie invasion of his radio station, a mass of zombies cross the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. Wilkins
Review: Downtown 81 Celebrates a Bygone New York's Creative Energy
This time capsule of bohemian New York distorts its representation of the city for reasons more loving than lazy.3
Todd Phillips's Joker takes place in 1981, in a Gotham City meant to evoke the New York City of the late '70s and early '80s: garbage-strewn, violence-ridden, institutionally broken, on the brink of anarchy. But this vision of New York as a place where people live in perpetual fear is a cliché, a detail-absent caricature derived mostly from other movies, with Taxi Driver its most obvious reference and inspiration. Ironically, though not surprisingly, Joker can only simulate pre-gentrified Manhattan in its quest for "authenticity."
The real New York of 1981 is the setting and subject for Downtown 81, a low-budget time capsule of bohemian Manhattan that distorts its representation of the city for reasons more loving than lazy. Like the city then, the film's history is messy and beleaguered. The brainchild of French designer Maripol and her Swiss-born photographer husband, Edo Bertoglio, the film was written by cultural critic Glenn O'Brien and conceived in order to document the vibrant New York avant-garde scenes of the time. With a hip locale and cast, which included a pre-fame Jean-Michel Basquiat and several post-punk bands, it seemed primed for underground success, but post-production funding dried up and the film, originally titled New York Beat, was left incomplete until 1999. Unfortunately, in the intervening years the original dialogue recordings were lost, and since Basquist had died 10 years earlier, Saul Williams was hired to dub his voice, and the film was released to the public in 2000 as Downtown 81.
Downtown 81 frequently mythologizes its time and place. The "Once upon a time" prologue establishes this with a dreamy glide through the clouds and a female narrator intoning, "Any resemblance between the characters and the events depicted here and reality is purely magical." The action occurs on a Lower East Side of demolished buildings and boarded-up windows that Jean accurately characterizes as looking "like we dropped a bomb on ourselves," but while Jean is clear-eyed about the perils of the concrete jungle ("You can get anything you want here if you try," he explains in voiceover, "You can get plenty of what you don't want, too"), his adventures are often depicted as a series of urban whimsies through which he saunters as insouciant flâneur and DIY artist. He wakes up in a hospital for reasons unknown, gets evicted from his apartment, and encounters muggings, robberies, and hustles, viewing it all with utter nonchalance. The city takes care of its own, the film seems to say, and its moral and architectural degradations merely create occasions for reappropriative creativity, especially when Basquiat applies his absurdist graffiti to already heavily tattooed walls.
Like its occasionally wonky dubbing, this fairy-tale aspect of the film is sometimes endearing, sometimes irritating. Much of Downtown 81's charm rests on having captured the thrill of art being created by like-minded weirdoes in their natural, incubating habitat, which means viewers get to see a Fab 5 Freddy rap session and a scintillating performance by James White and the Blacks, with White doing his best James Brown-by-way-of-Richard Hell routine. (Also performing in the film are DNA, the Felons, the Plastics, and King Creole and the Coconuts.)
But that charm fades in several frivolous asides, including a silly ending that has Debbie Harry transforming from bag lady to fairy godmother in order to provide Jean with a suitcase of money. This is supposed to resolve the film's underdeveloped conflict—in which Jean must come up with roughly $500 to pay his rent, all while chasing a European model (played by Anna Schroeder) who might be his romantic and financial salvation—but it also marks the point where Downtown 81's devil-may-care exuberance slides into a preciousness, and a sidestepping of reality, that's no less juvenile for being 38 years old.
Other episodes work better, including one in which Walter Steding, of obscure No Wave band the Dragon People, recounts, in satirically mopey fashion, the indignities of life on the fringes of the music industry, vowing to never play again just before getting roped into another show moments later. And of course, there's Basquiat himself, whose commanding presence as a neo-Beat wanderer and perceptual genius pervades every frame he's in. As our guide, the easygoing yet street-wise Jean allows us to see the early-'80s New York that's been both romanticized and abandoned for its ubiquitous danger as a place where actual people lived, worked, and even thrived, his run-ins and shit-shootings with artist friends proving that New York City is more ragtag community of guarded aspiration than despair-plunging cesspool.
Ultimately, and despite its blind spots, Downtown 81's gritty optimism in the face of unpleasant surroundings is a welcome reminder that, to quote Kurt Braunohler (which I admittedly learned from an NYCLink kiosk), "a true New Yorker doesn't get ground down—he gets polished." This is also a New York of the imagination—but a creative, not destructive, one.
Director: Edo Bertoglio Distributor: Metrograph Pictures Running Time: 75 min Rating: NR Year: 2000
Review: The Kill Team Seeks to Dispel the Illusion of a Clean War
This battlefront thriller has a clearer moral sense than other cinematic attempts to cope with the War on Terror.2
Based on true events from 2009, writer-director Dan Krauss's The Kill Team suggests that the war in Afghanistan—America's longest by an unhealthy margin—long ago reached the state of a self-perpetuating feedback loop. The story concerns a group of soldiers whose frustration and rage at the death of colleagues was channeled into a campaign of terror in the Kandahar countryside. Led and allegedly manipulated by a rogue commanding officer, the unit executed randomly selected villagers, framing them after the fact as insurgents by planting weapons next to their bodies and concocting false battle reports.
The Kill Team opens with the death of the team's commanding officer, Sergeant Bruer (Zackary Momoh), who's killed by an IED while offering candy to children. Throughout its telling of this and other events, the film sets up Private Andrew Briggman (Nat Wolff) as the audience's surrogate, an eager and sensitive recruit who observes his fellow soldiers' actions almost from an outsider's perspective. He doesn't smoke hash with his fellow soldiers, and he doesn't, like them, begrudge the locals their differing traditions and language. He also doesn't relish the opportunity to fight and kill. After Bruer is killed, his unit is assigned a new commanding officer, Sergeant Deeks (Alexander Skarsgård), an imposing, stone-faced figure who begins cultivating insecure attachments with the men under his command, bestowing and withdrawing favor at a whim in order to make them dependent on his approval.
While Krauss's film examines the way that the young men's subsequent embrace of an amoral warrior's mentality leads to inhuman consequences, its reflection on both the inherent violence of war and the loss of a sense of mission among the occupiers remains incomplete. This battlefront thriller has a clearer moral sense than other cinematic attempts to cope with the conflicts formerly known as the War on Terror, such as Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, but it achieves this clarity largely by finding confining itself to a scenario with a clear moral dichotomy: that between the relatively innocent Briggman and the icy madmen Deeks.
In Deeks, the fictionalized version of the real commanding officer convicted of encouraging the young men to view all Afghans as animals, Krauss captures the sociopathy of a truly committed warrior. To play a killer who entices young men to join him in almost ritualistic slaughters, Skarsgård deploys the coldly attractive moral nonchalance familiar from his role as the vampire Eric Northman on HBO's True Blood. "We kill people. That's what we do," Deeks explains softly and plainly to the uncomfortable Briggman at one point. Briggman averts his eyes, attempting to square the apparent truth of Deeks's warrior philosophy with the "hearts and minds" mission his unit has often been sent out on.
Deeks turns missions into hunts, compelling the men under his command to find an Afghan man to be shot. In these scenes, which frequently cut away from the actual act—to, say, Briggman coming across the men discussing their cover, or to the body of an Afghan man lying on the ground behind them—we can see one end of a thread tying together American forms of authoritarian violence. The murder scenes captured from Briggman's perspective on the margins, or just after the fact, strike an overtone that resonates with the police shootings and cover-ups that have triggered unrest at home while our Mideast wars have been raging.
The Kill Team gives us snapshots of a rural Afghan population whose hearts and minds are, as of 2009, very much not won over. Men and women alike shout fruitlessly in Pashto as their loved ones are pulled aside by the American soldiers. The trembling, battered face of a man picked up from the road outside the U.S. base, and whom Deeks attempts to convince Briggman to torture, is a powerful image that could stand as an indictment of the war itself. But the story limits its perspective to the experience of Briggman as he struggles internally, and in messages back home to his father, with what to do about the situation. The film's focus on the private only becomes more acute as the circle around him tightens, the group of killers growing concerned that he will rat on them. The lives of the villagers killed becomes of secondary concern, as suspense in The Kill Team is increasingly driven by the question of whether Briggman will survive or be betrayed and murdered by his compatriots.
Krauss's evident outrage at the commission of war crimes is something that's sorely lacking in what meager public discourse about our continuing wars exists, but it doesn't follow this outrage to what seems its logical, if radical ends. As the sergeant not entirely inaccurately asserts, the Army is there to kill. Given such a directive, perhaps liberal fantasies of a "clean war" are untenable. Warfare breeds bloodthirst; it produces people like Deeks. But despite glimpses of a larger critique of the American project in Afghanistan, and of the psychological and social sicknesses cultivated by two decades of continuous warfare, The Kill Team lets us escape from the horrors of war before it finishes demolishing the illusion of a clean one.
Cast: Nat Wolff, Alexander Skarsgård, Adam Long, Jonathan Whitesell, Brian Marc, Rob Morrow Director: Dan Krauss Screenwriter: Dan Krauss Distributor: A24 Running Time: 87 min Rating: R Year: 2019
Review: Black and Blue Provides a Quick Fix of Action-Movie Catharsis
The film's command of action defuses concerns about whether it offers a thorough social critique.2.5
Deon Taylor's Black and Blue is an intensely political, niche thriller that, if it generates much mainstream discourse, will likely spark angry boycotts from those on one side of the aisle and searing hot takes from those on the other. Step a few feet back from its fast-paced saga of a valiant solitary policewoman hunted through the streets of New Orleans as she attempts to return incriminating body-camera footage to her precinct and you'll see a narrative that construes a cop as a Black Lives Matter hero simply for using her mandated body camera as she should. This is a major-studio film that may go further than many others, including Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman, in implicating police forces as systemic perpetuators of white supremacy, but it's also one that handles the representation of poverty clumsily at best.
What's more, Black and Blue's action-movie tropes redirect its characters' mistrust of authority into a narrative that tacitly approves of the militarization of the police and society at large. These same tropes, though, are part of what defuses such concerns about whether the film offers a thorough social critique. Despite its real-world trappings, Black and Blue comes off as fantasy, a story with the exaggerated features and simple satisfactions of a dream. Crooked cops will get their comeuppance, prejudices will be upended, and those not yet beyond redemption will be redeemed. Beyond the film's spurious messaging about finding a middle ground between being black and being "blue," its extended chase through New Orleans's 9th Ward might offer simple, effective action-movie catharsis to those who've been outraged by this decade's flood of videos of police offers shooting unarmed black people.
Perhaps unintentionally, Black and Blue's setting and action reminds us that, with the advent of body cameras, the sci-fi dystopias depicted in various films from the 1980s and '90s have come true. Resembling the A plot of Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days, the film's main action is jump-started by the mafia-style execution of a young black man by police, an explosive event that's captured on video by a woman wearing a camera. And in Black and Blue, that woman, rookie cop Alicia West (Naomie Harris), is also the one tasked with delivering the footage to the authorities. The shooting, committed by narcotics detective Terry Malone (Frank Grillo) and his circle of drug-dealing police officers, takes place in a scummy, abandoned factory, and when the assembled perpetrators notice the wide-eyed rookie filming them, they repeatedly shoot her. West unexpectedly survives, and so the film also brings to mind Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop, another sci-fi classic that hinges on a piece of incriminating video footage.
Mostly shielded by her body armor but grazed by a bullet on her side, West somehow slips away from the murderous cops. Black and Blue tends to solve such narrative impasses via the magic of montage: We see West stumbling away down a passageway but don't see exactly how she escapes. Now pursued by the extensive cabal of officers, she makes it to a convenience store where a childhood friend, Mouse (Tyrese Gibson), reluctantly helps her patch herself up. Mouse and the tight-knit community of the nearby Kingston Manor apartment complex, the film makes clear, don't like cops; an earlier scene has Mouse and his sister, Missy (Nafessa Williams), refuse to acknowledge that they know West, who's recently returned from two tours in Afghanistan after growing up in their neighborhood. As seen from the perspective of West and her partner, Kevin (Reid Scott), this impoverished area is full of shifty-eyed gangsters, and Black and Blue veers into problematic terrain early on when it lays ominous bass notes under close-ups of black men slinking around in and out of the cops' view.
The filmmakers, though, deploy such hammy racism mostly to undermine it. Deacon Brown (James Moses Black), an officer who saves West from one of the aforementioned black youth, is quickly revealed to be part of Malone's conspiracy, and therefore complicit in the murder of unarmed men and the attempted murder of West herself. While Black and Blue indulges some of the worst stereotypes about black poverty, the dehumanizing practices of the police are portrayed as the truly pernicious social force. And West must ultimately reintegrate herself with the film's black community: After skirting from place to place within the 9th Ward, her ultimate recourse is to bring the body camera to Kingston Manor and let the people there, including the hot-headed local kingpin, Darius (Mike Colter), see the footage for themselves.
What follows is a fun, if muddled, climax that upends some of the expectations set by the bulk of the film. While Black and Blue is much more comfortable dispatching the gangsters who are trying to kill West than the cops shown to be their moral equivalents, the intense showdown at Kingston Manor proves that the film's typical action-movie ethos of violent retribution can also extend to figures of authority. And while it settles in a place that offers a less probing critique of the status quo than its makers might be intending, its over-the-top climax provides a brief, cathartic release from the real-world issues its story raises.
Cast: Naomie Harris, Tyrese Gibson, Mike Colter, Frank Grillo, Reid Scott, Nafessa Williams, James Moses Black Director: Deon Taylor Screenwriter: Peter A. Dowling Distributor: Screen Gems Running Time: 108 min Rating: R Year: 2019
The 50 Greatest Horror Movies of the 21st Century
These are the films from this millennium that have most shocked us by plumbing our deepest primordial terrors.
Ever since audiences ran screaming from the premiere of Auguste and Louis Lumière's 1895 short black-and-white silent documentary Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, the histories of filmgoing and horror have been inextricably intertwined. Through the decades—and subsequent crazes for color and sound, stereoscopy and anamorphosis—since that train threatened to barrel into the front row, there's never been a time when audiences didn't clamor for the palpating fingers of fear. Horror films remain perennially popular, despite periodic (and always exaggerated) rumors of their demise, even in the face of steadily declining ticket sales and desperately shifting models of distribution.
Into the new millennium, horror films have retained their power to shock and outrage by continuing to plumb our deepest primordial terrors, to incarnate our sickest, most socially unpalatable fantasies. They are, in what amounts to a particularly delicious irony, a "safe space" in which we can explore these otherwise unfathomable facets of our true selves, while yet consoling ourselves with the knowledge that "it's only a movie."
At the same time, the genre manages to find fresh and powerful metaphors for where we're at as a society and how we endure fractious, fearful times. For every eviscerated remake or toothless throwback, there's a startlingly fresh take on the genre's most time-honored tropes; for every milquetoast PG-13 compromise, there's a ferocious take-no-prisoners attempt to push the envelope on what we can honestly say about ourselves. Budd Wilkins
50. Them (2006)
Hoody-clad sadists attack a couple, alone in their country home. That's all the setup that co-writers/directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud need to dredge up some uniquely discomfiting chills. You won't be able to shake Them after seeing it because it's scary without being grisly or full of cheap jump scares. Instead, it's a marvel of precise timing and action choreography. The silence that deadens the air between each new assault becomes more and more disquieting as the film goes on. Likewise, the house where Them is primarily set in seems to grow bigger with each new hole the film's villains tear out of. To get the maximum effect, be sure to watch this one at night; just don't watch it alone. Simon Abrams
49. Black Death (2010)
Grim aesthetics and an even grimmer worldview define Black Death, in which ardent piousness and defiant paganism both prove paths toward violence, hypocrisy, and hell. Christopher Smith's 14th-century period piece exudes an oppressive sense of physical, spiritual, and atmospheric weight, with grimy doom hanging in the air like the fog enshrouding its dense forests. His story concerns a gang of thugs, torturers, and killers led by Ulric (Sean Bean), a devout soldier commissioned by the church to visit the lone, remote town in the land not afflicted by a fatal pestilence, where it's suspected a necromancer is raising the dead. Dario Poloni's austere script charts the crew's journey into a misty netherworld where the viciousness of man seems constantly matched by divine cruelty, even as the role of God's hand—in the pestilence, and in the personal affairs of individuals—remains throughout tantalizingly oblique. Nick Schager
48. The Invitation (2015)
The Invitation filters each sinister development through Will's (Logan Marshall-Green) unreliable perspective, to the point that one friend's failure to turn up at a lavish dinner, or another's precipitous departure, appear as if submerged, changing with each shift in the emotional current. Returning to the rambling house where he and Eden once lived for the first time since the death of their son, Will finds himself inundated anew by his heartache, and the film, which otherwise hews to crisp, clean realism, is run through with these painful stabs of memory. Eden slashes her wrists in the kitchen sink, the sounds of children playing emanate from the empty yard, inane talk of the Internet's funny cats and penguins becomes white noise against Will's screaming: The question of whether or not to trust his sense of foreboding is perhaps not so open as director Karyn Kusama and company might wish, but against the terrors of continuing on after losing a child, the issue of narrative suspense is almost immaterial. Matt Brennan
47. Midsommar (2019)
Anybody who's seen Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man or similar folk horror films will hardly be surprised by any of the plot turns in Ari Aster's Midsommar. From early on, there's no doubt that the pagan rituals at the film's center will spell doom for the group of friends who visit rural Sweden in a quasi-anthropological attempt to observe a cult's summer solstice festival. The film masterfully builds itself around the inevitability of a mass terror, aligning our foreknowledge of that with the anxiety felt by the main character, Dani (Florence Pugh), in the wake of a recent family tragedy. The result is a deeply unnerving film about the indissoluble, somehow archaic bond between self and family—one more psychologically robust than Aster's similarly themed Hereditary. And it's also very funny. Pat Brown
46. Mulholland Drive (2001)
David Lynch's meta noir Mulholland Drive literalizes the theory of surrealism as perpetual dream state. Told as it is using a highly symbolic, ravishingly engorged language of dreams, this bloody valentine to Los Angeles naturally leaves one feeling groggy, confused, looking forward and back, hankering to pass again through its serpentine, slithery hall of mirrors until all its secrets have been unpacked. Whether Mulholland Drive anticipated the YouTube Age we live in (and which Inland Empire's digital punk poetics perfectly embody) is up for debate, but there's no doubt that this movie-movie will continue to haunt us long after Lynch has moved on to shooting pictures using the tools of whatever new film medium awaits us—tools that he will no doubt have helped to revolutionize. Ed Gonzalez
45. Sinister (2012)
Scott Derrickson's Sinister isn't a period piece, but by directing its attention backward it brackets its chosen tech-horror particulars as products of a bygone era—in this case considerably further back than the period of tube TVs and quarter-inch tapes to which this subgenre of horror so often belongs. Much like Ringu, Sinister concerns a cursed film whose audience dies after exposure to it, but here the curse is disseminated not by clunky videotape, but by a box of 8mm films. The projector, more than simply outmoded, is regarded here as practically archaic, and as with Berberian Sound Studio and its reel-to-reel fetishism, Sinister makes quite a show of the mechanics of the machine, soaking in the localized details and milking them for their weighty physicality. Even the format's deficiencies, from the rickety hum of sprockets to the instability of the frame, are savored by what seems like a nostalgic impulse—a fondness for the old-fashioned that even transforms the rough, granular quality of the haunted films themselves into something like pointillist paintings of the macabre. Calum Marsh
44. Maniac (2012)
Made in collaboration with Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur, and with the sort of fearless artistic freedom often allowed by European financing, Franck Khalfoun's Maniac begins with a psychopath's synth-tastically scored stalking of a party girl back to her apartment, outside which he cuts her frightened scream short by driving a knife up into her head through her jaw. The film deceptively delights in capturing the mood of an exploitation cheapie before latching onto and running with the conceit only halfheartedly employed by William Lustig in the 1980 original, framing the titular maniac's killing spree—this time set in Los Angeles—almost entirely from his point of view. A gimmick, yes, but more than just a means of superficially keying us into the psyche of the main character, Frank, an antique mannequin salesman played memorably by a minimally seen Elijah Wood. As in Rob Zombie's Halloween II, this approach becomes a provocative means of sympathizing with the devil. Gonzalez
43. Depraved (2019)
What does a Frankenstein figure look like in 2019? According to Larry Fessenden's Depraved, he's a guy with war-addled, once-noble intentions set adrift by male ego and shady benefactors. He's a white man grasping for control in a world coming apart, a cog in a machine who hasn't broken free so much as changed the machine's function—from that of war to that of the pharmaceutical industry. The film, Fessenden's first feature as both writer and director since 2006's The Last Winter, paints multiple psychological portraits that are sad, angry, and strangely beautiful. It shows us the mind of not just PTSD-afflicted field surgeon Henry (David Call), but also that of his prototypical sewn-together "monster," Adam (Alex Breaux), and his assistant and Big Pharma bankroller, Polidori (Joshua Leonard). Throughout, the film it remains firmly focused on its thesis of Frankenstein as a lens for examining modern society. Fessenden catalogues what personalities and power dynamics have shifted and what hasn't changed at all. He diagnoses the rot of our era through these solipsistic men that pour their prejudices and their insecurities into Adam, an open book eventually read back to its authors with a violence they cultivated themselves. Steven Scaife
42. 28 Days Later (2002)
Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later is a post-apocalyptic zombie movie indebted to the traditions of John Wyndham and George A. Romero, opening with its young hero wandering abandoned streets calling out "Hello! Hello!" into the void. A marvel of economic storytelling, the film follows a handful of survivors that evaded a deadly "Rage" virus that tore across England, the riots and destruction that ensued, and the legion of infected victims who roam the streets at night for human meat. A bleak journey through an underground tunnel brings to mind one of the finest chapters in Stephen King's The Stand; similar such references are far from being smug in-jokes, but rather uniquely appreciative of previous horror texts. The Rage virus itself feels particularly topical in our angry modern times. But maybe the more appropriate metaphor is that anyone who's struggled through a grouchy, apocalyptic mood during 28 days of nicotine/drug/alcohol withdrawal will find their hostile sentiments reflected in this anger-fueled nightmare odyssey. Jeremiah Kipp
41. Piranha 3D (2010)
Piranha 3D tips its cap to Jaws with an opening appearance by Richard Dreyfuss, yet the true ancestors of Alexandre Aja's latest are less Steven Spielberg's classic (and Joe Dante and Roger Corman's more politically inclined 1978 original Piranha) than 1980s-era slasher films. Unapologetically giddy about its gratuitous crassness, Aja's B movie operates by constantly winking at its audience, and while such self-consciousness diffuses any serious sense of terror, it also amplifies the rollicking comedy of its over-the-top insanity. Aja's gimmicky use of 3D is self-aware, and the obscene gore of the proceedings is, like its softcore jokiness, so extreme and campy—epitomized by a hair-caught-in-propeller scalping—that the trashy, merciless Piranha 3D proves a worthy heir to its brazen exploitation-cinema forefathers. Schager
Review: Zombieland: Double Tap Shrugs Toward the End of the World
Behind the film's self-awareness and irony is a hollow emotional core.1.5
"Double tap," the belated Zombieland sequel's namesake, refers to the rule of shooting a zombie more than once in order to ensure that it's dead. Like the rest of the rules devised by the series's dweebish protagonist, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), it's spelled out in large on-screen text, an amusingly self-aware touch in the original 2009 film that has, a decade later into our irony-poisoned present, lost its luster.
Part of that is because the sequel highlights these rules more frequently and prominently, injecting them with flashy text effects that are more distracting than funny. But it's also because self-awareness doesn't feel nearly as refreshing as it did in 2009, with seemingly every big studio movie nowadays winking and nodding at audiences, trying to swaddle us in layers of protective irony (that writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick went on to script the vacuous Deadpool films is no accident). Zombieland: Double Tap effortlessly operates in the same groove as the original, but that's less a compliment than a measure of a failure to evolve.
Revising the world of Zombieland feels like returning to a television program you gave up on watching; though the cast has aged, the character dynamics remain largely the same, if slightly more exaggerated and perhaps overly familiar. Boisterous gunslinger Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) is a little more cartoonish now, while Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) is all grown up. She's more than old enough to drive, and thus old enough to run away with a pacifist hippie, Berkeley (Avan Jogia), prompting Columbus, Tallahassee, and conwoman Wichita (Emma Stone) to track her down. They're a makeshift family now, despite still referring to one another by the city aliases that were meant to prevent getting too attached.
A newcomer to their group still goes by her real name, Madison (Zoey Deutch), and as a caricatured dumb blonde, she typifies much of the film's easy, uninspired comedy. The supremely overqualified cast powers through tiresome, pop culture-laden exchanges via sheer charisma; Stone, though unfortunately reduced to playing a "jealous girlfriend" type, is particularly expressive. But returning director Ruben Fleischer, despite pairing with the usually excellent cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung, too often shoots the actors in close-up, robbing much of the film of the chemistry that the actors display in wider shots.
Double Tap also plays unthinkingly into the zombie fantasy as survivalist gun porn, even going so far as to add a Gen Z commune of idiot pacifists who melt down guns into peace symbols. This sequel, however, is too mediocre for such an idea to register with more than a shrug. The film isn't using the concept to make a point, after all; behind the self-awareness and the irony is merely a hollow emotional core, a lack of anything to say because saying something would require ambition rather than complacent winks and nods.
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, Emma Stone, Rosario Dawson, Zoey Deutch, Avan Jogia, Luke Wilson, Thomas Middleditch Director: Ruben Fleischer Screenwriter: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Dave Callaham Distributor: Columbia Pictures Running Time: 93 min Rating: R Year: 2019
Review: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil Transforms Thorny Folklore into Fluff
In transforming folk metaphors into utilitarian attributes of an action hero, Disney exposes the emptiness of their product.1
"Once upon a time…or perhaps twice upon a time, for you may remember this story," begins the voiceover narration of Disney's Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. To its credit, the film opens by addressing the elephant in the castle: that we, as modern filmgoers, surely know this story well, through all its incarnations as old-fashioned fairy-tale romance and as insipid CG action-fantasy. But this sequel's attempt to deflect attention from its own tiresomeness only highlights the cynicism of a corporation that insists on franchising the reboots of its adaptations—on repeating the process of filtering the imaginative irrationality of folk tales through layers upon layers of calculation.
Angelina Jolie returns as Maleficent, once one of the most deliciously evil villainesses in the Disney canon, who now—like Oz's Wicked Witch of the West—has been reduced to a mildly grumpy environmentalist. Disney has erected a mythos around the character to explain her malevolent deeds—or rather, to expose them as truly good. Channeling themes of historical revisionism and post-colonial white guilt, the Malefi-verse positions its title character as defender of the marshlands known as The Moors and its multifarious magical inhabitants, the Dark Fey, against the incursions and crimes of the late-Renaissance Europeans who live nearby. In the film, whose subtitle has virtually nothing to do with its plot, she's supplied with an army of fellow Feys primed to resist the destruction of their native lands by greedy humans. The deviousness suggested by Maleficent's occasional wry, sharp-toothed smiles and curling horns is hardly on display in her actions, which have thoroughly virtuous motivations.
Mistress of Evil posits a "true story" behind the official one recorded in the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, as rather than persecuting the princess subsequently known as Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent has adopted her and raised her. Aurora (Elle Fanning), though she's grown up among the Fey, has fallen in love with Prince Phillip (Harris Dickinson). Throughout, we're given little evidence of their mutual attraction beyond the fact that they're both young humans, though Joachim Rønning's film does attempt to elicit our sympathies for their union with an early scene that stages a YouTube-ready surprise proposal. Though she harbors doubts about this union, Maleficent initially tries to play the good mother, reluctantly accepting the match. But then, at the engagement dinner, Phillip's mother, Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer), frames Maleficent for the sleeping curse that befalls King John (Robert Lindsay). Wounded in the subsequent confrontation, Maleficent flees and finds herself in an enclave of other vulture-winged, goat-horned Feys, led by Borra (Ed Skrein) and Conall (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
As played by Jolie, Maleficent is less a character than a pose. Rather than suggesting potency and confidence, the character's impassiveness conveys indifference, a disinterested neutrality that emanates from behind Jolie's green contacts and prosthetic cheekbones. Neither Maleficent's anger at the humans who framed her nor her muted concern for the oppressed Fey succeeds in selling the clichéd plotline concerning indigenous rebellion. As debate rages in the ranks of the outcast Fey regarding a prospective uprising against the murderous humans—the screenplay, of course, makes Conall's plea for a moderate response to creeping genocide more appealing than Borra's call for a revolution—Jolie's perpetually cool persona fails to anchor our feelings in the fate of the forest's denizens.
The rebellious Fey recruit Maleficent for the same reason that the humans fear her: the magical powers she possesses. Yet Maleficent's powers are ill-defined, the magical green tendrils that extend from her hands little more than a reference to visual effects devised for Disney's classic animated Sleeping Beauty from 1959. But aspects of the magic in Mistress of Evil still draw inspiration from its diluted source material: the Grimm brothers' fairy tale classic that the animated film was based on. In that story, the wise woman's curse not only puts the princess to sleep, but also freezes all life in the castle in place and envelops the structure in an impenetrable thorn bush. Many princes attempt and fail to forcibly enter the castle, hacking away at the bushes, but after a century, the brambles open up on their own, at last allowing a prince to enter the princess's chamber, so to speak.
In Mistress of Evil, we see the character that Disney has dubbed Maleficent deploy similar magical effects to much less metaphorical ends: She freezes a cat in the air mid-pounce to protect her were-raven familiar, Diaval (Sam Riley), and she conjures up spindly thorn branches to shield herself and Chonall from a volley of crossbow bolts. The filmmakers, no doubt, see such references to the original tale as forms of felicitous homage, but in transforming folk metaphors into utilitarian attributes of an action hero, Disney exposes the emptiness of their product. The film arranges a marriage between fairy-tale motifs and a CG-algorithm-driven plot that's as bland and arbitrary as the one it stages between its nondescript human couple, processing thorny folklore into smooth, consumable pop culture.
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sam Riley, Ed Skrein, Harris Dickinson, Robert Lindsay, Warwick Davis Director: Joachim Rønning Screenwriter: Micah Fitzerman-Blue, Noah Harpster, Linda Woolverton Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Running Time: 118 min Rating: PG Year: 2019
Review: Tell Me Who I Am Feels as One-Sided as the Curated Lie at Its Center
By focusing so narrowly on the Lewis brothers' relationship with their mother, the film inadvertently minimizes the scope of their abuse.2
When Alex Lewis was 18 years old, he was involved in a motorcycle crash that left him with a severe case of amnesia. When he awoke in a hospital following the accident, he couldn't recall where he lived or who his friends were. He didn't even know his name. As for the woman babbling and pacing around the foot of his bed, he was taken aback to learn that she was his mother. The only thing Alex did remember was that the young man standing before him, Marcus, was his identical twin, and that they had a special connection.
Upon returning to their family estate, Marcus began the lengthy process of reacquainting Alex with the particulars of his life, as well as re-teaching him the basics, like how to tie his shoes. And through it all, Marcus did his best to present a rosy picture of their parents, assuring Alex that their mother, Jill, was "cool" and that they took nice vacations to France when they were kids. It wasn't until after their parents' death that Alex began to suspect that their upbringing may not have been as pleasant as Marcus suggested. And after Alex discovered a cabinet full of sex toys in Jill's room and a photograph of him and his brother naked with their heads torn off, the horrible truth began to dawn on Alex: that he and his brother were sexually abused by their mother. Marcus would go on to confirm the abuse but refused to provide additional details, leaving his brother with questions that would haunt him for years.
Based on a book co-written by Alex and Marcus, Ed Perkins's Tell Me Who I Am tells the brothers' story with an Errol Morris-lite mix of expressionistic reenactments and interviews in which the subjects speak directly into the camera. Like the similarly themed Three Identical Strangers, the film parcels out disarming hints and shocking revelations at a steady clip, with a view toward maximizing the emotional impact of the material. It's undeniably effective and affecting, escalating toward a harrowing confrontation-cum-reconciliation between the two brothers in which Marcus finally reveals the full horror of what they endured as kids: that, in addition to being abused by their mother, they were subjected to sexual assaults at the hands of multiple abusers, in what essentially amounted to an elite pedophilia ring.
In its richer, more rewarding moments, Tell Me Who I Am hints at the complex relationship between memory and identity. Alex relies on photographs to fill in the blanks in his memory, and yet, these seemingly objective recordings of the past, curated for him by his brother, are as conspicuous for what they reveal as for what they don't. (As Alex muses at one point, "We take photos of weddings. You never take photos at funerals.") But for a film about the power of getting a full and accurate accounting of the truth, it's frustrating how little Tell Me Who I Am reckons with its own revelations. By focusing so narrowly on the Lewis brothers' relationship with their mother, the film inadvertently minimizes the sheer scope of the boys' abuse.
Tell Me Who I Am hints at the brothers having been caught up in a seemingly extensive sexual abuse ring, one involving aristocrats and at least one well-known artist, all of whom remain unnamed. It's a scandal reminiscent of recently exposed conspiracies of silence that surround wrongdoing, such as those involving Jeffrey Epstein, Jimmy Savile, and the Catholic Church. And while Perkins's film wants us to believe that the brothers' saga reaches a definitive conclusion when they tearfully embrace after Alex learns about what happened to him, it leaves the viewer with a host of unanswered questions. Who exactly was part of Jill's social circle? How extensive was Alex and Marcus's abuse? Were there other victims?
Even a cursory glance at news articles about the men and reviews of their book suggests how much Perkins has massaged the details of the Lewis brothers' lives to craft his sleek, emotionally punchy narrative. From watching Tell Me Who I Am, one wouldn't know that there was at least one other confirmed victim: Alex and Marcus's younger brother, whose existence the film doesn't even acknowledge. By forcing Alex and Marcus's story into such a rigidly linear narrative of redemption, the film ends up losing sight of its subjects altogether, reducing them to mere representations of its core theme: the brother who wants to learn about his past versus the brother who'd rather keep it buried.
That's why Tell Me Who I Am's attempt to end on a note of closure—"It's over finally," Alex says, as the camera tracks away from the house where he was abused—comes off as phony. Perhaps Alex feels that he finally understands who he really is, but the film leaves us with so many unanswered questions, it's hard not feel that the picture we've been given of these men is nearly as misleading and incomplete as the one Marcus provided to Alex all those years ago.
Director: Ed Perkins Distributor: Netflix Running Time: 85 min Rating: NR Year: 2019
Review: The Gloss of Stuffed Is at Odds with Taxidermy's Inherent Boldness
Erin Derham's unadventurous aesthetic inoculates her from taxidermy's subversive spirit.1.5
Erin Derham's Stuffed opens with a montage of the various taxidermists she profiles throughout her documentary. This opening lays bare the film's argument in unmistakable terms: that taxidermy is an art form, closer to the work of Tim Burton than that of Norman Bates. But it also exposes the film's most unbearable flaw, as Derham supports her hagiographic argument by sewing together her case studies with a relentless, and relentlessly generic, score that speaks to her devotion to formula.
It's an unadventurous formula at odds with the documentary's attempts to establish taxidermy as a highly complex, anti-paradigmatic endeavor involving great amounts of scientific precision, as well as creative audacity and whimsical experimentation. Derham insists so much on taxidermists' labor being more than the mere production of replicas that her refusal to adopt a more playful aesthetic approach as she portrays the quirky imagination of taxidermists feels like equivocation. It's as if she approached the documentary's making with thick rubber gloves, thus inoculating herself from taxidermy's subversive spirit.
This may be the result of a certain courting, conscious or not, of digital streaming platforms through the mimicry of impersonally glossy production values. In any case, it leaves the viewer in a position akin to that of the fussy eater trying to pick unwelcomed ingredients out of their food. We want to savor the taxidermists' artistry, except the clichéd polish that envelops the film keeps getting in the way. It's an artistry that's bold by design, as the taxidermist utilizes dead matter not with the utilitarian goal of resurrecting it, but as raw material to sculpt something altogether new. If the Paris Museum of Hunting and Nature invited artists Sophie Calle and Serena Carone in 2018 to intervene in its collection of retired guns and taxidermic realism precisely because of the unusual juxtaposition of conceptual art and refurbished dead matter, moose in red gowns and all, Stuffed defines taxidermy itself as already marrying fanciful concepts with the illusion of beastly or avian resurrection.
Taxidermist Madison Rubin tells us she loves "seeing the insides and the anatomy of things" as she skins 11 ermines with the meticulousness of a sculptor, or a dollmaker. Others evoke the resurgence of taxidermy, which used to be particularly popular in the Victorian era, in these times of digital de-materialization. And some attest to the specificity of the medium—how no other art form can convey texture the way taxidermy does. Yet Derham seems more invested in glossing over the numerous chapters she's divided the film's narrative into than in exploring the depths of her story. Taxidermy and sustainability, taxidermy and climate change, the ethics of taxidermy, taxidermy and museums, taxidermy as a business, taxidermy in fashion—all of these get addressed too rapidly, sometimes in just a couple of minutes.
The rush feels particularly unfortunate when Derham turns her attention to rogue taxidermy, a Lynchean subgenre located at the intersection of dioramas, cabinets of curiosities, and surrealist art. Here, Calle and Carone's red ballgown-wearing stuffed roadkill would feel right at home—that is, delightfully out of place in the world. Instead, Stuffed quickly continues in its quest of a happy, peppy denouement to match the pristine porelessness of its sheen.
Director: Erin Derham Distributor: Music Box Films Running Time: 84 min Rating: NR Year: 2019
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This morning, I was up and out early because I had to take the car into the shop, and I decided to get breakfast at a restaurant before beginning the long bus and train journey home. Breakfast was what I always eat on the rare occasion when I'm out of the house before everyone's serving lunch: scrambled eggs, sausage, toast, and orange juice.
As I was eating this breakfast, I was thinking about a conversation I've had with two different female friends, at two different restaurants, over two of the same breakfasts. It goes like this:
Friend: God, I never order orange juice when I'm already eating a breakfast like this. Do you know how many calories are in a glass of orange juice?
Me: Yeah, I do. But A) if I were counting calories, I wouldn't be eating eggs and sausage, and B) because I'm eating sausage and eggs, I want to get some fruit in, too. You know, with all the vitamins and shit? And since the only other fruit you can get in a place like this is a lemon wedge or a bowl of anemic melon chunks in nasty syrup, orange juice it is.
Friend: I just can't do it. If I'm going to consume that many calories, I want them to come from food.
Me: [shrug] I like orange juice.
And thinking about that got me thinking about another conversation with another friend, when I was in college, before my hardcore dieting days. I'd been thinking I needed to eat more vegetables in general, but the dining hall options were never very appealing. One night, I sat down with a plate of dry, pale carrots and some ranch dressing for dipping. Like, a tablespoon and a half of ranch dressing, mind you, not a freakin' bucket of it.
Friend: Do you know how much fat is in that dressing?
Me: Yeah, I do.
Friend: Then why are you putting it on your carrots?
Me: Because they taste like ass without it.
Friend: But what's the point of eating carrots if you're just going to cancel them out with a bunch of fat?
Me: Um… to eat carrots? And since I have no interest in eating dining hall carrots straight, I figure it's better to eat them with something that makes them palatable than not eat them at all?
Friend: [looks at me as if she now understands precisely why I'm a disgusting, fat cow who will obviously have a heart attack before I'm 30]
This is what happens in a dieting culture. Orange juice is considered solely in terms of calories and sugar, not vitamins. (Or flavonoids. Am I seriously the only one who's not surprised to learn that o.j. is good for you?) Carrot sticks are what you eat to get thin, not vegetables that have exactly the same nutritional value even if you dip them in ranch dressing or consume them alongside a plate of Buffalo wings. Apples are frightening to the anti-carb crowd. Fat and calories cancel out the "goodness" of fruits and vegetables — because that concept of goodness ultimately refers to your morals, not the food's nutritional content.
This is bullshit, people. Once again, the conflation of "fattening" with "unhealthy" has completely warped our concept of reasonable eating. I know it took me forever after I stopped dieting to realize that yes, I could eat a salad with full-fat dressing, cheese, croutons, and even — gasp! — bacon, and I would still be getting a nice big dose of greens, peppers, broccoli, carrots, whatever. And, miracle of miracles, I would not secretly feel deprived — like choosing to eat salad was a moral victory but a practical disappointment — and subsequently crave a burger and fries more strongly than ever.
You know what that meant? It meant I started eating a lot more salad. Which meant I started eating a lot more greens, peppers, broccoli, carrots, whatever, than I had previously. After all that dieting, a spinach salad with egg, bacon, croutons, and dressing ON the salad, instead of ferried over to it in tiny droplets on the end of my fork, feels nearly as "indulgent" as a piece of chocolate cake — but you know what it's got that chocolate cake doesn't? A BIG FUCKING PILE OF SPINACH. The same principle applies to cooked vegetables served with a pat of butter or a sprinkling of parmesan: if you add a small amount of fat, I'm a hell of a lot more likely to want to eat it. And since the alternative (post-dieting) was not choking down steamed veggies for the good of my soul but eating hardly any vegetables at all, I have to say I like this way better.
And you might like it better, too, but it might not have occurred to you yet that it's okay. So I'm here to tell you it is. I am not, of course, a health care professional or nutritionist, but from one ex-dieter to another, I hereby give you permission to drink fruit juice and eat your veggies with fat. You will not cancel out their nutritional value. (Well, you'll lose fiber drinking juice instead of eating fruit, but since you'll still eat fruit at other times and get fiber from other sources, it's still okay.) You will not go to hell. You will not even get any fatter, if you're already at your set point. You'll just be eating and drinking stuff that tastes good and contains lots of nutrients your body needs.


text: Jack Lew has been nominated to be the next Treasury secretary. Mandel Ngan /AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Mandel Ngan /AFP/Getty Images The Two-Way Obama Taps Top Aide Lew For Treasury January 10, 2013 The president has nominated his chief of staff. Jack Lew is also a former budget director in both the Clinton and Obama administrations. He would replace Timothy Geithner, who plans to step down soon. President Obama announces nomination of Jack Lew for Treasury Listen · 14:56 14:56 Toggle more options Download Embed Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/169053851/169061397" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">


text: This house is a great example of what you can do with 300 square feet, divided into two regions: active/work and rest/lounge. The bed is lofted above all the functional spaces (bathroom, kitchen, closet). The design also incorporates a table that can seat 6 and a changing room. The changing room is pretty neat idea, with a lofted bed, we don't have any room to really change, but a changing room meets this need, hides your clothes and provides privacy.


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Moderators: Eric, Tomas, robin
FYI I've moved this topic here, since it has nothing to do with Poco.jcmoor1 wrote:I have been using this program to archive my emails and attachments, since Pocomail does not have this functionality. (This is something that should be added, by the way, in future versions).
Seems their support doesn't take much interest in their customers.I have tried to contact the seller of this program (processtext.com), but get no reply.
Yes, see my above suggestion.1. Does anybody have another way to archive emails individually in such a way that they can be searched? Is there another program?
Can't respond to that, since I don't anything about future functionalities. Maybe or maybe not, who knowsIs pocomail going to provide this functionality?
Have you tried to contact them through their website support form?2. Does anybody know anything about how to get the newest version of this program or contact the seller?
migrating emails that I want to keep via converting to text files
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests


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Dutch Cream Waffles
"My grandmother made these waffles in a waffle iron on a wood-burning stove," says Barbara Syme of Peoria, Arizona. "The crispy golden waffles are special to me because, 40 years ago, I served them to my husband the first night I cooked in our new house."
Total TimePrep/Total Time: 20 min.
Makes3 servings
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3 eggs, separated
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
- Maple syrup
- In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. In a small bowl, beat egg yolks on low speed; gradually add cream and beat for 1 minute. Add to flour mixture; combine on low speed, then beat on medium-high until smooth.
- In another bowl with clean beaters, beat egg whites on high until stiff peaks form. Gently fold into batter.
- Bake in a preheated waffle iron according to manufacturer's directions. Serve with syrup.
Nutrition Facts1 each: 500 calories, 35g fat (20g saturated fat), 321mg cholesterol, 291mg sodium, 35g carbohydrate (4g sugars, 1g fiber), 12g protein.
Originally published as Dutch Cream Waffles in Reminisce March/April 1994
Recommended Video
Feb 14, 2014
Just made this. I was unsure without baking powder how this would be, but it was magnificent! I did not have whipping cream but replaced it with a natural creamer and some orange zest to offset the extra sweetness. These waffles are WONDERFUL!


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Idea super


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Welcome to the Military Monday Family Blogger Carnival – November 22 Edition! Please help spread the word so that this can become a fun way to learn more from each other!
Plus, I will be happy to tweet, stumble, and share your posts…so please do join in! The linky is open all week so jump in any time!
Stumped as to what to write about? Thanksgiving is this week so it would be a great time to share what you are grateful for as part of the military family…but you can post on any topic you like!
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