Enlarged Heart Radio #6
Bludded Head, NASA Space Universe, MoHa! and more in the sixth edition of Enlarged Heart Radio. If you’re listening and liking what you hear, please do let me know.
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Date: March 2016
Bludded Head, NASA Space Universe, MoHa! and more in the sixth edition of Enlarged Heart Radio. If you’re listening and liking what you hear, please do let me know.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
Sisters is a one-trick movie, and that trick – a third act party that’s really the second act, and takes up half the running time – is bloated to an ultimately tiresome degree. That’s more disappointing than the paint-by-numbers formula, and the lazy racial stereotyping which is almost a mandate for Hollywood comedy. But when it works – and it does, quite frequently – it’s genuinely, uproariously funny.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
By Skyfall, the Daniel Craig Bonds had already stopped pretending to be the gritty reinvention of the character heralded by Casino Royale, so the poor reception for Spectre – for doing just that, it appears – is hard to swallow, especially when even more than its predecessor it’s a bold-faced (po-faced?) greatest-hits collection. It’s a shame that this comes at the expense of its internal logic, and over a bloated two-and-a-half hours, I’ll give the critics that. But there’s enough melodramatic silliness to entertain in the spirit of the classic Bonds, even if lacking their nostalgic charm.
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This is great stuff. But one cannot talk about the British short story without also mentioning its Irish cousin. #link
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Worldbuilding Stack Exchange "is a question and answer site for writers/artists using science, geography and culture to construct imaginary worlds and settings." A golden resource for fiction writers/creators, here. #link
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"I’m an edge case. I want an untangled web. I want everything I do to copy back to a single place, so I have one searchable log for each day’s thoughts, images, notes and activities." Me too. It's pretty much what I want this website to be. But I'd rather have the API knowhow to roll it myself rather than sign up to yet another service that could disappear tomorrow. #link
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Now this is the kind of thing they should be doing on the Network. See also: a time lapse video of the construction and dismantling of a WWE ring #link
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Hector Guerrero deserved better than this, of course. But his mature attitude to what was basically a rib is commendable. #link
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Not the best fortnight for me, in fairness. Existential anxiety last weekend reverberated through the following days, and I’m foggy on the details, so they’re a write-off. Then as soon as I started feeling more like myself, it was head down for a production deadline. And with the hauntings of a cold and all.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
By movie number three, most modern Hollywood franchises have given up the ghost, particularly in the animated realm. Kung Fu Panda 3 is one of the few to buck the trend. With its big name voice cast, and poor DreamWorks Animation pedigree (it’s from the same studio as the tired Shrek films, and the depressingly average Ice Age series), all signs point to it not being even half as good as it actually is, melding a trope-laden but solid story with genuine, unforced comedy and a superlative visual identity of a kind rarely seen beyond anime. If you miss it, you’re missing out.
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It's a Vox article, yeah. But it does put the Trump phenomenon in perspective, as much as it's a damning indictment of the state of American society. (In other words, thanks for fucking up the world for the rest of us, yanks!) #link
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"We want to think about Trump using our familiar categories, according to familiar norms, judging him by familiar rules. But what Donald Trump is all about is incinerating the existing rules––which are revealed as all too easy to incinerate. He breaks the system just by his manner of being. It’s humbling, because the system he breaks is the only one we know how to understand." That's true. But he's also fairly typical of the fundamentally amoral moneyed class that have existed since wealth was invented. #link
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#BlackLivesMatter from the lips of the man who started the ball rolling. More understanding, less thoughtless reactionism. #link
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Saw the film on Monday and it's great; my full review will come before the month is out. Also, this Trailer Town site? It's really something else; fantastic job! #link
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Some nice deep-cut film criticism here. #link
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The infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion was debunked by this Irish journalist. Something we can really be proud of, not this year's Easter Rising self-congratulation bullshit. #link
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Another reminder for me to learn some JavaScript. And learn how to make a GIF. See also: UGC expertise can no longer be a niche newsroom skill #link
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I think this is more a case of social media amplifying the minor quibbles about life's trivial complications that we all have into loudspeaker life-or-death proclamations. #link
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This is no hard, fast rule; it's more interesting to see one critic come clean on their personal preferences and biases. We all have them, and they must be taken into account when you read our reviews, as much as we might strive to evaluate things somewhat objectively. #link
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Whenever I need to draft interview questions in future, I will be referring to this. #link
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The worst horror movie I've seen since The Last Exorcism Part II. I'm shocked that Peter Bradshaw gave it such a positive review in the Guardian. #link
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Surprisingly decent intro to a wrestling subculture for a non-wrestling site #link
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Blogging this solely for the take on They Live's legendary street fight: "Kicking the shit out of a person is a pretty silly and undignified thing to do. Watching two people fight also just happens to tickle all those sweet lizard brain impulses. Watching a grimy alleyway fight stretched out to ludicrous lengths just exposes that inherent absurdity for all to see." #link
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It's only taken 15 years for someone to write a decent mainstream sports-focused intro to MMA. (And yes I know the UFC has been around for 22 years shut up.) #link
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Blogged for this nugget of wisdom: "We’ve all probably said something on the Internet that’s off-color or offensive, or just not given proper context in the size of tweet. Many of us have held problematic views at different stages in our lives, particularly when engaging in intellectual exercises or writing academic papers. In the past, we’d generally expect to be given a chance to move on and leave our past selves behind. In today’s culture wars, that’s not the case. The past is present, especially when your words are only a Google search away." (If that doesn't describe this very website I don't know what does.) #link
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I seem to have irked some people with my Thumped review of last Saturday and Sunday’s wrestling weekender. I’ve blocked a few arseholes for bullying tweets, because I happened to have a different experience of the evening than them (missing the point that I was reviewing the whole experience of both evenings, not just the matches or ‘workrate’, but that’s nothing new for the dregs of the IWC) and I’ve somehow injured their little hardcore clique or whatever. Fuck that noise.
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