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I'm fascinated by Cronenberg, but I wasn't keen on Shivers. For my money, it's his worst movie (excluding shorts like The Lie Chair and The Italian Machine). I know a lot of people would vote instead for Fast Company, and while it's certainly a poor movie, I still think Fast Company has certain virtues--especially the greasy details of drag strip life, and the way motors are used as a metaphor for how the human body functions and needs repair.

Yeah... I thought it was crap. It isn't Linklater's only misstep--I also thought Bad News Bears, SubUrbia, and Fast Food Nation were mediocre or worse--but it's the most flabbergasting of his failures.

I saw that when it first came out, and have been a huge Linklater fan ever since--at this point, I'd describe him as one of the most vital voices in American movies. (Before Sunset is one my desert-island movies.) I'll have to check out the Criterion DVD, since I've been trying to track down It's Impossible... for years. I've never seen it. Speaking of lesser-known Linklater stuff, have you seen his short documentary Live from Shiva's Dance Floor? In that one, Linklater follows performance artist Timothy "Speed" Levitch on an off-kilter tour of NYC. The movie's most memorable bit consist

I always thought the same thing! True story.

No kidding... I have a couple of their albums, and I can't figure out what the big deal is.

I actively resist imposing such black-and-white principles upon art; strict adherence to preconceived notions too often leads us to miss what's truly happening in an artwork, or miss what's most vital about it. Sometimes a song is great for its music, sometimes for its lyrics, and sometimes for both--but a work that finds harmony between the two is not automatically better than the others, because art isn't about piling up points, or about filling out a rubric.

Based on that alone, I'm going to check that album out. NP: I already like it more than Twin Cinema, which was a very good album but still a let-down for me compared to earlier NP stuff. This one, though, I am really really diggin'. For starters, "Challengers," "Myriad Harbour," and "Unguided" are ridiculously good.

I don't think the Pabst is large enough... but perhaps the Riverside?

I've had that catchy "Drivin' Me Wild" in my head for weeks, and finally picked this up today. Upon first listen, it strikes me as even more immediately pleasurable than Be (which I loved).

I remember that when I saw that in the theater, I was the only one there. Pity.

That holds up, doesn't it?

The upper level does have a few seats, but nearly all of them are reserved. There's plenty of standing room up there, though. Frankly, the Eagles Ballroom is not the greatest venue. Its best virtue is that it's, um, large.

Madison on Sep. 11, Milwaukee on Oct. 9... sounds like it's going to be a good Wilco month for me. (And in between, 11 days of the Milwaukee International Film Festival!)

In 1993 I wrote a mildly favorable review of Jurassic Park. Fourteen years later, my friends still won't let me forget the headline added by the morons at the newspaper: "DINO-mite!"

My favorite? Svankmajer's 15-minute take on The Fall of the House of Usher (1980).

Sembene died in June, but the deaths of Bergman and Antonioni reminded me that they weren't the first major figures in international cinema that we lost this summer.

Most of the episodes are as strong as his best feature work... I made a point of watching them when they originally aired, and then later I bought the complete series on DVD. If you're a Morris fan, it's absolutely worth tracking down.

Yes! Did you ever watch First Person?

We agree that those actions can be called terrorism. In fact, I've never referred to those specific perpetrators as freedom fighters. You made a generalized statement ("You can't fight against freedom and be a freedom fighter") with no qualifications that therefore applies across the board and across history, and that's what I responded to, not your specific stance on insurgents in Iraq. (In fact, my contrary example was historical.) It's the generalization that I objected to, but now you're re-framing the discussion to pretend that both your original comment and my objection were spec

I didn't post that... but how is it a similar oversimplication? The whole point of that poster is to get people to consider the possibility that their rigid definitions are not as simple as they may at first appear. In other words, it muddies the issue, which is the precise opposite of oversimplifying the issue.

I think we're saying that to be most effective in fighting them, we must first accurately comprehend how they have come to understand the circumstances. The point was that your cartoonish oversimplification of "You can't fight against freedom and be a freedom fighter" ignores certain complexities, and it's that kind of thinking that made Iraq a mess. Unfortunately, that's how this Administration writes policy--not according to political reality, but according to how catchy it sounds on a bumper sticker.

You can if the two sides define freedom in different terms.

The only surprising thing about it was the use of a Guster song. That was cool, at least.