I watched Art Garfunkel smell the diner and think about walking away from it. Then he stood up, put a small pile of money on the table next to a white bowl with what appeared to be the dregs of pea soup, and prepared to walk away.
Quentin Tarantino’s most identifiable feature as a writer-director is his characters’ talking, talking, talking, often followed by violence triggered not by the talking, really, but by accident, coincidence, or stupidity.
The tensions that wire our lives do not go dead. Every time I try to look away, they crop up again, disguised or insidious. But Sylvia Plimack Mangold fixed her gaze and stared them down.
(Jakub Dziubak via Unsplash) Every so often the forces of new scientific findings and opinion columns align to produce a certain sense of dread and unease. In this case, that dread and that unease are acute if you believe in the power and pleasure of a…
This is a concept country, like one of those cool demo cars that never get made because they are too flawed to be practical. Except, the nation did get made. We are still figuring out how to punctuate that reality.
Fans of Martin’s will be rewarded for watching more than three hours of documentary about his life. What emerges is a portrait of an anxious introvert acting like an extreme extrovert for fun and profit.
Nature is red in tooth and claw, I mutter to myself. But how could our gentle dog be so cruel?
Our sensual imagination has gone abstract, need-based, overclever, and devoid of substance.
Children grow up, go to school, get jobs, may have their own families, and at some point usually stop getting gifts from magical beings. But it is not that the magic does not exist. It is that the children themselves have become part of the great, benevolent cartel of nurturers of warmth and plenty.
Thinking, Fast and Slow is, in part, an extended lesson in humility. It should humble us all to understand how limited we are. Kahneman’s book is also, fortunately for us, a potent antidote.