Michael Bay and Jacques Derrida?

Last week I read this snipet from Entertainment Weekly about Michael Bay's upcoming third transformers movie, Transformers: Dark of the Moon:

"Michael Bay deconstructs the perils of an institutionally binary electoral system in this astute...or, you know, robots blow each other up as Shia LaBeouf runs for his life." (85, Entertainment Weekly June 3/10 Double Issue)

So, I ask myself, does Derrida penetrate even the most non-academic writing or is it that this was written by a humanities grad school dropout?

One more reason to buy a blu-ray player

I saw this and thought of my friend and fellow blogger Ben. Blu ray Citizen Kane + The Magnificent Amberson (which has never been released on dvd or blu ray) = another reason to upgrade.

Film Noir and Criterion

Up until this year, criterion's selection of film noir has been scant. The film noir I refer to here is the traditional Hollywood kind; born and bred in the US of A . With the exception of Siodmak's The Killers and a few titles from Samuel Fuller and Jules Dassin the collection is mostly made up Japanese and French noir along with some selections of neonoir. Don't get me wrong, I love Melville's noir style and Godard is a genius, but, I would love to see more Hollywood noir.

It looks like they've gotten my mental memo and have announced some great noir releases for later this year. These include: Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, and the already released Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick).

Here are ten more noir greats that I would love to see on Criterion.

1. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)

2. Asphalt Jungle (John Huston)

3. Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer)

4. Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur)

5. The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks)

6. The Maltese Falcon (John Huston)

7. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)

8. Laura (Otto Preminger)

9. The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett)

10. Dark Passage (Delmer Daves)

Napolean Dynamite the Cartoon

Heck yes! I'm excited about this. I'm not going to lie.

I'm your favorite daydream, I'm your famous nightmare

Twin Shadow's TV debut on Fallon. Good stuff.

Charleston

Spring semester ended last Monday when I submitted my grades and turned in my last two papers. No more school for the rest of the summer, right? Well, not exactly. I accepted a teaching offer for summer term and in order to take it I needed to be registered for two courses. We thought it was good opportunity and decided it was the best thing to do. I'll be taking a class about "La literatura fantastica" during "maymester" (a short 3-week term with 3 hour, daily classes). I'll then take another ecocriticism course, this one focusing on natural disasters, starting in June.

Before maymester, Beckie was nice enough to plan a small getaway to Charleston, SC for the three of us. We had a great time. Charleston is beautiful city, full of gorgeous antebellum architecture. We walked around the city, enjoying the homes and streets and it was clear that a long, important history had embedded itself into every block. Originally, we planned on visiting Fort Sumpter but decided that the aquarium was more child-friendly. The decision worked for the best as our little guy had a great time.

We ended our trip with a short detour to the Angel Oak, the oldest tree east of the Missippi. The little one loved the ground covered in leaves.