Due to popular demand, film critic Clementine DuCinema has added a Soviet-era children’s matinee to the upcoming WLBOTT film festival. Plow Now, Red Cow Plow Now, Red Cow is exactly the kind of film that leaves children teary-eyed, confused, and deeply committed to collectivist agriculture. Elder G 
Children’s Matinee Feature Plow Now, Red Cow […]
Category: Movies
Clementine DuCinema received her MFA and PhD in filmology from the University of Petrochemical Fumes and Fine Arts in Baytown, Texas. She specialized in Soviet-era cinema, and her dissertation was titled “Boy Meets Tractor: Boy meets tractor. Boy falls in love with tractor. Tractor represents collective hope.” Today, she brings her razor-sharp wit and velvet-gloved […]
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The Weight, Part II
Yesterday we looked at the 1968 song The Weight, by The Band. We learned that the song’s author, Robbie Robertson, was influenced by surrealist director Luis Buñuel. Luis Buñuel’s best know film is L’Age d’Or (Age of Gold, or Golden Age), released in 1930. L’Age d’Or (French: L’Âge d’Or, pronounced [lɑʒ dɔʁ]), commonly translated as […]
Movie Tie-Ins As cheese becomes sentient, a whole new audience is available for movie enjoyment. Lactose Intolerant: Judgment Dairy The Dairyminator: The Whey of Destruction T-99 Movie Posters For Jane Austen Fans! Pride and Provolone “The genteel world of regency romance… now with extra dairy.” Brie and Prejudice “When love and lactose mix, society will […]
Jason Pargin is becoming our go-to guy for a voice of reason on Facebook. Hard truths and reality checks. Mostly apolitical, but an astute observer of culture. I recently came across one of his videos that inserts some reality into content creation. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1D2ptjh638 You can check out his videos here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/jasondavidwongpargin For some reason, this […]
Instead of asking, “Is AI becoming human-like?”, perhaps we should be asking “Are humans AI-like?” Let’s work with this set of assumptions: It is a deterministic universe, rigidly governed by the laws of physics. Humans are incredibly complex state machines, obeying biochemical responses. We have no free will, no consciousness, but due to the incredible […]
Today we look at the stories portrayed in the 1964 Japanese ghost story anthology film, Kwaidan. The Black Hair “The Black Hair” (黒髪, Kurokami) is adapted from “The Reconciliation” and “The Corpse Rider”, which appeared in Hearn’s collection Shadowings (1900). An impoverished swordsman in Kyoto divorces his wife, a weaver, and leaves her for a […]
Lafcadio Hearn’s short story, Mujina, from Kwaidan – Stories and Studies of Strange Things, depicts a creepy Japanese supernatural creature called a noppera-bō, or mujina. No-Face / Spirited Away No-Face is a fascinating character in the Japanese animated film Spirited Away. Insightful article on Comic Book Resources: The CBR is a pretty cool web site. […]
Lafcadio Hearn, author of the book Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, moved to Japan in 1890. He initially arrived to work as an English teacher in Matsue, a city in the Shimane Prefecture. Hearn became deeply fascinated with Japanese culture, folklore, and traditions, eventually settling in Japan permanently. He married a Japanese woman […]
Through an interesting stream of consciousness, we came across one of the most interesting people on our World Tour: Lafcadio Hearn. Stream of Unconsciousness So, due to a combination of quantum effects, uncertainty principles, and tidal forces, the HBO algorithm suggested Kwaidan. The poster was creepy enough to draw me in. Kwaidan (Japanese: 怪談, Hepburn: […]