Consolation Champs

Sarah McLachlan may have made the greatest video ever for a song. And yeah, it made me cry a little bit. (via darryl)

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[this is good]
(via kottke)

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“When we get our spiritual house in order, we’ll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don’t expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty.”
— Flannery O’Connor

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Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (USA, director Xan Cassavetes): The daughter of the late filmmaker John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands, Xan (Alexandra) Cassavetes grew up surrounded by the culture of film. But in her teens, she began to form her own taste, thanks in part to an innovative Los Angeles area cable channel. […]

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Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (USA, director Ken Burns): It may seem hard to believe, but I’ve never seen a Ken Burns film. I’ve always meant to, of course, but watching a multi-part documentary series is something of a commitment. So I jumped at the chance to see an entire film […]

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Bad Education (La Mala Educación) (Spain, director Pedro Almodóvar): I’m really having trouble coming up with things to say about this film. I’m new to Almodóvar films (Talk to Her was the first one I saw), and maybe I just don’t “get” him yet, but I must say I left this film with a vague […]

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Mondovino (USA/France, director Jonathan Nossiter): Since I work in the wine business, I had been quite eager to see this documentary, and I wasn’t disappointed. Reportedly drawn from over 500 hours of footage, the good news is that Nossiter will be releasing not only a theatrical cut, but a ten-part, ten hour series of the […]

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Les Choristes (France/Switzerland, director Christophe Barratier): Les Choristes is an unabashedly sentimental film that reminded me very much of Italian films Ciao Professore! and especially Cinema Paradiso. It tells the story of a failed musician named Clement Mathieu who finds himself taking a job in desperation as the supervisor of a reform school in […]

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The Alzheimer Case (De Zaak Alzheimer) (Belgium, director Erik Van Looy): Although based on a novel, this stylish police thriller’s main conceit (”hitman has Alzheimer’s”) could have been lifted from a Hollywood film executive’s idea of “high concept”. Except that it would have made a forgettable Hollywood picture. Instead, director Van Looy sets this story […]

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Salvador Allende (Chile/France/Belgium/Germany/Spain/Mexico, director Patricio Guzmán): September 11 will forever be remembered in this country as the anniversary of the attacks that brought down the World Trade Center. But it’s also the anniversary of the death of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile whose government was brought down by a CIA-backed coup d’etat […]

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