At the movies: The Shrouds.

 David Cronenberg is back, and that's how we like it.

Prince.

I still don't have my mind wrapped around having lost Prince. This piece that I wrote for Club Planet, well, I was able to do it because it had a specific focus on his ongoing gifts to the dance music community. I focused on the Linn LM-1 and drum machines in general.

At the movies: Contagion.

You've already been exposed. To the advertising campaign. Which is effective. like the movie.

At the movies: Final Destination 5.

They just keep dying...

At the Movies: Harry Potter 7.1.

The latest journey into the Wizarding World.

Catching Up at The Movies: Hereafter.

So I feel like I was way hard on this film. Looking back on it, Damon's performance stays with me, and his scenes with Bryce Dallas Howard are emotionally hardcore. But I don't know if I can make myself watch this one again. Maybe...

Catching Up at The Movies: The Agony and The Ecstasy of Phil Spector.

Ah, the sheer madness of it all.

Panic, Chaos, and the Art of Storytelling.

Picture it. A pleasantly divey bar in the east village. The personae: John Lichman, Vadim Rizov, Matt Prigge, and me. It was an absolute honor for me to be part of, taking part in an in-depth discussion about cinema with people who not only get published in high-profile venues but who are also known electronically.

I had a blast, and would love to do so again.

Listen here.

Pity it couldn't have gone on, when the Nightmare on Elm Street movies and death were under discussion.

At the movies: The Final Destination 3D.

I’m on record as being willing to watch 3D anything.

Call it a weakness for gimmicks or just being enraptured with the visual representation of physical space, I’m more than willing to luxuriate in stereoscopic cinema under just about any circumstances.

The analogy I’ll always use is The Polar Express. As a film, it’s near unwatchable. But in 3D, it’s pretty fascinating to look at and to experience.

So take that perspective, and apply it to something that I really love- in this instance, the Final Destination films. The most egalitarian voice in contemporary cinema, these films posit that we are, in fact, mortal beings, and that moral perspective and/or actions are completely irrelevant to our own survival. That's eminently subversive these days, when movies generally are just little slices of immortality, things that flatter us into believing that by watching films, we somehow are learning skills that will let us avoid the tragedies that befall others. But whether it's cancer, some poisoning arthropod, or a randomly careening bus, we all will die at some point. It's what defines us. And the Final Destination films' baroque setpieces are cathartic experiences that even the Ancient Greeks would have responded to.

And as for those deaths: we get what could best be called a Chuck Palahniuk kill (possibly the only moment that felt like it had been trimmed for the purposes of the MPAA, because just the idea of this one is unbelievably nasty), a beauty parlor sequence which will terrify anyone even thinking of getting a pedicure at any point in their future, an escalator encounter that somehow manages to recall both Wile E. Coyote and nine inch nails' "Happiness in Slavery" video, countless flying or impaling objects, and, in the meta-moment of this year's cinema, something catastrophic that happens at a 3D film.

This is a movie that works both as a shameless deployer of pointy things at your face and as a great example of using physical space in a captivating way. Director David Ellis (who directed the series peak Final Destination 2, the superweak Asylum, the pretty awesome Cellular, and the thuddering misfire Snakes on a Plane) has a gift for playing both our perceptions and our own senses of foreboding, and there is no body part he won't make go splat, no dream he won't head off at the pass, and no viewer he won't play like a finely-tuned instrument.

Things that I must say: Uncle Crizzle edition.

So I had the grand opportunity to appear on my colleague and buddy Craig D. Lindsey's podcast recently, and it's a wild and weird journey into what I like to call cinemadness. Give it a listen here, provided you aren't one of Prince's lawyers or Michael Bay.

Some more words about our recently departed.

A few words about our recently departed.

A veritable Whitman's Sampler of stuff.

Here's where my mind is at:

The latest on the Georgian front.

Some good news regarding the evershifting balance between common sense and belief in the world of academia.

The lineup for this year's New York Film Festival is up.

Much in the way that Madonna's "Sky Fits Heaven" worked in spite of using lines from a Nike commercial, R&B phenomenon Chris Brown combines trance-rap synths, Timbaland beats, and a DOublemint slogan and makes pop gold.

Detroit sets what must be some sad new kind of trend.