The Man Who Wasn't There
Posted by Michael Atkinson at 8/10/2010 7:26 PM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Hemingway Cutthroat novel Hemingway
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Hemingway Cutthroat novel Hemingway
This isn't really a blog at all, as blogs have come to be known and underwritten (as ill-edited advice columns or diaries or what have you) — it's more like a poor mother I've long left at home and write to much less often than is responsible. I can't help it, I'm busy, and here's with what: daily columns at Movieline.com , monthly gigs at In These Times and Sight & Sound, frequent weekly gigs for The Village Voice and LA Weekly and Boston Phoenix, occasional but large pieces for Moving Image Source and The Believer, three books I'm in the middle of, ferrying three my-life's-blood but often ungrateful children around everywhere, and... dammit, the extraordinary effort and time required to help publicize my new book (see left). Plus whatever my wife needs me to do that day.
So I'll keep it short, and promise to do better, although by now my promises are worthless. In a peanut shell, I am:
- Still in awe of Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which I finally read while vacationing on the Yucatan,
- Not so in awe of any movie I've seen this summer, shy of Von Sternberg's silents in the new Criterion set,
- Happy to have written the liner notes for Criterion's new edition of Black Orpheus ,
- Unreasonably nervous about entertaining what I hope will be a crowd at my book event (Book Revue in Huntington) this Friday the 13th,
- Grateful,
- Dreading the November elections,
- Terminally sick of the news cycle, which answers the paucity of actual reporting and dwindling significance of original news writing by reporting on itself so much that I feel like I'm watching a starving baby eat its own flesh,
- Tired of people telling me adverbs are bad writing, because adverbs fucking rule,
- Smitten with Crack'd,
- Fond of Mexico, thanks for asking, especially the octopus,
- Going to Bouchercon in October, for the first time,
- Finished with my latest first-draft pilot for 20th Century, we'll see what happens,
- Looking forward to teaching silent film history again in the fall,
- Missing my 12-year-old, who's only away for a week at sleepaway camp, but it's the first time.
Skol!
So I'll keep it short, and promise to do better, although by now my promises are worthless. In a peanut shell, I am:
- Still in awe of Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which I finally read while vacationing on the Yucatan,
- Not so in awe of any movie I've seen this summer, shy of Von Sternberg's silents in the new Criterion set,
- Happy to have written the liner notes for Criterion's new edition of Black Orpheus ,
- Unreasonably nervous about entertaining what I hope will be a crowd at my book event (Book Revue in Huntington) this Friday the 13th,
- Grateful,
- Dreading the November elections,
- Terminally sick of the news cycle, which answers the paucity of actual reporting and dwindling significance of original news writing by reporting on itself so much that I feel like I'm watching a starving baby eat its own flesh,
- Tired of people telling me adverbs are bad writing, because adverbs fucking rule,
- Smitten with Crack'd,
- Fond of Mexico, thanks for asking, especially the octopus,
- Going to Bouchercon in October, for the first time,
- Finished with my latest first-draft pilot for 20th Century, we'll see what happens,
- Looking forward to teaching silent film history again in the fall,
- Missing my 12-year-old, who's only away for a week at sleepaway camp, but it's the first time.
Skol!
What's Crack'd? Not finding anything very useful on Google.
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Sorry, it's Cracked.
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