Damn Fine TV/Film
It has been a fantastic year of television so the 25YL staff are going to have to make some tough decisions this award season! On the panel we have: Laura Stewart, Matt Armitage, JC Hotchkiss, Martin Hearn, Brien Sponaugle, Paul Billington and Caemeron Crain. So let's see what their choices are... Favorite New Show of …
In watching Maniac I continually found myself thinking that I enjoyed the frame more than the painting, that is, the world-building that the show engaged in---from the weird mix of a 1980s aesthetic with futuristic technology (about which I am tempted to coin a term in analogy with “steampunk”), to the idea of an “Ad …
Owen Milgrim (Jonah Hill) has schizophrenia, and one effect of that is seeing a non-existent brother. This brother assures him that he’s meant for greatness, and that he’s “going to save the world," if only Owen could trust him. To be sure, Netflix’s Maniac portrays a simplistic, cartoonish version of a complicated disorder, but that’s …
Continue reading "‘The pattern is the pattern’: Sentiment as therapy in Maniac"
The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how …
Continue reading "The Leftovers: Every Ghost Story is a Love Story"
Sometimes the world looks perfect, Nothing to rearrange. Sometimes you just get a feeling Like you need some kind of change. No matter what the odds are this time, Nothing's going to stand in my way. This flame in my heart, Like a long lost friend Gives every dark street a light at the end. …
When a man commits himself to anything, fully realizing that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind – in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility. There are many, indeed, …
I do not doubt that it would be easier for fate to take away your suffering than it would for me. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness. - Sigmund Freud, Studies on Hysteria (1895) As a therapist, Laurie Garvey devoted her life …
To respect madness is not to interpret it as the involuntary and inevitable accident of disease, but to recognize this lower limit of human truth, a limit not accidental but essential. As death is the limit of human life in the realm of time, madness is its limit in the realm of animality, and just …
I was thus weighed down by the pleasant burden of the world in the way one commonly is by sleep, and the thoughts with which I attempted to meditate upon you were like the efforts of people who are trying to wake up, but are overpowered and immersed once more in slumberous deeps. No one …
I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake, Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white; The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night, The East her hidden joy before the morning break, The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away, The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire: O …
Continue reading "The Leftovers: In Defense of the Guilty Remnant"