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Dan Carlson
Los Angeles, California

I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. I try not to think too hard about how I want to build my life around talking about other people's creations and not mine. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of a few TV shows ("The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day" for starters), you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings. I guess I was made to be a film critic.

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« December 12 | December 14 »

Wednesday, December 13

"Heroes": More Join My Cause

by Dan Carlson on Wed 13 Dec 2006 12:36 PM PST

I wrote a little while ago about the artificiality of "Heroes," and I still maintain that it's an awkward, forced attempt at selling to geekdom, instead of just being naturally somewhat geeky and casual about its genre.

Here's a similar take from Awakeland:

ok, i've had it. i am honestly shocked that heroes is as popular as it is. ... do people really not see how bad this show is? i'm sorry, i really thought i was done blogging rants about anything artistically negative, but this whole heroes craze has just got me perplexed beyond recognition.
why is it bad? honestly, i think the concept is a great one, albeit unoriginal but who cares because it's a comic book story. but the way it is written is so forced and one-dimensional, i cannot understand how it is so popular. not just popular, this show is LOVED by people. what the--?
and please please please, don't read this as an egotistical rant from sethius mcfilmsnob. this is seth worley. firefly advocate and lost addict, registered trekkie and loveslave to spiderman 2. this isn't just another pious blowing off of genre material. this is a huge nerd watching a show about superheroes and being flabbergasted in wake of its worldwide following.

I knew it wasn't just me.

Comments (2) | Permanent Link | Cosmos

TV Land Presents 100 More Reasons Boomers Are Not To Be Trusted

by Dan Carlson on Wed 13 Dec 2006 12:22 PM PST

TV Land, the network haven of shows that couldn't quite make the cut for Nick at Nite, recently compiled a list of the 100 greatest quotes and catchphrases in TV history. The entire list, organized alphabetically, can be found here. There are many, many things wrong with this endeavor.

• The list includes not just TV catchphrases, but things that were simply said on TV. John F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you..." isn't a TV catchphrase. It's a great moment from a classic speech that was televised. Likewise, Neil Armstrong's "One small step for man" line is news, not programming. There's a difference, TV Land.

• The list is a fawning rip-off of AFI's annual pointless lists, and just like the film organization's countdowns, the TV Land list tosses in a few more modern entries in hopes of appearing hip and relevant. But is Denny Crane's "Denny Crane" really worth praising? And the inclusion of "Nip/Tuck" and the insipid Paris Hilton is just embarrassing.

• Just thinking about the list has completely robbed me of all energy. I'm done now.

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the wisdom

Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
— Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
— John Stuart Mill

We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
— G.K. Chesterton

We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.
— August Van Zorn

There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.
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Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.
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