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the info
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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The Clock
View Article  The New Digs
I suppose I should take this opportunity to welcome you to the new site, which has pretty much the same stuff as the old site, except for shiny new colors.

On the left, underneath my profile, you should see some file folders. This is where my review archive and running list of every film I've seen will be stored. It's exciting, I know.

Over along the right side, you'll find links to all the sites I linked to on my old site, with a couple of new additions. I'm a fairly boring man with a healthy respect for routine, so not much has changed.

As far as leaving comments on this here blog, you should be able to do so anonymously by clicking "Post anonymously" on the comment form. This is not an invitation to actually leave a comment without signing your name. I just wanted to let you know that I don't believe you have to sign up for either an eponym blog or a reader account to post comments. Let me know if you have any problems. And, as always, anyone leaving a comment without signing their name will be considered a coward or a fool, whose remarks are of no significance.

I guess that does it for now. Look around, and try not to break stuff.
View Article  An Open Letter


Dear Overstock.com Woman,

Do you want to come over and hang out? We could just watch TV or something, if you want. Or, you know, whatever.

Just putting that on the table.

Sincerely,

Daniel Carlson
the post
Questions? Comments? Complaints?

Drop 'em in the mailbag.
the quotes

"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
— Pauline Kael


"Film lovers are sick people."
— Francois Truffaut


"I hope I strike a blow for chubby bald men everywhere. I hope they rise like an army."
Paul Giamatti, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 12/14/04


"Let others praise ancient times, I am glad I was born in these."
— Ovid

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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.
— Stephen King



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.
Ask the Dust, John Fante