The Photo
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 Chimp And The Woman


Thanks to the wonderful folks at YouTube, I can share with you the glory that is Sean Cullen, singing the tale of the chimp and the woman. Are you sitting down? You should really be sitting down for this.

View Article  If My Heart Were A Xerox Machine, You'd Be The Toner
At this time last year, I was several months into what would turn out to be a 9-month run at a cubicle-shaped hell out in Thousand Oaks. During my time there, it was virtually impossible to watch Office Space or episodes of "The Office," both U.K. and U.S. versions. From the constant meetings, to the pointless busywork, to the socially inept and assuredly lonely manager with a lazy eye that creeped all hell out of me, it was a dark time indeed.

On Valentine's Day, my boss distributed pink slips of paper to everyone in my sub-department, on which we were to write notes to each other, which would be passed out later by my boss. I was at a complete loss as to what to write; I hadn't quite come to the point at that office where'd I'd risk a sexual harassment suit just to be fired and have some peace in my life, or I would have turned in some pretty brutal notes. And besides, what was I supposed to write to copy editors? After "You sure to edit some good copy" and "Your dictionary skills are great, I guess," I ran out of ideas.

My boss passed out the cards along with a special card from her for each one of us, and the cheap, cycloptic, spinally malformed woman couldn't even cough up a Starbucks giftcard. I threw the whole mess away.
View Article  I'm Already Afraid Of This
In the spirit of the day, I've decided to let you all superficially judge me, or at least give me feedback while you do it.

Click here for the window.

[I ripped this off from The Mad Cowboy. If he lived closer, I'd give him my wallet.]

View Article  Review: London
Pepperdine grads that used to live with me should probably skip the opening paragraph. Just a heads-up.

Clickety-click.

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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