In Memoriam, Carl Weathers

Not always a fan of the ‘in memoriam’ bandwagons, but I liked Carl Weathers, especially for his lesser known roles. In Arrested Development, he played a cheapskate acting coach who saved eaten-over chicken bones for stews, bought cars only at police auctions, and always tried to find his way onto someone else’s tab. What’s additionally funny about this role, aside from his great performance, was the fact he actually helped create the character: he deliberately wanted the character to be a humorously-cheap acting coach. Clips abound, but one funny one is below. In memoriam!

On Resident Evil, Milla Jovovich

Named the “reigning queen of kick-butt” by VH1 in 2006, Milla Jovovich’s character in Resident Evil was an unmatched BAMF (man or woman), not to mention a tough, kickass female role model. Following her breakout role in the very-90s “5th Element”, she paired with director Paul WS Anderson to make the Resident Evil film series, the highest grossing film series based on a video game, even if critics widely regarded it as cheesy, technically rough, gratuitously violent and narratively simple. The main protagonist in the movies, Milla trained in various martial arts and combat training to prepare for her role and she did the vast majority of her own stunts. Aside from her extensive filmography, she is a musician and model. Likewise, she advocated for cannabis legalization and has spoken out on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Major props to Milla J.

On Terrence Malick

Terrence Malick is pretty interesting. Best known for his films such as Tree of Life (starring Brad Pitt), which won the top award at the Cannes Film Festival, and the acclaimed war film, The Thin Red Line, he also nearly completed a PhD in Philosophy on a Rhodes Scholarship, failing to do so only over a disagreement with his advisor over the meaning of a concept in Heidegger’s thought. Still, he went on to translate a book of Heidegger’s (which is no small feat), and taught at MIT before transitioning to film. Now he’s pretty reclusive, apparently. What a life…

A Reflection On Walter Benjamin

One of my favorite thinkers is Walter Benjamin, a German-Jewish critical theorist who studied and wrote about art, politics, philosophy and history. He spent a fair amount of his time in Berlin and Paris in the early part of the 20th century and has written some of the most influential artistic theory there is. He killed himself on the verge of his escape from a nazified Europe thinking he wouldn’t make it out in time. He was a man who lived in his thoughts, for better or for worse, and sometimes lost himself to fantasy, not facing the political reality as it was. Tragically, he stayed too long in Paris.

He enjoyed the Paris Arcades, collections of indoor, windowed stores in Paris that anticipate the modern mall. The Arcades captivated him, and he spent a lot of his time there, writing and thinking about the historical-social significance of the Arcades and what they meant to the development of capitalism and how they subsequently influenced the people that inhabited them. His longest work, unfinished, was called the Arcades Project (I haven’t finished it either), and it is a voluminous (Bible like) random collection of quotes, stories, histories and artistic reflections that covers such topics as early films, land use planning in Paris, politics, art and so many other topics. And it is a testament to one of his great hobbies: quote collecting. He loved to collect quotes, various things he would see in the everyday. I relate to this pursuit and enjoy it in my own life, as quotes are like a mini window into the thoughts of others, an ossified statement of their reflections on and their engagement with the experience of the world.

We know about some of his works through Georges Bataille, author of The Story of the Eye, who was a librarian at the time, and who hid W Benjamin’s unfinished manuscript for the Arcades Project in a library in Paris on the eve of the German advance and just before W Benjamin’s flight from his beloved Paris.