December 2011
1 post
1 tag
“This is always what I wanted to do. What I love about it, I love the sound of...”
– Aaron Sorkin on The Hollywood Reporter’s Award Season Roundtable Series: The Writers Uncensored. (There must be a place in one of the circles of Hell where people are forced to transcribe Aaron Sorkin interviews.)
July 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Aaron Sorkin and Truth
I came upon an old account of Sorkin’s quirky internet forum forays that most likely effected his luddite philosophy after some back-and-forth arguments between the two parties that did not make Sorkin stand out very well to say the least.
The forum’s meticulous analyses of the show have unraveled aspects of The West Wing that I did not notice when I watched the show years ago. I implore everyone...
2 tags
My Fundamental Problem with “The West Wing”
The aforementioned quote by Aaron Sorkin led me to conceive of the best way to formulate my problem with the otherwise great show The West Wing.
President Bartlet is obviously too likable and one-sidedly good to be anything like a realistic president—the same which can be said about everyone around him, all of whom are in line with Sorkin’ melodramatic atmosphere and cadenced dialogue replete...
2 tags
“My parents took me to see plays, starting when I was very, very little, and I...”
– Aaron Sorkin on the bonus material of The Social Network.
I am glad to see that he admits to this, because I find that he tends to fictionalize reality in a fashion that prefers theatricality to reality.
1 tag
May 2011
1 post
“One of the main differences between a movie and a TV show is, with the TV show,...”
– Translation and transcription excerpt of Danish radio station P1’s episode on “The Human Story”.
“Now everyone is a filmmaker. Maybe that means home movies can no longer be...”
– Roger Ebert’s reply to my request for his opinion on the state of family home videos. I hope he doesn’t mind that I quote our clandestine discussion.
March 2010
1 post
2 tags
Theory 101—Author, Intent, and Reception (Part...
A brief intermezzo with some narrative theory to tie the knot on our observations on Mad Men and pave the way for the entries to follow.
In Mad Men, we came upon the emphatic eyes in Mad Men. At the time, it was not certain, to me, whether the experience was only my own or if it had been facilitated by the creators of the show—the “authors”. Regardless of the authors’...
January 2010
4 posts
1 tag
Eyes of Mad Men II
From Don and Betty’s Paradise Lost by Bruce Handy in Vanity Fair:
January Jones on playing Elisabeth Draper:
A lot of what I do with Betty is in the eyes. A lot of the feelings are unspoken, so that’s kind of been fun to play with.
Alan Taylor, a Sopranos director who directed the Mad Men pilot and was involved in casting Jon Hamm as Don Draper:
It was a wonderful turning point when we...
1 tag
“My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are...”
– Meditations in an Emergency, from page 38.
1 tag
1 tag
December 2009
1 post
1 tag
Eyes of Mad Men
After watching the first season of Mad Men, I know the colour of all the regular characters’ eyes. Intentional or accidental, I think of it as a testament to the intimacy and gravitas of the drama.
The eyes are usually blue, but, ironically, Don Draper’s are difficult to figure out; are they green—or grey? Meanwhile, his wife outshines the moon with her emphatically blue...
May 2008
2 posts
Intro
No autobiographical dealings, no ouverture and no vague manifest as for what the future of this “blog” will hold. Meaning no idiosyncratic metablogging in future posts.
What the blog will contain are long, elaborate essays—others might say musings—on various and oftentimes completely unrelated subjects. Mostly with the purpose of digging into a subject that either continues to boggle...
