So Long, Holden

So Long, Holden

I imagined it so differently. I would hand The Catcher in the Rye to my students and watch it transform their lives. They would see themselves in Holden Caulfield, and J.D. Salinger's words would elucidate their own frustrations and struggles. They would write righteous screeds against phoniness, start keeping journals, and forever treasure their pored-over paperback. The book would blow the minds of teenagers seeking a pilgrim soul—a friend’s voice in the wild of adolescence.

How and where the Grindhouse spirit survives (and whether it should)

Film: For Our Consideration: How and where the Grindhouse spirit survives (and whether it should)




The opening sequence to the recent stripper-takes-revenge-on-her-rapists thriller Cherry Bomb looks like it could’ve been swiped in its entirety from some 1983 straight-to-video action movie, with its grainy, underlit shots of a grimy urban landscape, and its pulsing, bass-heavy hard-rock score. The similarity is no accident. It’s the effect director Kyle Day and screenwriter Garrett Hargrove were going for, to recall the seedy quickies of their youth. The same goes for Michael Biehn’s new-to-video directorial debut The Victim, which stars veteran actor Biehn as a backwoods loner who helps a stripper fend off two rogue cops who killed her best friend. In spite of the modern-day setting, The Victim has the style and tone of gamy ’70s drive-in fare. Cherry Bomb and The Victim are both pretty terrible movies, but they have a context. And they owe some of that context to a box-office flop from five ...

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Why We Freak Out About Some Technologies but Not Others

Why We Freak Out About Some Technologies but Not Others

There's often a side effect to new technologies: moral panic. Facebook causes narcissism! Texting is making us illiterate! But the funny thing is, other technologies don't provoke such alarm. What's the difference? Why do we freak out at some technologies and shrug at others? To provoke moral panic, a technology must satisfy three rules...