Culturopolis

I find it rich beyond belief that as I prepare to step down from a 15-year tenure as an alternative weekly critic, my 7-year-old son’s reviewing career is ascendent. Illustrating the value of independent businesses, a recent visit to the beyond-charming Little Shop of Stories in Decatur yielded a mega-dose of bookwormophilia in my man-child. One hint of A’s interest in Ripley’s and other oddball phenomena and the bookstore manager Terra, who was so righteously named, was off and running. She was grabbing books about parasites, books about Houdini (score!). The woman knew a slightly freaky book kid when she met him. Then, the coup de gras: Terra unloaded a stack of advance reader’s copies for A to peruse. You know, check them out, make some recommendations. “You are a book reviewer!” I squealed with delight at preparing my child for professional obsolescence. His first, rather ambitious if you ask me, undertaking was a 12 and up (yes, I’m bragging. No he didn’t read it on his own) t...

(Photo courtesy of Warner Independent Pictures) If you thought Michael Haneke's 1997 Austrian feature Funny Games was an exercise in sadism, then you should check out the ad campaign associated with his current Hollywood remake of the film starring Naomi Watts, Tim Roth and Michael Pitt centered on a vacationing family tortured by a pair of privileged Bret Easton Ellis-type teenagers. In a certifiably sick movie tie-in, viewers can go to the Funny Games website : Click on "Play the Game." You customize an email message and a phone message using the name of a friend or loved one and receive a message for your friend delivered in the voices of the film’s killers. It's an incredibly creepy promotional gimmick. It's strange to see this diabolical device used to promote a film by this exceedingly smart, subversive director. Does Haneke know? If I had his email address and phone number, I might have to customize one for him. I have written about Haneke a number o...

Why "Oskar" with a "k"? It's only that the "k" reminds me of my favorite cinematic Oskar, played by David Bennent in Volker Schlondorff's The Tin Drum . Why have a pet at all, if you aren't going to embed a cryptic movie reference? I never thought I was a dog person. That doggy smell, wet and musky, always made my stomach lurch. But Oskar has become such a beloved baby-substitute, such a Dickensian waif with those sad, dewy eyes, it is taking all my stamina and the barest trace of self-respect not to plant a big ole kiss on his gooey doggy lips. Must. Not. Turn. Into. One. Of. Those. People. I won't name the very high profile Atlanta gallerist who once tried to get me to kiss her pooch. I thought it crossed a line, in an art world where there are no lines. But now with my own dark, goofy dog-love tendencies awakened, the impulse doesn't seem quite so bizarre to me. I don't know if that's growth.