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.

I defy any fan of kitsch not to fall immediately in love with this vulgar, slick digestion in a single image, "Blessed Art Thou" of the annoying sanctification of celebrity that runs rampant in American culture, but also the sanctification of self that certain celebrities like Jolie seem to engage in endlessly. North Carolina artist Kate Kretz proves that Southerners are often the most adept smart-asses when it comes to feeding our culture back to us on a pitchfork.

Go to this website for my review of one of the best films I've seen in months: PAN'S LABYRINTH

It is so hard for me to crack a book these days, with the vortex pull of the internet and the ease of online articles and blogs the kind of writing it's so easy to just drop in on. But something about that process, the jumping around cyberspace also does something to your attention span, making it harder when faced with a more substantive read, to do the heavy lifting required. I feel addled and teenaged and I can't imagine what it's like for my 5-year-old to grow up with this distracted, free-ranging mentality.

FILM COFFEE ACHIEVERS Black Gold goes behind the scenes of our coffee jones TRANSGENDER BIAS Out on Film searches for a new niche ART DOMESTIC GODDESSES Teresa Bramlette Reeves and Lillian Blades at Sandler Hudson STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS Beep Beep Gallery plays it by ear