Matt Zoller Seitz, on the myth of Charlie Sheen:

[N]o matter what idiocy he gets involved with, and no matter how many lives he damages or destroys, people just continue hiring him, and talking about him, and writing about him (see also this article), and otherwise supporting and enabling him. He truly seems invulnerable. He is the Anton Chighur of tabloid media, capable of withstanding (or so it seems) any amount of controlled substances as well as public shaming. Sheen’s last flameout was covered more extensively than most foreign wars. His obligatory period of wandering seemed to last about two-and-a-half minutes.

I really enjoyed Tom Whalen’s Film Quarterly essay on Run Lola Run. Yes, it’s 10 years old (and the film is even older) but the film’s subtle message about fate and determinism has been sticking with me recently as I sense big changes coming in my life quite soon:

Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (Lola rennt, 1998) blasts open doors for viewers in the late 90s the way Godard’s Breathless (1959) did for viewers in the late 50s. In few other ways would I compare these two films. Godard’s exercise is tinted cool, hip, his characters posturing cartoons; whereas Tykwer’s is hot, kinetic, and his (at times animated) characters bristling realities. Though a profoundly philosophical and German film, Run Lola Run leaps lightly over the typical Teutonic metaphysical mountains. Tykwer’s work doesn’t have the Romantic receptive gaze of a Wenders or entertain the grapple with the gods of a Herzog, but instead possesses a ludic spirit willing to see life and art as a game. Nor, though as excited by the techniques of cinema as the film of a first-time director (Run Lola Run is Tykwer’s eighth movie), is it the loose, dehumanized display of, say, Pulp Fiction (1994) or Trainspotting (1996). Run Lola Run is fast, but never loose. It’s as tightly wound and playful as a Tinguely machine and constructed with care.

Dan Fienberg has a spectacular yet thoughtful takedown of the new morally reprehensible show H8r, hosted by Mario Lopez:

Mario Lopez doesn’t care how little money you make or what you do or even if anybody out there on the Internet cares about whatever mean thing you might say, because he’s got a point to make, one that he believes in strongly: Even the lowest-level celebrity — ESPECIALLY the lowest-level celebrity — should be exempt from criticism. But feel free to love them and write about that.

As usual, I reserve the right to modify this list for my end-of-year rankings. Here they are, in no particular order:

• Attack the Block
• 50/50
• Martha Marcy May Marlene
• The Guard
• Drive
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes
• Submarine
• Kung Fu Panda 2
• Bridesmaids
• X-Men: First Class

The Guardian has as an interesting piece on the challenges of live TV and the firing of Ortis Deley, who tried valiantly to cover the World Athletics Championships this year for the BBC. As the following video shows, it did not go very well:

As someone who weekly tries to put on a live show in front of about a hundred people, I can relate.

Much love to Linda Holmes’ discussion of Die Hard, and how Die Hard 5 can never live up to the insanely high standards put forth by the original:

[In Die Hard], just about every frame in the film is either (1) setting up or (2) paying off a specific piece of the story. Even everything that happens at the beginning that would normally be window dressing and character development and throat-clearing has a specific reason for being there. “Fists with your toes.” Holly slamming down the family photo in her office. Her Rolex.

This essay made me appreciate Die Hard more. That is a difficult thing to accomplish. Kudos.