Links To Dan & Jessica Schneider On The Internet!

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Webliography: Title/Subject/Author

NEW WRITINGS!

517) Borat/DVD Review/Dan Schneider A couple of years ago, in 2006, the biggest comedy hit was a film called Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan. The film grew out of a recurring character on a British television show, Da Ali G. Show, created by Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. I mention the man’s religion because the film attacks anti-Semitism in a brutally funny way, even as many dull-witted critics accuse the film of that bias....

Hilarious.

518) Pather Panchali/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Somewhere between the Oriental placidity of a great Yasujiro Ozu film and the harsh reality of a great Vittorio De Sica drama lies the world of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, the first of his Apu Trilogy of films. And in case there was any doubt, that place is a very, very good one for any filmmaker to be, for the two aforementioned filmmakers were masters of their own sorts of films, and- if this one, and first, film of Ray’s is an indication, the same plaudits can be ascribed to Ray, a former advertising firm’s employee who struck out on his own to raise Indian cinema from the melodramatic doldrums it had been in since its creation....

Classic.

519) Au Hasard Balthazar/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The greatness of Robert Bresson’s 1966 black and white film, Au Hasard Balthazar (which, translated, means something like Randomly Balthazar or By Chance Balthazar), comes not from only one aspect of it, nor even just a few. Virtually every aspect of the film reeks and resonates greatness, although, despite this being the near full consensus opinion of film lovers and critics alike, a reading of the criticism suggests it is one of the most poorly understood films....

Nonpareil.

520) Red Clay, Blue Cadillac/Book Review/Dan Schneider Michael Malone is most well known for being the lead writer on the American soap opera One Life To Live. As someone who has watched soap operas and other serial fictions for years. I do not hold this against him. However, having read his collection of twelve stories centered on Southern belles, Red Clay, Blue Cadillac, I can say that he certainly doesn't hide the fact of his past employment....

Better than expected.

521) The Conscience Of A Liberal/Book Review/Dan Schneider In reading Paul Krugman’s 2007 book, The Conscience Of A Liberal, I wanted to be able to speak of his writing style, as much as of his opinions, politically and economically. This is because I simply get tired of books being criticized simply for their arguments and not how they are presented. In the last year or so, as example, I got two books that exemplified this approach....

Good stuff.

501) Campaign 2008/Obama/Dan Schneider I am a political Independent who has voted in the last three Presidential General Elections for Ralph Nader. I did so, despite my Democratic roots, because I am a pragmatist and the last three Republican candidates for President were unappealing- not a budding Abe Lincoln nor Teddy Roosevelt in the lot. In 1992 I voted for Bill Clinton because of the disastrous 12 years of Reagan-Bush policies that destroyed the middle class, decimated the poor, and threatened civil liberties with their radical agenda for the Supreme Court. The choice was clear. The only other choices were the elder George Bush, who reaped the evil Ronald Reagan sowed, or a psychotic billionaire dwarf named Ross Perot, whose only vindication, all these years later, is that he was correct about the large flushing sound created by NAFTA....

Da man.

502) Stardust Memories/DVD Review/Dan Schneider One of the interesting things about a great work of art is how, upon re-experience a) it holds up and/or b) deepens into something even better. From the first time I saw Woody Allen’s 88-minute black-and-white 1980 effort Stardust Memories (made early on in Woody’s Golden Era of 1977-1992) on a VHS tape, I knew I was watching one of the greatest films ever made....

A classic.

503) Never Let Me Go/Book Review/Jessica Schneider One of the bad things about being a great writer is that readers will come to expect that writer to reach greatness every time, and so if a work falls just short at very good or merely excellent, this can be a disappointment. This is just what Kazuo Ishiguro’s most recent novel, Never Let Me Go does. Because I have read now all of the works of Ishiguro — who has written great books like The Remains of the Day and An Artist of the Floating World as well as near great books such as A Pale View of Hills and The Unconsoled -- I can say that Never Let Me Go let me down a bit but that is only because I expect more from him than I would other writers....

Pretty good.

504) Rescue Dawn/DVD Review/Dan Schneider It’s been quite a few years since Werner Herzog did a major fictive film. The last couple of decades has seen an increasing veer into documentaries and more experimental cinema. However, with the 2007 film, Rescue Dawn, Herzog shows that the years have not taken their all too inexorable toll on the visionary mind. While the film is not an inarguably great masterpiece along the lines of some of his classic fictive films from the 1970s, it is a terrific war film, but, more so, a terrific prison escape and action film, even as it wholly subverts many of those subgenre’s worst banalities....

Herzog in command.

505) Approaching 70/Poem/Dan Schneider

Aging's not so bad.

506) Ruthless/Book Review/Jessica Schneider If you are laughing upon sight of this review of Ruthless: A Tell-All Book, I can say that I join you in your laughing. I’m going to be upfront and say that I’m no fan of Oprah Winfrey for many reasons. Yet, one would think that I’d be giving this trashy anti-Oprah book positive reviews then, right? First, a bit of background....

Oprah sucks- old news.

507) All Aunt Hagar's Children/Book Review/Dan Schneider Reading the latest book of short stories put out by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, was a profound disappointment because, unlike bad writers like Dave Eggers, T.C. Boyle, David Foster Wallace, newcomers like Donald Ray Pollock, or literary leeches like Thomas Steinbeck, Jones actually has (or had) writing talent. His 1991 book of short stories, Lost In The City, actually was a great piece of literature, with an astounding nine of its fourteen stories reaching greatness (utterly unheard of for published manuscripts). However, The Known World, his 2003 novel that actually won him the Pulitzer, was merely a mediocrity....

Bad from great.

508) Anne Of Green Gables/Book Review/Jessica Schneider I have been a longtime fan of the Anne of Green Gables made-for-TV movies, starring Megan Follows as Anne. Those films had done such a good job that I thought they’d be impossible to beat, and hence I only finally got around to reading the classic children’s tale, published back in 1908. The book is a very good one, and certainly a great children’s tale, yet it falls just short of the films....

Quality lit.

509) Last Year In Marienbad/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Forget all prior claims you’ve read about Alain Resnais‘ 90-minute, black-and-white L’Année dernière à Marienbad / Last Year in Marienbad (1961) from the bad to the good, from publicity nonsense which declaims the three main characters are named after letters (they are actually unnamed), and see it raw; for then you’ll see why greatness is its own company. That’s because the difference between this truly great film, a work of art considered a cinematic high point, and the 1962 Carnival of Souls, considered a B-horror film, are minimal. Their similarities, however, are considerable, even though I doubt that the latter film’s director, Herk Harvey, had even seen Last Year in Marienbad while making his only feature. I say this because Last Year in Marienbad truly is one of those works of art that the moment it is experienced the viewer connects with it as something they feel has always been. It is like that tune you hear that becomes a Top 40 hit, and you swear you’ve known it for years....

Escherian bliss.

510) Vampyr/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The Criterion Collection will shortly be releasing a two-disk version of the 1932 black and white classic horror film by Carl Theodor Dreyer, Vampyr. I first watched this film about twenty years ago, on a VHS release, and, unlike many others, immediately recognized it as a supernal piece of cinema. Then, I did not have the critical knowledge to discern why, but I do now, and will explicate....

A classic.

512) High And Low/DVD Review/Dan Schneider While most well known for his classic Japanese period dramas, such as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Throne Of Blood, the fact is that director Akira Kurosawa’s lasting legacy will be sustained by his towering achievements in then contemporary Japanese drama — films such as Ikiru, The Bad Sleep Well, and 1963’s black and white crime drama High And Low.....

Akira kicks ass.

511) Sonnet For My Pretty Skirt/Poem/Jessica Schneider

Good stuff.

513) The Rules Of The Game/DVD Review/Dan Schneider French filmmaker Jean Renoir’s 1939 black and white classic, The Rules Of The Game (La Règle Du Jeu), routinely shows up on Top Five lists for best films ever, along with classics like Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, and Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story....

Overrated.

514) Vampyr/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The Criterion Collection will shortly be releasing a two-disk version of the 1932 black and white classic horror film by Carl Theodor Dreyer, Vampyr. I first watched this film about twenty years ago, on a VHS release, and, unlike many others, immediately recognized it as a supernal piece of cinema. Then, I did not have the critical knowledge to discern why, but I do now, and will explicate....

A classic.

515) Shock Corridor/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Director Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor is one of those wildly aberrant works of art than can be called great, on some levels, and utter schlock, on other levels. And both are correct assessments of this film that can only be termed a didactic melodrama. What results, though, is that one is left with a so-so film- not the piece of pulp garbage that many reviewers first assailed the black and white film (with dream sequence snippets in color) as, upon its release in 1963, nor the masterpiece that revisionists have proffered in later auteur-based assessments. It had been almost a quarter century since I last watched the film, but recently popped in The Criterion Collection DVD of the film, and rediscovered its ‘charms.’....

Hit and miss.

516) The Wild Places/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Whenever I read a book that isn’t great but merely good, the writer will fall into two categories. The first is where the writer could be great, if only some trimming and tweaking were done. Frank McCourt falls into this category with his classic memoir Angela’s Ashes, for while the book is filled with terrific scenes and description, structurally the book is weak. The second involves a writer that, despite being good technically, lacks the “highs” of the first writer. Macfarlane falls into this second category, for while The Wild Places is technically a good, solid book, there is something missing from the writing that no amount of tweaking could ever make it a great work....

So-so.


		The Other Sources! Cosmoetica Links Schneider Online Schneider Online2 Webliography: Title/Subject/Author NEW WRITINGS! 517) Borat/DVD Review/Dan Schneider A couple of years ago, in 2006, the biggest comedy hit was a film called Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan. The film grew out of a recurring character on a British television show, Da Ali G. Show, created by Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. I mention the man’s religion because the film attacks anti-Semitism in a brutally funny way, even as many dull-witted critics accuse the film of that bias.... Hilarious. 518) Pather Panchali/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Somewhere between the Oriental placidity of a great Yasujiro Ozu film and the harsh reality of a great Vittorio De Sica drama lies the world of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, the first of his Apu Trilogy of films. And in case there was any doubt, that place is a very, very good one for any filmmaker to be, for the two aforementioned filmmakers were masters of their own sorts of films, and- if this one, and first, film of Ray’s is an indication, the same plaudits can be ascribed to Ray, a former advertising firm’s employee who struck out on his own to raise Indian cinema from the melodramatic doldrums it had been in since its creation.... Classic. 519) Au Hasard Balthazar/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The greatness of Robert Bresson’s 1966 black and white film, Au Hasard Balthazar (which, translated, means something like Randomly Balthazar or By Chance Balthazar), comes not from only one aspect of it, nor even just a few. Virtually every aspect of the film reeks and resonates greatness, although, despite this being the near full consensus opinion of film lovers and critics alike, a reading of the criticism suggests it is one of the most poorly understood films.... Nonpareil. 520) Red Clay, Blue Cadillac/Book Review/Dan Schneider Michael Malone is most well known for being the lead writer on the American soap opera One Life To Live. As someone who has watched soap operas and other serial fictions for years. I do not hold this against him. However, having read his collection of twelve stories centered on Southern belles, Red Clay, Blue Cadillac, I can say that he certainly doesn't hide the fact of his past employment.... Better than expected. 521) The Conscience Of A Liberal/Book Review/Dan Schneider In reading Paul Krugman’s 2007 book, The Conscience Of A Liberal, I wanted to be able to speak of his writing style, as much as of his opinions, politically and economically. This is because I simply get tired of books being criticized simply for their arguments and not how they are presented. In the last year or so, as example, I got two books that exemplified this approach.... Good stuff. 501) Campaign 2008/Obama/Dan Schneider I am a political Independent who has voted in the last three Presidential General Elections for Ralph Nader. I did so, despite my Democratic roots, because I am a pragmatist and the last three Republican candidates for President were unappealing- not a budding Abe Lincoln nor Teddy Roosevelt in the lot. In 1992 I voted for Bill Clinton because of the disastrous 12 years of Reagan-Bush policies that destroyed the middle class, decimated the poor, and threatened civil liberties with their radical agenda for the Supreme Court. The choice was clear. The only other choices were the elder George Bush, who reaped the evil Ronald Reagan sowed, or a psychotic billionaire dwarf named Ross Perot, whose only vindication, all these years later, is that he was correct about the large flushing sound created by NAFTA.... Da man. 502) Stardust Memories/DVD Review/Dan Schneider One of the interesting things about a great work of art is how, upon re-experience a) it holds up and/or b) deepens into something even better. From the first time I saw Woody Allen’s 88-minute black-and-white 1980 effort Stardust Memories (made early on in Woody’s Golden Era of 1977-1992) on a VHS tape, I knew I was watching one of the greatest films ever made.... A classic. 503) Never Let Me Go/Book Review/Jessica Schneider One of the bad things about being a great writer is that readers will come to expect that writer to reach greatness every time, and so if a work falls just short at very good or merely excellent, this can be a disappointment. This is just what Kazuo Ishiguro’s most recent novel, Never Let Me Go does. Because I have read now all of the works of Ishiguro — who has written great books like The Remains of the Day and An Artist of the Floating World as well as near great books such as A Pale View of Hills and The Unconsoled -- I can say that Never Let Me Go let me down a bit but that is only because I expect more from him than I would other writers.... Pretty good. 504) Rescue Dawn/DVD Review/Dan Schneider It’s been quite a few years since Werner Herzog did a major fictive film. The last couple of decades has seen an increasing veer into documentaries and more experimental cinema. However, with the 2007 film, Rescue Dawn, Herzog shows that the years have not taken their all too inexorable toll on the visionary mind. While the film is not an inarguably great masterpiece along the lines of some of his classic fictive films from the 1970s, it is a terrific war film, but, more so, a terrific prison escape and action film, even as it wholly subverts many of those subgenre’s worst banalities.... Herzog in command. 505) Approaching 70/Poem/Dan Schneider Aging's not so bad. 506) Ruthless/Book Review/Jessica Schneider If you are laughing upon sight of this review of Ruthless: A Tell-All Book, I can say that I join you in your laughing. I’m going to be upfront and say that I’m no fan of Oprah Winfrey for many reasons. Yet, one would think that I’d be giving this trashy anti-Oprah book positive reviews then, right? First, a bit of background.... Oprah sucks- old news. 507) All Aunt Hagar's Children/Book Review/Dan Schneider Reading the latest book of short stories put out by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, was a profound disappointment because, unlike bad writers like Dave Eggers, T.C. Boyle, David Foster Wallace, newcomers like Donald Ray Pollock, or literary leeches like Thomas Steinbeck, Jones actually has (or had) writing talent. His 1991 book of short stories, Lost In The City, actually was a great piece of literature, with an astounding nine of its fourteen stories reaching greatness (utterly unheard of for published manuscripts). However, The Known World, his 2003 novel that actually won him the Pulitzer, was merely a mediocrity.... Bad from great. 508) Anne Of Green Gables/Book Review/Jessica Schneider I have been a longtime fan of the Anne of Green Gables made-for-TV movies, starring Megan Follows as Anne. Those films had done such a good job that I thought they’d be impossible to beat, and hence I only finally got around to reading the classic children’s tale, published back in 1908. The book is a very good one, and certainly a great children’s tale, yet it falls just short of the films.... Quality lit. 509) Last Year In Marienbad/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Forget all prior claims you’ve read about Alain Resnais‘ 90-minute, black-and-white L’Année dernière à Marienbad / Last Year in Marienbad (1961) from the bad to the good, from publicity nonsense which declaims the three main characters are named after letters (they are actually unnamed), and see it raw; for then you’ll see why greatness is its own company. That’s because the difference between this truly great film, a work of art considered a cinematic high point, and the 1962 Carnival of Souls, considered a B-horror film, are minimal. Their similarities, however, are considerable, even though I doubt that the latter film’s director, Herk Harvey, had even seen Last Year in Marienbad while making his only feature. I say this because Last Year in Marienbad truly is one of those works of art that the moment it is experienced the viewer connects with it as something they feel has always been. It is like that tune you hear that becomes a Top 40 hit, and you swear you’ve known it for years.... Escherian bliss. 510) Vampyr/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The Criterion Collection will shortly be releasing a two-disk version of the 1932 black and white classic horror film by Carl Theodor Dreyer, Vampyr. I first watched this film about twenty years ago, on a VHS release, and, unlike many others, immediately recognized it as a supernal piece of cinema. Then, I did not have the critical knowledge to discern why, but I do now, and will explicate.... A classic. 512) High And Low/DVD Review/Dan Schneider While most well known for his classic Japanese period dramas, such as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Throne Of Blood, the fact is that director Akira Kurosawa’s lasting legacy will be sustained by his towering achievements in then contemporary Japanese drama — films such as Ikiru, The Bad Sleep Well, and 1963’s black and white crime drama High And Low..... Akira kicks ass. 511) Sonnet For My Pretty Skirt/Poem/Jessica Schneider Good stuff. 513) The Rules Of The Game/DVD Review/Dan Schneider French filmmaker Jean Renoir’s 1939 black and white classic, The Rules Of The Game (La Règle Du Jeu), routinely shows up on Top Five lists for best films ever, along with classics like Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, and Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story.... Overrated. 514) Vampyr/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The Criterion Collection will shortly be releasing a two-disk version of the 1932 black and white classic horror film by Carl Theodor Dreyer, Vampyr. I first watched this film about twenty years ago, on a VHS release, and, unlike many others, immediately recognized it as a supernal piece of cinema. Then, I did not have the critical knowledge to discern why, but I do now, and will explicate.... A classic. 515) Shock Corridor/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Director Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor is one of those wildly aberrant works of art than can be called great, on some levels, and utter schlock, on other levels. And both are correct assessments of this film that can only be termed a didactic melodrama. What results, though, is that one is left with a so-so film- not the piece of pulp garbage that many reviewers first assailed the black and white film (with dream sequence snippets in color) as, upon its release in 1963, nor the masterpiece that revisionists have proffered in later auteur-based assessments. It had been almost a quarter century since I last watched the film, but recently popped in The Criterion Collection DVD of the film, and rediscovered its ‘charms.’.... Hit and miss. 516) The Wild Places/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Whenever I read a book that isn’t great but merely good, the writer will fall into two categories. The first is where the writer could be great, if only some trimming and tweaking were done. Frank McCourt falls into this category with his classic memoir Angela’s Ashes, for while the book is filled with terrific scenes and description, structurally the book is weak. The second involves a writer that, despite being good technically, lacks the “highs” of the first writer. Macfarlane falls into this second category, for while The Wild Places is technically a good, solid book, there is something missing from the writing that no amount of tweaking could ever make it a great work.... So-so.
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