Unlike Mike and his hi-brow students writing about Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders, I have a student who wants to write about the reproduction of black subjectivity in comedies from the 1990s. She has chosen the following titles: House Party, BAPS, Friday, Bulworth, Hollywood Shuffle, School Daze, Soul Food, and The Best Man. I’m of a mind that she has to have an understanding of comedy (if such a thing is even possible) before she can begin to treat these films as texts that tell us (her) something about the nature of black identity in 90s culture. Any advice?

This is a frivolous post, so forgive me. It is prompted by a casual exchange between Frisoli and Arnab regarding the somewhat regular cinematic appearance of Harvey Keitel’s peeeeenis. I watched “American Splendor” for a second time the other night, and I noticed that, as in “Sideways” there’s a (brief) shot of Giammati sitting on the crapper. Does anyone know of other films that feature Giammati pooping? And has anyone seen “Kings of the Road”–it features perhaps the most touching scene of a man pooping I’ve ever found in film (not that I look for it…often). Anywho, I take it that a man pooping is always a figure of pathos. I’ll be interested in seeing who responds to this first.

Twitch Film is a site I have enjoyed checking out over the last couple of months, and at the moment it is providing a link to see, in its entirety, the Oscar winning, live-action short Wasp directed by Andrea Arnold. Tough stuff but kinda cool nonetheless.