Left to my own devices

Long time readers of this blog, as well as those who know me personally, are fully aware that I love music. Along with music, I'm also partial to the odd music video (whenever one comes along these days). They're a dying art form, but one that, if done well, can be just as exquisite as a painting. What better way to celebrate the music video than to present my 10 favorite ones? Note: another list of truth is to follow. Here we go!

English actor James Norton is our Pic of the Week. Fans of PBS will know him from his TV show Grantchester,  whose second season has just finished airing in the U.S.

The people who unnerve me the most are those who are doggedly assured about everything. For better or worse, I am not like that. From the universe to faith, from gun control to politics, it is often shades of grey for this 40-year-old. If others have it all figured out, bully for them. But they scare me. The older I get, the more I see things through a prism of uncertainty. In fact I am so uncertain, I've no idea whether this is a normal progression of aging human thought, or if it's an anomaly derived from some inner quirk or foible. I suspect it may be a bit of both. When I was younger, I saw the world with a fair amount of assuredness. Things were black & white. X was good, Y was bad. I knew such things to be self-evident. Older people would sometimes shake their head, and I'd hear things like, "It's not that simple, Matt," or "Life is more complicated than that." I shook my head at them. They'd let the world beat them down ...

Reading Matt Zoller Seitz's remembrance of his wife , Jennifer, on the tenth anniversary of her death, filled me with a sense of dread, sadness and anxiety. Despite having read Matt's reviews on RogerEbert.com for years and being aware of the books he's written about director Wes Anderson, this was an aspect of his life of which I was unaware. I felt sadness for his loss, even though it is now a decade old. The dread and anxiety crept-in because such a read will invariably make one reflect on their own life situation and think, 'Oh no, what if it happens to me?!' Ashley & I will have been together sixteen years this June. First and foremost: if anything ever happened to him, I would be devastated. Of that, there is no doubt. It's not something I dwell on, though I do think about it perhaps more than I should. Every time he drives to work, or even goes off to the store on his own, I hope he comes back. I've known people whose spouses have died in...

Be wary of people who like to say they don't care what anyone thinks about them, for those are often the people who care the most about others' opinions. There's nothing wrong with that. As human beings, we do not live in a vacuum, devoid of social interaction and all that comes with it. The need to impress and gain approval is fairly ingrained in us, and to deny it is silly at best, folly at worst. Thus we land on a topic that's been foremost on my mind this past week. Another Ebertfest has come and gone and, with it, a reminder of the book that I never wrote, and likely never will. It was to be a collection of film reviews, and some of the work had already been done. For a few years during the early aughts, I wrote reviews on Amazon, many of them for movies I'd seen. Some of them needed a bit of polish, but for the most part, they were a good spring board for a nice collection. The plan was to edit those film reviews, and write perhaps twenty or thirty mo...

We're a little over a quarter-way through the year, the Roger Ebert Film Festival is about to kick-off, and so I thought it would be a good time to take stock and rank the 2016 films I've seen thus far. It's been an interesting year.... 1. Hello, My Name Is Doris The three leads -- Sally Field, Max Greenfield and Tyne Daly -- turn-in such delightful performances in this gem of a film. Doris, an eccentric sixty-something woman, develops a crush on her thirty-something co-worker, and awkward hilarity ensues. Really sweet movie. 2. 10 Cloverfield Lane Look up the word "taut" in the dictionary, and a still from this film should accompany it. An engrossing, stage play-like tour de force from the three main actors, combined with great direction and pulse-pounding music, makes this an edge-of-your-seat experience. 3. Eye In the Sky Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman (in his last live-action role) headline this tense political thriller about ...

Our of pic of the week is model Mitchell Slaggert. Enjoy.