* One thing I meant to call out in particular from David Bordwell’s excellent essay on criticism yesterday but didn’t was this passage on “reflectionism”:

Reviews seldom indulge in analysis, which typically consumes a lot of space and might give away too much. Nor do reviewers usually float interpretations, but when they do, the most common tactic is reflectionism. A current film is read in relation to the mood of the moment, a current political controversy, or a broader Zeitgeist. A cynic might say that this is a handy way to make a film seem important and relevant, while offering a ready-made way to fill a column. Reviewers don’t have a monopoly on reflectionism, though. It’s present in the essayistic think-piece and in academic criticism too.

To this he appends a footnote:

Reflectionist interpretation usually seems to me unpersuasive, for reasons I’ve discussed in Poetics of Cinema, pp. 30-32. I realize that I’m tilting at windmills. Reflectionism will be with us forever.

Besides giving me something to add to my reading list, Bordwell has gifted me here with a term for the lamentable fixation of mainstream reviewers on sociopolitical allegory, real or imagined, in genre films generally and horror films specifically. As Bordwell implies, this tendency is by no means limited to genre and may or may not be a worthwhile line of inquiry.

* EW’s fanboy-writ-large Doc Jensen takes a look at 17 unsolved mysteries from Lost. I’m glad he called out the fatuity of the show’s creators’ half-assed treatment of the mysterious Numbers, because he actually has their ear. Dropped ball on “Adam and Eve,” though. (Via Whitney Matheson.)

* Because the only thing cooler than water monsters is water monsters from subterranean bodies of water, based on the plot description in this piece about how the guy who designed the Cloverfield monsters is working on the movie, I am now looking forward to the remake of Piranha.

* In an earlier, Spoiler Warning-free iteration of this post, Matthew Perpetua took the liberty of revealing to me the secret of M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming film The Happening, goddammit.

* Speaking of Shyamalan, Not Coming to a Theater Near You’s Leo Goldsmith takes a look at the director’s underrated superhero thriller Unbreakable. Ah, that opening train-crash sequence shot. Long-take heaven.

* Dave at Rue Morgue posts the poster for Maniac. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.

* This parody video centering on a deluxe Tokyo hotel that doubles as a giant robot makes good use of uncanny immensity, something that all parody videos should probably do. (Via Topless Robot.)

* Your video of the day is “Let Me Go” by Heaven 17. The whole first two thirds is an redolent with the promise of the final third (you can’t miss when it kicks off)–it’s one of the most brilliantly structured pop songs I’ve ever heard.

* Finally, in the vein of my months-long project of Netflixing The Wire and watching it during my lunchbreaks, I’ve lately been doing the same with Deadwood. So far it makes The Wire look like CSI Miami, but the real reason I bring it up is because last night I had a sex dream about Calamity Jane and I don’t know how to feel about this. (I should note that this dream began with me being engaged to Gene Hackman’s daughter, who I barely knew and whose name I couldn’t even remember, and ended with me locking my father and uncles into a room, then holding the door shut while I listened in horror as they succumbed to the zombie bites they’d incurred earlier, tormenting myself by trying to discern who was the last to turn and therefore the first victim of the other two. It made the Jane-sex seem a lot less uncomfortable in retrospect.)

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