David Foster Wallace’s introduction to The Best American Essays 2007 , as its editor. In typical Wallacean fashion, he spends most of the time unpacking the meaning of the collection’s title, and expounding on his selection methodology as “the Decider.”

Part of our emergency is that it’s so tempting to do this sort of thing now, to retreat to narrow arrogance, pre-formed positions, rigid filters, the “moral clarity” of the immature. The alternative is dealing with massive, high-entropy amounts of info and ambiguity and conflict and flux; it’s continually discovering new areas of personal ignorance and delusion. In sum, to really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.

(thx, kyosti)

The 121 122 best foreign language films, as chosen by a variety of critics, bloggers, and professors. The list will eventually be culled down to the top 25. I’ve seen 39 of them, and want to see most of the rest.

Today on Crazymonk’s Milchnews Daily: Milch discusses life after John from Cincinnati. He’s working on a period cop show (set in the 1970’s) and the future of the Deadwood movies doesn’t look too certain. (thx, nyctony)

Martin Scorsese on Michaelangelo Antonioni.

At the time there were two camps, the people who liked the Fellini film and the ones who liked “L’Avventura.” I knew I was firmly on Antonioni’s side of the line, but if you’d asked me at the time, I’m not sure I would have been able to explain why. I loved Fellini’s pictures and I admired “La Dolce Vita,” but I was challenged by “L’Avventura.”

Interesting, because superficially the films are sort of similar, but I can understand why there would be two camps. Can anyone think of any two topically similar modern day films that split film lovers into two camps?

Uwe Boll responds to a negative review from Wired magazine of his latest video-game movie, Postal:

your review shows me only that you dont understand anything about movies and that you are a untalented wanna bee filmmaker with no balls and no understanding what POSTAL is. you dont see courage because you are nothing. and no go to your mum and fuck her …because she cooks for you now since 30 years ..so she deserves it.
people like you are the reason that independent movies have no chance anymore.
uwe boll

Boll is no stranger to taking on critics face-to-face, literally.

Lawrence Lessig takes on Hillary Clinton for her recent vigorous defense of lobbyists. In response to her lobbyists-represent-real-Americans argument:

But just because a system is populated with good people does[n’t] mean the system itself is not corrupt. And the problem with this system is the way it obviously queers good judgment when so much effort by politicians must be devoted to raising money in order to keep your job.

He also talks a little about how Clinton has proven to be the least receptive candidate so far of a sane copyright policy.

HBO cancels John from Cincinnati, yet is “staying in business” with David Milch. I’m not surprised, but I’m getting a little flustered with HBO’s lack of foresight.

An interview with David Milch about the season finale of John from Cincinnati , and the show in general. The most interesting line, having nothing to do with JFC:

I wrote (“Deadwood’s”) Al Swearingen for Ed [O’Neill]…If he’d had that part the show would still be running.

Woah, what’s he saying about Ian McShane’s role in Deadwood ‘s cancellation?

Two clips from an upcoming DVD of Dan Deacon’s music synchronized with the hypercolorized-Conan-the-Barbarian video art of his colleage Jimmy Joe Roche. (via pf)

For you fans of The Wire : Read about the story of the real-life Omar. For those of you not in the know, Omar Little -- played by Michael Williams, the brother of poet/musician Saul Williams – is one of the greatest TV characters of all time. (thx, hugo)

Trailer for Michel Gondry’s latest film, Be Kind Rewind. A potentially thin concept, but Gondry is one of the few people who can pull it off. (via aicn)

Find out how walkable your residence is, from 1 to 100. My current apartment in Vegas is at 49, and the last two places I lived in Cambridge, MA were 86 and 95. Interestingly enough, the area we’re looking to move to in Reno had a score of 97. (thx, josh)

Fill out what issues you care about, and see what 2008 presidential candidate ideologically aligns with you most. Kucinich was number one for me, followed by Gravel, Obama, and then Clinton. In last place was Romney, surprisingly (to me) below Tancredo.

Guys and Dolls, a documentary about the domestic relationships between men and their Real Dolls. (via waxy)

Evidence , a short film by Godfrey Reggio depicting entranced children. I’ve wanted to see this for awhile now, and only this weekend found it on YouTube. The title is definitely an overstatement.

Xtreme Mormons. The funny thing is that if you toned down the parodic tone and dialogue, it could probably be fairly successful as LDS cinema.