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Playtime

Architecture
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Since its release almost four decades ago, Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1967) has aged like a fine wine. It start­ed life as a crit­i­cal punch­ing bag and slow­ly gained recog­ni­tion as an exquis­ite­ly detailed (and very fun­ny) vision of a bland and ulti­mate­ly bleak mod­ern distopia.

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Easy Rider

Film
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I was sad­dened to read that Dennis Hopper died today at the age of 74. Obituaries are start­ing to appear here and there, and most share a view of his career as errat­ic and uneven.

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Mulholland Drive

Film
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I first saw Mulholland Drive with my friend Rana in her tiny Tokyo apart­ment. The film end­ed at mid­night and by the time we grew tired of ana­lyz­ing its many twists and turns, we real­ized day­light had already crept in through her cur­tains.

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Biography

Family
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My friends and busi­ness part­ners have been egging me on to update my port­fo­lio and web­site, and today Samsam remind­ed me that I owe my copy­writer Hala a bio out­line.

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The Godfather

Film
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From start to fin­ish, The Godfather (1972) is a mas­ter­piece of pac­ing and mood, and an excel­lent exam­ple of how the estab­lished rela­tion­ship between cin­e­ma and archi­tec­ture can be upheld while being used in com­plete­ly fresh and excit­ing ways.

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Taxi Driver

Film
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Martin Scorsese is wide­ly con­sid­ered the most influ­en­tial American film­mak­er of the last thir­ty years, and this is due in large part to his abil­i­ty to cap­ture the hec­tic ener­gy of the city in which he grew up. In many ways, Taxi Driver (1976) is his most effec­tive movie: an unre­lent­ing por­trait of angst, nihilism, and the debil­i­tat­ing effects of urban life on the psy­che.

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