Korean western film takes pastiche to another level


The Good, the Bad, the Weird really moves. Oozing style from every frame, Kim Jee-woon’s Korean western starts with a thrilling train robbery in Japanese-occupied China and rarely slows down. Here is a film that understands the simple pleasure of a moving camera and moving characters. Kim’s movie is an absurd, gorgeous mash-up of Western […]

A series of tubes that won’t go away


I got the title for my Internet-themed column from ex-Senator Ted Stevens’ comments on net neutrality. In 2006, Stevens mixed up the words “Internet” and “e-mail,” and then gave an incorrect account of how e-mail traffic works, saying that “[the Internet is] not a big truck — it’s a series of tubes.” It seemed at […]

Buffett book offers advice to rich parents


Upon hearing that Peter Buffett — son of American investor Warren Buffett — wrote a motivational book entitled Life is What You Make It, your first question might be: What hard life experiences did the son of a billionaire go through that would inspire him to write a self-help book? The answer, in short, is […]

Change always present at USC


One of the most simultaneously frustrating yet promising aspects of USC is that it is a school perpetually under construction. Construction is underway at seemingly every turn of the campus. Given all the upheaval in the last four years, orange cones and yellow tape should be the official crest of the graduating class of 2010. […]