RMWMTMBM Archive

Doctor Nobody, or: How I Learned to Stop Sitting Passively By and Actually Fight the MOOC Machine

As just-another college professor, it’s hard not to feel like the war against MOOCs is more than a little bit like the War on Drugs, or the War or Terror, or the War on Poverty.  The “enemy” is largely nonspecific, nonlocatable, plural, mutable, incredibly powerful and often invisible.  It’s hard to tell on which front…

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31 Day Film Challenge, Day 13: A Film With Your Least Favorite Actor

Today’s is the easiest pick of the 31 Day Film Challenge by a long-shot.  I really, truly, deeply and categorically cannot stand Matt Damon. As much as I wish I could, I cannot put a finger on exactly what it is that irks me so much about Matt Damon.  I like many, even most, of…

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31 Day Film Challenge, Day 12: A Film With Your Favorite Actor/Actress

So, I know I chose both a Jeff Bridges and a Coen brothers film just a couple of days ago, but I can’t help it.  I’m doing it again today. Jeff Bridges is an unlikely pick, I know, but he’s definitely one of my favorite actors.  And if I’m forced (which I am today) to…

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31 Day Film Challenge, Day 11: The Best Sports Film

About eight months ago, when I was planning the syllabus for last semester’s Philosophy of Film course, I had exactly the same problem I’m having today trying to determine which is the “best” of the hundreds of truly great sports films.  Here was (and is) my dilemma:  when I think of sport as an important…

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31 Day Film Challenge, Day 10: A Film From Your Favorite Director

My “favorite Director” is, technically speaking, two directors:  the brothers Ethan and Joel Coen.  Although they are separate people, of course, who have talents distinct from one another, it is still the case that most cinephiles treat them as the single entity “Coen brothers.”  It was hard to pass over many in the pantheon of…

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31 Day Film Challenge, Day 9: Best Documentary Film

As I mentioned a few days ago, I am in the process of making my first documentary film this summer, so I probably thought a good deal more about today’s prompt than I otherwise might have.  There are so many different types of documentaries and the ones I like the most, I like for very…

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31 Day Film Challenge, Day 8: A Film That You Can Quote A Line From

Like a lot of other people doing the 31 Day Film Challenge, I can quote “a” line from most film’s that I’ve seen.  I can quote several lines from all the good films I’ve seen.  Some films, like Casablanca and The Godfather and The Holy Grail, include dialogue that has embedded itself so deeply in…

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Working In Memphis: A Documentary

I thought I might interrupt the 31 Day Film Challenge for a moment to update you readers on my own little adventure into film-making.  I’ve undertaken a project this summer that I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time: a documentary film about “working” Memphis musicians. For what it’s worth, all the photos in…

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30 Day Song Challenge (The Sequel), Day 28: A Song You Like By a Band/Artist You First Discovered in the Last Year

It’s funny how the process of “discovering” an artist or band happens sometimes.  Nowadays, when almost every venue for purchasing or pirating music auto-recommends artists/bands to you, it’s very easy to get caught in a self-reinforcing loop of your own tastes and, correspondingly, it’s very difficult to just stumble upon something genuinely “new” to you. …

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30 Day Song Challenge (The Sequel), Day 26: A Song By a Band/Artist You’d Like To Have Dinner With

I’m going to assume that today’s prompt means for me to pick among living artists/bands, partly because it would be really creepy to have dinner with a dead person, but more so because the idea of choosing a dinner guest from all the living and dead artists ever is far too daunting a project for…

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