Ganjasaurus Rex was a failed attempt by the Reagan administration to infiltrate and destroy the stoner community from within. The plan went that the filmmakers would deliberately create the kind of trashy, poorly-made cult film that gets passed around on bootleg VHS tapes by bemused and stoned individuals; the insidious twist being that, upon seeing the film, the viewers would, via a Ludovico-type technique, associate the horrific, painful process of watching the film with the consumption of cannabis itself, compelling…

Had to sit on this for a few days. Still super provisional, could see my rating go up or down on rewatch; want to revisit after re-reading Vineland to compare it to (haven't looked at that one since high school, and probably won't get to it for a while as I just finished a second read of Gravity's Rainbow over the summer and have Shadow Ticket coming up next week, so will be all Rugglesed out for the near future).…

What a time capsule. The product of a kind of american liberalism that doesn't really exist anymore: deifying of the Kennedy dynasty*, anti-militarist from a framework that it's been "corrupted" by big business interests, utterly cynical about the role of the intelligence agencies in American life but also 100% convinced of the most boyscoutish vision of our founding fathers' freedom-loving ideals. They just don't make Cranks Who Are Kinda Onto Something like this anymore, certainly none capable of spinning a…

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Ratatoing. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer’s head. There’s also Marcel Toing’s nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes,…