sábado, 30 de mayo de 2009

this week's gems

the fucking western canon, at last

runnin down a dream (4 hours of wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow!!!!)



the sky crawlers (always hated miyazaki, but apparently planes plus oshii is just my cup of tea)



oh, jerusalem (it's crap but it's good)



leverage (why i hate guns)



nickelodeon



best:
runnin down a dream, followed by sky crawlers

domingo, 24 de mayo de 2009

touch and go

this week i painted my masterpiece in film crit, a parody of platonic crap that leaves godel's crazy antics on time behind, its just sad i have tendencies to read stuff i abhor.
it was a bad week cuz i had to go to uni, too. and the themes coincided 100 per cent. it was three days of obligatory conferences on how to stick things in or out of film noir, noir lit, pulp fiction, hard boiled categories. yeah, film noir, remember that crap the french thought they discovered, it was yap yap about that. we needed to have it explained, seemingly; even the old ladies were starting to understand not only our ironic predicament, but rather our penchant for time.
in uni, they were living in the past.
the polemic with which i burst out of film crit was exactly the same. to add insult to irony, i had warhol at a finger's distance and other absentia in purely corporate terms, uttered by spain's resident malcolm le grice. unfortunately Troll wasn't me (and neither was Unamuno) and my masterstroke died sooner, here and there, and everywhere.
touch and go cinema has nothing to do with either. theories, crits, categories only serve whoever's in the money. it's a battle between aristocratic pataphysics and working/middle class exchange and, by god, dont get scammed.

in uni they wound up stating postmodernism was the critic's invention, after denying house was film noir where the virus was the postmodernist parody of the femme fatale.
i blurbled two incoherent things at two points, displaced as i was, not really wanting to be there. i said two of the three things i 'wanted to say', when i 'didn't want say anything at all': coen brothers had a tragic cosmic undertone to their tales, i added they were also a big joke. i couldnt resist, i didnt want to be there, i didnt want to talk or explain the coens, and yet i yearned to be at home watching the ladykillers or burn after reading, in truth i wanted to be watching national lampoons with the opportunity to watch the coens.
a resident at the uni brought up pomo and the banality of the place, but, naturally, in a way that assured its future existence- as argument- just as well as the time he'd wasted as a uni junkie. bright kid, probably in the money, but none of us are bright, and we weren't saying smart things, even thou we're all smart. i added pomo was the critic's invention. it was just a quick mumble.

it was all a pedagogical/ explanatory joke; we needed theory to explain our classes. it was way back to the academic debates i saw in canterbury in 2002.

one more thing i had the knee jerk of nearly saying was that crank, that pic where whatever happens, including sex in front of a bunch of good old chinese folk, and there is no police, was the future of cinema, after an in the money teacher mentioned it as a new category, or lack of category.
and the stunning thing is what im saying isnt even intelligent, im just falling in the huge trap.

i was always two steps in front of theorists, and this won't be an exception. jojojo.
i've killed film and lit theory and crit, but what's most remarkable is that i thought the arts could be taught 4 or 5 years ago, whereas now i'm ashamed to my soul and advocate 100 per cent taste, and crit, theory, the noir genre, is taste's archrival. that letter to the cannes reviewer's newspaper is a copy of what the same guy did to taste a year ago, heckling a mainstream reviewer whining about kiarostami's latest warholisms at venice, not to mention a bloke with a penchant for mind-farts. excuse the boutades, please o theorists. never was defending some guy you havent read so relevant.

one thing thou, at the time, 4 or 5 years ago, i wasnt fully aware of post-napster, but now explanatory tomes have no present, no future. sauve qui peut la vie. its in the reader, big deal. what a stupid conclusion. just lose yourself in the tales, stupid.

missed out on frederick wiseman's aspen, which was about ski resorts, but caught his ballet, as it was either that or the evening at the conference.
i also wanted to see wiseman's variation to herzog's amazing skier, and to altman's amazing the company.
and i wanted to catch on the only two occasions wiseman's probably bothered to talk about beauty.
ballet worked beautifully, for the most part.

it's no mistake the past 5 months have been the happiest of my life, even thou i've had to painstakingly agonize over following teachers to make sure i get a pass.

so back to my first season of 'leverage'.

great pics from this week:

little murders (elliot gould!!! gets hitched by some dame, the entire pic can be seen on youtube, and it seems a repeat of the week mentioned above)



vertical limit



salaam bombay



black sheep (what about the sheep?/ fuck the sheep!)



miss austen regrets (which i saw last week, excellent and where she does the emma thing)



faves were black sheep, salaam bombay, ballet and little murders, with ballet and miss austen regrets as the leading ladies. in other words all except vertical limit, which was good but not great.

this blog is saved cuz its in lower case and more of a diary than a publication. allez y the lower case writing, for fucks sake.

sábado, 16 de mayo de 2009

this week's gems

secret honor (nixon! fuck em!!)



the go-getter (m ward plus band apart rippy!)



la drolesse (11 yr old girl with the hots for a 20 yr old slacker weirdo)



bigger stronger faster (better (research) than michael moore; just as sad as it's funny, and the guy winds up voting for arnie)



radioactive dreams (great soundtrack and great shitty hilarious stuff going on from philip and marlowe)



the wanderers (just as slippery a look back at the early 60s from the late 70s, in the bronx, with strip poker too)



la notte di san lorenzo (good kid and battle scenes)



summer lovers (great soundtrack, the island, jerking off to right wing darryl hannah sexuality.. from the maker of blue lagoon and grease, and i really mean it.. and its gotta be the precursor to vicky cristina barcelona)



la vieille maitresse (chapter one hundred and whatever on how asia argento is such a good fuck)



pump up the volume (slater and cohen do the lenny bruce 10 years before napster and 20 after... joplin?)



honeysuckle rose (willie nelson and amy irving singing you show me yours; not even the dolly parton thingie dyan cannon spoils the show.. WOW!)



company man (some stuff works, some not, most does, weaver as wife, mr x vs the grammar, in any case my week's guilty pleasure)



the baader meinhof complex (it's good, kinda didactic like the che pics, but kinda just plain unhappy)



l'esquive, votre bouche avec la mienne (some bad ass femmes fast talk, not as grand statementish as some wanted, and just as bitty as i did)



dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge (music, and more, more music)



a couple of games from last week:
barça bitchslapping the madrileñan 'casta'



barça getting bitchslapped by russian tactics



and this week:
barça bitchslapping athletic (and the rey thinking he's a poshy little shit from morocco or china)




movies not on youtube:
saint jack. bogdanovich picks up cassavetes gazzara, adds bogdanovich humour, singapour, faded out british imperialists to the mix, and gazzara the singapour junkie who doesnt return to the states even when he can, yet right next to ideologies, when all that's left is business)

heat and dust
ivory picks up julie christie, highly sexy, or fuckable in the pic, unlike in the messy david lean ones. and how could i not like christie in india? loved it, but not as much as quartet.

dyn amo
dwoskin makes a horror movie out of sexuality by making it a circus. rather harrowing, or sexy.

a stunning week by any standards, just stunning. these are only the good movies i've seen.

head and shoulders above the rest, dilwale.

greats, tops any other week:
the wanderers
honeysuckle rose
summer lovers

grand movies:
saint jack
la drolesse
dyn amo
l'esquive
barna bitchslapping mandril

good to great pics:
secret honor
heat and dust
radioactive dreams
la vieille maitresse

good and good ones:
pump up the volume
bigger stronger faster
the go getter

good munches:
la notte di san lorenzo
baader meinhof complex
company man
barna getting bitchslapped by chelseas
barna's bitchslapping of athletic

sábado, 9 de mayo de 2009

this week's gems

lady in the water



the man in the moon (w/ reese witherspoon not the other one!)



memphis belle



the white diamond



murphy's romance (lol)



quartet



talk radio



going in style



hud



piranha (lol)



i'll even stick in he's not that into you, the title's great anyways, but no clips really available. gene sak's brighton beach memoirs has no hits on youtube.

favourites, by a long shot, were hud, quartet, talk radio and the white diamond, all in a league of their own, followed, if anything by going in style, man in the moon and piranha.

sábado, 2 de mayo de 2009

this week's gems

fandango



touching the void



honky tonk man



twister



the paper chase (crappy but interesting in paarrrts)



oscar and lucinda (tal para cual, the gambling part is good)



We, the living (reminds me of the time i discovered kaurismaki)



seraphim falls



matinee



urban cowboy



and whatever happened to the remarkable jodi thelen from four friends, lovely 1981 movie that has niente hits on youtube?
these are only the 1. good movies i 2. remember watching this week.
favourites, four friends and touching the void, followed closely by fandango and urban cowboy.