Somehow I'm always listening to Air's soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola's 2000 film based on Jeffrey Eugenides' novel. The book, film and soundtrack all captured something unnameable and pretty frightening. Horrifying, really. [Side note: the Latin horror has its root in 'veneration' or 'religious awe' -- the idea that something could be so powerful and/or inexplicably beautiful that it causes intense fright. Though, as I see it, not necessarily in a bad way, if that makes any sense.] It's kind of like looking in on this massive, gooey thing that's not quite of this planet, except when you get closer you can tell that all the ghostly little pieces that add up to the whole are pretty familiar.
Also the album artwork by Mike Mills (not the REM bassist, the other famous Mike Mills) might be my favorite ever.
30 January 2012
25 January 2012
Jackie Wilson
Somebody somewhere at some point in time once said, "When it comes to singers, there's Jackie Wilson, and then there's everybody else."
Sputnik Sweetheart
"Who can really distinguish between the sea and what's reflected in it? Or tell the difference between the falling rain and loneliness?"
-Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
-Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
20 January 2012
Nouvelle/Nouveau
I liked these paragraphs from a new thing:
Silence. Then eerie whispering. The room felt dank with something dark and unknown. Danny thought of a massive hundred-legger, hanging upside down from the corner of an empty room, slowly cleaning its legs, waiting. He felt a hand on his knee and didn’t look up to see who it was. Whoever it was started to say something but didn’t get past a “he”-sounding syllable.
More eyes vectored on Danny, or so it seemed. His anger was fading into nothingness. He might have felt it if you pinched his bottom. Maybe. All the other drummers around him were either crying or had their heads in their hands, but Danny felt zero. Rien. Only his own anxiousness at feeling nothing, which was somehow receding, too. How do you describe nothing? He was there, witnessing the tears and grief, but felt neither bad nor good. He thought very briefly of a fresh piece of chalk pulled slowly from a full pack, one that hadn’t broken in transit.
Silence. Then eerie whispering. The room felt dank with something dark and unknown. Danny thought of a massive hundred-legger, hanging upside down from the corner of an empty room, slowly cleaning its legs, waiting. He felt a hand on his knee and didn’t look up to see who it was. Whoever it was started to say something but didn’t get past a “he”-sounding syllable.
More eyes vectored on Danny, or so it seemed. His anger was fading into nothingness. He might have felt it if you pinched his bottom. Maybe. All the other drummers around him were either crying or had their heads in their hands, but Danny felt zero. Rien. Only his own anxiousness at feeling nothing, which was somehow receding, too. How do you describe nothing? He was there, witnessing the tears and grief, but felt neither bad nor good. He thought very briefly of a fresh piece of chalk pulled slowly from a full pack, one that hadn’t broken in transit.
22 December 2011
20 December 2011
The Durrrrk Knayyyt!
I'm just as excited as probably anybody else about The Dark Knight Rises. But I'm also probably a little bit more cynical; apparently this is what happens as you approach 30 years old. Christopher Nolan's films are clearly levels above plenty of previous efforts, though I do still hold a special place for Tim Burton's first two films, like anybody around my age. They weren't perfect, but they captured a little era so perfectly you can almost forgive Kim Basinger for basically screaming for that entire first movie.
And now I'll stumble onto something: Why are the women in these movies so awful?
I should clarify: I don't entirely blame the actresses. I do blame Katie Holmes for ruining Batman Begins, even if she was handed some shitty writing, probably written by boys who grew up reading comic books filled with women who were either impossibly voluptuous or pathetically weak and clingy and nothing in between. But that's too easy. I don't care what anyone says, you don't become a Hollywood writer, at least nowadays, with that kind of warped view of what a female is. Which tells me that, especially in the Nolan films, the writers are trying really hard to walk a really fine line between writing the big boobed comic book woman who will sell tickets to young boys, yet not making her totally pathetic, bland, and dumb, and hopefully achieving a somewhat smart and powerful character.
It's a totally noble effort that sort of accidentally ends up becoming chauvinistic, because ultimately the women, to me, end up feeling almost entirely inhuman. Or even if they are kind of human, they're forced to regurgitate some downright awful lines.
So let me just clean up my puke after hearing Anne Hathaway's Catwoman whisper in that new trailer, "There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large, and leave so little for the rest of us."
It's not that the barely hidden income inequality stuff is bullshit or annoyingly topical (if you know anything about superheroes in general, it's that they are always fighting for the less fortunate out there), but that storm metaphor is just gross. It reads like a fucking stump speech. AND she's saying this to Bruce Wayne, the single biggest philanthropist in Gotham; half the plot of Batman Begins was built around the idea that Gotham was spared total economic collapse because the Wayne family gave so much. So if they're moving the plot in the "Bruce Wayne turns into a money-grubbing asshole" direction, I'm going to be supremely disappointed.
Anyway - I'm just scared. Hold me. The end of The Dark Knight where the ferries are supposed to blow each other up but don't because the goodness of mankind prevails....oof. Semi-interesting idea but I could have done without the "HEY! IN CASE YOU MISSED IT THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE MAIN THEME OF THE MOVIE" card dangling in front of the screen the whole time.
And now I'll stumble onto something: Why are the women in these movies so awful?
I should clarify: I don't entirely blame the actresses. I do blame Katie Holmes for ruining Batman Begins, even if she was handed some shitty writing, probably written by boys who grew up reading comic books filled with women who were either impossibly voluptuous or pathetically weak and clingy and nothing in between. But that's too easy. I don't care what anyone says, you don't become a Hollywood writer, at least nowadays, with that kind of warped view of what a female is. Which tells me that, especially in the Nolan films, the writers are trying really hard to walk a really fine line between writing the big boobed comic book woman who will sell tickets to young boys, yet not making her totally pathetic, bland, and dumb, and hopefully achieving a somewhat smart and powerful character.
It's a totally noble effort that sort of accidentally ends up becoming chauvinistic, because ultimately the women, to me, end up feeling almost entirely inhuman. Or even if they are kind of human, they're forced to regurgitate some downright awful lines.
So let me just clean up my puke after hearing Anne Hathaway's Catwoman whisper in that new trailer, "There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large, and leave so little for the rest of us."
It's not that the barely hidden income inequality stuff is bullshit or annoyingly topical (if you know anything about superheroes in general, it's that they are always fighting for the less fortunate out there), but that storm metaphor is just gross. It reads like a fucking stump speech. AND she's saying this to Bruce Wayne, the single biggest philanthropist in Gotham; half the plot of Batman Begins was built around the idea that Gotham was spared total economic collapse because the Wayne family gave so much. So if they're moving the plot in the "Bruce Wayne turns into a money-grubbing asshole" direction, I'm going to be supremely disappointed.
Anyway - I'm just scared. Hold me. The end of The Dark Knight where the ferries are supposed to blow each other up but don't because the goodness of mankind prevails....oof. Semi-interesting idea but I could have done without the "HEY! IN CASE YOU MISSED IT THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE MAIN THEME OF THE MOVIE" card dangling in front of the screen the whole time.
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