I wanna write about some films and a book.... I don't feel like I have the adequate critical training for them, and it's uhhh well it's 9:49 but it feels early as shit to me.
A Married Woman -- This is an old Godard film that is apparently not held in high regard, since it isn't in print and the copy I saw was, to put it mildly, shambling. The subtitles were incomplete (it seemed like about 80% of what was said was translated) and in big blocky letters like they were done on some 1971 computer, rife with misspellings and short lines would linger forever and paragraphs would blink by, and the video tape was practically held together by dust.
Very good movie. Very enjoyable... made me hornier than a motherfucker too, and it was essentially a PG-13 movie. This is another case where censorship helps the matter (or, if not censorship, judicious licentiousness). Godard's artistic and symbolic use of various G/PG/PG-13 body parts shown isolated at odd angles as the wife and her lover, then her husband, ramble about their love life, or sex life, or philosophy, is 1000000 times smarter and more titillating than anything to come out of Hollywood in the last 25 years. When a director knows what he's doing, the act of a bra being put on is more hot than some 20-minute shag scene. Godard knows what he's doing.
I suppose if I had a complaint, it's that the husband isn't the nicest dude, but these French films (Godard, Rohmer, Truffaut...) aren't trying to present a "perfect" romance, or to paraphrase Mark E Smith they aren't here-ah to cheer you up-ah!!!, they are here to move you and ruminate for you and present oddly-colliding lives for entertainment value.
Alphaville - Aaah, a celebrated movie, restored on exquisite DVD, and starring Anna Karina, so surely I liked it more than A Married Woman, right?
Uh, no... it was really good, but I think I prefer the former.
Yes, Alphaville is surreal, yes it is more unpredictable, yes Anna Karina friggin' melts me when she looks at the camera... she looks deep into the camera and delivers poetry *shiver*... yes, it has very beautiful shots restored lovingly in DVD, and yes it has that creepy-ass voice for Alpha 60, but I still think A Married Woman is slightly more engaging.
Also, I believe both movies have almost the exact same speech in them, about living in the present being "the only place life is possible" as opposed to the past or future, which are merely memory or conjecture. I say "I believe" because I watched AMW, then watched 1/2 of Alphaville before falling asleep and watching the rest in the morning... yet I swear the speech made by the wife to her husband (after he gets back from his flight and their having dinner with his colleague) in the former is totally repeated between Ivan/Lemmy and Alpha 60 in the latter.
Anyway.... I've been writing for 20 minutes now... Old School by Tobias Wolff is a very enjoyable novel. Not fun-fun, but poignant, true to... what it needs to be true to. Is it autobiographical at all? I dunno. It's the story of a private boys school in 1960-61, and the following years, for one studen there. His literary aspirations and heroes. The inevitable private-school type stuff: kids getting expelled? Kids sneaking secret smokes? Teachers personal problems? Rivalries? Like Prego spaghetti sauce, it's all in there... although this is more classy cuisine than shit you'd find next to some can o' Hunts in your grocery. Wolff knows how to write... damn it! (I do, too; did you notice that classy spaghetti-sauce simile? Wow, poetry. I should really shut the fugk up when praising honest-to-god quality books.) I was a bit disappointed when it ended, and I used to think this happened when I didn't like the ending of a book but now realize it's not that I dislike the ending, or that it ended too abruptly, it's just that I didn't want it to end.
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QUESTION - What is your favorite disco-rock song?
There's so many... "The Disco Strangler"... "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?"... "Another Brick in the Wall part 2"... "Wouldn't Wanna Be Like You" by Alan Parsons...
I'd have to say it's a tie between "Kiss You All Over" by Exile and "Another Brick in the Wall part 2" by 'Floyd. It's a neck-and-neck race for coolness between blatant oral-sex reference and creepy-English-schoolkids chorus. Also, I was just thinking, "Pork Roll Egg and Cheese" by Ween is very close to disco.
A Married Woman -- This is an old Godard film that is apparently not held in high regard, since it isn't in print and the copy I saw was, to put it mildly, shambling. The subtitles were incomplete (it seemed like about 80% of what was said was translated) and in big blocky letters like they were done on some 1971 computer, rife with misspellings and short lines would linger forever and paragraphs would blink by, and the video tape was practically held together by dust.
Very good movie. Very enjoyable... made me hornier than a motherfucker too, and it was essentially a PG-13 movie. This is another case where censorship helps the matter (or, if not censorship, judicious licentiousness). Godard's artistic and symbolic use of various G/PG/PG-13 body parts shown isolated at odd angles as the wife and her lover, then her husband, ramble about their love life, or sex life, or philosophy, is 1000000 times smarter and more titillating than anything to come out of Hollywood in the last 25 years. When a director knows what he's doing, the act of a bra being put on is more hot than some 20-minute shag scene. Godard knows what he's doing.
I suppose if I had a complaint, it's that the husband isn't the nicest dude, but these French films (Godard, Rohmer, Truffaut...) aren't trying to present a "perfect" romance, or to paraphrase Mark E Smith they aren't here-ah to cheer you up-ah!!!, they are here to move you and ruminate for you and present oddly-colliding lives for entertainment value.
Alphaville - Aaah, a celebrated movie, restored on exquisite DVD, and starring Anna Karina, so surely I liked it more than A Married Woman, right?
Uh, no... it was really good, but I think I prefer the former.
Yes, Alphaville is surreal, yes it is more unpredictable, yes Anna Karina friggin' melts me when she looks at the camera... she looks deep into the camera and delivers poetry *shiver*... yes, it has very beautiful shots restored lovingly in DVD, and yes it has that creepy-ass voice for Alpha 60, but I still think A Married Woman is slightly more engaging.
Also, I believe both movies have almost the exact same speech in them, about living in the present being "the only place life is possible" as opposed to the past or future, which are merely memory or conjecture. I say "I believe" because I watched AMW, then watched 1/2 of Alphaville before falling asleep and watching the rest in the morning... yet I swear the speech made by the wife to her husband (after he gets back from his flight and their having dinner with his colleague) in the former is totally repeated between Ivan/Lemmy and Alpha 60 in the latter.
Anyway.... I've been writing for 20 minutes now... Old School by Tobias Wolff is a very enjoyable novel. Not fun-fun, but poignant, true to... what it needs to be true to. Is it autobiographical at all? I dunno. It's the story of a private boys school in 1960-61, and the following years, for one studen there. His literary aspirations and heroes. The inevitable private-school type stuff: kids getting expelled? Kids sneaking secret smokes? Teachers personal problems? Rivalries? Like Prego spaghetti sauce, it's all in there... although this is more classy cuisine than shit you'd find next to some can o' Hunts in your grocery. Wolff knows how to write... damn it! (I do, too; did you notice that classy spaghetti-sauce simile? Wow, poetry. I should really shut the fugk up when praising honest-to-god quality books.) I was a bit disappointed when it ended, and I used to think this happened when I didn't like the ending of a book but now realize it's not that I dislike the ending, or that it ended too abruptly, it's just that I didn't want it to end.
-- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - --
QUESTION - What is your favorite disco-rock song?
There's so many... "The Disco Strangler"... "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?"... "Another Brick in the Wall part 2"... "Wouldn't Wanna Be Like You" by Alan Parsons...
I'd have to say it's a tie between "Kiss You All Over" by Exile and "Another Brick in the Wall part 2" by 'Floyd. It's a neck-and-neck race for coolness between blatant oral-sex reference and creepy-English-schoolkids chorus. Also, I was just thinking, "Pork Roll Egg and Cheese" by Ween is very close to disco.
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
or anything by the band-Black Moustache.....no that is some kicking disco roack....you need not comment on the writing in the journal-it is just snippets from the novel I am writing...I like to see random reaction to bits of dialouge..