Saturday, September 11, 2004
-----------------------
In Memory of An American
I do not know anybody who died on that day, but I would like to take this moment to pay tribute to an American that comes to mind when I think about that country. Rob Myslik died young a year ago somewhere between home and a film festival. He was muse and mentor, a trickster with effervascent honesty in his sleeves--a neighborhood wolf in sheep's skin. When he taught he was an open wound at times--laying his soul on the line. It seemed he'd stay on one topic until he had "a moment" and only then would he move on. And on days when people were completely unresponsive it would get to him because he never put up any guard for it. He was attracted to the absurd, but not to the degree that it became a way of avoiding honest experience.
some random quotes I'd throw his way....
"You never have to change what you got up in the middle of the night to write." Saul Bellow
“Memories strike home, like slaps in the face….” Philip Larkin
"When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice." Saul Bellow
"I saw commercial that told me uncle john smokes his own bacon, now there's a tough son of a bitch." Bukowski
"Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining." Saul Bellow
"Do sober what you said you'd do drunk" Hemingway
"Little man has done it again. He's made a monkey out of the forces of evil." -- For Your Height Only
"I am the nemesis of the would-be forgotten" Saul Bellow
"What kind of son of a bitch puts a snake in a man's salad?" – Blindman
"Never confuse movement with action" Hemingway
"Dr. Hughes called you and told you that the tumor on her neck is definitely a fetus." -- The Manitou
"Old age is no place for sissies" Belle
"He who is vitalily alive is ready to die with life." Samuel Johnson
"If I want to listen to an asshole I'll fart." -- Go to Hell!
-----------------------
For You Gmail PeopleMindtrick has done something to relieve that pain in your ass:
Well, i wrote a small perl utility to download files from your gmail account which are actually attached to the emails, and upload the requested file by sending an email to yourself....Those who use gmail also as a backup system would like to give gmcp a try.
Friday, September 10, 2004
-----------------------
Trash (Paul Morrissey, 1970)
This films great. I was lucky to see it in the theatre a while back. The Istanbul Film Festival also ran a Paul Morrissey Trilogy screening a couple of years ago. Here's a rather hilarious interview with Paul Morrissey by Matthew Hayes (Montreal Mirror, since moved to Toronto).
"the basic idea for the movie is that drug people are trash. There's no difference between a person using drugs and a piece of refuse."--Paul Morrissey
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
-----------------------
Random Ozu DayThe number of Ozu films on DVD is kind of pathetic (there are only four on Amazon via Criterion), here are Ray Carney's thoughts when asked:
Flavor of Green Tea over rice
Must see, a critical work that brilliantly shifts from sit. com. to tragedy in mid-course
There Was a Father (Chichi ariki) (1942) 87min
skipable
Early Spring (Soshun) (1956) 144min
must see
Record of a Tenement Gentleman (Nagaya shinshi roku) (1947) 72min
skipable
Tokyo Twilight (Tokyo boshoku) (1974) 141min
should see, but not the ultimate highest supremo
A Hen in the Wind (Kaze no naka no mendori) (1948) 84min
skipable
Good Morning (Ohayo) (1959) 93min
must see
Floating Weeds (Ukigusa) (1959) 119min
should see, but not the ultimate highest supremo
Late Autumn (Akibiyori) (1960) 129min
must see....
An Autumn Afternoon (Sanma no aji) (1962) 113min
must see
And where is Late Spring in your list? Add it to the Must See group!
Ozu IS amazing. All the films are interesting, but just as with any other artist, there are "roughly zones." Even Homer wrote some lines in haste. Even Bach has a few unnecessary repeats. So, yes, some of the early films in particular are "skippable." But the ones I've marked Must See you really should try to get to. Ohayo is the only one in that group that you might skip, but since it is comic and has fart jokes, I know you wouldn't want to, so I put it on the Must See custom for you! : ) Just kidding! It's a sweet, charming flic!
Keep making trouble!
Ray
"It is always easier to be a scoffer, a debunker, a skeptic, than to open oneself to unfamiliar insights. It is always easier to resist an experience, to hold oneself above it, than to put one's certainties at risk by deeply yielding oneself to it. There are twentieth-century critics who practice the hermeneutics of faith, but for obvious reasons they do not get as much attention as the other sort of critics. They are not system builders. They are not generalizers. Their work does not make self-aggrandizing claims about literature's complicity with repressive systems of race, class, and gender. They do not offer comforting, utopian prospects of escape from those systems through projects of literary and critical cleansing. What they do offer, in fact, is not what most people want: an unending course of work, conducted through arduous acts of sustained attention, without the promise of grandiose ideological insights and sociological generalizations at the end of the road."--Ray Carney
"squeeze your nuts and open your face." ee cummings
