Wednesday, May 31, 2006
From 1993, Geoff Dyer’s The Search, is a brief, dreamlike, but engaging sort of detective novel that reminded me often of Paul Auster’s (superior) City of Glass. A man meets a woman at a party and seems to fall for her - but just as it looks like the book is a love story, the woman ends up hiring the man to attempt to track down her ex-husband, to sign some legal papers regarding his will. The ex-husband is also being hunted by other men who are trying to kill him. With almost no information to go on the search begins. The book travels cross country into a bizarre landscape of increasingly Little Nemo like dream-cities - each with its own unique character. The thread of the book unravels rather than coming together - opposite of your regular detective novel - the search eventually being performed by not even looking. It’s actually a really fun book. Another author it put me in mind of was Steve Erickson. I really liked these lines near the end, “The best you could hope for was to be free from the itch of restlessness, for a while at least. To put your feet up. For nothing to happen.”
Monday, May 29, 2006
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Monday, May 15, 2006
You pick up the weekly paper to flip through all the new movies of the week only to once again be stunned by the endless pile of worthless crap appearing in theaters. One wonders - why bother. How can it be that people actually care about this shit? How can people actually spend their money, or even worse - their time - watching this pathetic, revolting nothing. Yet... ultimately... a film like Michelangelo Antonioni’s from 1975, The Passenger, really makes cinema seem worthwhile. Okay - you realize - even if it takes twenty-thousand crappy movies a year to get the few truly beautiful, amazing movies like this somehow made - I guess that in some way kind of justifies the existence of all the crap. Or at least, it makes it slightly easier to accept.Of course, I’d seen The Passenger before, but somehow (possibly because it was an old beat-up pan & scanned VHS release over a decade ago?) it didn’t make quite the impression watching the brand new, frankly stunningly perfect DVD release made this evening. This mysterious masterpiece has suddenly shot up into my personal pantheon of essentials. My top ten list of movies that somehow present exactly everything I could possible imagine a movie could be. Those movies that manage to capture that mysterious something that really can’t be put into words. While Antonioni’s earlier films have their own special powers, I mean I love almost all of them, here he has captured (with Jack Nicholson providing his best(?) and most understated performance) something grittier and more human, a vision of the internal and/or external world I personally could hardly relate to more. Really, a fucking amazing movie!
Sunday, May 14, 2006
I don’t know - last night I was watching The Ladies Man, a film Jerry Lewis directed in 1961 (and stars in), and I’ve got to admit I loved it - in fact, I’d have to rank certain scenes among the funniest I’ve ever seen. One scene in particular, involving a gangster-type, his hat & Lewis, had me laughing close to as much as I ever have before in my life (the only funnier bits I can remember are W.C. Fields dentist and - a silent Laurel and Hardy short shot during a dinner). The plot of The Ladies Man is almost non-existent, merely a space to allow Lewis to ramble extremely absurdly in. Filmed almost entirely in a weird, cut-away dollhouse type set - the story features Lewis as a brokenhearted college graduate - who somehow ends up working as the “houseboy” in some kind of odd halfway house for hundreds of 20somthing wanna-be starlets, Hollywood beauties, who mostly seem to just lay around (really it almost seemed like a whorehouse!). The humor is extremely zany, surreal, off-the-wall, honestly completely cracked. Other Jerry Lewis movies may be more complete, and more satisfyingly plotted, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen one funnier (though there are still plenty I guess I‘ve never seen before). And in this case, funny is what counts most.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
A Hen in the Wind is another one of those many perfect films directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Originally released in 1948 it’s definitely among those bleak post-war style pictures, dealing with the difficulties of inflationary poverty on the lives of ordinary citizens. In this case, the plot is focused on a twenty-nine year old woman trying to raise her child on her own, while her husband rots (I’m assuming) in a P.O.W. camp. After having sold off almost everything she owns just to get by, her child gets sick, and she feels forced to turn to prostitution to pay the doctor’s bill. The story really starts when her husband finally returns home and she decides to be honest with him. The mixed feelings and raw emotions passed, make for extremely compelling viewing. The visual style of all of Ozu’s films always amazes me - I continue to be shocked by the shot by shot perfection - even though having seen countless of his films before, I should be well prepared.I know it’s crazy of me, but as the movie was winding down, I kept painfully thinking - how much better a place the world would be if more people were somehow spending their time watching and thinking about movies like these instead of, well, you know what. The themes of A Hen in the Wind are truly timeless. And since for the most part, people aren’t taking advantage of learning from these great stories, we keep getting caught in making the same goddamn mistakes. For instance, it’s hard to grasp that as I sit here peacefully typing these words, thinking these thoughts, other people are out there fighting and dying and being driven insane by war / death / etc. I can’t understand it.
Basic, interesting, but not fascinating biography of the composer Maurice Ravel. Part of the Phaidon's (defunct?) 20th-Century Composer series, which I'm slowly reading my way through. Lots of photos and illustrations scattered throughout the text are a big part of what makes these books special. Author, Gerald Larner, did seem to have some kind of weird, slightly distracting, hang-up about Ravel's sexuality. There was especially no need to focus so much of the book's epilogue on the subject. However, Larner does a good job of putting all the music and basic facts of the composer's life in a readable, chronological order. Wish he could have perhaps brought a little more enthusiasm to the task somehow. The book did lead me to a dozen or so recordings to check out - which is probably the main reason I had for digging into it in the first place anyway.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
I don’t exactly want to call Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1961 film, Mother Joan of the Angels, a masterpiece, but it is the kind of film I appreciate. The “fact” based plot is about a group of nuns possessed by Satan and the weirdo priest who comes to save ‘em. Convincing set in 1634 - the film really captures an old world feel - partially because the print used for this DVD is so beat-up that it sometimes looks like a barely preserved film from the dawn of cinema. The camera work is often tricky, without showing off excessively - a fine line to walk. At times, the movie somehow wasn’t quite as engaging as I would have hoped, the pace can be slow - although the pace is certainly purposeful. The madness, the fever, degradation and strangeness - the contrast between the white robed nuns and black frocked priest - their struggle with faith / love / death - is visually and mentally captivating (for the most part).
Saturday, May 06, 2006
While most of the novels of Philip K. Dick are filled with ever shifting plot twists, ever shifting ideas of what is “real,” 1963’s The Game Players of Titan, may take the prize by having practically no content that doesn’t get turned completely upside-down or in the opposite direction within the next several pages. Or less. Set in a future, practically depopulated Earth, in which, thanks to the effects of a Red Chinese weapon during the last war, it has become almost impossible for humans to conceive children and repopulate the planet - the plot involves a group of game playing, wife swapping, land holders who get caught up in a sort of interplanetary murder mystery (oh yes - Earth is cohabited now by telepathic “Vugs” from Titan!) in which six of the group’s members are the main suspects after they turn up with large chunks of their memories erased from the day in question.I think what makes Philip K. Dick’s most successful books click is his ability to create strange, technologically appealing worlds (flying cars, talking toaster ovens) not too different from out own (i.e. almost believable), and instead of populating them with the dull, heroic characters one would normally expect to encounter in a SF story, instead creating a cast of lovable losers and misfits, or intense, intelligent but unpleasant people. Real people. People with interests too. Then the mind-fuck of always pulling the rug out from underneath everything, again and again. One slips so easily into these paranoid, multi-angled worlds - where anything becomes possible - where one never feels the Earth stop shaking. He always shows, the more closely you examine any idea, the harder it becomes to decide what is right, what is real - if you look at the world deeply, honestly.
Like his best books, The Game-Players of Titan is also a lot of fun. It was apparently one I’d never read before too. After randomly reading his books as I stumbled across them over the years (since the mid-1980s!), I’m finally making a systematic effort to read them all - and The Game-Players of Titan is now the 20th one I’ve added to my shelf - certainly more books than I have by any other author, maybe times two - and there’s happily plenty more to go.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
La possibilité d'une île, the most recent novel by Michel Houellebecq is rambling and perhaps overlong, but it’s also his most ambitious and frankly devastating work yet. He probably needed that extra length to have the cumulative effect of the book grow so powerfully, though sometimes it feels like he’s just piling up events hoping it’s going to add up to something, and luckily it does. The somewhat overcomplicated approach has the book split into alternating chapters. A chapter for the story of Daniel1, and a short chapter for, usually, a commentary on the previous chapter, written from the perspective of one of his future (2,000 years later) clones, Daniel24 then Daniel 25. The bulk of the book could hardly be considered science fiction though - it’s much more focused on the life of Daniel, a successful, provocative comedian and filmmaker, and the two significant love affaires in his life. The first with a woman who wants love, but not sex. The second with a woman into the sex, but not into the love. Somewhat less interesting are the sections spent later in the book as he finds himself getting involved with a sort of cult, the ultimate purpose of which is to raise money for research into DNA and cloning. It’s not so much that he really gets wrapped up in their beliefs, just that he spends some time as a guest VIP at one of their retreats in the midst of important events, more as a witness than a participant. It’s the book as witness approach that gives La possibilité d'une île some of its strange, convincing power. In a way, it’s written as a sort of a gospel from the bible. However, instead of presenting a message of hope, the message is more one of exhaustion or despair for the future (and present) of mankind. Thankfully the book, especially early, also has its share of humor. Houellebecq loves to provoke and he’s up to many of his old tricks here - some light racism, sexism etcetera (the character's or the author’s or both?), but he goes about it in such a weird way as to keep it interesting instead of offensive, unless one is easily offended. Really the book has a lot in common with all three of his previous novels I’ve read, but takes everything much further, and in that sense, it’s probably also his best.
