i don't love wes anderson

Richard Brody's recent puff profile of Wes Anderson in the New Yorker (which can be read here ) vexed and perplexed me. This is partly due to Brody's semi-inappropriate cheerleading and back-patting of Anderson's efforts and partly due to Anderson himself who - according to the essay - seemingly makes movies to merely reference other movies, not because they're willed into creation by some deep internal necessity. This in turn breeds a certain, say,  inauthenticity in his characters which by some accounts is grand and by others grand folly. I'm in the latter camp. as is this assessment of life aquatic from n+1 which Brody references.

Don't get me wrong, I love love Bottle Rocket and like-love Rushmore - perhaps b/c the first has the ambitions of the nascent filmmaker on full display and the second has its roots in slight biography; they're also the least self-concious of his attempts -  but it's all been downhill from there, each sucessive movie a more labored effort to watch. Is the well dry?

I feel compelled to include that I have an inherent alarm bell that rings when the rich (c/f spike jonze) have these artistic vagabond narratives spun about their early formative experiences and then go on to get really into fashion and culture and being in magazines. maybe i'm just jealous.

sentence of the day 11.08.09

"There's not a shower head in the world that can accommodate a waffle"

bp to mm, responding to her idea, early AM.

The Ascent

some time ago at the library i randomly picked up The Ascent
by Larisa Sheptiko

based pretty much on cover art and synopsis.

just watched, mouth agape. holy crap.
Stunning, staggering images.
Use of sound and music.

Have not been as struck by a film in a long time and the fact that it's a random find makes it all the sweeter.

Who is this woman?

Shining, The

On Halloween night we decided to stay home and rewatch The Shining. I've seen it probably 20 times previous with most interpretations circling some varietal of horror/domesticity but this time I finally got it in clear precision: The genocidal history of the United States. This is somewhat buttressed by Bill Blakemore's essay in the San Fran Chronicle but the essay only goes so far to my thinking, limiting the scope to decimation of native americans and leaving it there. While the film certainly does include that I couldn't help but feel that was more of a leaping off place, noting the placement of red/white/blue in nearly every frame, the iconography and symbols of USA surrounding Danny (goofy, apollo usa, baseball bats), the watered-down revisionist telling of events at the Overlook by Stuart Ullman (his initials a reversing of US), the placement of American flags, the British servant handing the reins over to Jack, and most pertinently, the final shot of the film, the push in to the photograph of the Overlook Hotel's 4th of July celebration in 1924. The man that oversaw genocide and widespread race destruction is not a mere antecedant of the modern man - his alcoholism, his abuse, his frustrations at the domesticity that entraps him - but in fact, the very same individual. Oh Kubrick, I love thee so. In every frame.  


edited to add link to this spot-on take on the shining written w/ more smarts and patience than i can manage

cure for what ails

margaret and i were both home sick 3 days in a row. a perfect opportunity to rewatch that's entertainment to my way of thinking, a perfect opportunity to make endless fun of me for doing so to margaret's. Fine, throw me your taunts gentle woman, tease, prod, laugh at me. But try to deny the curative powers of fred astaire and ginger rogers and you'll be doing a fool's errand.
oh yes. you will.

sentence of the day 11.5.09

"Look right when you drive!"

mm crossing the street yelling at an oblivious driver just after slamming her hand on the hood

death of a chimpanzee

if you haven't encountered this elsewhere on the internet
the story is here