~ Mark

The King of 78s: Joe Bussard. This guy has 15,000 records and hilariously cantankerous taste in music. Although maybe that passion and nerdery foments and requires this kind of dismissive focus:

Q: Is there a music genre that you avoid?
A: Rock-n- roll. Period. Any of it. Hate it. Worse thing that happened to music. Hurt all types of music. They took blues and ruined it. It’s the cancer of music….ate into everything. Killed Country music, that’s for sure.
Q: A lot of people would claim the complete opposite. that Rock-n-Roll re invented and recharged music. What is it about rock-n-roll that annoys you so much?
A: Don’t like. Just my personal taste. Don’t like the sound of it, the meaning of it…doesn’t promote anything beautiful or meaningful. Idiotic noise, in my opinion.
Q: So artist like Miles Davis, John Coltrane don’t deserve your time?
A: Oh my god, you gotta be kidding me. None of that music moves me.

Solaris (2002)

~ Mark

Solaris (2002). I really liked the Tarkovsky version of the novel, and Soderbergh’s is very good, too. It’s more trim and spare. What I really loved was the sound throughout. Footsteps, rustle of clothing, breath. And that soundtrack! Cliff Martinez to the rescue again (see: Drive; Contagion). So perfect. That said, the script is a little painful here and there. What are you gonna do? At least the ideas about memory, empathy, regret, etc. are evergreen.

There’s not a single dud in any of the Soderbergh films I’ve seen lately. Looking forward to more. My current rankings:

  1. Haywire
  2. Out of Sight
  3. Solaris
  4. Contagion
  5. Ocean’s Trilogy, which I don’t remember all that well, honestly.

The Five Obstructions

~ Mark

The Five Obstructions. A documentary in which Lars von Trier puts his hero/mentor Jørgen Leth to the test. Leth has to recreate his own surrealist film, The Perfect Human, five times with five different sets of constraints, dreamed up off-the-cuff by Von Trier, who’s really just trying to get Leth to make something that sucks. Interesting to see the back-and-forth here. Rumor has it that Von Trier and Scorsese are going to do a similar project. My Lars Von Trier rankings:

  1. Melancholia
  2. Dancer in the Dark
  3. The Five Obstructions
  4. Antichrist

Why does the return journey feel quicker? – The Irish Times

~ Mark

Childhood holidays seem to last forever, but as you grow older time seems to accelerate. “Time” is related to how much information you are taking in – information stretches time. A child’s day from 9am to 3.30pm is like a 20-hour day for an adult. Children experience many new things every day and time passes slowly, but as people get older they have fewer new experiences and time is less stretched by information.

Why does the return journey feel quicker? – The Irish Times

Observations on film art : Unsteadicam chronicles

~ Mark

Run-and-gun technique doesn’t demand that you develop an ongoing sense of the figures within a spatial whole. The bodies, fragmented and smeared across the frame, don’t dwell within these locales. They exist in an architectural vacuum. In United 93, the technique could work because we’re all minimally familiar with the geography of a passenger jet. But in The Bourne Ultimatum, could anybody reconstruct any of these stations, streets, or apartment blocks on the strength of what we see?

Reminds me once again of Die Hard as an architectural film. I don’t think this kind of spatial understanding is an absolute requirement for a good action movie or any movie, really, but it’s interesting to think about. I recently mentioned The Thin Red Line did a great job during the hilltop battle. Rear Window, too, but that’s maybe an easier task, given the confinement. Which others?

Observations on film art : Unsteadicam chronicles

The Usual Suspects

~ Mark

The Usual Suspects. I’d already heard so much about this movie that I went in jaded and suspicious and looking for clues. I figured out the Big Thing early, was underwhelmed, had a hard time staying awake during the last 1/3, gained no satisfaction from being right, and then I woke up and spoiled it on Twitter (spoiler!). I do think great stories withstand spoilers. This might not be one, but there’s good camera and cast and characters. I bet this was fun to make.

Blade Runner

~ Mark

Blade Runner (Final Cut). Dang. Like Alien, this one holds up so, so well. Incredible movie. Cast, sets (!), shots, sound, score. I love the eye imagery and symbolism throughout. Themes of empathy, memory, humanity. Deckard has a sweet bachelor pad. If I were more of a jerk, right around now I’d take a second to mention how bad Prometheus was in comparison. Night and day.

~ Mark

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

Ralph Waldo Emerson. (via). Cf. Victor Hugo:

Let’s not bring flame where light is enough.

And Jay-Z:

It’s hard to beat the entertainment value of people who deliberately misunderstand the world, people dying to be insulted, running around looking for a bullet to get in front of.

~ Mark

Meal entering vehicle window = tacky, suburban, boring, junk food. Meal exiting vehicle window = cool, urban, hip, adventurous.

Andisheh Nouraee.