Chiasmus – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

~ Mark

the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted parallelism.

So they’re mirrored (like the shape of the letter X… Greek letter chi… chiasmus…). Think ABCCBA, or ABCDEDCBA, or whatever. This is really common in the Bible, e.g. Isaiah 6:10:

A “Make the heart of this people fat,
B and make their ears heavy,
C and shut their eyes;
C lest they see with their eyes,
B and hear with their ears,
A and understand with their heart, and convert [return], and be healed.”

And in songwriting, e.g. Snoop’s Gin and Juice:

I got my mind on my money, my money on my mind.

Or the wisdom of Stephen Stills:

If you can’t be with the one you love, honey / Love the one you’re with.

You also see chiastic structure for an entire work, like the Song of Songs or Paradise Lost.

Man, I really like words.

Chiasmus – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mad Love: The Surrealism of the Supernatural Romantic Melodrama, Part One « The Third Meaning

~ Mark

I hadn’t considered this. Socio-cultural roots of the modern fantasy melodrama?

Part of what makes supernatural romantic melodramas stories of amours fou, arguably, is how they go about addressing a fundamental problem for the love story in the contemporary social context: how do you erect obstacles between the couple? If they are in love enough for us to be invested in their situation, how can you have a plausible enough obstacle for them to have to overcome in order to be together? Unless you want to do a period picture (be it Thomas Hardy, Far from Heaven or The Notebook), class, nationality, religion, and other aspects of social background just aren’t sufficiently convincing barriers to a Western audience, even if really they should be; we have all been raised, mostly by movies and pop songs, to believe that True Love Conquers All.

Mad Love: The Surrealism of the Supernatural Romantic Melodrama, Part One « The Third Meaning

~ Mark

Striptease has become less interesting since they did away with the costumes. It’s become Newtonian. The movement of bodies through space, period. It can get boring.

Margaret Atwood. (via)

Bloodsport

~ Mark

Bloodsport. ★★★★★. Finally saw it on the big screen. And there’s nothing like seeing a movie with a crowd that cares as much as you do. This movie is one of the first things I remember me and my big brother bonding over, so I’ve lost all critical perspective. That actually might have happened before I saw the movie, when my brother told me about the shin scene (spoiler!). I was horrified/sold. I love how briskly it all moves. Backstory and dialogue are mostly functional. A route from A to B. We all know why we’re here: fights! Surprisingly good soundtrack, though. I haven’t met anyone who’s seen this that didn’t love Paco. And there’s a young Forest Whitaker!

~ Mark

Preface otherwise banal life wisdom with “My father once taught me…” (or similar) and it then becomes rich with generational credibility.

Ben Casnocha.

Contagion

~ Mark

Contagion. Pretty good. Deliberate, precise, dispassionate. It’s not a weepy melodrama. The point is to get a sense of all the moving parts. I’d call it scifi, but in the less-fantastical sense of exploring a hypothetical that isn’t (yet!?!!?!?!) true. Jude Law’s blogger/gadfly was a hoot. Another good score by Cliff Martinez (Cf.). This is only the third Steven Soderbergh movie for me, outside of the Ocean’s trilogy.

~ Mark

Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.

Herodotus, or so Mark Twain would have us believe in the intro to A Horse’s Tale. Reminds me of Oscar Wilde in The Decay of Lying:

The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.

Lord help me I just started reading the Histories.

Laconic (adj.) – Online Etymology Dictionary

~ Mark

I never knew the word was connected with the Spartans. Awesome:

“concise, abrupt,” 1580s, probably via L. Laconicus, from Gk. Lakonikos, from Lakon “person from Lakonia,” the district around Sparta in southern Greece in ancient times, whose inhabitants were famously proud of their brevity of speech. When Philip of Macedon threatened them with, “If I enter Laconia, I will raze Sparta to the ground,” the Spartans’ reply was, “If.”

One source of this story is Plutarch’s On Talkativeness.

Laconic (adj.) – Online Etymology Dictionary

~ Mark

“Drive”: Memory Lane « The Third Meaning.

So much film geekery is informed, more or less directly, by the Manny Farber discourse on such action-oriented fare that its cred as ‘termite art’ comes already embossed on its metallic exterior by virtue of its generic/critical positioning even before consideration of the specifics of the individual case. […]

Drive is, then, a contribution to its particular kind of silent-tough-guy, hyperstylized, cool crime film. But what it adds is filigree. It’s a baroque, decadent, intensification of and comment on those aspects of Melville, Hill and Mann that Refn fetishizes, film geek that he is, and it appeals to other film geeks, like me, who share his tastes.

The Last of the Mohicans

~ Mark

The Last of the Mohicans. I might have seen this more times than I should have, but it’s mighty fine dramatic Hollywood entertainment. Such a great pace and you really feel like you’ve been on a story, y’know? Frontier love fantasy! Majestic scenery! An outsider caught between two worlds (seems to be a recurring Mann theme)! A strong, noble woman who won’t be brought down by the savagery around her! DDL with long, flowing hair! Scalpings! Gun fu, but with muskets! As much as I bitch about the main melody’s omnipresence throughout the score, I’d totally forgotten about the vocal tune at the climax. I like that the movie bookends with those mountain running scenes. I think I have to re-sort my Michael Mann rankings:

  1. Heat
  2. Thief
  3. The Last of the Mohicans
  4. Manhunter
  5. Collateral
~ Mark

Analysis of Blade Runner. In which I learned that Deckard’s apartment scenes were modeled after Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House, which has relief design inspired by the Mayan temples at Uxmal, which, unicorns aside, is an interesting architectural hint, when you recall that the Tyrell Corporation is headquartered in a gigantic-ass pyramid. Via Film Studies for Free, which I discovered on my journey waaaaaaaaaaaaaay down the rabbithole of film writing after watching and reading about Thief and related works.

(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)

Every Day Is Like Sunday

~ Mark

rachael-maddux:

Atlanta in particular is one hell of a beautiful old leaky old house. The whole Chick-Fil-A thing is actually kind of a perfect encapsulation of the strangeness of the city and the cultural faultlines its cultures straddle—the old-school conservative businessman and the religious right (usually aligned with the suburbs) versus the progressive urban center, and all the shades in between. The irony of it all is so striking, those statements (and that money) coming from a man who lives in, and in part owes the vast success of his business to, a city with one of the largest gay populations in the South, indeed one of the largest in the U.S. It’s counterintuitive and maddening and hard to explain to an outsider. It is so very Atlanta.

Filed under: Atlanta; The South.

Thief

~ Mark

Thief. Hell yeah. Fun stuff. Some good writing here and a great Tangerine Dream soundtrack. I love how the camera kind of zones out every now and then and the movie is all form (like the welding climax). I also like that this thief isn’t an MI-style sneaky ninja techno-athlete (or some kind of capoeira breakdancer coughOcean’sTwelvecough). He’s an old man. He’s got a limp. He wants to have a wife and kid. He uses power saws and hammers and welding torches. I forget how cool James Caan is. And Willie Nelson is in it! You can definitely see the influence on Drive.

Here’s my rankings for Michael Mann films I’ve seen so far. Strong, strong work:

  1. Heat
  2. Thief (not far behind)
  3. Manhunter
  4. The Last of the Mohicans
  5. Collateral
~ Mark

You can never be both a writer and a politician – at least not a good writer. A writer must always tell the truth as he sees it, and a politician must never give the game away. Now, these are two opposing forces.

NPR Fresh Air remembers Gore Vidal with excerpts from two Terry Gross interviews (via explore-blog)