T-Men. A B-movie mostly remembered for John Alton’s cinematography. Film noir is so mannered sometimes. Our modern sensibilities make many parts of this movie unintentionally funny, but of course that makes you like it more. Had a good mini-twist and a surprisingly touching death scene. This is the only Anthony Mann film I’ve seen, besides watching El Cid in high school Spanish class.
Young Jeezy – Hustlaz Ambition.
Who gives a fuck what you think of me unless you feedin’ my family?
Antichrist. This and The Tree of Life in one weekend? I could use a good slapstick comedy now. It wasn’t as dark or graphic as I expected, but Jeeeeeeesus. Not for the timid. This is a movie that I’ll enjoy a lot more after reading some good criticism. Plenty of (not-so-subtle) archetypal/mythological/symbolic/etc./etc. fodder here.
Incidentally, this one was dedicated to Tarkovsky. One obvious reference to Solaris:
If I didn’t dedicate the film to Tarkovsky, then everyone would say I was stealing from him. If you are stealing, then dedicate.
I sort of hate book trailers, so I made a cute dog video disguised as one instead.
My relationship with Amazon was deeply harmed when they told me my pre-ordered copy isn’t coming until March 1st restored when I got an update that it should arrive tomorrow! Hurry it up Good job, guys!
The old cop who chafed at institutional limits has undergone a neoliberal transformation: The result is a new kind of series that we might call the consultant procedural. A derivative of the cop and private investigator procedurals, the consultant procedural starts with some sort of institutional disqualification and follows the central character as he or she ports unmatched professional skills from job to job.
The consultant procedural! This is brilliant.
Kobe’s relentlessness has always been his most celebrated quality, but this season, he’s starting to remind me of one of those space probes that somehow keep feeding back data even after they’ve gone out twice as far as the zone where they were supposed to break down. You know these stories — no one at NASA can believe it, every day they come into work expecting the line to be dead, but somehow, the beeps and blorps keep coming through. Maybe half the transmissions get lost these days, or break up around the moons of Jupiter, but somehow, this piece of isolated metal keeps functioning on a cold fringe of the solar system that no human eyes have seen.
That’s Kobe, right? While the rest of the Lakers look increasingly anxious and time-bound, he just keeps gliding farther out, like some kind of experiment to see whether never having a single feeling can make you immortal. He’s barely preserving radio contact with anyone else at this point, but basketball scientists who’ve seen fragments of his diagnostic readouts report that the numbers are heartening. It’s bizarre.
Rarely do I have any shittiness that stays shitty. I either resolve it or walk away. Rarely do I let shit linger.
I missed this interview last fall. Murphy on the selectiveness that wealth affords:
I only want to do what I really want to do, otherwise I’m content to sit here and play my guitar all day. I always tell people now that I’m a semiretired gentleman of leisure, and occasionally I’ll go do some work to break the boredom up.
On parenting:
That stuff, with people disciplining their kids back in the day, it’s totally different. You hear about Joe Jackson, who had, what, 10 kids? You’re whipping somebody’s ass if you have 10 kids, in this little house! Ten kids, one of them is spinning all around and walking backward and shit? You’d be like, “Somebody’s getting their ass whipped” [laughs]. It’s a whole different time.
On transience:
Technology has it to where they gonna play this stuff forever. But the reality is, all this shit turns into dust, everything is temporary. No matter what you do, if you’re around here long enough, you’ll wind up dribbling and shitting on yourself, and you won’t even remember the shit you did.
The Tree of Life. Well, it’s beautiful. And huge bonus points to Malick for ridiculous ambition and the credibility to do it at scale with big names. But in the same way that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend movies like Solaris or 2001 or Once Upon a Time in the West or Koyaanisqatsi or something, I don’t recommend this one if you’re not willing to sit through some wanky, gorgeous, exhausting, melodramatic sequences. I felt really, really skeptical when I saw the trailers, skeptical when I started, rolled my eyes a few times when I was watching… and yet I’m warming to the idea of watching it again. In the moments where there’s actually acting, the performers are excellent. Sometimes it takes you one viewing to figure out the rules and another to participate/surrender like you need to. My current Terrence Malick rankings:
With this one out of the way, it’s on to The Thin Red Line.
Ads lift us above the other people who are duped by them. That is part of how they persuade us. […] We are hailed by ads only under the pretense that we are observing someone else being hailed (someone who turns out to become us).
Predictive analytics and information camouflage – The New Inquiry
Tenured academics has worked a great scam. They’ve managed to monetize peoples’ affection for regional football teams, and their desire for a work credential, and then somehow diverted that money into paying academics to work on whatever they want, for the rest of their lives, without any oversight by the football fans or the employers.
In addition to enjoying this nice little zinger, definitely read her 12 hypotheses about the college system in the wake of distance-learning disruption. Good stuff.
Envisioning a Post-Campus America – Megan McArdle – The Atlantic
Sweet Smell of Success. It’s about information, and what you can get for it. This is a cynical film, but somehow you’re never far from a punchline. Awesome movie. Tony Curtis is truly incredible. (I really liked him in Some Like It Hot, too.) First time I’ve seen Burt Lancaster, though The Killers has been on my list for a while.
A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.
In his Autobiography, Williams makes clear that part of what inspired him to become a writer was anger: “To write, like Shakespeare! and besides I wanted to tell people, to tell ‘em off, plenty. There would be a bitter pleasure in that, bitter because I instinctively knew no one much would listen.”
The New World of William Carlos Williams by Adam Kirsch | The New York Review of Books
Rita Hayworth – Gilda’s First Appearance. When I saw it featured in Visions of Light, which just showed the hair-tossing and winning smile, this bit got a nice laugh out of the audience. This was in the section of the documentary about Hollywood starlets and their symbiotic professional relationships with cinematographers who knew how to make them look great. Actresses and photographers would look out for each other. And then when I watched Gilda last night and saw this clip again, after a 20-minute intro… It’s still silly, but… I mean… dang.
So successful has been the camera’s role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.
Gilda. This one is worth watching for Rita Hayworth. Gilda is a sad, sad, rebellious woman. The movie ends and you don’t feel good about this couple at all. I love Steve Geray’s role as a sort of one-man Greek chorus. Also great photography here by Rudolph Maté, who directed the superior D.O.A.. Reminds me of another excellent film with a lost woman that revolves around casino life: La Baie des Anges. And another good film named after and about an object of irrational obsession is Laura. Glenn Ford was also awesome in 3:10 to Yuma. Filed under: film noir; movies I’ve seen.
I’ve learned that talking to the press is like talking to the police — ideally, don’t, since your interests conflict and there’s little to no potential upside for you — but I regularly forget or ignore this wisdom.
Mark Larson 