godthedog

in other movie news, should i go see 'primer' tonight? i want to see it and actually do something substantial today, but it starts in half an hour and i'd have to put my shoes & jacket on and it's cold outside.

i'd say she isn't deliberately cruel per se, just totally empty as a human being. she doesn't really know any better, as she's just not capable of thinking about people other than herself like that. you could say the same about belmondo's character: throughout the whole movie he's a completely selfish conniving little shit, and we don't get much indication that he truly loves this girl: he just tries to imitate the kind of love he sees in the movies, because he wants to be cool like the guys in the movies. that's the great irony of the movie: seberg's character is the one who seems like the bad guy, but belmondo is just as bad as she is, and there really isn't anything to these people at the core.

Jean Seberg was an American! but an american in paris who speaks french is more exotic than fuckable than a regular american. seberg's career was famously bombing in america because she seemed to not have any personality. godard took that kind of vapid "aura" about her, and made it natural and cute and sexy. general point being, them euro art directors adored their young actresses and really knew how to give them sexy personalities and magnetism and what not.

the pedophilia confession scene in bergman's 'persona' gave me weeks of masturbatory fantasies of bibi andersson. 60s european art movies are really all about the fuckable young actresses. moreso than american movies even, cause the foreignness makes them more exotic and intelligent.

i walked out of 'a.i.' after about 40 minutes. once jude law started dancing on the water, i was outta there.

1. schindler's list 2. e.t. 3. raiders of the lost ark 4. jaws 5. empire of the sun i sorta did, but not totally. i did fall head over heels in love with anna karina, in all her various incarnations. i'd STILL do her, i don't care if she's over 60.

'reasonable doubt' is about $17. is that worth it?

i thought about getting jay-z's 'the blueprint' today, but the only copy of it i could find was for $20 at tower. is it really THAT good? would my $20 be well spent?

huzzah.

we're also forgetting 'belle and sebastian'. unless that's already been released on dvd. in which case, I'M forgetting 'belle and sebastian'.

i can only think of one off the top of my head right now: 'the wonder years' - the finale. it gets really overblown and cheesy and contrived (with kevin & winnie having to hitchhike, then getting stuck in a barn in the rain), but god damn if they don't get that sense of loss of innocence just right. it really concentrated on that moment where you suddenly know that after this it's never going to be the same again, so you get everything you can out of the moment before it's gone. when winnie looks at him and suddenly says out of nowhere, "kevin, i don't want it to end"...fuck that gets to me. and the way the whole series was built up around the idea that kevin & winnie were going to end up together, then having them part ways once they grow up...that captures the whole essence of growing up right there. i've probably caught this episode on tv half a dozen different times, and i absolutely can't not be riveted by it every time. nothing on tv ever got to me in as personal a way as this did.

and in new york.

nothing revolutionary about the way pennebaker shot it. the verite school had been brewing for years when the new portable equipment was available, and really came into fruition with 'primary' (for which pennebaker was a cameraman, i believe--he did SOMETHING on it). i never thought pennebaker was that good an editor. he reveals a lot of interesting facets of dylan's character (i like how he shows us that "subterranean homesick blues" already tells us everything we need to know about him before we even see how he behaves). but it isn't terribly compelling and it doesn't really go anywhere. the maysles brothers, from the same verite school, i like a whole lot more. they had some of the best film editors ever, were fucking ACE with shaping all the maysles' chaotic footage into something really dramatic and involving. i love me some 'gimme shelter'. the stones themselves are pretty blah in that movie, not nearly as dynamic or charismatic as dylan, but the maysles capture the spirit of the event really well.

i imagine TCM has a highbrow-enough status to get away with it, since 1) it's pretty obvious the intentions aren't pornographic or distasteful and 2) kids don't watch it anyway. similarly, i remember seeing an unedited version of 'stand and deliver' on public television one night many years ago. nothing beats a fat, short edward james olmos with a combover saying "i'm gonna kick the shit out of you."

friend just text-messaged the following joke to me: "what has nine arms and sucks? "def leppard." probably an old joke, but i've never heard it before and i wanted to share it with the group.

i remember seeing 'office space' with my best friend the first day it was released. NOBODY was in that theater, and we laughed our asses off. those were the days, back when i could quote the "two chicks at the same time" line and people wouldn't know what i was talking about. i got a lot of funny looks back in the day.

jeff buckley - "the way young lovers do"

the basic problem is, film is a medium of pictures & sounds and the screenplay only exists on the page. there's a "meat" to every story: the issues it concerns, the kind of emotions it evokes, the kind of message it carries. the screenplay has the meat of that story in words, but the final product has to use pictures & sounds to get at that same meat, and pictures & sounds don't work the way words do. there's waaaaaaaay too many details in a film for the screenplay to cover, the best it can hope to do is pick some key elements to indicate the kind of feeling that the screenwriter is going for. take a scene from 'being john malkovich': INT. CRAIG AND LOTTE' S GARAGE - MORNING The place is a mess. Vivaldi blasts through cheap speakers. A small marionette stage stands in the back of the garage. The stage is lit and on it is a finely sculpted puppet version of Craig. The "Craig" puppet paces back and forth, wringing its hands with incredible subtlety. We see Craig, above and behind the stage. He is manipulating the puppet. His fingers move fast and furious. The puppet breaks into a dance, a beautiful and intricate balletic piece. Soon the puppet is leaping and tumbling through space, moves that one would think impossible for a marionette. Sweat appears on the real Craig’s brow. His fingers move like lightning. The puppet moves faster and faster. Sweat appears on the puppet's brow. We see that the sweat is being piped from a special device that the real Craig controls. The Craig puppet collapses on the floor of the stage. It puts its hands up to its face and weeps. Craig hangs the puppet, and comes down around the front of the stage. He is heaving. He switches off the music, picks up a beer and takes a swig. there's a lot of really vague shit here that's way open for interpretation. "the place is a mess": how do you convey that visually? do you give one or two empty shots of the garage before you show craig or the puppet? or do you cut straight into the action, and just let the mess be there in the background? HOW messy do you want this? what kind of shit should be strewn about his place? what should the color scheme be--do you want it to look dank and dirty, make everything brown and crusty and colorless? do you want the room to be some kind of expression of sadness, use a lot of blues? do you want to be disorienting and claustrophobic, use a bunch of big bold colors that clash with each other? "Sweat appears on the real Craig’s brow. His fingers move like lightning. The puppet moves faster and faster. Sweat appears on the puppet's brow. We see that the sweat is being piped from a special device that the real Craig controls." these are separate actions, but they don't necessarily have to all be separate shots. you could show craig sweating in one shot, show his fingers in the next shot. you could start with a close-up of craig's brow, then pan the camera down to his fingers. you could have a slightly wider shot that has his face and his hands in the same frame. if you want to be really fancy, you can do a weird david fincher-type CGI shot and pan from craig's brow, to his fingers, to the puppet's feet (moving faster & faster), to the puppet's brow, to the "sweat-pumping" device. and what is this device supposed to look like? should it be big and clunky and hodgepodge? should it be small and elegantly designed? WHERE should the device be, and how does craig control it? should craig get the same lighting as the puppet? should he have the harsh sunlight through the window on his face, while the puppet is lit smoothly and evenly? should the puppet be really brightly lit, with craig being more dark and shadowy? "He switches off the music, picks up a beer and takes a swig." this is a good empty beat to end the scene on, but what kind of moment should this be? do you want it to be a big dramatic moment, basking in how good craig is at what he does, or do you want to play it up for comic effect to remind the audience that he's still a pathetic unshaven loser? the timing will be different, depending on what you think the moment should be, as will the way you construct the shots. if you want to, you don't even need to SHOW craig doing this: you can linger on a close-up of the lifeless puppet on the empty stage, and have the sound effects tell the audience what craig is doing. point being, the director's job isn't to transcribe what the writer put down. it's to make the story come alive on the screen, and it's done through making all these little decisions. inasmuch as judging a good MOVIE is subjective, yeah, judging a good director is subjective. it's just a matter of how much you enjoy the movie, and paying attention to what the movie's actually DOING that makes you enjoy it. if a scene is confusing, or just passes right by you without you understanding the point, then the director probably fucked up. if there's a really well-written moment that seems to fall flat on the screen, the director probably missed something. it's a really nebulous kind of thing and there's a lot of wiggle room, but it's possible. 'the aviator' is a REALLY good example, where scorsese manages to go totally above and beyond a really shitty, scattered, episodic script through sheer force of will and knowing exactly how to make each misstep of the script work really well, and gets really really close to having a great movie. ... bumpy bump bump. i already sent this in PM form, but i thought it might make for some good general points of discussion.

paul giamatti seems like the most chill guy ever. on the 'american splendor' commentary he just does not give a shit, just sits back and has fun.

incidentally, four people vented to me tonight on the internet. one about a girl, one about his roommate possibly having sex in the next room, one about her suicidal boyfriend and her dad being debilitated by cancer, and one about her mentally ill mother calling her a "hateful bitch" to her face.

i'm not wearing any underwear.

'sideways' moreso than 'ray'. like, a LOT moreso.

coltrane - my favorite things GZA - liquid swords as i was walking out of the virgin megastore with my purchases, i saw a bunch of writing on the store doors that said "RZA today 2 p.m." it was a little after 3, apparently i just missed him. evidently i was being punished for getting the GZA instead of the RZA.

Seven Samurai is my proof against anyone who thinks movies like Braveheart were so kewl, cuz Kurosawa invented cinematic techniques and stylistic touches that're still being copied today. If you haven't seen any other Kurosawa stuff, definitely give Rashamon and Sanjuro (a sequel to Yojimbo and a better film IMHO) a try. i'll go out on a limb and say welles's 'chimes at midnight' > 'seven samurai'.

this is what enid should've drawn in 'ghost world', instead of don knotts.