Sunday, February 26, 2012

Your Highness

I laughed a couple times -- that's a couple times more than expected. A movie certainly better at home, than shelling out $12 at the theater. Some creative special effects. David Gordon Green is slumming these days, but he's certainly no hack. Favorite scenes: the pedophilia wizard, and the minotaur hard-on.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

We Love You, Artie.

"It's good to be alive."

Artie Lange returns to stand-up.

Craig Finn

Troubadour. Monday night, February 21st (President's Day).

Sad downtrodden songs of boozy nights, rough mornings, & heartbreak.

"Scared of the future, ashamed of the past."

Encore: Save Me Jesus (Bobby Charles, 1972)

Monday, February 20, 2012

The Help

Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, and Jessica Chastain really do elevate this movie into something more that it would (or should) be, bringing emotion and humanism beyond the cliches. Good melodrama. I just changed my Oscar prediction for one category.

From the Fresh Air interview: Some blogs called Davis a sellout for taking the sort of role that was once the only kind black actresses could get. Tulane University Professor Melissa Harris-Perry told MSNBC that "what killed me was that in 2011, Viola Davis was reduced to playing a maid."

Even Tate Taylor, the film's director, has said that "the role of Aibileen, in the hands of the wrong actress, could turn into a cliche."

Davis tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that she absolutely didn't see Aibileen as a character she was reduced to playing — much less a cliche.

"Or else I wouldn't have done it," she says. "You're only reduced to a cliche if you don't humanize a character. A character can't be a stereotype based on the character's occupation."

Davis says she has played one-dimensional characters in the past, but she makes clear that Aibileen — a 53-year-old maid with a sixth-grade education — doesn't fall into that category in her eyes.

"I saw her going on a journey," she says. "I saw her having humor and heart and intelligence. I saw her as having duality. And that's what I look for above anything else. Because usually, that is what's missing."

Vegas. Haiku. Saturday Morning.

Two girls Fargo knock
Buck in a den of cherry
Treage honey trap

Friday, February 17, 2012

Viva Las Vegas

Spirit Airlines. Flt 356. Arrival 4:20pm.

To be continued...

Springsteen 1982

The thirtieth anniversary of Nebraska.

What Springsteen gleaned from the songs of Woody Guthrie, the writings of O’Connor and Steinbeck and filmmakers like Ford, Huston and Terrence Mallick was a humanity and a curiosity about why certain people lose connection with themselves, their families, their community, their government. And what then happens when that kind of alienation infiltrates the subconscious. Further, the profound effect that has on the people that love those alienated and disconnected souls.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Springsteen 2012

As expected a horn section was announced to fill in for original E-Street Band member Clarence Clemons on the upcoming world tour about a week ago. It was almost a certainty that this would be the case, but I still hoped for a memoriam by having no horns for this tour.

Guitars filling in for the missing sax from Little Steven and Bruce. Aging, original members on stage. Long-time friends. Bringing it night after night. Ragged. And loud.

It's February,'12. Obama is running for re-election.

"I never campaigned for politicians previous to 
John Kerry and at that moment it was such a blatant disaster occurring at the top of government, you felt that if you had any cachet whatsoever, you had to cash it in because you couldn't sit around and watch it.
I'm not a professional campaigner and every four years I don't think that I'm going to go and pick a guy and go after him.
I prefer to stay on the sidelines. I genuinely believe an artist (is) supposed to be the canary in the coalmine, and you're better off with a certain distance from the seat of power."
Springsteen said he thought Obama had a mixed record.
"There's a lot of things" that were positive.
"He kept GM alive, which was incredibly important to Detroit and Michigan, and he got the healthcare law passed, although I wish there had been a public option and didn't leave the citizens victims of the insurance companies, he killed Osama bin Laden, which was extremely important. He brought some sanity to the top level of government."
However, Obama was "more friendly to corporations than I thought he would be, (and) there's not as many middle-class or working-class voices heard in the administration as I thought there would be," said Springsteen.
"I would like to have seen more activism in job creation sooner than it came, I would like to have seen people helped out, seen some of these (home) foreclosures stopped somehow."
Springsteen said: "I still support the president, but there are plenty of things that I thought took a long time and would have been closed by now. But on the other hand, we're out of Iraq and hopefully we'll be out of Afghanistan soon."

Meryl Streep

Terry Gross interview on Fresh Air.

"It's not about the audience," she says. "It's all about fooling the other actors into believing who you say you are. That's hard, when you walk on set, when it's a big makeup job. And I take my entire performance from them, so if they don't look at me and hate me appropriately or love me the way they're supposed to ... then I'm lost, I don't have anything to go on."

Henry Miller's Work Schedule, 1932-33


***
Henry Miller's Work Schedule, 1932-33:

COMMANDMENTS
1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to "Black Spring."
3. Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4 Work according to the program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can't "create" you can "work".
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people; go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don't be a drought-horse! Work with pleasure only. 
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it--but go back to it the next day. CONCENTRATE. NARROW DOWN. EXCLUDE.
10.Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you "are" writing.
11 Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

MILLER'S DAILY PROGRAM
Mornings:
If groggy, type notes and allocate, as stimulus
If in fine fettle, write.

Afternoons:
Work on section in hand, following plan of section scrupulously. No
intrusions, no diversions. Write to finish one section at a time, for
good and all.

Evenings:
See friends. Read in cafes.
Explore unfamiliar sections--on foot if wet, on bicycle if dry.
Write, if in mood, but only on Minor program
Paint if empty or tired.
Makes Notes. Make Charts, Plans. Make corrections of MS.

Note: Allow sufficient time during daylight to make an occasional visit to museums or an occasional sketch or an occasional bike ride. Sketch in cafes and trains and streets. Cut the movies! Library references once a week.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Kalifornia

The 1992 serial killer movie with Brad Pitt, David Duchovny, Michelle Forbes, and Juliette Lewis. This must have been made in the time of Jeffrey Dahmer and America's fascination with serial killers. Years before Seven re-wrote the genre.
A dark, twisted American road movie with competent, cool style. Edgy but also in a way empty.

Hike

Sullivan Canyon on Saturday morning. Located off of Sunset in the Palisades winding into the Santa Monica mountains.

The trail is a tale of two hikes -- starts off gradually uphill, fully enclosed by brush and sycamore trees. Then reaching a pass (after well over an hour), it opens up completely with views of the surrounding mountains, sun & sky, and eventually leading to the ocean.

More hikes this year. There's only good that comes from them. Always worthwhile once on the path. Nature. Exercise. Clean air.  Rejuvenation.
One of the jewels of life in Los Angeles.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Super Bowl Sunday

It has turned into a national holiday. For some reason, I decided to not invest myself in the game as much as previous years. But I regret not paying more attention. It's a pageant with a football game.

Halftime: Madonna belts out 'Vogue,' 'Music,' New Song, 'Like A Prayer.'  A bizarre highlight. Like a bloated pop culture circus act run amuck on cocaine and acid.

With fireworks shooting off randomly, the Super Bowl leads into Luck: Episode Two.

Luck: Episode 2
Inscrutable. And impenetrable. Dark, dark stuff. The characters on the show have reached the ascent, all in episode 1, and the rest of the show will be the fall. They're degenerates.  There's no redemption.

I will watch every episode as long as this show is on the air. But, at the same time, I'll rejoice come April with the return of Sunday night Treme.
The two shows, back-to-back, would be quite something, but Luck transitioning into Treme will be a relief.
Plus the added desert of Life's Too Short.

Beginners

A nice Saturday night movie to watch at home. Melaine Laurent would have been a great, silent film actress.

Despite the art-house pretension that the film is life/death/romance, in a lot of ways - at the core - it's just one in the line of male-fantasy (i.e. Leaving Las Vegas, Greenberg) romantic films. A beautiful angel comes to save the broken-down soul, loving him unconditionally, and he keeps pushing her away.

It's Halloween in Los Angeles. A depressed Ewan MacGregor - dressed as Freud - reluctantly attends a house party. He looms in the corner, introspective, grief-stricken eyes. Despite his anti-social behavior, a quirky, soft -faced female guest, dressed as a dapper-suited man approaches him, pursues him. She has laryngitis. They write harmless notes to one another. They drink. They dance.
MacGregor leaves the party. Regret starts to creep in. She comes running after him. They spend the rest of the night together. When she takes off her costume wig and business suit, flowing blond locks tumble past her shoulders. It is the irresistibly charming, beautiful French actress Melanie Laurent.
Nice score MacGregor! Wish it always turned out that way.

Additional notes:
The mother/son flashback scenes stand out as the weakest part of the film. MacGregor, Laurent, & Plummer turn in nice performances, and hold the screen.

With the weightiness of the the material, I thought there would be a larger, more manipulative emotional pull by the end. And was ready for it. But the anchor never dropped.

A touching piece if you're in the mood.




Friday, February 3, 2012

East Troy, WI (6.26.04)

The end of the run.

Set Two:
Boogie On Reggae Woman ->
Jam ->
Ghost ->
Free
Friday
Piper->
Harry Hood.
Encore:
Possum.

Sharon Van Etten

A late-night crush on a singer/songwriter.

One Day

Static On The Radio

Jim White.

The fog rolls through topanga.

Down to the Pacific Coast Highway on a Thursday night.

The twists. The turns. The film noir.





Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Pat: It feels like...times have changed.
Billy: Times maybe, not me.


The first of an unending series of crises struck when a mounting flange on a 40mm Panavision lens was bent & went undetected. As a result, in the shots made with this lens (almost all of them were masters because it had a short focal length) the entire right half of the screen was out of focus. The film had to be shipped back to MGM in Culver City for development, then back to Durango, so Peckinpah & his crew did not discover the problem until a week later. By that time they had filmed a dozen scenes with the defective lens.


"We started watching the first night's dailies & the shit's out of focus," says Gordon Dawson. 


 Sam says, 'Can't I expect fucking focus?' 


And the second shot was out of focus, and the third shot was out of focus. Sam got so mad he took out a folding chair & he stood up, he almost fell off of it because it was gonna fold, and he took his cock out and he pissed on the screen with this big S and he walked out of the fucking room. 


"Bob Dylan & I were sitting in the screening room when he did that," Kris Kristofferson recalls. 


"I remember Bob turning & looking at me with the most perfect reaction: What the fuck have we gotten ourselves into?"


"From then on," says Dawson, "Every night we watched dailies with this S-shaped piss stain on the screen." 

--If They Move...Kill 'Em: The Life & Times of Sam Peckinpah by David Weddle

The Sopranos Final Scene

Made in America. Holsten's in New Jersey. David Chase's lucid dream.

It's been several years since the finale, but the final moments still linger with a dark mysteriousness. Here's a fully comprehensive scene breakdown of the death of Tony Soprano. This is required reading for any fan of the show, or director/filmmaker.

The best shot-by-shot analysis I've come across.

The New American Divide

In the week that Bruce Springsteen released his new single, "We Take Care of Our Own," in anticipation of the upcoming album, Wrecking Ball, my younger brother sent me this article.


The New American Divide by Charles Murray.


Of particular note:
In 1960, America already had the equivalent of SuperZIPs in the form of famously elite neighborhoods—places like the Upper East Side of New York, Philadelphia's Main Line, the North Shore of Chicago and Beverly Hills. But despite their prestige, the people in them weren't uniformly wealthy or even affluent. Across 14 of the most elite places to live in 1960, the median family income wasn't close to affluence. It was just $84,000 (in today's purchasing power). Only one in four adults in those elite communities had a college degree.
By 2000, that diversity had dwindled. Median family income had doubled, to $163,000 in the same elite ZIP Codes. The percentage of adults with B.A.s rose to 67% from 26%. And it's not just that elite neighborhoods became more homogeneously affluent and highly educated—they also formed larger and larger clusters.

Horse Back

This is Neil Young. This is Crazy Horse.

A Fuckin' Up jam that leads into a sublime Cortez the Killer. 

Shakey Pictures.



Luck

Sunday nights. Milch. Mann. Madness.

"Go pick up you dough."

Zodiac / Summer of Sam

The New Year in Los Angeles.

During the ensuing investigation, police say they learned that the man, Umar Khan of Glendale, often drives around the city at night or early morning hours naked from the waist down and looks for a cul-de-sac or home driveway to masturbate in, Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz told the Glendale News-Press.

Something's in the ether.