New Year Ideas

*Be present. Focus on the present. In the moment. Accomplish one small step at a time.
*Write daily (even for 30 minutes)
*Read daily  (more books, less internet articles)
*Exercise daily
*Be kind to yourself

merry xmas on dec 20th

cats

down a thirty year rabbit hole (but this is celene dion batshit / ridley scott alien)

love letters

https://variety.com/2019/film/spotlight/ari-aster-the-irishman-steve-zaillian-1203448277/?fbclid=IwAR0_198jZKA2-f8DdQFo2hcMBY-ov_vjK2YM6RIURTqZDREGfXQHvqxPCU4

movies i've seen in the theater recently

pain & glory/parasite (double feature)
ford v ferrari
the irishman
dark waters / (some of the irishman)
a marriage story/knives out (double feature)
jojo rabbit / (some of the irishman again, first half of waves, some of ford v ferrari)
richard jewell/a beautiful day in the neighborhood (double feature)
the irishman (again in full at the landmark glendale)
a hidden life (xmas eve 4:30pm)
uncut gems (dec. 26th)

#decade

back on my bullshit (sunday night will rogers follies edition) #cinema

Magnolia "Interpretative Dance" starring fiona apple

Tuscaloosa

young neil. autumn. harvest moon

here we are in the years
after the goldrush
out on the weekend
harvest
old man
heart of gold

time fades away
lookout joe
new mama
alabama
don't be denied

October 16th-20th, 1974 - The Last One - Winterland

Magic. These 5 shows before "retirement." Dosed up the ass.  What a culmination. What a run. What a sound.

They're home. Never to be the same.

Tim O'Brien

on a hero's journey bringing back the boon from vietnam. a new book reflecting on fatherhood in america.

back on my bullshit

2016 #horace&pete #louisck #bestofthedecade

Nick Paumgarten on Robert Hunter

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/robert-hunter-gave-the-grateful-dead-its-voice

american beauty

The first time I went to England, it was the second day I was there, everybody went and left me alone with a case of retsina.

Suddenly I realized, you know, here I was in London, the city I had always dreamed of going to, and I was very, very happy that I had come home to some psychic place...maybe the home of Robin Hood and Peter Pan. Mind you I had only drank half a bottle of this retsina but it was having the whole case there that was important.

I sat down and wrote, I wrote 'Ripple' and 'To Lay Me Down,' and 'Brokedown Palace.' It was a magic day. I knew I was writing stuff that would live forever (laughs)...

Oh, would those days would come again.
Oh they will, they will, but not for me.

--Robert Hunter 💔🌹💀

one more saturday night (last picture show) (pat garrett & billy the kid)

So these last four Italian flicks, after nine years together, would be Rick and Cliff's final rodeo. Cliff doesn't have a clue what he's going to do. The only thing the two men know of for sure, tonight, Rick and Cliff will have a good old-fashioned drunk. Both men know once the plane touches down in El Segundo, it'll be the end of an era for both of them. When you come to the end of the line with a buddy who is more than a brother, and a little less than a wife, getting blind drunk together is really the only way to say farewell.

the deuce (this monday) (succession on sunday)

one last thing.

pta & haim (another late night)

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (one more night)

in the wheelhouse. it's a male fantasy

pta & haim

late night hooked on their videos (greek theater, like a star is born)

best of the decade (from the 2019 oscar telecast)

Paul Schrader

1 hr · 

Watched Apocalypse Now tonight in Imax. The film remains as problematic as ever in terms of theme and intent. It's like vibrating under the spell of juiced up pro war amphetamines while, in the distance, hearing a dour somewhat confused country preacher declaiming war's evils. But visually and auditorily, man, it stands alone.

Added comment. The schizophrenic nature of the film goes back to the script itself. John's original script was all bravado and gung ho crazy. Francis has the opposite sensibility.. The Ride of the Valkyries, the surfers, the bunnies--that's Milius. The Michael Herr narration, the plantation exposition, the meditations on evil--that's Coppola.

favorite films of the decade (working draft)

tree of life
inside llewyn davis
zero dark thirty
inception
only lovers left alive (patterson)
twin peaks: the return
horace & pete
the deuce
vietnam war
long strange trip
wolf of wall street
lady bird
midsommar
once upon a time in hollywood

greenberg
the master / inherent vice / phantom thread
everybody wants some
toni erdmann
suspiria
rolling thunder revue

Grateful Dead - Uptown Theater, 12.3.79

That late fall 79 sound...Brent's keyboard/Phil's bass...cokey dirty bar band tempo**...

Set1
Alabama Getaway**
Promised Land
Brown-Eyed Woman
El Paso
Ramble on Rose
It's All Over Now**
Jack-a-Roe
Lazy Lightnin'>
Supplication
Althea**
Music Never Stopped

NYC - Parker Posey & Louis C.K.

Hey Baby, It's the 4th of July (Greeley, 2019)

Are You a Deadhead?

Birthday is inching closer. 

Best last scene of the decade (dir. S. Lelio). Best last scene of the decade (dir. S. Lelio) .

Life isn't about finding yourself. Or finding anything. Life is about creating yourself.

Why don't you kill him? Why. He's my friend.

Best of the Decade (dir. Ridley Scott, '13)

I watched this in February, 2014 on a late Sunday night trip while visiting my Dad. We had Chinese food.
Then I went continued onto Savannah.

 It's the director's cut.

Best of the Decade (dir. Greta Gerwig, '17)

this scene should be "crash into me" but it's been taken offline. fine. i teared up during this scene, too.

David Milch's Third Act

At one point, I asked him whether, despite what Alzheimer’s was stealing from him, it had given anything in return. The answer: a continuous sense of urgency.
“There’s an acute sense of time’s passage,” he said. “Things are important. You don’t want to be inconsequential in your perspective on things. I feel that with an increasing acuteness—that everything counts.”
“Do you wake up to that feeling every day?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Milch believes that time is ultimately the subject of every story.

Singer: When you wake up in the morning, is there a process that you’re aware of—an inventorying—that you weren’t experiencing five years ago?
Milch: Absolutely. As I say, it’s a series of takings away. And there’s a subsidiary category of shame, at not being able to do things.
Singer: Why shame?
Milch: It’s self-imposed. More than anything else, one would like to think of oneself as being capable as a human being. The sad truth, imposed with increasing rigor, is you aren’t. You aren’t normal anymore. You’re not capable of thinking in the fashion you would hope to as an artist and as a person. Things as pedestrian as not being able to remember the day. Sometimes where you’ve been. There have been a couple of times when I haven’t been able to remember where I live. And then there are compensatory adjustments that you make in anticipation of those rigors, so that you can conceal the fact of what you can’t do. It’s a constriction that becomes increasingly vicious. And then you go on.
Singer: I’m sitting here listening to you, and you’re describing what you’re describing, and there is to me an immense irony: this is the same mind that I’ve known for as long as I’ve known you.
Milch: That’s a blessing of this conversation, and I’m concentrating and thinking as hard as I can. I’m asking for the grace and dignity of a lucid cogitation. I’m asking of my faculties, such as they are, in whatever diminution they are, to meet you fairly.
I’m different recognizably, unmistakably, from one day to the next. I’m capable of things on one day that are absolutely beyond me. Down to things as rudimentary as sometimes where I live. One tries to adjust to those rigors and disciplines as they reveal themselves, as the day unfolds. At one level—the level of vanity, I suppose—there’s a shame that shows itself as anger, an anger that is quickly internalized as unfair to the disciplines or ambitions of the exchange in which I’m involved at that moment. And I try to adapt to that because it’s a distraction from what the invoked purpose, the proper purpose, of that exchange is. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t. At a rudimentary and humiliating level, I’m incapable of lucid discourse. That’s no fun.

I think that is the chief blessing of art, the opportunity to organize one’s behavior around a different reality. It’s a second chance.

Singer: You once told me that you try not to think about writing when you’re not writing. Did that mean that writing was easy for you, and did that change when you were working on this new film?
Milch: It’s not a self-conscious process. I try to think of an interior logic to things. Exploring that interior and kind of walking around inside it. And, for better or worse, finding things as I go, which instruct me how to proceed, so that it’s a kind of exfoliating logic that I’m pursuing. You have to be content when a path that you’re pursuing turns out not to be rewarding. It’s a journey in that sense.

Singer: Right. So, when you talk about loss, sadness, are those sentimental feelings or objective realities?
Milch: Objective realities. There’s increasingly little to hold on to. A kind of relentless deterioration, and that’s disconcerting.
Singer: I’m so sorry this is happening. . . . And, now that I’ve said that, I feel like an idiot. When people tell you they’re sorry, what’s your response?
Milch: “Thank you.” It depends on who I’m talking to and what the ambitions of the conversation are. In a lot of ways, it feels like you’re living a dream, with those relentless aspects.

Milch: The world gets smaller. You’re capable of less work and you have to learn to accept that—that’s a given of the way you have to live. And that’s a sadness. But it’s also true that a focus comes to your behavior which is productive.

Myrtle Beach

Best of the Decade (dir. Richard Linkleater, '16)

My birthday is July 26th this year.

Dome & Musso's on July 26th

I think of it like my memory piece. Alfonso had ROMA and Mexico City, 1970. I had L.A. and 1969. This is me. This is the year that formed me. I was six years old then. This is my world. And this is my love letter to L.A.
--QT from the Cannes red carpet

Cinema

From Scorsese/Hogg conversation

Best of the Decade (dir. Jarmusch, 2014)

"how can you live for so long, and still not get it."

Best of the Decade (Zero Dark Thirty / dir. Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

Frederic Edwin Church's Rainy Season in the Tropics, 1866

aka Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

Thursday Night

Springsteen/Scorsese

“If you’re an artist, the darkness is always more interesting than the light. It’s nice when you let the light in at the end of something, but I was always interested in what were the things that didn’t go right,” Springsteen said. “I had a habit—I would drive back to my hometown and I would do this over and over again and I used to ask myself, ‘what am I coming back here for?’ And I still do it. I’m nearly 70 years old… I don’t know  if you’re going back to fix things that went wrong or so much happened there that informed your work and your life, it still remains a rich location, but I always wanted base the heart of my work in the dark side of things and then you had to earn the light.….The artists that are interesting: You think of Hank Williams or Elvis or Frank Sinatra or Bob Dylan or Marty Scorsese, it’s ‘What’s bothering that guy? ['A lot,’ answered Scorsese, with a laugh]. That’s what keeps us watching. That’s why you can watch Bob DeNiro’s face on the screen for two hours..it never gives up its secrets. I don’t think there’s necessarily an answer, but you do ask question after question in the work that you create and those questions are fascinating and they bring you closer to a certain kind of truth and that’s the best you can do.”

January 2nd, 1970 (Dave's Picks)

Set 1
Mason's Children
Casey Jones
Black Peter*
Mama Tried
Hard to Handle* (Pigpen!)
Cumberland Blues
That's It for the Other One*
Cosmic Charlie

Double Feature: Long Shot (dir. Jonathan Levine) / Avengers: Endgame (dir. Russo Brothers)

i cried. in both. (and during the Blinded By the Light trailer)

notes:
Avengers, despite being on eight screens, was still almost completely filled for a 4pm standard screening. Young children on laps included.
Long Shot also had more people than expected. 60 year old couples, and some scattered thirty-something dudes.

Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park, 1948 (Diego Rivera)

fuck. hi joan! (where's t-bone?)

my future tattoo

I heard someone from the music business saying they are no longer looking for talent, they want people with a certain look and a willingness to cooperate. I thought, that's interesting, because I believe a total unwillingness to cooperate is what is necessary to be an artist - not for perverse reasons, but to protect your vision. The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music. That's why I spend my time now painting.
--Joni Mitchell

Rabbit Hole Yo La Tengo Michael Shannon Suicide Steppenwolf Hannukah

4/20

on the set of dr. strangelove

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.
--John Barrymore

Best of the Decade: Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade, 2016)

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

--Albert Camus

1997

There are no second acts in American lives

Tiger wins the Masters. After the 16th hole par 3, my thoughts turn to the expose, "The Secret History of Tiger Woods: The death of his father set a battle raging inside the world's greatest golfer. How he waged that war -- is the the tale of how Tiger lost his way."

Addiction, loss, and the possibility of recovery/rebirth. Infinite.

Friday Night (on NBC)

after northbrook court (with $1 Tropik Sun)

One Year Ago

I am alive but lonely. Bob.

Esquire piece on Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces, 1970)

Happy Birthday 21st Island Tour! (I get older, you sound better)

Set 1
Tube
My Mind's Got a Mind of it's Own
Sloth
STASH (frankie says foreshadowing) ->
Horn
Waste
Chalkdust

Set 2
Punch You in the Eye (sizzling intro)
Birds of a Feather
Simple
Wolfman's->
Sneakin' Sally->
Frankie Says
TWIST (alien twist. the twist that we made contact)
Sleeping Monkey
Rocky Top

Logging: Escape at Dannemora (mini-series) Episode 1 -- January "From the Beginning"

Benicio Del Toro. Paul Dano. Patricia Arquette. David Morse.

The big question, can Ben Stiller direct? Wonder if it's his passion project?

March Madness

Tom Izzo has inherited the spirit of Coach Norman Dale

Izzo has decided to embrace the new style of coaching being requested of him. pic.twitter.com/SDIN23N7Ec

— David Harns (@DavidHarns) March 22, 2019

Dragged Across Concrete reviews

From Brietbart: 

"If you want to bleed art into something bland, the fastest route is through ideological conformity...Zahler has chosen to be an artist who surprises, who thrills in ways big and small, who zigs where other artists, either out of fear or lack of imagination, censor themselves."

Spring

15 years old (Pacific Grove Theater) (Saturday evening)

Hollywood. 1969. Photoshop. 2019.

Trio/Chicago

Logging : Shrill (Hulu series with Aidy Bryant)

Decent enough. After six episodes, it just ends.

Au-Revoir

Fare thee well (subtitled)

Logging: Burning (dir. Lee Chang-dong)

a slow-burn. Almost lulled me to sleep in its first half, yet was casting its ways unknowingly. filling me with tension and dread. like "cutter & bone" (dir. Passer, 81). haunting, mysterious, and chilling. wish i had experienced it in the theater to feel its full on spell.

Yo La Tango-a-thon on a Saturday Afternoon

It's rainy. Free-form radio (WFMU) as the soundtrack.

Set 1:
Link Wray - Rumble
The Monkees - For Pete's Sake
The Monkees - Daydream Believer
Peter Paul & Mary - Puff the Magic Dragon
The Ronettes - Be My Baby

Set 2:
The Ramones - Rock n Roll High School
Spencer Davis Group - I'm a Man
Ernie K Doe - Mother-In-Law
Yo La Tengo - Autumn Sweater
Electric Eels - Agitated

Set 3:
Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want to Have Fun
David Bowie - Panic in Detroit
Lee Dorsey - Ya Ya
Monochrome Set - He's Frank
The Creep - Betty Lou's Got A New Tattoo

Set 4:
Black Flag - TV Party
Beat Happening - Cast A Shadow
Bob Dylan - Lay Lady Lay
Swamp Dogg - Synthetic World
Velvet Underground - Rock And Roll

Set 5:
Disco-Tex and Sex-o-lettes - Get Dancin'
Neil Yong - Cowgirl In The Sand
Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen In Love
Funkadelic - Can You Get To That
The Kinks - You Really Got Me

Set 6:
Theme From M*A*S*H
Ohio Express - Chewy Chewy
The Replacements - Unsatisfied
The Zombies - She's Not There
The Ramones - Babysitter

Walter Payton in His Last Game

Logging: Losers (netflix)

The Jean-Van Del Velde episode on the British Open

Fat Tuesday

Treme (Season 1, Eps. 8) "All on a Mardi Gras Day"/ (Season 2, Eps. 7) "Carnival Time"

"...but I'm home for Mardi Gras...home for Mardi Gras."

It was the afternoon of carnival 💜💛💚

Turn it up! (and repeat)

The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011, David Hockney

Dream Baby Dream

Nighttime serenade

Napa Valley, 1978

photo by Wim Wenders 

The Sopranos - "Walk Like A Man"

Thinking about Christopher re-planting that small tree in the front yard.

Wednesday night soundtrack

on the errant path karen dalton/tim hardin

On the eve before the Oscars

when Rami Malek receives Best Actor for having terrific wigs & protruding, prosthetic teeth (while Ethan Hawke watches on a television)

Her Smell / Dragged Across Concrete

two trailers on the same day for american films I really want to see in 2019. the year all builds to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Logging: True Detective Season 3 Episode 2

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
"You ever been some place you couldn't leave, and you couldn't stay. Both at the same time."

a hole so far down (no way out)

winter (destroyer)

Office Space 20th Anniversary

Note to self: Never bring up the holocaust on a date, it can only go bad.

And Twiggy is pretty cute!

True Detective Season 3

Finally watched first episode tonight. Well-crafted,  tense and unsettling, in a set-up we've seen countless times. Beyond my expectations. I'll keep watching.

Miller's Crossing (1990)

They don't make trailers like this anymore.

Logging: Russian Doll

went down the wormhole of RUSSIAN DOLL over the course of two evenings. somewhere deep down i remember the old adage that all the great stories boil down to the core feeling/idea of loneliness. of that basic human need to find & share with another person(s) who truly understands you.

Midnight (New Beverly Cinema)

(twenty-five years this october, old orchard theater for a saturday matinee)

Double Feature: The French Connection / Taxi Driver

on TCM (midnight est)

#giddyup

(update: while watching. my dad connected liked the french connection. never even saw taxi driver. five year difference, 71...76)

Tomorrow Never Knows

listen to the color of your dream. of the beginning (on a loop)

Monet (in his gardens)

Hero (also, me at parties)

Dylan, "We are the World"

The River (MSG 9.22.79)

"For my brother-in-law and sister." (debut performance)

Prove It All Night
Badlands
The Promised Land
The River

Inherent Vice (90 percent close-ups)

Journey Through the Past

Shawshank (behind-the-scenes)

Roger Deakins at work 

Logging: Isle of Dogs

Wes Anderson knows & loves dogs. Their distinct expressions, and personalities. (maybe more than people)

It's a nice little art piece (moreso than a fully captivating film) to add to the Wes museum.

Coming in from the Cold (Midwest)

Atlantic City (Artist: Gerard Huerta, 1980)

Roma (behind-the-scenes)

ASC article. Tracking shot from the beach into the ocean and back was built on a wooden pier and used a Technocrane. Ahh (thumbs up).

Logging: The Mars Room (finished)

by Rachel Kushner

Slow burn new fiction from 2018. Tears you up a little. It will last.

Split (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

Not as holyfuckingshit as I was hoping. Treaded water almost the whole time. Then the end came and went quickly.

Shyamalan can definitely direct. Nearly all his films have a tension, strangeness in their existence. He knows where to put the camera.

Happy 99th Fellini

"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life."

Tarkovsky (Polaroids)

Talking Boogie Nights

I saw the Valley the way David Lean saw the desert in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
-- Paul Thomas Anderson

Destroyer

Karyn Kusama is badass

Update:
Top 10 films from Criterion

Another Peckinpah Quote

"I'm nothing if not a romantic and I've got this weakness for losers on a grand scale, as well as a kind of sneaky affection for all the misfits and drifters in the world."

Logging : Atlanta

Season 2, Episode 10 "FUBU"

Full of pathos.

(Glover's (90s) version of Louie's (70s) school day remembrances)

VICE (dir. Adam McKay)

Shapeless. Vomit writing. Empty storytelling.

On the nose agenda with an in your face, all on the surface style. No interest at all in exploring behavior, psychology, relationships, and the grays of life.

Who is the audience for this jerk-off fest? Other than McKay and his Hollywood friends who love to pat themselves on the back and believe that this $60 million garbage is a deep revelation for everyone  else.

The Continuing Saga of Louis C.K.

"I like to jerk off, and I don't like being alone."

New Orleans Jazz Fest 50th

Thoughts on ROMA from Guillermo

I love hearing him talk cinema (more than any of his own films). Enthusiasm in contagious.

Bird Box (dir. Susanne Bier)

Took me the course of three nights to get to the end. Probably would've been better served as mini-series, way too long, shot like a tv movie, yet storylines crammed in and unanswered. Watchable (I guess)?? Wish it was truly holyfuckingshit like M. Night Shamylan's The Happening.

Sunday Snow

morning magic music (Halicarnassus by Circles Around the Sound)