July 8, 2009
Soon I’ll be leaving Japan. When I think back on my year here, hundreds, if not thousands of emotions come flooding through me. How does one adequately describe a sunrise on Mt Fuji, fields of waving bamboo, peaceful sacred monkeys, or the snows of Hokkaido? Rather than attempt the impossible, here is a brief video clip that sums of the profound, unspeakable beauty that is the Land of the Rising Sun in a portrayal of Japanese life and culture that words simply cannot replicate:
[ via Filmdrunk]
June 29, 2009
I watched Jackie Brown again tonight for the first time in a few years. I have always defended Jackie Brown as being seriously underrated, but I think that this position is now not a controversial one. Jackie Brown revisionism has replaced the muted reaction that followed the film’s initial run to the point where when someone mentions Tarantino around a group of 20 somethings a ‘dude, Jackie Brown was actually really great!‘ is almost a pavlovian response. Even Sam Jackson’s awful dingle berry facial hair isn’t a reason to dismiss the movie which is amazingly paced, acted, edited, written, and shot. It makes you realize that beyond Tarantino’s coke addled B movie posturing there is (was?) a fantastic director and writer. That Tarantino adapted it from an Elmore Leonard novel makes it seem cooler to me now, rather than the opposite. What this viewing of JB did change my mind about was not the movie itself, but the persona of an actor that I think is for the most part seen by people my age as, at best, ’that guy from the first Batman’ and at worst as ‘that guy from Multiplicity.’
The reason I watched Jackie Brown was because I also recently saw Steven Soderbergh’s excellent Out of Sight for the first time. While watching Out of Sight it dawned on me that Jackie Brown was also (as I mentioned previously) based on an Elmore Leonard novel and that it also had Michael Keaton. I couldn’t stop thinking about Michael Keaton. I suspected he was playing the same character as in JB and, after poking around on Wikipedia, it turns out to be the only instance where the same character is played by the same actor in two completely (financially) unrelated films – the character being Federal Agent Ray Nicolette.
While watching Out of Sight I was really impressed by how believable and funny Keaton was in this small supporting role of Jennifer Lopez’s BF. In the movie Keaton plays a married federal agent who J Lo is having an affair with, and who she, herself, later cuckolds with bank robber Jack Foley (George Clooney.) While Keaton’s role in Out of Sight is relatively small, there is a short scene where he meets J Lo’s father (Dennis Farina) at the breakfast table and they exchange a few quick one-liners with amazing comic timing. This was when I remembered Jackie Brown and realized that Keaton was playing the same dude.
And so I watched Jackie Brown. And Michael Keaton is great in it also. While Keaton’s career is mixed (really, really, mixed) highlights including Batman, Batman Returns, Beetlejuice, Jackie Brown, and Out of Sight are not to be scoffed at. He was also in Mr. Mom which is excellent for entirely more ironic reasons. While this is not an amazing list of features, it does provide enough to make me think that he was sadly wasted as a character actor. Keaton never surpassed his star power from Batman but did maintain at least a fair amount of caché through the late 90s. His downfall could probably be seen starting with 1998s snow-man-come-to-life caper Jack Frost (incidentally a financial success, however) with the final nail in the veritable Hollywood coffin being the Lindsey Lohan vehicle (pun intended) Herbie: Fully Loaded.
Michael Keaton’s revisionism really isn’t viable beyond looking at the few performances where he was given a chance to work with serious directors. Unfortunately he wasn’t in all that many of these movies. Still, I think more consideration is due. Currently, he is seen by most people as some weird relic of the 90s. The male equivalent of his Multiplicity co-star Andy MacDowell. And maybe even a poor man’s Val Kilmer or a failed Tom Hanks wannabe. If Christian Bale falls into similar obscurity I think it is safe to say there is some sort of Batman Curse at work here, but somehow I think Bale will be spared the same fate. No matter. The point is that we ought to give Keaton more credit. He may not be as compelling as Kilmer was or as universally affable as Hanks, but he was still a subtle and effective actor in his own right, especially great in supporting roles. He may be due for a comeback.
June 29, 2009
June 10, 2009
I was skating at the downtown library in San Francisco two weeks ago and some serious shit went down. I was lucky enough to catch almost all of it on tape. Here is the raw video from the ridiculous debacle. I’m not really sure what to think of the whole thing…
June 8, 2009
let's throw a few more dead babies on that cactus
Over at the AV Club it’s BLOOD MERIDIAN month. I cut and pasted a long comment I made in a talk back over there down below, but you guys should head over and join the discussion yourselves. At the very least you can read other people’s analysis. And if you haven’t read BLOOD MERIDIAN (you know, Cormac McCarthy’s violence ridden gore-filled epic deconstruction of the Western) then get off the fucking internet and go read it. Now.
My comment:
Blastodon
8 JUNE 2009 | 5:03 AM CDT
I’ve always seen Blood Meridian as a novel that fits into the tradition of American literature that deals with a male patriarch who is trying to establish himself outside the bounds of society.
This idea, which heavily parallels Nietzsche (although it probably started with Melville and Moby-Dick many years before Nietzsche) is a tradition firmly established in American literary canon. Blood Meridian is as much a commentary on this tradition as it is a stand alone epic.
In Moby Dick, Ahab’s quest to defeat the whale is essentially a drive to rid himself of control – to be free the bounds of God / Society / Anything. Moby Dick represents a control, a lack of freedom, and Ahab destroys himself and the pequod in an attempt to free himself of this control. It is a quintessential and extremely American conflict: to establish yourself anew, free to make your own destiny. Radical individualism, though, has its price.
Similarly:
Thomas Sutpen, in Faulkner’s (arguably greatest novel, and most difficult) Absalom! Absalom!, attempts a similar quest, albeit through different means. He hopes to establish himself by creating a dynasty under his name, and, in so doing, ensure himself immortality and power. Of course, like Ahab, he fails again and again and again.
The key question of Blood Meridian, is whether or not the Judge has succeeded in creating, in himself, this post-moral American Super Man. Has his violence transcended all boundaries of judgement and consequence? I see McCarthy as arguing that he has.
While Ahab and Sutpen fail epicly (really really epicly!) The judge has succeeded in completely divorcing himself of the shackles of control; he has completely actualized the embodiment of American freedom. We, the readers, are force fed violence upon violence in a way that shows a world totally free, totally devoid of morals, totally ripped from the context of feeling, judgement, love, humanity.
The judge’s world, though not the world that Ahab and Sutpen longed for, is a world where there is no a priori, where action is apropos of nothing.
What McCarthy says, is that to gain our total freedom, this is the result. If god exists in Blood Meridian, then God is giving yourself up to that control.
June 8, 2009
The New York Times’s bizarre analogy quotient has been filled and surpassed this week as Ron Nordland (Nordland!) has compared wayward terrorist leader and dialysis enthusiast Osama bin Laden to the recently rediscovered prehistoric coelacanth – a fish native to the extreme depths of frigid New Zealand waters.
Nordland writes:
Has the message from Al Qaeda just become fossilized, a missive from a coelacanth that no longer dares venture out of its deep sea cave, where it slakes its predatory appetites in the dark?
SLAKES ITS PREDATORY APPETITES IN THE DARK! So. rad.
Here’s the original story. And here is a visual comparison:
May 27, 2009
I was looking through a folder on my laptop called ‘emachine’ which is all the contents from a computer I had years and years ago. Anyway, I came across the beginning of a fantasy story I must have tried to write in 8th or 9th grade. It fucking rules too, sort of like the narrative was inspired by a speed metal shirt’s graphics:
The gorewulfs wore fair and thinly the coats, feathers, hiding themselves. Skin was visible. I knew better and I knew what was under the epidermis: pink, purple muscles, and claws and bones. Eyes and teeth. I left the house walking briskly, determined not to let them catch me. They wear them thinly, their coats and feathers, they do not try to fool. I had just killed the master and blood was flowing from my fingernails and my eyes were closing and opening and all I could see were the cobbles and my boots. The gorewulfs were angry.
Gore Wulf
May 26, 2009
This is my second video update. Everything in this montage was filmed in the last 2 weeks.
Skaters:
Kenny Tanaka, Roy Heide, Shea (?), Filip Reese, Derek Nielson, Thomas Dijsktra
Additional Filming by:
Kenny and Roy
Music:
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Mysteries
May 23, 2009
This is some crazy graffiti/animation I found. Its pretty rad check it out.
