March

Having utterly failed to use this space for my intended purpose, to write essays, and imagining naively that others want to know what I am reading and watching and doing, or even worse, what I think about what I am reading and watching and doing, I have decided to start simply reporting what I’m watching and reading and doing, and in order to spark controversy (anything but joy, really), I was considering adding ratings, but I’m loathe to get quantitative when it comes to evaluating art, so finally I decided instead to go with an image/vibe-based system where I will provide an image that indicates how such-and-such made me feel. This will probably be annoying.

Mickey 17 (dir. Bong Joon Hoo)

Really feels like Bong Joon Hoo got the Academy Award bucks and decided to go full Hollywood here. This one’s about as subtle as an SNL sketch, and just as unfunny, I found myself trying to chuckle at various moments and failing. One measure of the complexity of a film might be in the variety of contradictions and neuroses that abide in its characters and situations, but this movie needed there to be two Robert Pattinson’s in order for there to be anything like an internal emotional dilemma (i.e., I know I should be this way but I want to be that way).

A man in the row in front of me fell into a sleep so deep that when the movie ended he was folded forward like a question mark, and not even the lights coming on or the people around him leaving stirred him. Perhaps the movie quite literally bored him to death, I don’t know.

(Why was Robert Pattinson doing that voice of rank dweebitude? Why were not one but two women attracted to his dweebitude? Why is anyone still casting Mark Ruffalo in anything?)

This one gets one nonplussed Bill Pullman.

Takeout (dir. Sean Baker)

Baker’s first, but has all the characteristic Sean Baker moves: the desperate scrambling for money, the act of kindness from the unexpected source, the endless sadistic parade of humiliation that the protagonist must suffer through before there can be any catharsis. Moving ending even if the drama that necessitates can be seen coming from a mile away.

I’ll give this one Bobby Bacalla playing with trains.

Herscht 07769, by László Krasznahorkai

Accusations of brodernism and facile formal play aside, this reads more like a nihilistic Jean Patrick Manchette crime novel than it does other single-sentence novels like William Gaddis' Agapē Agape or Bohumil Hrabal’s Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age, and it should be read as such. It’s an easy read, a fable, a tad ridiculous at times, but also more thoughtful than it’s given credit for and a grim warning…I liked it!

This one gets one Vince McMahon on the verge of creaming his pants.

Elizabeth Costello by JM Coetzee

Maybe the best thing a novel can do is humble its reader. Astonishing ending, each section a marvel of affect and effect.

This one gets one Jane Canary crying due to her own self-disgust.

Temple of the Dog, by Temple of the Dog

I really should have outgrown this stuff by now, but Chris Cornell’s maudlin wailing imprinted upon me at an impressionable age and it will probably only grow old for me when I do.

This one gets one Eddie Vedder standing in some weeds.

Possession (dir. Andrzej Żuławski)

Already said much of what I want to say about this one here. This movie is just pure romance, in my opinion.

Me, Going to and Giving Literary Readings

As a matter of fact, I’m there right now.

Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch)

Not as terrifying or as heartbreaking as some of his other efforts, but still a very good film with many moments of sprezzatura and hilarity. Laura Dern and Kyle McLachlan are kind of an awkward pair, and that’s occasionally funny, but Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper make the movie.

I felt vitiated enough that this one gets a Cooper having some coffee.

The New Final Destination Trailer

I’m sorry, but anyone who gets FD knows the films are about the terror of realizing you are trapped in a fatal fait accompli. But if you break a glass near an ice bin, you should empty the ice bin. If you don’t, and you make a drink with that ice, and you get a piece of glass in your drink, well, that’s not a fait accompli, that’s just stupidity.

This gets one Ralph Fiennes saying that it sounds like it was your own fault.

Setting up my spittoon when you have bronchitis

Unparalleled experience, in my opinion.

Universities Collaborating with ICE and the Trump Administration

History will remember your cowardice! I hope! It seems like everywhere institutions are choosing their bottom line over doing the right thing. Or worse, they’ve decided the people being deported without due process probably had it coming.

I’m sure these reluctant collaborators imagine this is Okay because one day soon we will wake up from this nightmare, and the wronged will receive justice, but of course, they are desperately wrong, and their concessions are indistinguishable from collaboration, and each one allows this administration to turn the heat up on the pot of boiling water that our oleaginous, idiot frog of a democracy is squatting in a little bit more.

In A Silent Way, by Miles Davis

This is utterly soothing. Perfect thing to have a think too. Might put it on right now.

Until next time,

Evan