this is a re-post from last year, but it makes my heart soar and reminds me why we started this blog.
we are independently wealthy!
love.
pat the aspiring actress in SHERMAN'S MARCH
the animal collective show was canceled friday and postponed until mid-february. a little damper on the weekend. perhaps this is good timing, though, as rhan has already outlistened himself on the new album and needs a break before hearing those songs live.
caught myself up on two wonderful, long overdue movies: PAPER MOON and SHERMAN'S MARCH. both were excellent; the latter is exceptional. charleen, ross mcelwee's mentor, deserves to be emblazened on a t-shirt. see the film and you'll understand what i mean.
we are going to the animal collective show tonight!!!
thanks to chad von nau for his video
having just seen the marrying kind (dir. george cukor, 1952), featuring one aldo ray in his first starring role, i am thinking about voices. ray's voice was a shocking mismatch for his face, a gruff, husky gangster's voice more suited to a bigger man (though ray was thick and athletic, with the build of a boxer). i spent the first quarter of the film delighted just to hear him talk.
faces, like voices, can be fortunate or unfortunate, insofar as they indicate the nature of the person they belong to accurately or inaccurately. someone like barbara stanwyck proves to me that beauty can be intelligent, while having a face like, say, aaron eckhart's is a misfortune, assuming that he is in fact a likable, thoughtful man and not a total boob. i think he looks like a boob. but this, of course, is my prejudice.
i wonder what my voice will sound like in my twilight years. i wonder what my voice sounds like now. to my inner ear, it is a touch deep and caught in the throat, the words coming out of me uneasily and at a low volume. but again, my prejudice. it's the people i know who could say.
oh, and we're seeing this one tonight:
in its first official US release!
a documentary about a fifteen year old boy growing up in a small town in maine, a boy who likes rock n'roll, movies, books and girls. there are plenty of films made about growing up-- a lot of them documentaries--but this one is particularly true, and its subject truely exceptional. billy is at once unusually smart and achingly typical, and through him you might remember your own adolescence--the whole exciting, horrible muck of it.
there's a moment in robert altman's commentary on 3 women where he describes pinkie and millie's struggle just to get through life: he describes them as brave. just to be an upright, living person is a difficult thing. billy the kid reminds me of this, too.
above, what i'd like to imagine is one of billy's favorite pictures of himself.
this is my favorite movie of the year so far.
see this movie. see this movie.
polished off carlos saura's flamenco trilogy:
BLOOD WEDDING (1981)
CARMEN (1983)
EL AMOR BRUJO (1986)
my favorite scene from the trilogy: la tabacalera in carmen
these films tap into the part of me that wishes i had been a dancer, or at least had the propensity to dance like this. they are also films that deal very intelligently with the preparation and artifice of performance, though they become increasingly narrative (and dramatic!) as the trilogy unfolds. these movies are beautiful and exciting, and worth giving yourself over to for awhile.
spanish passion burns red hot; it is suited for a dance like flamenco.
if you had any doubts about this, saura furnishes the proof.
what's a half-japanese girl to do? i have such short limbs.
a lovely morning
burden of dreams
herzog eats his shoe
peaceful afternoon conversation
prepared piano improvisation
sweeping the floor talking to xtevion on the phone
j s e shops for stuff so we can make soup
i move our bed more centered in the room
and boots settles in for a stare
out an open window
a beautiful day
sweet place in the evening
los angeles january 2009
CAT UPDATE: jack boots looks worried at the prospect of introducing a new kitten into the household.
last night i was seized with the desire to adopt another cat and to name it "tender buttons." i accumulate succulent plants for the same reason: to give them names. rhan shuddered at the thought of a second cat, having dealt with terrible feline infighting in the past, but i haven't given up the idea just yet. i'm looking up cat headshots on kitten rescue and the los angeles spca. thinking about buttons.
when i was younger, i liked to think about the possibility of doubles: that somewhere in the world there was someone exactly like me, living her life with the same looks and personality in a different set of circumstances. later i developed this into the thought that not only was there one alternate me, but dozens, one for every nationality and age group in the world. a brazilian juliet. an indian juliet. a juliet that is a very old lady. what were they all doing? and would i recognize them if i saw them?
juliet berto as celine in celine and julie go boating
these are the kind of thoughts that can transition very easily into diehard convictions, since they're good fun to talk about and there's no way to verify them one way or the other. also in this category is my "____ is someone's favorite ____" idea, which entails that no matter who or what you're thinking of or how obscure or awful they may seem, that thing or person is someone's favorite in the world. "my ding-a-ling" is someone's favorite song. bob balaban is someone's favorite actor. and so on and so forth. i believe these things are true with no actual proof, which i suppose is as close to religious faith as i've ever experienced. i've had people dispute me on these points, but i argue that such people are too hung up on a certain sort of accuracy, which is to say the sort of accuracy that takes the poetry out of opinion and the mystery out of life.
aspiring pop star juliet (richardson): ride the pain
i wonder if other juliets go by nicknames. i've had people ask me if i ever go by "julie," which strikes me as a funny sort of nickname, it being a whole other name in itself.
when i was growing up my dad had a few cameras -
a very cool early sixties model of a polaroid camera -
a no name 8mm movie camera -
and a nikon 35mm still camera.
it was understood that i should have no relationship
to these instruments - it was not encouraged -
i was half my mother and she could not take a picture, therefore i might break it.
it must be said for the sake of this post that my father was not what i call a great photographer.
he knew how to frame an image, he understood the window but beyond that his creativity was subtle.
later he got a camcorder. his videos were similar to his 8mm films. both formats usually involved birthdays, holidays. they included a great deal of my mother or my grandmothers and aunts running out of the shot laughing begging and screaming, “ronnie quit it, ronnie, don’t. i don’t want to be in that movie.”
me neither, actually. to this day i’m not very fond of a camera aimed in my direction unless i pointed it there myself.
the RCA VHS camcorder piqued my curiosity to overturn the house rule that only dad knew how to capture an image.
i made my first "short document" with it out in the back of my grandparents’ home.
though long gone, i still find this place wildly inspirational. it filled up my senses. i stayed for hours in the treetops. i hunted and snooped every inch of the old place. the great folk art shed, the fields, the creeks, the poverty of the neighborhood, the pastures, horses, old cats and dogs.
the old place was green in summer and white and grey in winter. coffee grounds and egg shells were pitched underhand in the field behind the shed; parts of raw chicken were tossed in a ditch in the side yard, where my grandfather burned all of the trash in two black and rusted oil drums.
i lovingly filmed these things with dad’s camcorder one afternoon. i was where i needed to be. i can still feel those images - in the purity of the moment i said the name of what i was filming, out loud - wood - grass - oil drum - ash - chicken.
that last image there - chicken - that one made my dad very angry. i was wasting tape.
he made fun of my now embarrassing narration. it was ridiculous, but his criticism was humiliating and i felt like a freak. i was not to touch the camcorder again.
later, on yearly vacations with my step-mother, dad's movies would always include an image of tree stumps or a rock complete with narration as a silly tribute to me and my first taped document.
he had no idea how he has affected my relationship to making things. it’s not his fault; he was just being honest and it was all he truly knew about cameras. they were tools for documenting those extraordinary posed moments in a family's life. the funny thing is that i totally agree with that philosophy. i frame every shot by the edges. i think about capturing a moment. to document what i see for posterity. whatever it’s worth.
from thomas merton's channel
there are a few words that i could use to describe catherine breillat's fat girl (2001) but i won't use those words. i can only say see it.
to describe the specifics of it or the way i felt watching it, would color a reaction. as it is, it stands on its own.
.
screen captures by r s e
as it happens, the first film we watched in the new year is also one of the finest films ever made. this is auspicious.
TROUBLE IN PARADISE, dir. ernst lubitsch, 1932, is a romantic comedy about thieves in love. it stars herbert marshall and miriam hopkins as a crooked couple and kay francis as the beautiful heir to a parisian perfumery fortune-- she's the mark they set out to swindle. the plot thickens, interests are piqued, jealousies inflamed, all leading to an ending both unexpected and totally, uniquely satisfying. movies don't end this way enough.
it's a funny film. it's also a sad one. this movie tells you what it means to be in love, to make choices, and to accept difficulty with grace. it has wit, loneliness, romance, tension and intrigue. all this and more in 82 minutes.
roger ebert on TROUBLE IN PARADISE
82 minutes! there is no fat on this picture. it is an argument for economy. if there really is a "lubitsch touch," it lies in this seemingly airtight arrangement of parts--the perfect cast, the best dialogue, and, as peter bogdanovich has pointed out, "not a moment of wasted motion." the editing is mostly invisible, and those points of stylistic boldness--a prelude to a love scene towards the middle of the movie, for instance--are exercised so sparingly that they just shimmer. kay francis has a face that looks like it is always indulging you a little, and miriam hopkins is beautiful, enthusiastic and utterly charming. lubitsch had to know all of this; after seeing only one of his films (albeit his "best" one) i trust in that completely. lubitsch is king. long live lubitsch.
this is my favorite time of the year, a time where i experience an almost superstitious belief in renewal, new beginnings, and the sweeping out of bad luck. i will turn twenty-six in 2009 and celebrate the two-year anniversary of my marriage. i hope to meet many new people this year and for everything to work out for all of them. i love this movie. i feel unassailably good about things.
TROUBLE IN PARADISE is the latest assignment for FILM ORGY.
JULIET: we spent the first day of the 2009 eating traditional japanese new year's dishes prepared lovingly by my mother and aunt. above, broiled red snapper with rolled nori and a mixture of snow peas, carrots, and some other things i'm not sure of. not pictured are my favorites--fish cakes, ginger chicken and mochi. we ate heartily.
RHAN: the day had a peaceful dreamlike quality to it. all of the food felt new. after lunch, we all settled in to watch a film, and about two thirds of the way into it i heard the contented breathing of three ladies sleeping. this is a good way to start a new year.
JULIET: food coma.
RHAN: the day had a peaceful dreamlike quality to it. all of the food felt new. after lunch, we all settled in to watch a film, and about two thirds of the way into it i heard the contented breathing of three ladies sleeping. this is a good way to start a new year.
JULIET: food coma.
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