Tag Archives: Bob Dylan

Pravda [1969)

There are few things more difficult.  More difficult.  Than divining the truth as it is happening.

Happening?  The truth happens.  Or is.

We don’t know.  Prague Spring.  PRAHA.

Did you know that Ceaușescu condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia?  Really.

Fascinating.  We hear that name and we think bad guy.  Maybe.  We do.

Youthful errors.  I can only affirm the brilliance of this film in absence of French comprehension.

In absence of Italian comprehension.

In absence of Czech comprehension.

In absence of Marxist comprehension.

You will notice the monolithic structures as a Western capitalist on the outside looking in.

On the inside perhaps some saw provisions for all.

Heat in winter.  Food on the table.  Poverty squelched or shared.

Socialism.

It explains why this film is barely in print.  You must remember how radical the Dziga-Vertov Group was.

You either find it brave or you find it disgusting…like the Aden Arabie cell from La Chinoise.  Juliet Berto chanting

Revisionist!

Revisionist!

Revisionist!

…as if brainwashed.

Skoda.  Now owned by Volkswagen.  How ironic?

Skoda.  Founded by two Vaclavs.

There is a 20-year gap in Skoda’s history on Wikipedia.  Škoda Auto.  My guess is we can thank Volkswagen for “cleaning up” the history a bit.  They cleaned a little too well.  Now there’s a hole.  And it’s noticeable.

Two shirtless fat men.  Two Vaclavs?  I have no idea.  But these gents make it all worthwhile…shoveling dirt in front of a post office.  One of the two so impressively hirsute (back and front) as to have a pseudo-shirt.

Socialism was a belief in something.  The U.S. lost the Vietnam war.  Little debating that.  And now Vietnam is socialist (at least in name).  Did the globe stop spinning?  Of course not.

These are not brave details.  I have been much more bold before.

Yet reason.

She was so beautiful as to make us cry.

We stood no chance.

She never smiled.

Not like the first one..

To understand Marx.  To understand European socialism.  To understand Russia riddle enigma matryoshka.  Through the lens of Dostoyevsky.  Karamazov.  Religion.  Culture.  Vast expanses of land…

I may be at the end of the world.  It may be necessary for me to take a step back.

Mmmm…to be intoxicated by something so bizarre, so rare, so taboo, and so unknowable…for now.

It is why Alex Jones’ films fail.  They are artless.  Had he channeled Godard there would have been no stopping his cinema.

But the spectacle is where James Clapper, much to his own chagrin, realizes that “deceit deceives itself” (to quote Debord).

TPTB have never grasped the coded messages in Shostakovich.  Stylometry can only undermine a Snowden email.  If that.

Like Dylan I have no big answers.

You will be punished for thinking.  That.

Thought crime.

Guillotine.

Guileless in Seattle.

We are getting closer to the truth.  Dangerously close.

You will know knowledge hack.  Coined term.  Here.  Like 4’33” Cage.

Life hack.  Kryptos.

Somebody forgot to take their medicine.

We can joke.

Did Ezra Pound’s punishment befit his crime?  His crime?  [DHS] [[VHS]]

Kino Pravda.

Should keep several good intelligence analysts busy for a week.

Several petaflops of drivel occupied.

To not be fucked with.

Moloch in Bohemia.

Practically free.

Just keep the angles which predate Orson Welles.  Dziga.  Vertov.

The Académie française will never accept.  Their loss.

Propaganda will always show blood dripping from fangs…even if blood is dripping from fangs.

We could make a deal.  He says.

Petaflops.

Liquidated.

Rights reserved, wrongs reversed.

Elision says stylometry.

Experimental literature.

This is not a film review.

Think on your sins.

Gets to feeling like a powerful shit.  Ripe for manipulation.

A lot of things can happen to dog shit.

Flash tits change world.

Sure, you know what’s going on…but you don’t REALLY know.

Two-way mirror of social media.  Instant fame.

We’ve been trained to utter scumbag.

” ”

Twice.  de Chirico.

Yep.  Someone else has caught the scent.  Freud cerebral.  Marx visceral.

The angles converge.  Méliès.  Rampling, Charlotte.  Trampoline.

I need a love to keep me happy.  Keith Richards said that.

It is the most fertile field of Godard study.

This key-logging software is really slowing me down.

Doesn’t matter.  We take the stairs.

AIPAC, Carole King, Black Maria?!?

Now you know the key.  Of a different sort.

-PD

6 Comments

Masked and Anonymous [2003)

Some years ago, San Antonio (my hometown) had a cheeky ad “campaign” which struck a little too close to home…which is to say, it was perfect.

Our neighbors to the north in Austin (my home of some 15 years) have cashed in on a perceived eccentricity which that college metropolis embodies (to a greater or lesser extent):  Keep Austin Weird.

San Antonio’s riposte?  Keep San Antonio Lame.

I shit you not.

And, thus, tonight…Bob Dylan in the Alamo City…and a dream come true for me…sort of.  It took 17 years from when the album Time Out of Mind really convinced me of the man’s continued genius.  Seventeen years.  The amount of time it took Joyce to write Finnegans Wake.  At my pace it will take me as long to read Finnegans Wake.  But I digress…

It was poverty.  I was a musician.  Bob Dylan is/was/always will be my favorite living musician.  I could never afford the exorbitant ticket prices.  Tonight, luck was on my side…sort of.

The hoi polloi at tonight’s concert at the Majestic Theater disgusted me to an extreme degree.  People 30 to 45 minutes late…standing in front of me.  The incessant in and out of thirsty “fans” headed to the bar or shitter.  And to top it off, a brother/sister duo behind me who wouldn’t shut the fuck up.  Their never-ending running commentary finally snapped my patience as I turned around exasperated with a “I give up” look followed by the international pirate sign for throat-slitting.  Sure, I felt bad about it afterwards…but goddamn, I am shocked by the sporting event etiquette which greeted the true poet laureate of the United States to my fair (foul) city.

And so, Masked and Anonymous…

I rewatched it earlier today.  Such a fabulous film.  One of a kind.  Timeless.  There are no words for the cutting dissertation of Bob Dylan in his pseudonym screenwriter persona Sergei Petrov.  Larry Charles tags along as “Rene Fontaine” (cowriter) and as the cinematic auteur in charge of mise-en-scène.

I can’t really sum up how much Bob Dylan (as singer Jack Fate in this film) means to me.  That’s why it pissed me off so much as people filed out early from tonight’s concert to beat the rush…as if the Spurs were down 10 with 30 seconds remaining.  The bourgeois mass which sullied my night epitomize the artless throng which runs San Antone.  Don’t be fooled by the River Walk.  There is no life here.  Looking for the zombie apocalypse?  I can personally vouch that S.A. is chock-full of walking dead.

It is a prison.  And only a shrill voice can pierce the malaise.

In so many ways, Masked and Anonymous is a prescient film.  The flag.  North American Union.  The Midas-Judas Building.  Dr. Benway:  Psychiatrist.  And John Goodman as a thinly-veiled Albert Grossman:  Uncle Sweetheart.

Yes, the music industry is fucked.  It is a wonder that Bob Dylan gets out there every night and slogs it out.  In some ways, he is analogous to our Tim Duncan here in San Antonio (yes, our one pro sports team is truly the sole saving grace of this shithole…because they have class and are not obnoxious prima donnas).

Let’s give due to those vets who acted for the minimum recompense here:

Jeff Bridges as a slippery rock journalist.

Bruce Dern in a pithy role (powerfully acted) as Bridges’ editor.

Jessica Lange as a smoldering TV producer.

Penélope Cruz (so goddamned good in this) as a paranoid yet feather-light religious zealot.

Luke Wilson as Jack Fate’s old roadie.  [Side note:  I once walked up to Wilson in a Whole Foods and told him how much I appreciated his performance in this.  As I was wearing a white, polyester suit in the dead of Texas summer, it goes without saying that I probably shocked the shit out of poor Mr. Wilson.  He was, however, a good sport about the whole thing.]

Cheech Marin in 30 seconds (?) of pure genius…especially paired with the droll acting of Dylan.

Ed Harris as…Emmett Miller???

The list goes on and on…Chris Penn, Giovanni Ribisi (great segment on the bus), Christian Slater, Val Kilmer (slithy toves), Angela Bassett…

Of special note is Mickey Rourke as a bizarre mashup of George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales.

Somewhere between the positively fuck street of “Pay In Blood,” the agony of “Long and Wasted Years,” and the exiled ecstasy of “Autumn Leaves” Bob Dylan managed to transcend tonight at the Majestic.  Maybe he was channeling his old buddy Doug Sahm.  Nothing but a beer joint with a cloud machine.

-PD

8 Comments

British Sounds/See You at Mao [1969)

Bloody fucking bollocks!

I’ve wanted to say that for a long time.  I’ve said it before.  But it looks better in writing.

It has a sort of permanence to it.  Yet we never know.

Why the non sequitur expletive?  Because this film is a brilliant expletive deleted.

Long ago…in a galaxy…in OUR galaxy, as a matter of fact,

there were some clever blokes (?) who called themselves the Dziga-Vertov Group.

Chief among them, of course, was Jean-Luc Godard.

But it is telling that he wanted his celebrity subsumed by something greater than himself.

Ach, Gott!  Fuck this.  I have caught myself slipping into a routine voice.

A routine voice will tell you nothing about this film.

And so we come to the crux of this experiment:  struggle.

Film is a struggle between images and sounds.

In a Godard film, even images struggle amongst themselves in a feeding frenzy.

It is a manifestation of a mind trying to process the unfathomable complexity of the world.

In the film under review, it is especially the sounds which cannibalize one another.

But this is not new in Godard films.  Always, ALWAYS…there is a plethora of content.

Like a honey ant ready to explode.

[                                                      ] Space left intentionally blank.

Analogous to paragraph.

If you are thinking poetry,

you are not far off.

We miss the mark daily.  It is not a Christian confession.

There is not a way to look over the summary to this film on Wikipedia.

In that sense, I am offering a service.

Yet, I am giving you a very subjective, personal impression of this film.

I write film criticism which strives to harmonize with each individual film under consideration.

In other words, each film must be reviewed differently.

There really isn’t, despite a tendency to the contrary towards generalization, such thing as

a film like all the rest.

Yet I have my patois.  My schtick.

Take it or leave it.

Only know that the message is under continually scrutiny.

Self-criticism of film criticism in a controlled system seeking to explain it all.

If you are looking for the answer to the question,

“Who’s in control?,”

the answer is,

“No one’s in control.”

I’m sure my friends at the CIA will agree with me on this.

To clarify, I have no friends at the CIA (that I know of).

Speaking sequentially and descriptively with deference to “plot” is useless here.

We have lost the plot.  [Thank God!]

And so a guitar can change he world.

And some extremely-advanced students can change some Beatles lyrics (months after The White Album was released).

You must struggle in the mud.  Mud and blood.  Le sable et le sang.  Rimbaud.

I failed miserably.

And she was hoisted into the air on a Panavision boom.

Nude ascending a staircase.

This just in…THREE LEVELLERS SHOT BY CROMWELL IN BURFORD…

ORIOLES DEFEAT WHITE SOX IN BOURGEOIS VACUUM

Ah,…now I am weeping for the revolution…or for the auteur.

But the auteur has given us a lasting oeuvre.

Was Truffaut’s only English-language film Fahrenheit 451?

It matters.  Here.  …et ailleurs.

I am weeping for the old auteur…before he’s even gone.

And next I will view but not review.

Solely my own experience.  To remember where I started.  (which is basically where I am at this very second)

I have not moved an inch.

It is essential to see British Sounds.  To hear British Sounds.

As an English speaker.  In April 2015.  You won’t even need the Italian subtitles.

They are telling us we are losers.  THEY they.

I have no message.  “Too many messages.”  –Harry Partch

I am just floating on the waves of free association.

Go on:  call me an amateur.

A lover , not a fighter…who didn’t claw his way up to gargle in the rat-race choir.

He lives.  Let me check.

He lives.

Regardless.

And we have no way of communicating with our fellow man.  The life sucked out of the 21st century.

This is by design.

“Separation is the alpha and the omega of the spectacle.”  –Guy Debord

I present the conspiratorial view of history applied to cinema.

Paranoid nonfiction.  I have never read Dick.

Quicker than you can say Jack Robinson.  The difficulties.

Such a quintessentially British euphemism.

The Troubles.  Northern Ireland.

We know nothing.  It’s not as easy as shot/reverse/shot.

It’s like the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ).

KGB calling it a CIA false flag.

Need we remind the perceptive reader of world history that Dr. Ewen Cameron was being paid by the CIA to carry out hideous psychiatric experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute on the grounds of McGill University in Montreal as part of Project MKUltra over a period of time which overlapped with the activities of the FLQ? That is established fact and not a conjecture with which the KGB had any connection.

And so the question becomes, as Godard and co-director Jean-Henri Roger ask, [to paraphrase] “Is Marx the best weapon with which to confront the situation before us?”

Baltimore is haunted by the past (capitalism).  China is haunted by the present (vestigial communism).  In America there is no present moment (minus the times when reality erupts within the spectacle).  In China there is no past.  Not really.  It is forbidden.  Communism requires the primacy of the present moment.  History is history.  Gone.  Capitalism requires the continuation of the past.  Inheritance.  Both suffer from the status quo.  Capitalism is no longer capitalism…and communism is no longer communism.  The great irony is that monopoly capitalism and totalitarian socialism are no longer easily distinguishable (if they ever were).  Why more people don’t seek out the power elite of this two-sided conspiracy coin is beyond me.

Fear.  Fear prevents us.  Only the dispossessed have what is called courage.  Rage.  Courage.

-PD

2 Comments

Le Gai savoir [1969)

Words:  0

Publish.  1:09 AM.  Enter your categories below.  Bellow.  Saul.  HTML.  HoT MeaL.

Words:  12

The Grand Budapest Hote…

?!

I cannot express this pictogram.  CATEGORIES.  We must categorize.

Juliet Berto.  I’m just warming up.  Preview.

Words:  33

1:12 AM.  FEATURED IMAGE.  Visual.  Yes, a film by Jean-Luc Godard.

This DVD could feed a village for a week.

No food on the table.  No table.

The plot is one-sentence long (!) on Wikipedia.  The Joy of learning.

71  :Words

Trash.  Keep on goin’!

Au lecteur:

Current Staus:  Saved Draft.  Le Gai savoir [1969).

1:15 AM.

How long is a second?  Krypton?  Cesium?

paulydeathwish

Moi.

Preview Post.  Not coming to a theater near you (and certainly not near me).

4/16/2015

My Site.  W.

LBJ.  Vietnam.  Dropping white phosphorus bombs on the silk factories of Hanoi.

Enter your tags below.

Toe.

This film has been a favorite of mine since I first saw it.  Like a Bible in the dark.  Smirking at how clever.

152  :sdroW

Publish Immediately.

CHANGE STATUS.  It’s complicated.  In that it’s not complicated.  Painfully single.

File   Edit   View   Favorites   Tools   Help

Windows on the World.  Risk Waters.

You ask who died.  And who didn’t.  Warren Buffett.  Charity golf and tennis tournament.  Offutt AFB.  Morning of 9/11.  Nerve center of American nuclear deterrent.  We know one WTC CEO who didn’t die because she was invited.  Who else was on that list???

I hear the whispers of a young, balding man.  Torn in half by war.  Risking it all.  To edit a film about the Palestinians.  And the film lab is bombed.  A scare tactic.  How dare you support those Muselmanns?  Muselmensch.

Disproportionate riposte.  Flip script.  ABC

sWords:  265

1:27 AM

Louis Le Prince – Wikipedi…

Add Media.

Two sentences.  I overlooked a period.

Lumumba and Rousseau.

Freud is the head and Marx is the sex.  Theory and practice.

Give him enough rope.  …

Derrida sideways.

It is the brilliance of the little boy–the touching presence of the crusty old beggar.

In school we learned about Nietzsche, but no one ever told me about Jack Nitzsche.

iPhone.  Pronounced “ee-fone” in French.  ePhone.

This iswas unknown territory.  1969.  1:36 AM.  You’re late.  You’re really not taking this very seriously.

Bob Dylan.  Jean-Pierre Léaud.

My love is smiling by the sea.  She has gone away.  Cruel.

She stares at me from a different time.

He is an old man now.  Wild Strawberries.

Shall we try again??  D’accord…

Batman.  The Incredible Hulk.  Spiderman.

She keeps dozing off.  Tap tap.  Perks up.  Dozes.  Again prodded.  But when she slumps left (her left)…a caress.  It works the same.  She opens her eyes.  More painful-eyes studying.  Some sleep with one eye open.  I read until only one eye cooperates.  And then no eyes.  Off to processing sleep.

Mao was still prominent.  But this is where the great art of montage was first born…continued and epitomized in Histoire(s) du cinema.  3.8/5.  My ass.  Rotten tomatoes…Léolo.

Ou Ou Ou

Ou Ou Ou

So what you’re saying is that this review is a failure.

Three moles on left side of face.

No one in their right mind is asking.

Mon martyre.  Montmartre.

Jean of Ork.  nanu nanu

Tannu Tuva.

What ever happened to Richard Feynman?

Don’t call me Shirley.  Andrew Card.

To enjoy a cigar by the water.

Une poignée de gens

Words:  538.

Attack on language.  Send reinforcements.

2:05 AM

ending transmission

-PD

9 Comments

The Enforcer [1976)

Damn.  It takes a lot to laugh.  It takes a train to cry.  Bob Dylan said that.

I just said damn.

This film was released the year I was born.  Yeah, I’m an old son of a bitch.

Figure of speech (you understand)…

It’s hard to talk about this film without talking about Tyne Daly.  How beautiful she looked in this film!  What great acting!

But let’s start at the beginning…

Jocelyn Jones.  Any fish bite if you got good bait.  Henry “Ragtime” Thomas said that.

Numb nuts.  Jocelyn said that.

I know the type.  Bait.  Numb nuts.

Think Lana Turner.  That first appearance she makes in The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Or Sue Lyon in Lolita.  Kubrick.  The hard stuff.

Those little heart-shaped sunglasses.  Her eyes replaced by your mind.

It’s not “Pleasant Valley Sunday”…rather, Mill Valley.

No Monkees.  Just a bunch of bloodthirsty punks after some money.  A rag-tag group of Vietnam vets and ideological dupes.

Director James Fargo goes for the kill early on.  The tight shot of those blue-grey eyes.  A little awkward.  But DeVeren Bookwalter more or less delivers.  Not quite as terrifying as Andy Robinson in the original Dirty Harry…ok, actually a straight rip of that character minus the fascinating Zodiac Killer angle.  But Fargo turns in a pretty convincing film.  No small feat.  While the James Bond franchise was busy dicking around with numerous directors, the Dirty Harry series showed them how to strike an emotional blow with an economy of means.

Of course we get another shite superior…Captain McKay…played pretty well by Bradford Dillman.  Not as convincing as Hal Holbrook in Magnum Force, but hey…  And again, a straight rip of the Lt. Briggs character.

All of this would seem to indicate that this is a watery domestic facsimile with a lack of imagination.  Not quite.  This is a damn good film.

Tyne Daly really provides the foil to Eastwood that was needed to make this picture transcend.

Fargo’s silhouette version of Stan Brakhage’s The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (1971) is frankly brilliant.

Albert Popwell makes powerful use of his limited screen time.  Swahili for freedom:  uhuru.

It brings us to a Hitchcock moment and reminds us of the ultimate case of the wrong man:  Osama bin Laden.  As Ralph Nader described George W. Bush:  a corporation disguised as a human being.  Osama.  THE Company.

Not even the head of the snake.  Not even the tip of the iceberg.  More like a figurehead asset.  A fall guy.  A bogus bogeyman.

And so the real terrorists run free.  Suits and ties.  Top Secret security clearances.

It’s as hollow a feeling as that famous “mission accomplished” pronouncement.  On the USS Abraham Lincoln no less.  Yeah…it’s time to open up some crusty old prisons for the real terrorists.  Places that’ll make Guantanamo Bay look like a goddamned Sandals resort.

-PD

2 Comments

2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle [1967)

I am at a loss for words.  But through your peripheral vision you can tell that I didn’t stop writing after that statement.  No, in fact…you can tell that I conversely became quite verbose.  So therefore the figure of speech was misleading.  Perhaps that is why Godard came to distrust language.  Who is Jean-Luc Godard?

And what does it matter?  This rhetorical device propels my analysis, yet the reader is more or less free to comment at the end of the article.  More or less.  Derrida.  Deconstruct at the weakest link in the logical chain.  Find where the text contradicts itself.  It is like a pivot chord in a musical modulation.  Napoleon would charge with all of his forces.  More or less.

The reason I express myself in this way is because, for me, film criticism is akin to ekphrasis.  Therefore, poetry.  As much as we want to be historians or scholars or social scientists, we must accept that we are really just poets.  Just.

Finally a title which meshes with my theme.  It’s not my theme, yet I have chosen it.  Vertigo.  It rejects diacritical marks…just as Shirley cards rejected the negro.  Godard realized this in Africa.  Filming.  The film had been optimized for white actors.

With all of these tangents it is a wonder that anyone makes it to the end of these ekphrastic rants.  Rambling rants.  Off-topic.  Hot topic.  Napalm.  Curtis LeMay.  Stone Age.

It occurs to me that I could very well play the reactionary, yet conscience intercedes.  Pax Americana.  No.  I cannot justify it.  I will leave it to the Navy…”a global force for good.”

It was wise that they finally discarded such a ridiculous motto.  Perhaps no one was buying it.  Sell war.  Buy war.

It is easy to get caught up in all of the James Bond gadgetry and thereby forget Vietnam..  Forget Iraq.  Forget Afghanistan.  Libya.  Syria.

For me there is no difference between the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.  Pepsi and Coke.  Perhaps one is a little worse than the other.  They fundamentally define one another.  A dialectic.  Hegel.  Kant.  Fichte.

If I know one thing, it’s…a thesis.  If you knew better, you’d…antithesis.  Bon.  C’est tout.  …ou 3:  synthesis.

Jean-Luc Godard dropped out of the University of Paris.  It is credited as his alma mater on Wikipedia.  The Sorbonne.

This was before Hanne Karin Bayer became Anna Karina:  Godard’s first wife and leading lady.  But now we have Marina Vlady.  Made in Russia.

I get a text.  Putin missing.  I had seen.  DEBKAfile.  Approximately one million spots lower than my website on Alexa.

No, they will never give up on trying to impose order on the chaos of Finnegans Wake.  It is sheer egotism.  And I am the antithesis:  no plot, no characters.

And what of the synthesis?  Yes, you must reread and rewatch to uncover the nuances.  Godard’s oeuvre is one long statement.  Miss a film and you’ve missed a chapter of his life–a phrase in his grand statement.  Certainly.  Certainly.  Maybe.

“The comic book and me, just us, we caught the bus.”  From the basement Bob Dylan nailed it:  modern life as comic book.  Obverse and reverse.  Godard and Dylan.

All I have is cat food.  You have seven minutes left.  Three left.

Anny Duperey looks perfect…perfectly empty…staring off into space…smoking the ubiquitous cigarette.  The Shirley card loves her.  She shines.  She is radiance.  Might she be the next! big! thing?

It is with a heavy heart…that I relate that no, indeed, rather, Juliet Berto…for some time.

And thus our grand unstated theme:  cancer.  Like the hideous sound of jungle helicopters–desert jets.  Division.  Long division.

Juliet Berto won’t be reading this in any traditional manner.  She passed away in 1990 at the age of 42.

In 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle, she made her screen debut.

Tristesse.  Sadness.  Yes, Godard was right.  It is undeniable.  Things have not gone well for capitalism.  He says neo-capitalism, but I say neoconservatism.  It is not quite antithesis.  It is already synthesis.  Beginning, middle, end.  [Not necessarily in that order…]

-PD

2 Comments

Way of the Dragon [1972)

1770.  Beethoven.  Dragon.  If my math is correct.  I was born in the year of the dragon.  Hour of the dog.  For dragon, I will own eccentric.  For dog, sense of justice and lazy.  Bruce Lee was born in the year and hour of the dragon.

Strong.  Intestinal fortitude is usually used figuratively.  Early in this film we might be disoriented by the clumsy, blurred  mise-en-scène.  Indeed, this was Lee’s first and last completed directorial effort.  The beginning doesn’t bode well.  Just like his character, who accidentally orders five bowls of soup, Lee seems in over his head as an auteur.  As his character Tang Lung deals with a seeming case of the shits, the film moves (on the contrary) very slowly.  Not only do we wonder about the technical proficiency of the cinematographer, we experience a claustrophobic hyper-sensitivity to the passing of time.  Mercifully, this is offset by a cinematic tone which echoes Tati’s Playtime.

But the strength builds up.  The film, literally, comes into focus (albeit slowly).  Lee once again plays a similar character to those he delineated in The Big Boss and Fist of Fury.

You must put your hip into it, he says.  Yes.  This is the secret to power.  Leverage.  Chinese boxing.

We are made aware of Lee’s strength on several occasions when he flexes his taut physique.  Suffice it to say that there is nothing slight about the diminutive Lee.  One senses that every square inch of this man is power.  Strength.

Proud.  Nothing is like back home.  Hong Kong.  Rome doesn’t impress Lee.  On one occasion he seems to see things through the eyes of Respighi for a moment, but then makes a flippant comment about a grand fountain.  Tang Lung (Lee) would build over it.  Make money.

But this façade is at odds with the loyalty he shows to his newfound friends in Rome (themselves likewise expats from Hong Kong).

Direct.  Lee begins to direct.  There is a panache in all of his movements…like a lethal Chaplin.

Eccentric.  Can I buy a gun around here?  Yes?  Good.  I’ll whittle some bamboo darts instead.

He moves in squawking orbits.  Distractions.  Diversions.  Like Muhammad Ali with Tourette’s.

Show off.  More like a selective extrovert.  Beware of the quiet ones.  The humble ones.  When they reach their breaking points, God forbid they be the most genius asskickers on the planet.

Lee refrains until his adversaries ask for it.  Backed into a corner, he turns the tables…every time.

Arrogant.  Sometimes…  It takes a Chuck Norris to remind us that there are other masters in the world.  And if we beat them, we salute them.  But he who seeks not money shall have a superior core to the mercenary.  To protect is more powerful than to attack.

Violent.  Damn right!  You want violence?  You’re about to be dealt the quickest administrations of pain you’ve ever seen.  Calling Dr. Lee.  This is where shock and awe comes from.  And machinery/technology will never ascend to the glorious depths of human creativity.  Endurance is in the mind.

Brash.  Occasionally.  The big boss needs to learn.  The big boss hires his murders–his terrorism–his intimidation.  The big boss runs and hides when the fast bullets fly.  But once in awhile the masters of war find themselves in very uncomfortable circumstances.  The teacher does not love war.  The teacher masters war.  The teacher masters the passions of revenge.  Bruce Lee never distributes a disproportionate riposte.

Controlling.  Control.  First, control yourself.  Seek to master yourself.  Listen to your body.  Control what you can control…knowing that the world is chaos…an indeterminate harmony.  Then you will be ready to think on your feet.  You will be ready to invent and improvise like Thelonious Monk.

This is the way of the dragon.

-PD

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Masculin feminin: 15 faits precis [1966)

I don’t write about the film, I write about me.  I don’t write about the film, I write about the world.  No.  I write about the film the best I can.  I am on a mission to start every sentence with I…from now to the end of eternity.  Not quite.

I don’t know what pops up in your reader.  You know about the reader?  Tell me about the reader, Charles…  Yes?  And???  Right.  The reader writes.  Correct!

We are some macro-blogging mofos.  Four times I wrote it and four times it autocorrected to micro.  And so the stupid hyphen.  Just like the titles.  Diacritical marks are the first to go in totalitarian societies.  Then the dollar words.  Soon, all words which might express inefficient, ineffective concepts such as tenderness.

Now we are rolling.  Give the anarchist a cigarette!

D’accord…

Allors…

Jean-Pierre Léaud was the Jason Schwartzman of the 60s…or vice versa.  And while we might think primarily of Truffaut, here we see Léaud in a truly penetrating role.

Chantal Goya.  She plays the ice-cold bitch pretty well…completely meretricious, vacuous, etc.

And then we run into red hypertext “links” for Catherine-Isabelle Duport and Michel Debord.

Yeah, we all know:  the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.  Could have been.  Tarzan vs. IBM.  Could have been.  The ape and the onion.  Mercury Rev.

Well, yes:  it could have been.  Today.  Particularly dreary.  All week.  Usually I embrace it.  Pretend like I’m Liam Gallagher in Manchester.  But not today.  Not this week.  Only shadows in the night gets it right.

It’s a bummer.  I’m too old to be young.  Too perverted to be romantic.  Too romantic to live.  Etc. Etc. Etc.

And yes:  I catch the aspect ratio.  I yell Trotskyite.  Not really, but parallel.  I detest the cowardice…when I myself am a basket-case.  It’s ok.  We are human.

We remember Marx and Coca-Cola, but we forget James Bond and Vietnam.  We forget the military-industrial complex.

Let me tell you how it happened.  I lay down as always with my sea-foam-green (eau-de-nil) headphones ready to continue my reflection on the great oeuvre.  And my computer doesn’t cooperate.  It’s as if I have conjured the spirit of JLG.  The sound outraces the picture.  Chaplin-fast to Notre Musique-slow.  The waves come crashing in.  Ingmar is hijacked and ridiculized.

Translation:  my computer won’t play the disc.  After 15 minutes of relatively good play, it jerks and stops and pauses and reloads in an endless loop.  It’s like as a kid with that De La Soul CD…I’d physically pick up the player an inch and let it drop down.  Somehow it would catch.  It was just that disc.  No, not this time.

I have cared for this film like a child.  It is one of many baby Jesuses in my Jodorowsky stable.  Manger.

And so I traveled far to rewatch this.  Fifteen paces maybe.  15.  So what?

Et allors?

Pauvre Wikipedia.  Lion-wannabe.  Quick!  Call Tim Rice and Elton John.  Pathetic.

Yes, she keeps abreast of the pop charts.  Cashbox.  And he likes her type of breasts.  Why not say it?

And isn’t there anything else you like about me?  Well, Miss 19, there’s not much more to like.  A Big Mac and a pair of Nikes and you’re happy.

Yes, Seymour Glass.  I’m sure he just backed up too far on the balcony…trying to get all two of them in the picture…in Florida…like Richard Manuel.

Duport eats a bananafish.  Marquis de Sade.  Such a perfect day.  Cassis and mineral water.  And Orangina for Marlène Jobert.  Perhaps.  Who cares.

You can tell a redhead even in black and white.  She should have been more famous.  Eva Green’s mom.

yé-yé all day long

Mozart

the orchestra is fantastic

clarinet concerto

middle movement

Paul.  Again with the Paul.  It started tentatively in Vivre sa vie.  And then Paul Javal.  Contempt.  In the name of the father.  And now again without Christian name like Le Chiffre.  James Bond and Vietnam.  Same complex.  Inferiority.  Military-industrial.

With that I am at 666 words.  Ed Sanders decides to consult Harry Smith on how to levitate the Pentagon.  Exercise the demons.  Nothing like a demon with love handles. Give ’em a good workout.

B-A-C-H.  Psychotic fugue on the Mashed Potato.  Dee Dee Sharp.

What other kind of fugue is there?!?  Jonny Greenwood would surely tell you it’s reversible.  Amnesiac.

ménage à quatre

bullshit

intellectual parlor games

Wikipedia

I know.  I know.  Hawaiian.  Quick!  Vite!

caméra-couteau

probing, probing

like Tony Parker

pass the goddamn ball

I’m not sure you want to know.  I am a lip-reader.  Baudelaire.  Au lecteur.  Samuel Fuller.  Les Fleurs du mal.  No one under 18 admitted.  Strictly no admittance.  778 words and I haven’t gotten to the film.

-PD

11 Comments

I Could Never Be Your Woman [2007)

We get older.  It’s hard.  Our lives didn’t turn out like fairytales.  And yet, we push on.  We live.  We work.  We study.  We survive.  Oh, how much it can mean…a kind word.  A moment extra taken to be gentle.  Humble.  Respectful.  Thankful.

I didn’t know what I was getting into when I threw on this film.  I’ve sought out Saoirse Ronan films because I have been so impressed with her acting in Hanna and The Grand Budapest Hotel.  Suffice it to say, some of her lesser-known films…I never would have watched otherwise.  But it’s good.  It’s good to exit the genres and areas with which we are most comfortable.

Some of these newer films…there is a trepidation which precedes the viewing.  I wonder if I can make it past the first 10 or 15 minutes.  Let me say quite plainly:  this is a pretty damn good film.

Credit director and writer Amy Heckerling with tapping into a vein of stories which need to be told.  Likewise, Michelle Pfeiffer was just the right choice to express the marginalized stories which come to the forefront in this film.  Paul Rudd is a shockingly-good support here.

You want marginalized?  Well, this film went straight to DVD in the U.S.  That’s an insult.  I don’t care what the market research said:  that was a mistake.  Film history will vindicate these pictures which were treated thusly.

Over the hill…  40.  Women have it hard.  And so do dudes like Adam Pearl (Paul Rudd).  Teenage girls have it particularly hard.  Saoirse really does a masterful job of delineating a tough role.

I will admit:  this film made me tearful on several occasions.  Jon Lovitz…yeah, that’s the ticket.  Fred Willard…spot on.  But no, neither of those two.  It’s that look on Pfeiffer’s face when Rudd first reads in an audition.  It’s the right look.  Taking pride in your craft as a dramatist…even if you’ve been reduced to producing prepubescent pablum.

I’ve been in that chair.  A lifetime’s work for one or two lines that might be remembered by history.  I’ve been on that date.  I live that life every day.  Age.  And I’ve been the nerd.  Whoa have I been the nerd!

I’ve never lied about my age, but I know the industries where that becomes commonplace.  No, I’ve never gotten that whole lying thing down very well.  Yeah…me and Napoleon Dynamite would be best friends.  I guess that makes me Pedro…

Ah, but belief…  You can hear it in Bob Dylan’s new album Shadows in the Night.  We never stop believing.  We can’t.  We’d better not.  And Tracey Ullman is in our ear with the bad news…

You are right to be paranoid.  In general, the world is set up to get you down.  Globalizing…hah!  Perhaps generalizing?  Past aggressive.  Passed aggressive.  We hear the phrase and we assimilate into our patois.  The phrases don’t come with user’s manuals.

It’s a set-up.  I hyphenate when I please–when I’m damned good and ready.

And so I cry that I was human.  But most of all we cry for ourselves.  When the bottom falls out of your little corner of the entertainment industry.  This isn’t Los Angeles.

Yeah, I can relate.  With all of it.  Trying on pants.  Damn it.

Some people think they have me all figured out.  But mostly, they don’t think.  About me:

I don’t have a demo.  I have finished films.  Call Harry Smith from beyond the grave.  He’ll vouch for me.

Beware of the fake.  I just want to put food on the table.  The only thing that can’t be faked nowadays is food on the table.

Fuck it.  Gimme GMO.  My high horse rode off long ago.  Soft kill the shit outta me.  You’ll never know the sadness of the streets.

And for that you are poorer.  Consider it like a fine wine…or a classic foreign film.  Oops, sorry:  no corkscrew and no subtitles.

The Fonz reads Sartre…laughing.  Eat your heart out David Lynch.

You should have given him another chance.  You’re so responsible.  You threw away a heroic love.

I stayed as true as I could.  And now nobody calls.  My emails go unanswered.

Yes, the time stamp gives it away.  The BBC was 20 minutes early.  WTC 7.

Suck away.  I have moved on.  No, I’m not happy.

When Hal Blaine hits the floor tom and snare after the intro…like the world comes to a violent halt:  “Wouldn’t it be nice…”

We get older.  Mother Nature calls it creative destruction…maybe.  When the shit hits the tiara.

-PD

6 Comments

Pierrot le Fou [1965)

Here.  Ici.  Godard=Picasso=Joyce.  It may start with an Élie Faure quote concerning Velázquez, but that is just to set the stage for this ball of colored glass which goes beyond cinema.  The politics come on stronger, but they are like that strangely succinct Butthole Surfers lyric about not giving a fuck about the FBI…or the CIA.

You must only dial M.  Two murders by scissor.  Furthermore, the only way to catch a thief might be in his fireworks.  The tears of a clown…Clyde and his Bonnie…I can’t even keep track of their casual carnage.  Two?  3?  One thing is for sure:  the excitement of Breathless returns…along with the high school musical version of Broadway…in a bare apartment…a girl and a shitload of guns.  That’s all you need for this film.  And a car.  The spirit of Gene Kelly emerges later to spiff up the surreal song moments.

Pierrot doesn’t drive off a cliff.  But he drives right into the sea.  Yes, books were Pierrot’s downfall.  He’s never gonna get that job at Standard Oil.  Especially since he skipped town with a smokin’-hot murderer.  Drive all night.  Fuck it!  I’m so sick of everyone.  I just want to do what I want.  You know, just get in your car and start driving.  Find a town somewhere and start a whole new life.

Enid Coleslaw would doubtless have a certain simpatico with our lovers Marianne and Ferdinand (Pierrot [Belmondo]).  But this paradise isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  A parrot, a fox, sure…but eating out of tin cans…Marianne, like Groucho Marx, wants some hot-cha-cha!  And so the dance hall in town.  It could be L’Atalante.  It could be Casque d’Or.  Why are the police not here yet?  Because they like to let people destroy themselves.  Victor Hugo meets Dostoyevsky.

More torture à la Le Petit Soldat.  Use the whore’s dress.  Polyester.  An especially nasty asphyxiation.  And so Ferdinand ends up back in the bathtub…where he started.  Instead of reading the history of modern art to his daughter, he has just outed his lover.  What a terrible 5:00 pm.  What a terrible 5:00 pm.  What a terrible 5:00 pm.

Maybe I will just let the train pulverize me.  Why is it always damsels in distress?  Damoiseau?

Ah, but it all makes so much sense in the end.  Raymond Devos sums it up.  That tune that’s always been playing.  It is our comedic, pathetic love life.  Yes, she betrayed us.  And so he fails to not commit suicide.

A failed failure is a success.  I’ve always had trouble spelling that word.  I blame Bob Dylan.  There is no k in success.  And though I long embraced suckcess, I now remove the k and a c comes with it.  Sucess.  I have unsuccessfully spelled success.  As a graduate student.  In business.

Ah, but it’s really no use.  One must stay optimistic.  Realistic.  Let’s face it:  the chances are slim.  It takes a lot to laugh.  Hear that lonesome whistle blow.  Maybe tomorrow Bob Dylan.  Suckcess in all its glory.

-PD

4 Comments