Viaggio in Italia [1954)

We push ourselves so hard.

For what?

So that we may see beauty.

For me, it’s this.

Though I can barely hold my eyes open, I see it.

I see what Godard saw when he was just a lad.

A very mature film from Roberto Rossellini.

But by mature, we don’t mean sexual.

Actually, more nuanced than that.

A celebration of woman as human being.

A celebration of Ingrid Bergman as auteur.

Just as much as her husband, the director.

It’s there.

The collaboration.

And it’s unlike any other film I’ve ever seen.

Perhaps…

she fell in love with his genius.

The war trilogy.

We have talked about the great films.

Just after WWII.

Rome, Open City.

Germany, Year Zero.

And enfin…

Paisan.

[in not quite that order]

These are our English names.

But Journey to Italy is a weird feast of linguistic absurdity.

“…you shameless hussy”.

It’s like this, see…

George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman are British,

but they’re speaking Italian.

This was so the Italians didn’t have to read subtitles.

But then George says to a prosititute,

“I don’t speak Italian” (or something)

in English…WHEN HE’S BEEN SPEAKING ITALIAN FOR THE FIRST HOUR OF THE FILM!

And then there’s the Italian tradition of postproduction.

No live sound.

In this film, no ambient noises.

It’s like George and Ingrid are touring Italy in a fucking Tesla Model S!!

And a bit of dialogue.

And a clip-clop and a cloche.

Get out of the way, donkey cart!

Such that at a certain point, we wonder whether Roberto was exploding not only genre (to reference James Monaco), but the Italian version of “the tradition of quality” against which the French New Wave set themselves so polemically.

🙂

It’s possible.

“Do you think I’m insane,” asked Elon Musk.

No, of course not.

You’re South African like me.

But at the heart of this film (this is a film review, right?) are the same marital arts (!) which made Benatar sing love is a battlespace.  What?

Before Godard and Karina, it was Roberto and Ingrid.

And the tension rubs.

Gimme friction, said Tom Verlaine.

And Paul Verlaine said some stuff which was ignored.

And Rimbaud shot his hand.  Or ran guns.

Back when Abyssinia.

Main point is this is beautiful film.

Plain simple.

And it’s no accident Mr. and Ms. Joyce.

 

-PD

 

Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc [1962)

For the weary traveller.

Travailleur.

I commit myself like Joan Miró.

With fourteen flutes.

It is well that you wrote it out.

Bass clarinet.

Sparkles in the sidewalk.

Like Tesla signature red.

Real blood, real tears.

No more falcon wing doors.

But merely the holy crucifix.

From Alan Vega to Nick Cave.

Robert Bresson’s masterpiece The Trial of Joan of Arc.

Can’t say I didn’t tell you.

Saxophones.

Glockenspiel.

It was a proud day.

And the prodigal has returned.

I am no genius.

It is not for me to say.

French horns.

Oh…Mélisande.

Why did you forsake me?

No, it was to be God’s will.

That I should suffer more.

And again.

And double.

Triple.

To see the radiant face which looks through me invisibly.

I cannot be hurt anymore.

I am like the autumn leaves.

The tugboat.

I sleep in the parking lot of the church.

Forever.

 

-PD

Každý den odvahu [1964)

I took a long time off.

Because the brain is delicate.

I have crammed so many facts into my noggin.

That a release valve was needed.

The escape of television.

Which is to say, I’m no better than anyone else.

In some ways, I’m no different.

And this film proves the point.

Courage for Every Day.

Goes nowhere.

Except to the sublime.

But you must work at it.

You just haven’t earned it yet, baby.

Maybe.

It’s not buddy holly.

But it bops along with capitalist incursion.

This isn’t Evald Schorm’s best work, but it showed his range.

For a first film, it’s damned good.

But it’s slow.

Not like slow cinema.

More like plodding.

Plotting clumsy Ulysses.

When all I ever want is Finnegans Wake.

Former makes too much sense.

For a first FICTION film.

Largely failure for first 50%.

And then the sublime emerges.

We’re not on TV anymore.

We’re in the realm of cinema.

And it’s a huge difference.

Time…to stretch out.

In which.

A bunch of boring communist functionaries.

Up against the magic of the feral masses.  Untamed.

Uneducated.  But free, almost.  Maybe.

Jana Brejchová just like Beth Behrs.

But there is heartbreak.

When she says, “Work it out for yourself.”

Something like that.

Human being lawnmower.

Morphs into Czech Breathless.  Existential vacuum of Antonioni.

He can’t be a normal person.

Because of the cause.

All causes are insane.

Including mine.

The cause…

Not to be confused with causal mechanism.

To be an idealist.  Circumspect.

There is no life outside commerce.  In the West.

We have lost.

But a sudden ray of hope…

Only defense against desperation.

Here I sit, over my Underwood.

Go talk to him…

He loves you.

Cook it and kill it!

Or vice versa.

At such a time that pulling rabbit from hat becomes the ultimate embarrassment.

Because ridicule has been wedged.

We are back to real films (if not standard criticism).

Can only be discussed in its own terms.

Every time.

Ekphrasis 24/7.  8 day s week.

Rachel Corrie is my inspiration.

As said Giles Corey:  “More weight!”

 

Spring Breakers [2012)

Every American film is a cautionary tale.

David Lynch was the new path forward.

But then something happened.

Jarmusch is good.

But no one on our landscape is important as Harmony Korine.

No one could have made this film but him.

I was mistaken.

I had them wrong all along.

Ashley Benson seemed like the mom.

But she’s just 26.

[Don’t trust entertainment ages.]

I had her for Harmony’s wife the whole time.

Making Faith feel comfortable.

December 18.  Close.

Vanessa Hudgens.

Bingo.  Shares my birthday.

Doesn’t act 27.  But this was four years ago.

Rachel Korine is a real actress.

I can’t find the artist for the shower scene.

Ingres?

It is also Casino Royale.  Eva Green.

But Daniel Craig is behind the camera.

Maybe Rachel is the only one with an honest age.

But I have to give mad props to Selena Gomez for doing this film.

[Did I just say that?]

It’s true.  You have to excuse my thuggee language.

Selena Gomez is brilliant in this film.

Why?  Because she ostensibly survived it.

Is she a great actress?

I don’t know.

Is she even acting at all?

Hard to say.

Hanging with the Korine posse would seemingly drive anyone to tears.

But let’s define.

This milieu…these trappings.  Were/are genius.  Needed to happen.

It’s like Mercury Rev’s second album Boces.

Not something most people will want to revisit often.  [including the band]

Unless you’re bent.

Like me.

So Selena’s an artist.

She’s done one thing in life which will never disappear.

This film.

Chocolate syrup in the squirt gun.

Try it out.  Try it out.

Lots of Pussy Riot.

If you can’t handle the chicken shack, then you’re doomed.

Kinda like me years ago when Uma got stabbed in the heart.

St. Petersburg.

The one in Florida.

Far from Pussy Riot.

A lesser filmmaker (Oliver Stone) would have made Natural Born Killers.

Spring Breakers obliterates that poseur film.

[And Oli’s made a couple great ones.  But that’s not one.]

Let me just add this.

James Franco is all-world in this movie.

It must be seen to be believed.

Come in with no preconceptions.

Because Hollywood makes all actors into crap.

Only a Harmony Korine can save their acting souls.

And there’s only one of him.

So we have Godard.  Korine.  Lynch slumbering.  And the Romanians.

Gotta give some more props to Gucci Mane.

[What?]

That’s some damn good acting.

You wanna know black lives matter?

Even white kids get desperate.

From shitty small towns.

And so the uniquely American version of EXCESS.

It’s cinematic.

All the detritus from the MTV vaults.

So many disposable summers.

Finally put into perspective by a true humanist.  Harmony Korine.

You gotta get real deep to see the layers of meaning from the inside out.

Remember four girls in a pool.

Finally free.

Breathing their own air.

It’s an extreme version.

Of the American dream.

 

-PD

Twin Peaks “Masked Ball” [1990)

Air Force.

Twenty-Fifth Air Force.

25 AF.

Hello.

Important to note two Scriabin piano sonatas.

No. 7.  White Mass.

And No. 9.  Black Mass.

Extending the board.

Very much chess.

Rockabilly vortex.

Alfa ROmeo.

Bravo, Charlie!

Foxtrot Tango Macarena.

Romeo Juliett.

Kilo Charlie (Duchovny in drag).

Mike.

Hotel Tango Quebec.

[Oh dear, Miss Morse!]

Godard had maybe only finished 1a and 1b by this point.

The cigar.  And the loving gaze.

Two lodges.  And soul obliteration.

The theater of cruelty and its double.

 

-PD

 

Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut [1956)

I wanted to write last night, but the Internet fell asleep.

This is one of my favorite films ever.

But I needed to rewatch it.  As I always do.  Every movie.

Real fear.

Real danger.

A long project.

Extracting yourself from the superjail.  The prison planet.

A Man Escaped.  We have it easy in English.

But witness the fullness of the French title.

It speaks to care.  Rope.  Hooks.  Months.  Of planning.

And it all started with a spoon.

Tin nor aluminum will do.  Neither.

We must wait for iron.

Steel?

Iron.  Hardness.

It’s World War II.

Today.  World War III.

And for the CIA, World War IV.

Chemists.  Physicists.  And now mathematicians.

Computer scientists.  Statisticians.

No, that’s post-War.  Japan.

But for now we are locked in a room of our own making.

If we can only get through the door.

tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap

tap tap tap tap

tap tap tap tap tap tap tap

Which isn’t to say, taps.

We must succeed at this chess game.

Playing against an adversary with few weaknesses.

Multiple layers of defense and surveillance.

Doors and locks and gates and bars.

And silence.

It is the silence which will betray us.

And so, Dr. No, we must slip our shoes off for a little putting practice.

It is a real battle.

CIA vs. FBI.  Refereed by the NSA.

NGA vs. NRO.  Chantilly lace vs. a pretty face.

A girl and a gun.

ASIS vs. DIGO.  Or dingo.

Rich.

ASCAP vs. BM.I

But let me back up to the kebab organization known as SHISH.

Apologies to Belgium.

But it is worth noting SV/SE vs. CSIS/SCRS.

Scissors.  Suckers.  A scissor.

A pair of scissors.

He would need more leverage.  The most overused word in business.

And as meaningless as “innovation”.

What they mean is “interesting”…that’s innovation.

And by false flag, “not what it seems”.

Dear NEADS in Rome (NY) uttered collectively the phrase of Baudrillard’s lifetime:

“Is this real-world or exercise?”

But we have remembered it as simulation.

Going over his escape a million times in his head.

With poor reconnaissance.

Except the dead would-be escapee.

“He’s practically free.”

“No one’s practically free.”

Jessica Lange, incredulous.

But she’s not in this movie.

She’s headed to Roswell.

Named after Yale graduate Roswell Rudd.

A little town in New Mexico.

Out of time.  Mind.

CSE vs. GCHQ.  Or CSEC.

An animal with five eyes has no competition.

Within himself.  The owls are not what they seem.

Fifth wheel.  Hokey pokey.

Valuable antipodes.

And RCMP vs. FBI.  Horses.  Or moose.

Hippopotamus.  POTUS.  Not amused.

DND seems incorrect.

What was Fontaine in for?

And Jost?

DIPOLCAR.  Position.

MSS vs. RSS.  Seems so simple.  Really simple!  And so complex.

Pledged ΚΥΠ.

But the division.

ÚZSI vs. UZI.  Sounds dangerous.

With PET we get to canned milk or breaking wind.

A lovable Lego intelligence agency.

Of one.

Just one?

KaPo vs. capo.  Vs. ligatura.

Hitchcock’s rope vs. Bresson’s rope.

For this is Robert Bresson.  The movie.  Under consideration.

SUPO vs. sumo.

But we really get fired up by DGSE.

And it’s only appropriate.

DGSE vs. BND.

The only war which has ever been fought.

Das Fenster vs. la fenêtre.

The most delicate element of escape.

A crack in the breeze.

SIN vs. voodoo of all sorts.

GRLS.  Girls?  Gorillas?  Scalded ape?

When you need headache relief quick.  Choose BAINTELKAM!

A Buddhist temple with a surrounding population 95% Muslim.

Amazing.  Elton John.

MOIS.  Ooh…  Now we are getting serious.

Putting the me in month.

And of course “the Institute” (moving alphabethically).

Lisping along.

How will you project your escape.  Like Desargues.

And Poncelet.

The movie camera.

Go directly to jail.

Whale song matryoshka.

AISE.  Must be the coolest.  Standard issue Ferraris.  And meals in Modena.

Like Matthew Broderick’s brief moment of cool in Election.

Gid Tanner and his Skillet-Lickers…coming to the Kingdom of Jordan…real soon.

SREL.  Sreally?  That’s SRAL.  Like SalvaDali.

CISEN as sí señor.

Not quite hermeneutics.

FIB vs. SIN.

PST.  Masters of recruitment.

And FOST vs. SIE.

The big daddy ISI vs. ailleurs.

The canal of SENIS.  Central American zipper.

Could have been Lake Nicaragua.

AW 🙂 Georges Sand approaching Chopin with flowers.

He was a woman.  Mr. Sandman.

SIRP vs. usurp.

SVR vs. GRU. [now we’re making some sense]

And DEVGRU vs. GRU.

GIP is priceless.  One letter from perfection.

VOA vs. VOA.

NISA vs. NASA.  And the incomparable skills of PIS.

In joint operations with SENIS.

CITCO vs. Citgo.

Must it be?  It must be.  It MUST be.

And back to our MI6 and DIA and ONI.

These are the thoughts of a man in jail.

Where having a pencil is punishable by firing squad.

And so he builds his hope on escape.

From the mundane.

He is a true soldier.

Though he be stripped of any recognition.

Wisdom is that final step.  On a journey which started with mere data.

 

-PD

Poto and Cabengo [1980)

This is the most beautiful film I’ve ever seen.

16 ways to say potato.

Eclipses Ira Gershwin by 14.

George and Ira.

Grace and Virginia.

Poto and Cabengo.

Godard and Gorin.

It’s maddening.

That time has forgotten the most beautiful girls ever.

Wild and free.

The playful sounds of Poto and Cabengo.

Maybe there’s no finding them.

And that’s the message.

That they disappeared like their ephemeral language.

But I want to know.

What happened to the most beautiful girls ever?

We want to capture the past.

We can’t let it get away.

Because we are so moved by the images and the sounds.

What if I lost my language?

This language I have worked so hard to develop.

Science would call me a sophist.

Stylometry might have something to say about how developed my idiom is.

I cannot tell you, people, how much this movie moved me.

Napoleon Dynamite is like Shaft in comparison to the realness herein.

Intelligent Dasein.

I can’t possibly be the first to that pun.

But we wonder:

who will be the first blogger to win a Nobel in literature?

[surely not me]

Putting aside the auto-response for a moment…

Because it is bound to happen.

Writer started as blogger and progressed to…what.

Books?

Folio.  Quarto.  Octavo.

Potato.

1 patata 2 petata 3 pitata 4

5 potata 6 putata 7 pateta more

Abandoned in your own home.

The wild child and her double.

Theater of cruaute.  Crunchy crouton vegetables 🙂

And the zoo!

The San Diego Zoo.  So that you can love your city.  San Antonio.

“People say we got it made/Don’t they know we’re so afraid?”

…think we don’t know what staccato means.  Shit…

It’s our secret language.

As if the Navajo code talkers had dwindled down to two.

Pound would write a much more erudite version of this.

So much so that it was completely unintelligible.  And brilliant.

Have I mentioned Jean-Pierre Gorin?

Because he’s a genius.

The only collaborator through whom Godard’s name was subsumed.

Their language became strictly verboten.

They weren’t sent back into the forest.

We welcomed them.  To mop floors at a McDonald’s.

And work on an assembly line.

And I love them.

Because that’s what America sends its geniuses to do.

Wipe up fast-food fry grease.  And God knows what kind of menial work.

There are no more worthy stars in the history of film than

Grace and Virginia (“Ginny”) Kennedy.

Beauty is forever.

 

-PD

Twin Peaks “May the Giant Be With You” [1990)

For instance, I could tell you that George Hunter White

of the CIA

killed the first Secretary of Defense

James Forrestal

and I might be right.

Or I might be wrong.

Because the method was the same as for Dr. Frank Olson.

THrown from a high window.

Ruled a suicide.

Think about that for a second…

What kind of precedent would that set?

That the first SecDef was whacked.

They say Hobe Sound, but do they mean Jupiter Island?

This will all sound incredibly boring if you don’t know about Frank Olson.

Fort Detrick.

Slipped some acid.

Not very nice.  To experiment on a government employee.  And a medical doctor (to boot).

It is the ridiculous dance of death.

Staggering, staggering, walking like an Egyptian.

Boots and coke.

We don’t remember the label.

We just remember the Boni & Liveright colophon.

Propaganda.

Sophocles, tragedian.  Bernays.  Pure evil.

That’s the big question of Twin Peaks as season two kicks off.

Does evil exist?

Science doesn’t allow such.

But if anyone can convince us, it’s David Lynch.

Never a more awkward television episode than this.

A hulking oddity.

Beautiful!

As Ajax sits in the diner eating a piece of huckleberry pie.

Particularly fresh.  And particularly…  That’s classified.

Takes a long time to die from such a wound.

Dr. No says just a stupid cop.

With the stolen painting.

Hank Worden destroys television.

Turned on its head.

The most beautiful destruction.

Of the shallowest medium.

Montana.  Stanford.  White hair.

J. Geils?

And then Boban Marjanović makes his appearance.

Bohemian Club Moloch David Gergen.

Diane…

I would like to make love to a beautiful woman.

For whom I feel genuine tenderness.

tendresse

THe most longwinded rephrasing of “I am Spartacus” in the history of OSINT.

He was chopping wood INSIDE?

Wait a minute…

He was chopping wood INSIDE??

Miguel Ferrer is priceless 🙂

He is the dialectic.

A show having a conversation with itself.

Predicting the incredulous urban take on yokel homespun rerun.

Mask of Ivan IV’s comrade.

Dancing to await the unfolding of a plot.

Coy joy.

Spider bite at Paranormal Activity.

Slow news day?

Mairzy Doats comin’ thro’ the rye.

Tells Samuel Beckett to leave it in.  The interjection.  [offstage]

Same hair.  And Warhol.

The evil is grease.

And Donna’s all Double Indemnity.

Exploding genres à la James Monaco à la François Truffaut.

As bathetic as Wayne’s World.

Genre explodes.

And no author.

Just Army of God (thanks to FBI curation).

Curare cure air.  Volare.  Hugh Laurie?

Silence of the Lambs got in a little late with Buffalo Bill.

But right on the heels of BOB.

And the psyop B.o.B.

Felt good to burn.

But most touching is Mendelssohn.

SS.

Camera bobbing up and down like ROman Polanski’s buoy.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2

Carol Reed would have been ruined with such attendance.

But still the theme.

The credits are worse.

No late-period Godard waterfall slow-motion on Boyle and Fenn names.

The most terrifying moment in U.S. television history.

 

-PD

Twin Peaks “Cooper’s Dreams” [1990)

Television doesn’t get any better than this.

We all want to be Sherlock Holmes.

We all want to be James Bond.

The analytical in the United States might gravitate towards the FBI.

And the adventurous towards the CIA.

And why would a director of the stature of David Lynch (a true auteur) ever lower himself to doing TV?

Money.

The film studios won’t support a crackpot genius.

Because his whims will be their asses (come annual board meeting time).

And so film’s loss is TV’s gain.

Television is the most disposable medium of all.

It’s like air.  Constantly flowing.  Into every stop on this highline hell.

There are precedents.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents is the direct ancestor.

But the greatest film of all time was made for TV.

And so we must give credit to Canal+, France 3, the late La Sept, and the late Télévision Suisse Romande.  You see what supporting genius gets you.  You might just cease to exist!

But La Sept and Télévision Suisse Romande never did anything more important and timeless than supporting Histoire(s) du cinema.

Perhaps we could count Gaumont as a television player (they deserve thanks regardless).

Likewise, there was the French CNC.

What the fuck does any of this have to do with Twin Peaks?

It’s the red drapes.  The big rig.  The details.

The myna bird.  The poker chip.  The cuckoo clock.

Birds in general.

[meant in all possible ways]

Two eyelids?  Per side?  Red light was my baby?  Blue light was my mind?

BBC 1?  BBC 2?

Television can’t possibly get any better than this.

Episode 5.  Season 1.

We talk about David Lynch.

And we should.

He’s the big gun.

But we don’t mention Mark Frost.

Genius needs organization.

Who’s who?

And who reeled it in (fishy coffee)?

A:  Lesli Linka Glatter.

Director.

We’re all Icelanders.

“Ich bin ein Berliner.”  [with Addison’s disease]

And just as he reaches for the jelly donut (lots of donuts [my favorite])…no, a strudel.  No.  A sort of maple syrup concoction.  Brisk?  Bisque?  Bris?

Long John!  [I was way off]

Just as he reaches…no-look…opening the cabinet…a little secret altar…all with secret places…false bottoms (and real fronts).-

We see the joy of mental activity.

Of solving a puzzle.

Of feeling the brain cells (all two in my case) rub up against one another.

Many problems we have.

This would be a good point to end.  Poorly.

Ms. Glatter’s fine direction brings authorship (in the auteurist sense) into question.

Was Lynch too busy?

Was he deemed unqualified for network work?  Work.

I can’t answer all that.

Not right now.

Gather and interpret.

Orlando looks as fake as a three-dollar bill.

reality erupts within the spectacle

“and the spectacle is real”

There’s more than one way to pretend to skin a cat.

And the same venal studio system.  The same generally repugnant mass media.

Which pipes digital air (pollution) into your home.

Only needs to be controlled at the choke points.

Yale.  Princeton.  You know.

Like the Strait of Malacca.

 

-PD

Twin Peaks “Rest in Pain” [1990)

Science thinks it knows what religion doesn’t.

Religion thinks it knows what science doesn’t.

Science thinks.

Religion feels.

Romance is a sort of religion.

Unthinking.

But beautiful.

These are the issues in this rather unremarkable episode of Twin Peaks.

The romance of film criticism seeks to give no spoilers.

Break the code, solve the case.

Handwriting analysis…seems as old and mystical as phrenology.

Because today it is stylometry.

Were it not for Snowden, we’d still be in the dark.

ABSENCE OF LIGHT.

Hoping David Sanborn makes an album called Kryptos.

Or not.

I INSERTED THE CANDLE.

CAUSED THE FLAME TO FLICKER.

EMERGED FROM THE MIST.

There’s easier ways to get jobs.

To make verb tenses agree.

And to verb agreements tense.

Word pie lay.

The fragments are essential.

Each piece.

Piece by piece.

With ice cream on the side.

Huckleberry H.

Scalia was whisked off.

Like a broom.

He had been a jack of one-eyed secret society.  Guest.  SS.

Pound’s poetry didn’t go this deep.

But deeper.

To Colombian hell.

It’s trying to think.

Puttin’ on the Ritz.

I thought it was her.

A cipher.

Shame on me.

Eric Da Re.  Doremi Fasol Latido.

Rest in pain.

Jawohl.

The biggest asshole in television history.

Vs. a perception sharpest blade mind ever.

Even for an actor.

Kyle MacLachlan.

Sherlock Holmes.

A perverse sense of knowing.

Raymond Chandler.

Several stops and starts to get here.

Like the end of Vivre sa vie.

And like the beginning.

Michel Legrand subject to the most genius whims ever.

Lynch is our Godard.

Where the Germans have Schoenberg, we have Ives.

Not the best metaphor.

But perfect.

Length trying your patience.

I know.

Like the end of Vivre sa vie.

Where we don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

That is the bathos of mechanical mayhem.  Haywire sob hiccups.

G’uh g’uh g’uh.

Over and over and over and over and over again.

The Vladimir Poutine syndicate have goldBRICked with the Meow Zedong overseas intelligence amoeba to form a truly Quebecois brand of! Godspeed.

Kinda like that hockey scene from Strange Brew.

Messiaen at the organ.

ils.

Sont.  Hellfire.  Bohemian.

No Moloch or Moulouk can do it justice.

Moulouk vs. Bébert.

Oui.  C’est Ça.

There’s always two sets of books.

 

-PD