41020 [2021)

A silver mt. zion.

Montreal.

Hotel tango.

Sighing synths.

Leonard Cohen.

Getting cold.

Lee Hazlewood.

Arizona into the Rockies.

Wyoming.

Road music.

Music of wide open spaces.

Charles Mingus checks in.

Bob Dylan.

Tumbleweeds.

Was QAnon bullshit?

WFMU seems to think so.

And all their hipster listeners.

Missing the Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

Chris Isaak.

My Bloody Valentine.

R.E.M.

Automatic for the people.

Rightly asking if this guy, Pauly Deathwish, is Borat.

Elvis working at the truck stop.

Nevada.

New Mexico.

Into French philosophy at a Barnes & Noble.

Film criticism.

Cinematic music.

The great philosophers.

Taking on Philip Glass.

Rachmaninoff.

Swedish version.

Poor girl with grey teeth.

Dirty bra.

Addicted to Kardashians.

And meth.

Smoking candy cigarettes.

Brutal, cold world.

No fall back.

Withdrawal back.

Wanna lock me for blood pressure.

It ain’t no cakewalk.

Ripoff.

Tech moves fast.

Write anything.

Better than nothing.

Bad press.

No press.

You have a printing press.

The Innocence Mission.

Miles.

Porgy and Bess.

A thousand planes.

Two ambient instrumentals to start this album.

Setting an amber tone.

Pensive.

Ex-pensive.

Time is a luxury.

And Miles comes in.

Bending notes.

Sighing again.

Like music from Big Pink.

John Simon.

Leonard Cohen.

Very much of the Deserter’s Songs type.

Song cycle.

Van Dyke.

And Coltrane leaps in.

No bends.

Solid sax.

Honky.

Low mids.

Leaping up.

Transposition.

A little noodling.

And WHAT THE FUCK.

Now we are in Blue Hawaii.

On a jukebox in Nashville.

Sawdust on the floor.

Just spit that tabaccy anywheres.

It really is Elvis.

Loaded.

Lou Reed.

Doo-wop.

We’re in east Texas with George Jones.

Straight country.

Classic country.

Bona fide redneck interpolation.

“Daisies on Your Doorstep”.

Troubled relationship.

Robert Altman.

Nashville.

Hitchcock.

Traut.

Birds.

Grandaddy invades!

Modesto!!

And back to EXPANSIVE verb.

Cathedral.

Serious shit.

Country gothic.

Phil Spector would have loved this.

The plandemic that killed Phil Spector.

Biggest celebrity to buy the farm.

Buy the farm?

Or sell the farm?

During this whole plandemic.

Write copy.

Boilerplate.

You have no publicity.

I block all reposts.

I wanna EARN it.

Organic.

Diminished 7th.

Dissolve into what?

More Mercury Rev homage.

Drums from “Desperado”.

Another lonely bloke ended by “Holes”.

Favorite song ever.

Happy end.

Drunk room.

Tom Waits.

The chord.

Spring.

Le Sacre.

Back to regularly scheduled programming.

Knife in the Water.

Austin.

R.E.M. again.

Big Star.

John Cale droning away on the viola.

No tremolo.

Swing it.

Ragged time.

Texarkana.

Arkansas.

And Texas.

Definite Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci nod.

Nick Drake.

Again The Innocence Mission.

Birds.

Pink Floyd.

Fairport Convention.

Psych barn.

The Byrds.

Gram Parsons.

Neil Young big time.

Stooges meet Beach Boys meet Messiaen.

But the Bowie knife is orange.

Made in Germany.

Kanye West and Wayne Coyne drop in.

An anti-hit.

When you can sing, but you get raped by auto-tune.

Loosen that shit up.

Going all Arabic on me.

Raga.

Spinal Tap.

Clouds of sound on almost every track.

A very ambient album.

Mood set.

Mood retained.

Mature.

Duran Duran.

Peaches DJ Berlin.

Where’s Warhol?

Nigel Godrich.

Jonny Greenwood.

Thom Yorke.

Grinderman.

Roger Waters again.

Microtonal blues.

Straight into Bjork.

Does she umlaut?

Sounds of a Mac.

Swan.

Alarm clock.

Gentle waking.

Paganini.

Rachmaninoff.

Elton John.

Stevie Wonder.

Sly Stone.

James Bond in Rio.

Drax.

Os Mutantes.

Jobim.

Korean frogs.

Shinto.

Spy guitar for reprise.

Tom Verlaine.

Richard Lloyd.

Paul Simon.

Rhythm of the saints.

Graceland.

Beethoven emperor concerto.

Slow.

Beloved.

Tokyo.

Press roll.

Sushi.

Kill bounce.

Phil Selway.

Colin Greenwood?

A masterful track.

“Icelandic Pastiche”.

NOW WE’RE TALKING.

Papa Trump back in the house.

For the apocalypse.

Rocky Balboa.

L.L. Cool J.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Second coming.

To save.

Vengeance is his.

Everyone given a chance.

A fair chance.

NASA.

I hear a single.

“Landslide”.

Wisconsin decertified.

Ramthun came through.

About fucking time.

There’s a riot goin’ on.

Paperclip Nazis.

Eric Carmen.

Smokey Robinson.

Tears of a motherfucking clown.

Oboe.

Michael Stipe.

Gil Evans.

Having the French horns get groovy.

Amelie.

Sketches of Spain.

Sunday morning.

Loveless.

Kevin Shields.

Belinda.

The Soft Bulletin.

Christ coming down from the clouds.

Like a ton of bricks.

Anvil.

Don’t call it a comeback.

Not all the way.

Staple Singers.

Rick Danko.

Rocket pans across stereo field.

Jesus talkin’.

Crucified.

Died.

Buried.

AND ROSE AGAIN, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Jesus more space than NASA.

Really a masterpiece of sample placement.

Crystal-clear mix.

Clouseau.

Peter Sellers.

Bass solo.

Absolute Mingus.

Bloody jaw-dropping.

This is like a fucking lost Roland Kirk album.

This track!

Concerto for Booty and Orchestra.

Montreux.

Can never spell.

System hacked.

No more spelling.

Adieu au langage.

Flute loops.

Cocteau Twins.

Ties together album.

Last track coming on like Faust.

Built to Spill.

Silver Apples.

In memory of a bloke who bit it.

End of Night on Earth.

Real recorder.

Charity.

You will live forever, my friend.

I never knew you.

You aren’t forgotten.

Thought of you put in this track.

Catharsis.

Yerself is steam.

Smashing Pumpkins.

Siamese.

Great album by Pauly Deathwish.

Spotify.

iTunes.

Solid.

-PD


Puppylove [2013)

Everybody likes sex, right?

Well, maybe not priests, but…

Ok.  Bad joke.

But sex is not a subject I’ve ever written about specifically in any of my film reviews.

And perhaps it is only fitting that Puppylove be the movie under the aegis of which I first do so.

There are several ways of situating this film “historically” in the medium of cinema.

One would be to take a recent frame of reference.

Blue.

In a strange example of Zeitgeist, Blue is the Warmest Color beat Puppylove to market by about six months.

Indeed, La Vie d’Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2 might be the best comparison.

But it is not a very historical one.

Which is to say, the two films are more or less contemporaneous.

Were the creators of the latter film influenced by the earlier release?

Because the connection is strong.

From the astounding Adèle Exarchopoulos, we can draw an easy line to the equally-sublime Solène Rigot.

Their characters, Adèle and Diane, are extremely similar.

But let’s take director Delphine Lehericey’s wonderful film back to an actual previous point in film development.

 American Beauty.

1999.

Solène Rigot is an easy comparison to Thora Birch (my favorite actress ever) in that film.

Likewise, Audrey Bastien is an exact overlay (no pun intended) on Mena Suvari’s character Angela Hayes.

[At this point I would like to quote Neil Young (“I fell in love with the actress/She was playing a part that I could understand”) and admit that Solène Rigot really stole my heart with this one.  It took me awhile to fully comprehend…who she looked like…someone who broke my heart…a Beatrice in my Dantean darkness upon a time.]

Back to film criticism, and sticking with 1999’s “Best Picture”, we should also note that Kevin Spacey is well signified by signifier Vincent Perez in Puppylove.

To paraphrase Godard, ever image in every film is a quote.

Which brings us to the fountainhead.

To wit, where does this style of filmmaking which Lehericey is practicing originate?

For me, there is no better answer than Monsieur Godard’s perfect film Je vous salue, Marie.

1985.

Hail Mary‘s most jaw-dropping asset was the inimitable Myriem Roussel.

Solène Rigot is a reincarnation of Roussel’s magic.

Instead of basketball, it’s field hockey.

But Puppylove goes on to quote delicately and successfully.

Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water.

Perhaps even Kubrick’s Lolita (equally applicable to American Beauty…at least in theory).

But I’m the schmuck who wins the prize.

I didn’t care how “hot” Mena Suvari was.

And I don’t give a shit about Audrey Bastien’s skinny little frame either.

[Though Bastien is a much better actress than Suvari.]

I fall for the outcasts.

Jane Burnham (Thora Birch).

And, here, Diane (Solène Rigot).

Puppylove is not as earth-shattering a film as Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color.

But Delphine Lehericey is an extremely gifted director.

And she had the secret weapon to pull it off.

Solène Rigot.

Puppylove will endure because Rigot is the real thing.

I’ve hardly talked about sex yet (like, not at all).

But that’s the way the master of understatement Hitchcock would have done it.

The most sublime moments in highly-sexualized European cinema are when the sex isn’t happening.

Exarchopoulos proved this.

And Rigot confirms it.

-PD

Susuz Yaz [1964)

And now we finally come to Turkey.

Because it has been hard to find anything.

Kinda like the theme of this film:  Dry Summer.

About water, but about brothers.

Tigris and Euphrates.  Starting in Turkey.

And meandering down to Mesopotamia.

Two men and one woman.

Not unlike Knife in the Water.

Back to water again.

Our director was Metin Erksan who died in 2012.

But here he does a very good job with the characters he has.

Indeed, Susuz Yaz won the prestigious Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival.

Hülya Koçyiğit played the beautiful Bahar.

Bahar is playful…perfuming herself and letting her lover catch her in the corn field.

This was Hülya Koçyiğit’s first film.

And then there is the schlub villain (played by Erol Taş).

His mustache is key.  Yes, he is a big brute of a man.

And he causes problems every day in every way.

But do we sympathize with him?

Sure!

In fact, our film was based on a novel by Necati Cumalı.  He grew up in Urla close to İzmir.

There are really some fantastic moments in this movie.

But I must admit:  it was hard to watch.

Some of it is very beautiful.

I love the Turkish music!  And Erol Taş riding on a donkey while barefoot.

I guess they are growing tobacco.

But one thing is for sure:  the neighbors are pissed off.

That’s the downside to living downstream.

Dams!

And so there is a social commentary here.

Osman (Erol Taş) is a greedy man.

Actually, he’s a complete jerk.

But there are some humanizing things about him.

He seems bitter.

But then to look at what his brother has, there is reason for bitterness.

A beautiful wife.

Whom Osman covets.

I must also admit that I was exhausted when I watched this.

But most of all, I am happy to have finally reviewed a Turkish film.

I hope to review another soon!

 

-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

Nóż w wodzie [1962)

I wanted to not like this film.

For some reason.

Because it wasn’t my first love.

That would be Popiół i diament.

But Knife in the Water is as good a place as any to start.

Poland.

Quite frankly, this film blew my socks off.

Nóż w wodzie is a strange little masterpiece.

Truly.

On this day when Paris burns.

Appropriate.

That we get to a Parisian director named Roman Polański.

Yes, this film is like the day.

Today.

Yesterday.

All along we are afraid that someone is going to kill someone.

We suspect the vagrant.  The migrant.

But we find out that the real asshole is the yachtsman.

That shouldn’t have been hard to guess, but for some it takes a moment.

I first suspected the yachtsman thanks to Thierry Meyssan.

A couple of his books.

9/11:  The Big Lie.  And another called Pentagate.

These were among the first books to take aim at the fraudulent War on Terror by questioning the foundational event which birthed the current pall hovering over humanity.

“…an attack on humanity,” President Obama?  No.  YOU are an affront to humanity.  With your sullied Peace Prize.

Only fitting…considering Alfred Nobel invented dynamite.

Et allors…a Frenchman showed the way.

Meyssan.

The U.S. State Department branded his books as anti-American black propaganda.

In other words, they were claiming that the books stemmed from a foreign government’s attempt at geopolitical destabilization.

And you would know, State Department…because that is your specialty.

And so, as always, in the midst of my more adrift reviews the question arises as to the pertinence of my diatribe to said filmic document under consideration.

Nóż w wodzie is a political statement.  The bourgeois couple out for a day of leisurely sailing as pitted against the nature-boy tramp.

Salt in the wounds vs. salt of the earth.

I will leave it up to the reader to connect certain unspoken dots.

But, frankly, the spectacle I saw on 24-hour-news television tonight screamed false-flag terror to me.

What do I know?

I’m merely a boy with a rucksack and a couple of black radishes.

Far be it from me to discern real from fake.

As Guy Debord said (and I paraphrase), “Reality erupts within the spectacle.”

C’est-à-dire, it is very likely that many innocent people lost their lives tonight in Paris.

Therefore, the equation would be:  real death amidst fake terror.

It is the narrative which is fake.

Playing cui bono pretty quickly gets us from Islamic terrorists (who do not stand to benefit) to Western intelligence agencies (including possibly Israel) who very much stand to gain from tonight’s deadly shenanigans.

It is sad.

We don’t want it to be true.

You didn’t really cheat on me with the wanderer, did you?

And yet, the yachtsman’s wife is mostly innocent.

Sometimes it takes a miracle to realize that our lives suck.  Our life sucks.  We are living a sham.

That is the miracle which the yachtsman’s wife finds in a stolen kiss.

A moment of tenderness.  A reminder of what real life was like.

But Roman Polanski succeeds most of all (with the help of writer Jerzy Skolimowski) in showing us that we’re all guilty as hell.

Yeah.

That’s about right.

I’m no saint.

We’re no saints.

And so false-flag terror mostly annoys us at this point.

Every time an incident “erupts” we’re not sure whether anyone died whatsoever (to begin with).

As I said, things look very grave indeed tonight in Paris.

We mourn those 100 or so young people who died at Le Bataclan…sacrificed on the altar of war profits.

It is truly Satanic (if such things exist).

A very dark ritual which terrorizes the planet.

And so the only hope for the suspect intelligence agencies is to present us with the heads of their masters.

Call them the New World Order.  Call them SPECTRE.

Just call them and notify them that you will no longer be their whipping boys.

No doubt, the majority of intelligence agency employees are good, decent people.

That is why they should put their butts on the line to end this endless War on Terror charade.

Yesterday was all about sufficiently shocking the masses so as to regain control of the inhumane war against Syria from the leveling presence of Russia.

We know the equation.

Putin will never call out 9/11 as false-flag terror because he does the same thing to his people.

Just like Nóż w wodzie.  No one is really innocent here (myself included).  We’re all just trying to show off.  And on the world stage, it is truly a deadly game.

The NWO (let’s call them) seemingly has but one trick in their bag:  false-flag terrorism.  15 years of the same tune.  A one-trick pony.

And how do we know this?  Because of Operation Gladio.  Because of revelations gleaned over the years.

The CIA is tasked with this kind of stuff.  Doesn’t mean they get a whole lot of enjoyment out of it.

No, dear friends…I can’t give you the exact names–the exact chain of command, but someone can.

And maybe they are reading this and on the fence regarding their messy role in destabilizing the world.

But let’s be simple.

I can give you the name Jolanta Umecka.  What a beauty!  With her kitty-cat glasses.  Early-60s.  1950s.  The lagging fashion of the Eastern Bloc.

It’s not much.

I can give you a film review.  I can put myself out on the line as the village idiot.

It is both the least and the most I can do.

I may be mistaken about everything.

Like Thoreau, I will admit when I was in error.  In strong words.  Tomorrow.  Just as strong as those I used today.

Dear friends.  What a pity that these proxy games must go on.

We are above such machinations.

There is great art to be appreciated.

Great art teaches the way.

Great art like Nóż w wodzie.

-PD