thoughts

have been bad at housekeeping what i've been into - lot of movies, started renting dvd's from the library instead of paying for streaming stuff and it's been nice to try and be intentional choosing what to watch in advance. have been listening to a tonnn of music too and making a bunch of playlists, some with like 200 songs that are new to me. have not been making mixes though which im bummed about, tomorrow i want to for sure. listening to a lot of silver jews, and new molina & cities aviv album as of this weekend. the new godspeed you black emperor album is also rllly good.& revisiting mj lenderman - such a stacked year for music, head already spinning thinking about a top 10.

out of the last monthish the highlights have been the crumb documentary, inspired me to pick up drawing again and was also one of the most depressing family portraits i've ever seen. the pre-credits it leaves you with gave me a pit in my stomach. woman in the dunes is another cool movie, rll tense and composed and meticulous. & i saw the tv glowwww was dope was super invested and i felt rlly reflective after. love the score as well i had been listening to it before watching for months and glad i liked the movie on it's own, blends hope and horror in equal parts and has a good call to action. rlly love the album though, 'downed power line' is so good.

doing fine life-wise just had an interview this weekend hoping to hear good news, watching a lot of survivor in the meantime lol. hope all is well.

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10.14.2024

havent updated in a minute, watched 24 movies x__x some short thoughts from the highlights

blackberry, master gardener, the verdict, love liza - all fine-ish wont revisit

witness for the prosecution - billie wilder, adaptation of an agatha christie short story. loved the exposition at the start, first 40 minutes gave me asmr - some of it feels dated in a mysognist way of berating this overbearing matronly figure over and over for comedic relief. outside of that it's a ton of fun, this unfolding mystery that takes place in a trial and has a ton of twists and really quippy dialogue.

magnolia - paul thomas anderson, really enjoyed the way it unfolds where its hard to follow before characters overlap into each other stories, the first act feels disconnected n refuses to explain anything. reminded me of infinite jest a bit with a ton of random vignettes that slowly bleed into each other. one of the stories in magnolia is abt a trivia game show host & contestant & i'd just read small expressionless animals by DFW so that connection might have played a part. lived up to my expectations which im pretty happy about.

seconds - john frankenheimer, the opening of this movie is sooo cool & off kilter and stylish i loved it especially for being mid-60's it feels rlly expirimental. the rest of the movie was pretty bad in comparison, broad strokes kafkaesque stuff. not into it but i'll remember the opening.

uncle yanco - agnes varda, loved this so colorful and expressive. super DIY and of an era, whimsical and effervescent. loved it.

kajillionaire & me and you and everyone we know - miranda july, bit the bullet and didn't dislike either. i'll admit i was predisposed to being a hater i dont like some of her quirk-isms online but these were both solid and had really strong tones and style. kajillionaire is written much tighter and has a really clear arc so it feels very much like a tradtional movie but with a veneer of zany acting and liminal setpieces and it works. i preferred me and you more, the vignette style worked well in setting up disconnected emotional beats and having them all land rlly well on their own. feels more intimate and ambient, full of adolensce and love n soft hums and twee moments.cant believe tht girl kissed the baby tho...dont do that.

punch drunk love -PTA rewatch, and justice for all - norman jewison, jack goes boating - philip seymour hoffman; in order: goes by so fast rlly well edited n pacey, opening credits is the highlight it inserts such random moments to force suspense or conflict its embarassingly bad, means well but small cast n subdued performances for the most part have it feel a little thin

boyhood - richard linklater, conflicted i think the highlight is in writing it through mundane and menial moments making up their lives instead of landmarks, comes across as a lot more intimate and measured but the interactions as children were much more compelling than centering soley around him in highschool n onwards. filming across 12 years is rlly cool, functions as a time capsule as well just capturing certain actual events like the harry potter book release or an astros game. feels grounded and partially why the earlier years work better, it goes more into staged interactions later on. liked the last scene.

hotel monterey - chantal ackerman, i shouldve put music on in the background this pissed me off. just filming an elevator for like 30 minutes. grr...

blow-up - michelangelo antonioni, wish i didn't know the premise before watching it because it takes like 2/3 of the movie to get one sentence into the plot synopsis. suprised at how wild and freewheeling this was, expected something rlly meticulous and composed. leans into fashion, space age lounge music, & rock n roll and pacing back and forth between rooms. i also rlly liked the ending it seems so out of place it's almost inspiring to see that there's no rulebook.

light sleeper - paul schrader, after hours - martin scorsese, lost highway - david lynch; in order: didnt know he wrote taxi driver but yeah this is just him making it himself, umm did not care or like this much at all, i liked the first half of this a lot with the creepy ass phone calls and ominous overtones but 2nd identity overlay thing the dude was so greasy and things devolve into constant sex it was hard to care anymore

jules and jim - francois truffaut, definitely feels classic and i don't know if i respect voice over in terms of writing but it makes this way pacier - characters feel realized and their resignation to a compromised life is really brutal, liked the love triangle while everyone regained agency and i felt suprisingly invested at what would happen between them. just rlly solid and enjoyable, couple painfully dated sexist/racist remarks though definitely not timeless ha.

shadows - john cassavetes, beautiful tones in this despite being b/w all of the footage that took place on the streets i loved. the ending message about improvisation recolors this completely for me and sent me on a spiral about performance and acting. started the wheels turning on an essay about meta-fiction and the line between experience and entertainment. this was good, but i rlly loved how it made me rethink forms of media especially as someone who likes naturalist era movies a lot.

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8.27-9.18.2024

read a handful and kept putting off reviewing

confusion - stefan zweig: very flowery and romantic language, makes a good contrast between a story that's really small in scope and self contained. even small moments will be described in really ornate ways, with the story being an old man reflecting on his youth and experience in academia with a professor and his wife there's a layer of melancholy in every recollection. it also makes it so that the later signifigance is already known, so some conversations like with his father take on a heaviness as the seed between their rift etc. loved the musings on purpose and how the character triangle of student-professor-wife takes turns rotating between them being muse, instructor, object of desire, source of conflict etc. really good book.

picture cycle - masha tupitsyn: part film critisicm part diary entries about their relationships it really feels like looking directly into someones thoughts on how they navigate the world or relate to media. very personal but also presented with an audience in mind and explains film criticism/academic concepts thoroughly enough to not feel lost in some esoteric train of thought. really singular book havent read anything comparable, maybe annie ernaux but only in the sense of presenting diary entries about relationships. there's a completely different motivation here in terms of understanding how images shape us and also have changed from analog to digital and how movies have begun to replace dreams as a fictional setting. building on some of sontaggs ideas from on photography

addiction by design; machine gambling in las vegas - natasha dow schull: top 5 most educational books i've ever read. super thorough, heavily academic and well researched ( there's over 100 pages of citations at the end, it almost feels like a textbook in that way) but despite that it is so easily accessible and readable. reshapes the way i view media as a whole and inspired an essay im still trying to write about social media being mirrored by casino design as time becomes the new commodity. there years of history and research about how slot machines predate and predict this, as casinos were on the forefront of the transition to digital from analog, built predictive algorithms for user behavior, and switched from maximizing money to maximizing time-on-device. really perverse and super interesting. lot of interviews with gambling addicts and gambling machine designers. super insightful and scary.a five star book.

amusing ourselves to death - neil postman: heavily dated and while it is creepy how foreboding it is it falls a little flat in terms of call to action or reason to care past noticing it's happening. in itself the beginning about phases of culture communication were interesting especially in conjunction with other books that have to do with internet as culture, or the transition from spoken word to written to images to video and exploring the limitations of each. especially in terms of advertisements there are some warning signs that i'd never even considered an alternative to. worthwhile in terms of calling attention to fragmented information and excess. not super transformative though. out of all the books i'm citing in the essay it's probably the least important to what i care about.

normal people - sally rooney: really suprised at how invested and moving i found this. it's essentially just a love story following two people as they age through highschool and college into adulthood and how they phase in and out of love & each others lives. the way that they're drawn together out of leftover intimacy and dependence and also prevent each other from growing is tough to watch unfold. it doesnt feel like it's meaning to romanticize them, but showing how hard it is to let go of people especially as aging adds an element of pressure to settle and decide on a life for yourself. they're both a little hapless and horrible at communicating but seeing how their internal thoughts play out while they interact is moving in good and bad ways especially once they're out of sync. deals a lot with shame and inaction & i just enjoyed it, which for an author so popular i didnt expect to so i came away from it being even more pleased. the ending being so sudden i also really liked. watched the show as well. solid.

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9.15.2024

two movies that compliment each other really well, it turns out. both have really intense saturation, yellow and green, and have glimpses into a really profound sadness and fractured sense of belonging. they also both at their core are trying to convey the exhaustion of realizing you have to take care of yourself for the rest of your life & the communities you build to try and make it easier on yourself.

tangerine to start is oversaturated and naturalist which makes it feel like an elevated surreal version of LA, already elevated with facades to begin with. the levity and breakneck pacing (and breakbeat soundtrack) make for a light watch until there are glimpses into a pitiful and fractured underbelly of the characters and how they're spending their christmas eve's. it's not glamourous to begin with, centering around sex workers and infidelity, but descends into further decay; into motel rooms, crack pipes, and christmas carols. while lily chou-chou centers around the worship of a singer on stage, alexandra in tangerine pays to perform on one. to be in the spotlight, to command attention, to be heard, to belong. singing oldies that are imbued with an entire history on their own, first heard in her grandmothers living room, or maybe in a movie she saw as a teenager - an endearing personification of how she struggles to feel in place, as if transness wasn't enough of an other-ing. it's a heartfelt portrayal of staying afloat and the chosen family you fall in and out of.

lily chou chou is equally as oversaturated and restless, but both more frenetic and more rooted in being lost. In deep greens and overexposed iso's that blow out windows completely and create curtains out of excess light, and turn the sky itself into a plain white slate. both movies being so saturated and hand-cammed + the constant arabesque needledrop reminded me of chungking express or fallen angels visually. the movie is imbued with messageboard posts on a fan site for the artist lily chou-chou & opens by talking about how she was born at the same time lennon was murdered. last night i fell asleep to the audiobook of hanif abdurraqib's essay collection & he recounted a story that involved a springsteen concert that took place at the same time lennon was shot. just a coincedence, but that and a mention of bjork made the movie feel more grounded. there's also a lot to explore in terms of blurring the line of acting/experiencing. parts of the movie are shot on handicam by the actors themselves and involve kids having fun. period. at times it doesnt feel in service of a larger story but more about capturing the moment itself, of screaming on a beach lighting fireworks.

their trip to okinawa is only a small part of the movie, but it feels so heavily imbued & also formally feels distinct - in a good way. it recontexualizes iwai's character in ritual as well, his real mannerisms bleeding over or just informing his filmmaking. which makes for it feeling even more personal. the story itself revolves around bullying and the respite found amongst the forums and lily's music itself. it reminds me of mieko kawakami's book heaven. it has a similar brutal and unflinching way of reminding you children can be evil & how pitiable they are & how they catalyze out of wanting to be anything but either. the movie floats in and out thematically but lands in a really opressive second half that was really emotionally draining. it captures the ugliness and helplessness of childhood, the lack of direction and yearning for better but feeling you can't deserve it. it's frustrating and also becomes hard to follow but i respect it staying ambigious and leaving you on such a charged note to reel through the credits, a little too numb to cry.

both great movies, feeling really emotionally pent up though neither had a release valve. cant go to sleep like this need to go make something at 1:43 am

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8.28.2024

didn't feel strongly enough about most to devote a full review here are loose thoughts;

maxxxine - devolves into parody which for a trilogy marked by campiness isnt a bad thing, but aside from the period piecing it really falls apart once the dialogue starts treating you like an idiot. "this is the motel from psycho, the movie psycho. we're there now."

hard eight - P.T.A's debut and its fun to see recurring actors early on, notably philip seymour hoffman, but the movie falls apart after the first act and not in a charming or unexpected way, just more into tropes where characters will say things like "i know you killed his father..." there's also a nested sequence mid-story at the start that feels really modern, that's probably the highlight though. its hard to stay invested the entire way through.

shutter island - umm makes wolf of wall street make more sense, lot of whip pans. feel like this was culturally important enough to have been widely spoiled so the mystery didnt do tht much it was ok, little dated but takes itself rlly seriously at least.

boogie nights - bookended by good acts, starting on a high note with the goodfellas-esque club tour & also initially being caught off guard by how raunchy and stupid it is, once its established though it starts petering out slowly and then just takes a turn into batshit drugs and violence to close things out. i think i get the appeal, parts like robbing the drugdealer or the entire stereo-store subplot were highlights but it kind of feels like a movie that'd have one-liners people wear on graphic tee's.

zodiac - watching a mark ruffalo detective movie reminded me this existed, put it on non-commitally and didnt check the time until 40 mins in. i dont follow any true crime so it was all new to me and really unnerving and engaging. creepy tense and cryptic n edited to be really pacey, it is just a boy's club cast though. finished watching at like 4am and was scared to go to sleep, it was well made n didnt feel dated and never overplays its hand til the last minute. rlly enjoyed it. first fincher movie i've actively liked, suprise suprise.

once upon a time in hollywood - so after being proven wrong about fincher i tried to revisit another director whose fanbase i'm turned off by. was not proven wrong with this one. its kind of just babylon for boys, and i hated babylon.

bottle rocket - followed up PTA debut with a wes debut. this one suprised me so much, i wasnt expecting too much but it was laugh out loud funny. it's an eclectic mix of mumblecore and absurdist-crime-comedy, the improv talking over each other works rlly well, whoever you tune into is saying something stupid & the commitment to the character forces you to be the one to break. the library heist is so stupid start to finish, and the setting of mid-west summers in motel pools, cornfields, or buying ice cream & fireworks adds a ton. actively really funny constantly, and theres glimpses of the loud color pallets and overhead shots. rlly good movie, top 3 wes for me.

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8.20-27.2024

from today. recorded this video for a friend hence why its not edited or anything, but wanted to share it on youtube. uploading vids early on here seems cool, like a free patreon type thing.

aimless and a bit unremarkable film, it felt exactly as intersting as its premise: overhearing conversations at a cafe. there's something a bit perverse about eavesdropping on personal stories and exchanges between people who agree to meet in public but then still overstep boundaries & social convention emotionally. the conversations move really fast and across multiple narratives deal with suicides, actors and writers. the throughline being a woman writing in the corner, ruminating on what she's heard, adding to it and writing constantly. the crux being wether she's copying what she's hearing or if this is her imagined narrative playing out.

it's a fun conceit to have a story within a story, it feels almost wes anderson esque with his recent black&white nested story motif thing going on. a major aspect that adds to the wes connection is that the camera movements in this feel so rigid and have clear intentions. slow zoom onto one character, reveal interior detail, pause, grimace, interact with beverage, etc. it plays out so clearly that it feels like the stage directions are being said out loud. it's a bit weird and adds to the dreamlike imagined-conversation narrative a bit more. also just feels like a reenactment of a conversation, hence the anderson connection of b/w stageplay about actors not being able to write a screenplay, being imagined by a writer in a cafe. y'know?

another detail is the use of black and white, hong sang-soo's movies dont shy away from dating themselves which makes them feel on the surface really poised and composed ( on top of the classical music the cafe has on in the background throughout ) but the writer uses a macbook and the glowing apple logo reminds you that this is very much current day, the same way one of the cars they drive in another movie of his the novelists film was a 2022 subaru equivalent, its jarring but also refreshing that it doesnt view modernity as something that somehow invalidates it, feels like pushing back against traditional ideas in a small way.

it's short (only an hour long), self contained, and slow. enjoyed having it on but definitely my least favorite of his so far, like it more as a mental expiriment of thinking about writing and how many layers this functions in. the before sunrise shot of all the places these conversations took place, emptied and new the next morning kind of showcased how thin the conversations that took place in them were. which maybe is also the point, slow cinema after all - celebrating the mundane all the same.

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8.19.2024

out the gate this movie has a really interesting feel with how saturated the colors are and how subdued it is in slowly letting the story unfurl. it's medidative and slow, and thematically also about patience and coaxing out feelings, expressed in jittery brushstrokes and darting eye contact. there are glimpses of influence (or stylistic overlap at least) with P.T.A but it's only in short doses.

the one influence i couldn't shake throughout was a mix of the writing of annie ernaux and chantal akerman's je tu il elle. partially in a literal sense where a central plotline is about underground abortion a la happening and intense waves of desire and yearning, a la simple passion alongside akerman's stark white bedrooms and ungratuitous sapphism's. and them all being in french to begin with is more or less coincedental.

the weight of their romance really snuck up on me, i thought because of the slow pacing i was staying above the rising tide but it ends up being more about the weight of abscence, which is a lot harder to brace for. loved the depictions of intimacy, outside of painter -> muse relationship there was so much tension and heat imbued in all of their interactions, flushed faces and heavy pauses, wondering if they're withholding the same things. the fire motif worked rlly well on top of separating a sense of private/public feelings, where indoors it was lit fireplaces, candlelit rooms (the scene examining the first portrait by candle, the exposure was insane how it captured the colors themselves and the fire so low was rlly impressive, lighting wise) vs the moments outdoors always backdropped by lapping waves and freedom.

half asleep smiles and spit strings on kisses, it's jarringly intimate & uses that to it's advantage. "i wasted time too" feels like such an indictment of queerness as a whole, denying yourself of a life you want but feel you dont deserve. loved the orpheus paralell and reframing his choice being hers, to exist as a memory. decisions as a poet vs as a lover. and leaving is a choice, and it's always the ones we dont make that resign us to a life we don't fully want. beautiful, subdued, quiet movie about silencing yourself whether in terms of a love you wont let bubble over or of a sadness you're supressing.

I've been meaning to watch an Altman film for a while but cant find them on any service i have, when i opened one to keep looking it was already on the opening credits of blue velvet which i had started two days ago and immediately gotten pulled away from. There was an essay in the DFW collection i was reading about the time he spent on set with Lynch while he was filming lost highway - reading that much about lynch and his past works relit the movie flame that's been snuffed for a while now.
earlier in the year i was averaging 20+ watches a month, and i can count on one hand how many movies i've seen since june.

i went into this with a weird combination of eagerness to like something and rekindle the unnamable something that's been dulling & a jadedness half from an ongoing lack of interest in movies and half because.. this is lynch and lynch is defiantly himself which is hit or miss, he doesnt make neutral movies you can shrug either way about. you get something like mulhullond drive or you end up with eraserhead. (i thought it was terrible, sue me)

the movie itself is a fascimile of oversaturated suburbia and 60's high school, poodle skirts and pastel diners, mixed with surreal malease and an erotic undercurrent. was suprised at how linear the story was, at moments i was imbuing with a dream-like ambiguity just turned out to be how things really went, which doesnt make it any less bizzare but there's no second layer of unreliability or second-guessing as an audience member. the music is choice, in dreams by roy orbison is going to be stuck in my head along with the 'she wore blueeeee velvett' needledrop.

in terms of other quotables there's pretty sparse writing that isnt just for the sake of plot. one scene that the cover is from has a similar quality to cronenbergs dead ringers where one of the leads in a similar sexual situation says something poetic and vague (especially in the throes of passion) like 'im so vulnerable. im cut open.'

that's on display here as well, lot of juxtaposing and conflicting imagery - a la sexual gratification at knife-point. 'do you like me? hit me.' but also a blue/red motif that's in basically every scene.

the high school romance is cloying, the unease in all of the staircase scenes is great, all the interiors feel liminal, cinematography wise not that strong there was one scene that went from a hospital bed to a siren tht i really liked, i kind of wish it ended a bit faster though. would have loved a full stop ambigious danger-still-looming thing instead of resolution/answers, the whole idyll bow wrap was whatever. it's very quintissential lynch though, lot on motifs from what he'd done before or would later do & sort of refine going forward: leaning further into the liminal, unexplained, and the stages they take place on.

she wore blueeeeee velvettttttt.

immediately overthinking how my first book review being david foster wallace makes me look lmfao. on the bright side this book feels his most defensable and i also rlly enjoyed it, my third time trying to read something by him & his non-fiction voice comes across really well and even his fascination with pontificating about the most mundane aspects of life are a lot better suited to an essay (and sub-essays playing out through footnotes¹).

i visited this book soley to read his essay on television, which i've heard through mumbled paraphrasings was about modern media and a culture of over-consumption. i enjoyed the parts i understood a lot & managed to find specific glimpses of my own thoughts put into words which was really satsifying & helpful. the same trademark verbose-ness plays out and makes even really simple sentences hard to parse (i think it rubbed off on me bc i dropped pontificating earlier too casually haha). eventually his writing style became easier to wade through and the subject matter of his other essays being much more lighthearted helped as well.

on top of all of this there was a moment where i realized how uncharitable i had been when reading his earlier works - because his entire legacy and douchey intilectualist fans i was taking glimpses of earnest and pitiable people he writes as somehow sarcastic or spiteful when as he puts really clearly in his essay on media; he views cynicism as the death of culture and in turn goes on praising and pushing for sincerity.

there's also a lot of self awareness injected because of how he can be the focal point of some of the stories & his humanity, insecurity, and value of life really shines through. suprisingly, in an almost heel-turn-ingly positive spin, his nonfiction voice and perspective is really endearing. i enjoyed this dense and earnest collection & letting my mental barrier drop and engaging with him in a form that works well for him made me see him in a new light as heavily mischaracterized.

another standout is the self titled essay where he recounts his experience on a luxury cruise, funnily enough my brother just left to go on a cruise with his girlfriend last night. imposing my brothers thoughts onto davids experiences & vice versa made it that much funnier. also some great bits about inherent class in tourism along with comedy of errors surrounding politeness across cultures. enjoyed this a ton.

¹see also, ross gay's essay dispatch from the ruins found in inciting joy which across every essay you'll find footnotes taking up over half the page, but in that one specifically there's one that spans 3 pages, so at one point both open faces of the book are purely this mini side-note-essay about the book Benito Cereno. which on it's own convinced me to buy my own copy. this style of footnote interruptions and sidetracks in essays i find especially grounding & conversational, constantly wanting to add context or remembering a detail halfway through a different point. i'm horrible at keeping the stories i tell self contained. wallace is no different here amassing over 100 footnotes in the cruise-essay alone, and the internal comparison to ross gay (one of contemporary writings most infectiously agreeable people) definitely won him over in my eyes.