Room 237

Been excited about this one for a long time. I … LOVE … The Shining.

JLG 3D

Still reading David Thomson's phenomenal new book, The Big Screen, slowly and contemplatively, and it’s making me want to go back and watch a whole bunch of movies, both seen and unseen. Today I was reading his section on Godard, one of my all-time favorite directors, and now I want to watch all of his 60s films again.

More than a decade ago, the late, lamented, UC Theater in Berkeley, was running Godard double-features every Monday night for a couple months. It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate, romantic introduction to JLG than one film after another, separated by furtive cigarettes on University Avenue and maybe a quick coffee from Au Coquelet, then back into my seat for more girls, guns and jumpcuts. I was religiously there every week and I saw most of his head-spinning oeuvre (15 features!) from ‘60 to ‘67.

So, googling today, I learned that the next film the 81-year-old will make will be in 3D (mais bien sûr!) and that he described it like this:

“It’s about a man and his wife who no longer speak the same language. The dog they take on walks then intervenes and speaks. How I’ll do it, I don’t yet know. The rest is simple.”

(from The Verge)

What’s not to love about that?

Inequality

So there’s this (Gun to head, pull trigger).

Greenberg does Hemingway does Three Bears

“

Sometimes we would go for long walks along the river and you could almost forget for a little while that you were a bear and not people.

Once when we were out strolling for a very long time, we came home and you could see that someone had broken in and the door was open.

”La port est ouverte,” said Mama Bear. “The door should not be open.” Mama Bear had French blood on her father’s side.

”It is all right,” I said. “We will close it. Then it will be good like in the old days.”

”Bien,” she said. “It is well.”

We walked in and closed the door. There were dishes and bowls and all manner of eating utensils on the table and you could tell that someone had been eating porridge. We did not say anything for a long while.

”It is lovely here, “ I said finally. “But someone has been eating my porridge.”

”

—

Dan Greenberg, in the style of Hemingway, from Esquire, 1958

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/rthompso/porridge.html

Seitz: Sex and Attractiveness Are the Least Interesting Things About Last Week'€™s Girls

The always interesting Matt Zoller Seitz gets it right again. Girls is one of the best and most innovative shows on TV.

What David Thomson said

“American cinema liked to glorify “simple” people. It was a way of reassuring everyone that a picture was for them. Think of Chaplin’s little man and then notice his huge ego. This is a keystone in the American lie, that our lives can be small. Vigo believed that every life is just a pale skin wrapped around a seething inner life, and he knew that film could uncover it.”

— The Big Screen, David Thomson

Republican Response

"No one will remember a single word from Sen. Marco Rubio’s response to the State of the Union last night, lost as they were inside his desert mouth cave." What I like about this is how well it sums up the Republican view.

Who should win?

Another of Kevin B. Lee’s excellent little video essays, this one peeking at what makes the Oscar nominated actresses worthy, or not, of the statuette. I don’t agree about Emmanuelle Riva, but the rest seems spot on. It’s easy to forget how difficult great acting really is, when someone like Jennifer Lawrence makes it seem so natural.

The Walking Dead Intro as a 1980s Sitcom

Bruce

Caught up with the sketch boys Saturday night. Here’s something from down memory lane.