How wonderful that one can see the entire collection on Hulu.
Truffaut, Berman, Kurosawa—so much vision and creativity.
Also, fantastic trailer for the online collection.
Christmas Time Is Here
Damn, I love this holiday CD. It’s my favorite because it swings so nicely. (Second favorite is The Christmas Album by Nat King Cole).
The Holy Mountain
This mindF$#@K of a film was impossible to turn away from. Kind of like the journey it depicts wherein horror (dark night) and ecstasy (unitive state) dance and struggle endlessly.
Turning Alan Moore Films Into Movies
Here’s to hoping that Watchmen is more in the spirit of V for Vendetta than League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Of course, Moore’s not a fan of either film or any film based on his writings. I can see the aversion. Then again, my favorite Alan Moore comic book by far is Promethea his metaphysical tale about transformation, enlightenment and ascending the Qabalistic Tree of Life in search of our true Self. Heavy reading yes, but oh so entertaining and what a story.
Jules et Jim
One of my favorite movies of all time is Jules et Jim by François Truffaut.
Seeing it had a profound impact on me for a number of reasons. I see it as the ultimate meditation on life, friendship and freedom. To live this move is to really live.
The following conversation is from Henri-Pierre Roché’s book Jules et Jim, the inspiration for Truffaut’s unforgettable 1962 French film.
I love what the dialogue says about living life with purpose.
“What do you want to be?”
“A diplomat.”
“Do you have a large fortune?”
“No.”
“Are you related to anyone famous?”
“No.”
“Then forget about diplomacy.”
“Then what can I become?”
“An inquiring mind.”
“That’s not a career.”
“Not yet. Travel, write, translate. Learn to live anywhere, beginning now. The future’s bright for those who question. The French have holed up behind their borders for too long. Some newspapers will always pay for your escapades.”
Truffaut captures the essence of this in the film. He had this to say about Roché’s book:
It was in 1955 that I discovered Henri-Pierre Roché’s novel Jules et Jim, amongst the other secondhand books in the Stock Bookshop stall in the Place du Palais-Royal.
[...] From the very first lines, I fell in love with Henri-Pierre Roché’s prose. At that time, my favorite writer was Jean Cocteau, for his quickfire sentences, their perceptable dryness, and the precision of his images. I was discovering in Henri-Pierre Roché a writer who seemed to me to be stronger than Cocteau, for he achieved the same kind of poetic prose using a less extensive vocabulary, making ultra-short sentences from everyday words. Through Roché’s style, emotion is born out of the void, the emptiness of all the rejected words – it’s even born out of ellipsis.
I was similarly blown away by Truffaut’s film the first time I saw it. Recently, I picked up the Criterion Collection release of Jules et Jim. I’m thrilled to say the least.
My One Problem With The Karate Kid
Everytime I watch the Karate Kid I’m left with this nagging qustion that has pretty much ruined the movie for me: What’s the deal with the fat guy in Cobra Kai? You know the one pictured left fighting the really speedy guy who lost to Johnny in the quarter finals although he clearly had better moves than any Cobra Kai.
But, if Cobra Kai was all about picking on social outcasts, why wouldn’t the fat guy have been the first to go? He wasn’t up to snuff. Daniel La Russo was much cooler than that guy. What gives? But there he his fighting in the tournament, lumbering around the stage before catching a flying kick to the chest that wasn’t even that hard. I mean, what a wuss. La Russo got his knee hyperextended and probably all his ligaments stretched and torn and he still beat Johnny with a bad-ass crane kick right to the nose. And I know, all of you from the “Mr. Myagi has magic hands school” may disagree, but all the massaging in the world ain’t gonna take that pain away. Special ancient technique or no special ancient technique.
The Cobra Kai were all about “No mercy” and had it drilled into them with a relentless vigor by Sensei. Great. I get it. But then I see the fat guy and think why does he get a free pass? He doesn’t represent Cobra Kai values. The only thing that didn’t get mercy from him was a visit to the all you can eat buffets around town. They clearly cut him lots of slack and showed lots of mercy to his out of shape, huffing and puffing ass.
This just bothers me. Don’t ask me why. But it has come to ruin the Karate Kid for me. I’ll get into the why there’s no way in hell Ralph Macchio could ever take Steve Vai in a guitar duel in a later post.
America: Land of the Free, Home of the Chubby
This past holiday season signaled a major paradigm shift in my life.
For starters, I saw the amazing documentary Super Size Me which details the widening of America due to increased portions, increased fat intake and an increasingly lethargic population.
While I’ve always been relatively health conscious, what I saw shocked me. After the movie, I began to do a little digging around and came across some alarming trends regarding America’s health and well-being. My synopsis of what I found is this:
- We are completely clueless when it comes to nutrition.
- We eat more and move less, choosing the inactivity of our nation-wide TV obsession to exercise.
- There are healthy alternatives to what we eat and there is no excuse for our increasing reliance on fast food.
Duhhhh. These are obvious points. But my point is that if it’s so obvious and easy, why do we do nothing about? Why do we slip further into this greasy abyss?
Now for some good news. One of most refreshing discoveries in my internet wide search was Slow Food USA, a not-for-profit organization committed to promoting a return to the table in American food culture.
Their cause is the alter-ego of the eat on the go, eat in your car and do it as fat, I mean as fast as you can mentality that has led to our absolute dependence on fast food and other processed, modified and pre-packaged meals. Instead, what Slow Food envisions is as follows.
People have responded to the growing movement, because they have become tired of buying the same things, eating the same foods and living the same lives. With these interests in mind, our mission is to create a robust, active movement that protects taste, culture and the environment as universal social values. Slow Food programs are dedicated to the mingling of taste, culture and the environment.
Amen to this. In fact, it’s essential that we begin to think differently about eating. I’ve recently read research that suggests that the new trend is that parents will now be able to buy completely different prefab, preboxed dinners for each family member so that the son can have a hotdog, dad can have meatloaf, mom can get the baked chicken and sis can eat mac and cheese and French fries.
And we’ll be able to have our family dinner on the way home from the store in convenient to go containers. I say the hell with that. Give me slow food. Good food. Food grown where I live by farmers who actually tend to crops, nurturing them without hormones or chemicals. I’m a member of Slow Food. And while they may not be the only answer to some of our nation’s problems with diet and nutrition, they are a powerful and growing force dedicated to finding a solution.
Dear Friends, Thanks For Ruining Napoleon Dynamite For Me.
No use in seeing the cult phenomena that is Napoleon Dynamite now. My cohorts at the office have relived, quoted, enacted, mimed and listened to sound bytes of just about every second of the film. Great. Just great. It’s not like I wanted to see the movie. I’ve read that it’s a bit of a Wes Anderson rip-off and that may be true. But I’ll never know now, because I can’t see it now purely out of principle.
Who do my friends and colleagues at work think they are?
I appreciate their enthusiasm for Ligers and Sledgehammer bikes. Yippee! I can even deal with the endless quotes where my office mates insert their name where Napolean should be, “Hey Andy, what are you gonna do today?” Andy replies, angrily, “What ever I feel like, God!” Ahhhh, a movie quote. I get it. And do you know why I get it? Because I’ve heard probably every line of dialogue from the damn movie. Great guys.
Thanks again. No, I will not see Napoleon Dynamite now matter how much I want to. I may reconsider once the DVD comes out, but until then, I will isolate myself from the never ending Napoleon Dynamite buzz that has come to overwhelm my workplace and my social network. I guess I’ll just sit home and watch Rushmore until things die down a little.