==pla|\|ing lakes==

Friday, December 31, 2004

Movies watched (all the way through, in chronological order) in 2004

Quai des Orfèvres*
The Return of the King*
Le cercle rouge
John Huston: The Man, The Movies, The Maverick
The Work of Director Michael Gondry
Gosford Park (r)*
Northfork
The Scarlet Letter (1925)
Merci pour le chocolat
Gian jui (The Eye)
Black Narcissus*
The Big Lebowski (r)*
The Servant
Ringu
The Goose and the Gander
The General (1998)
Bob le Flambeur*
Insomnia (1997) (r)*
The Endurance
W C Fields Shorts
The Pelican Brief (r)
The Big Steal (r)*
Cure (1997)*
David Copperfield (1935)*
Executive Suite
Day of the Outlaw*
To Live and Die in L.A. (r)*
The Others (r)
Speaking Parts*
Lightning Over Water
Capturing the Friedmans*
Thirteen (2003)*
Midnight (1939)
My Life as a Dog (r)*
Kukushka (The Cuckoo)*
The American Experience : John Brown's Holy War
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (r)
Man on the Train
Heroes for Sale
American Splendor*
It's a Gift! (1934) (r)*
The River (1951) (r)*
Lost in Translation*
Maîtresse
American Experience: Tupperware!
Intolerable Cruelty
Hiroshima Mon Amour*
Cambridge Spies*
Sylvia (2003)
Runaway Jury
In Search of Shakespeare
Jesus' Son (r)*
Shoot the Piano Player
The Mothman Prophecies (r)*
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (r)*
Last Year at Marienbad
The Second Woman
Impact (1949)
Matchstick Men
Pieces of April*
Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood*
Decasia
Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail
School of Rock
Blow
Dr Akagi
High and Low (1963)*
The Directors: John Frankenheimer
Outland (r)
Baran*
Les Carabiniers*
Platoon (r)*
Slaughterhouse Five (r)*
The Duellists
Ministry of Fear
Repo Man (r)*
Heart of Glass (r)*
A Decade Under the Influence*
Knife in the Water*
Dirty Pretty Things*
Mona Lisa Smile
Shattered Glass*
Nightmare (1956)
Shakespeare in Love
Suddenly (1954)*
Onibaba*
demonlover
Madigan (1968)
The Truman Show (r)
The Killing (1956) (r)*
Devil in a Blue Dress (r)*
Something's Gotta Give
Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance
The Directors: William Friedkin
Klute
Prey for Rock N' Roll
On Dangerous Ground (1952)
Once Upon a Time in Mexico
The Major and the Minor (r)
The Cell (2000)*
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy*
32 Short Films About Glenn Gould*
Talk to Her*
Spoorlos (The Vanishing)
Man on the Moon
House of Sand and Fog
The Source (1999)*
The Black Hand (1950)
The Late Show (1977)
Empire of the Sun
Tokyo Story*
Play Misty for Me (r)
Love Me or Leave Me
Le Petit Soldat (r)*
The Miles Davis Story
The Last of Sheila*
Calendar*
Saboteur (r)
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Scorpio
Independent Lens: The Weather Underground*
Love Actually
Dollar (1938)*
La Dolce Vita*
3 Women (r)*
10.5
Finger of Guilt
Criss Cross (1949)*
Phantom Lady
Elephant (2003)*
The Triplets of Belleville
Girl With a Pearl Earring*
Blondie Live by Request
Exotica (r)*
Party Girl (1958)
Midnight Cowboy
Prime Suspect 6*
Pennies From Heaven (1981)
In America*
The Murder Man
Murder in the Private Car
M*
Frontline: The Killer at Thurston High
The Old Dark House
Act of Violence*
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
Bright Lights, Big City (r)
Okie Noodling
The Cooler (2003)
Smiles of a Summer Night
Frontline: The Jesus Factor
The Best Years of Our Lives
Prime Suspect 2*
Go Tell the Spartans*
Dead Ringers (r)*
Comfort and Joy
The Counterfeit Traitor
Julius Caesar (1953)
Wild Reeds
Bunny Lake Is Missing
Second Sight 1 (1999)
Cary Grant: A Class Apart
Breaking In (1989)(r)*
Nosferatu (1922)*
The Andromeda Strain (r)*
Stalker (r)*
The Animal Kingdom (r)*
The Parallax View (r)*
No Questions Asked
Drowning By Numbers
Saigon: Year of the Cat
Earth (1930)*
Salem's Lot (2004)
The Secret Agent (1996)
Shadow in the Sky
Night Falls on Manhattan
Scanners
Love Field
The Laughing Policeman
A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven) (r)*
Zabriskie Point*
The Subject Was Roses
Crisis (1950)*
Year of the Gun
Q & A
Spartan*
The 4400 (pilot)
The Company
Bad Santa*
The Asphalt Jungle (r)*
The Station Agent*
Atlantic City (r)*
The Days (debut)
Downtown 81
Lost in La Mancha
For All Mankind*
Danger Signal (1945)
My Life to Live (Vivre sa vie)
La jetée*
Eye Like a Strange Balloon*
The Carey Treatment
Welcome Back, Mr McDonald
Siddartha
The Politician's Wife
Gun Crazy (1949)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (r)*
The Horse's Mouth (r)*
Stray Dog (1949)*
Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles*
Don van Vliet: Some YoYo Stuff
A Story of Floating Weeds*
They Live By Night*
Prime Suspect 3*
A Mighty Wind (r)*
In the Mirror of Maya Deren*
Love Serenade
Winged Migration
After Hours (1985) (r)*
Dead Like Me (pilot)
Uzumaki
El náufrago de la calle de Providencia
Prime Suspect 4*
Night Gallery (Season 1 - disc 2)
One Is a Lonely Number
55 Days at Peking
Lone Star (1996)(r)*
The Big Easy (r)
Naked Lunch (r)
The Sorrow and the Pity
The City of No Limits
Goodbye, Lenin!*
The Parson's Wife*
The Puppetmaster (Hsimeng Jensheng) (1993)*
Waking Life*
The Lathe of Heaven (1979)(r)*
Tomorrow We Live
THX 1138 (r)*
Fight Club (r)*
Spring Summer Fall Winter . . . and Spring again*
Strange Illusion
Day of Wrath (1943)
Bon Voyage (2003)
Ordet (1955)*
I lived, But (Ozu doc)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind*
The Big Picture (r)*
Good Men, Good Women
Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy - Working With Time*
The Decline of the American Empire (r)*
Saved!
Donnie Darko (r)*
The Scent of Green Papaya*
Gertrud (1964)
Noises Off!
Early Summer (Bakushû)*
Painted Lady (1997)
Wire: On the Box*
Daria: Is It College Yet? (r)*
Laurel Canyon (r)*
Secret Honor*
Conspiracy (2001)*
The Return (Vozvrashcheniye)*
Cloak and Dagger (1946)
Mr Moto's Last Warning
Don't Die Without Telling Me Where You're Going
The Day After Tomorrow
Close Your Eyes
Quicksand (1950)
Arlington Road (r)*
Festival Express
Benny & Joon (r)*
Facing Windows*
Below
Magnolia (r)*
California Split*
L'Atalante*
What Time Is It There?*
Wonder Boys (r)*
Ram Dass: Fierce Grace*
Bill Hicks Live!*
Mystic River
Iris
Croupier*
Twilight of the Ice Nymphs
Phantom (1922)*
L'Age D'Or (r)*
Get Carter*
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban*
A Home at the End of the World*
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
Personal Velocity*
Carnivale: Season One*
Yi Yi*
Jandek on Corwood*
Forgotten Silver
The Shop Around the Corner (r)*
The Office: The Second Season*
Kitchen Stories
Tipping the Velvet
How to Draw a Bunny*
The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
Scrooge (aka A Christmas Carol) (1951)*
The Flower of Evil (Le Fleur du Mal)
Out of Time (2003)
Ed Wood (r)*
Goodbye South, Goodbye
Code 46*
Go (r)*

(r) = seen it before
* = particularly worth seeing

Selections to follow...

11:52 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Websites allow gift card recipients to swap cards

10:02 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Books read & completed 2004

Firedrake's Eye - Patricia Finney
Mr Timothy - Louis Bayard
W C Fields: A Biography - James Curtis
The Immoralist - André Gide
Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
Down There - David Goodis
Ocean of Sound - David Toop
The Parrot Trainer - Swain Wolfe
The Long Winter - John Christopher
Sacred - Dennis Lehane
Gone, Baby, Gone - Dennis Lehane
Prayers for Rain - Dennis Lehane
Empire of the Sun - J G Ballard
The Cloud Atlas - Liam Callanan
The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
The Diehard - Jon A Jackson
The Chronoliths - Robert Charles Wilson
Broken Angels - Richard K Morgan
Over the Shoulder - Leonard Chang
The Mexican Tree Duck - James Crumley
The Blind Pig - Jon A Jackson
Shutter Island - Dennis Lehane
Popular Music from Vittula - Mikael Niemi
Cronenberg on Cronenberg
Fierce People - Dirk Wittenborn
Outerbridge Reach - Robert Stone
Skinny Dip - Carl Hiaasen
Only Apparently Real - Paul Williams
Ambient - Jack Womack
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer - Philip K Dick
Country of Origin - Don Lee
In the Shadow of No Towers - Art Spiegelman
The Ordinary - Jim Grimsley

All but the last 7 or so were read before my new job started in July. Been watching films more than reading since then. netflix makes it all too easy.

But I wasn't getting much out of reading anyway. Needed a change of perspective.

I enjoyed Mr Timothy, Ocean of Sound, The Chronoliths, Popular Music from Vittula and Fierce People the most.


9:34 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Excellent-sounding exploration of pedophilia: The Woodsman, with Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick and newcomer Hannah Pilkes

Particularly impressive (and emblematic of the movie as a whole) is the way in which [first-time director Nicole Kassell] conveys exactly what it is that Walter (Kevin Bacon) -- a serial molester, newly released from prison -- likes to do to little girls. The audience needs to know because we need to know whom we're looking at. At the same time, an explicit exposition would be inartistic and unwelcome. And so Kassell finds a way to communicate the information wordlessly and gracefully and yet with a clarity that's unmistakable.

That's The Woodsman in a nutshell, tasteful but not compromised. Walter leaves prison after serving a 12-year sentence, and it doesn't take long for us to realize that he has precisely the same sexual impulses that he had a dozen years before. The only question is whether he'll be able to keep those impulses in check, every minute of every day for the rest of his life. It's a daunting challenge.

10:57 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Positive Newsday review of new Sean Penn pic The Assassination of Richard Nixon

10:49 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Restored print of Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin to be shown at next month's Berlin Film Festival

10:46 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

New Kiln EP sounds pretty good, only heard half of it so far

More electronics after ampday's emphasis on Love Tractorish (?) guitars.

Still like their eponymous first EP the best of their recordings. I got the first 2 discs from insound, whose search engine is down right now. But Kiln's music is probably not too hard to find.

One of my favorite acts.

9:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

New index of literate American cities [Refdesk]

8:32 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

New label for music/artists who combine field recordings with other sound [disquiet]

They've even branded a field recordist logo...

The site is in German mostly, but not hard to dope out.

8:28 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, December 26, 2004

R.I.P. Agnes Martin

Just downloaded a piece inspired by her at stasisfield though I've never studied her work. More on her here and here.

I think I have to see her paintings up close, net pics won't do.

12:06 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, December 25, 2004

Just before 4PM PT a giant 8.5 quake hit western Indonesia -- particularly Aceh -- and was felt in India, Myanmar, Singapore; tsunamis have hit Sri Lanka and Thailand, killing hundreds and flattening buildings

11:52 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, December 18, 2004

DVD Commentaries

I've listened to several lately of note:

The one for California Split enhanced my experience of the film considerably, as it includes Altman (who sometimes rambles when alone), Gould, Segal and screenwriter Joseph Walsh, and there's a nice vibe between the 4 of them. And good info, like most of the people you see in the background are Synanon grads or members...

The one for McCabe & Mrs Miller is not as good, but still interesting. Altman and producer David Foster trade off, obviously not in the same room, but it works anyway. Altman claims he intentionally goes for an "R" rating to keep attention-deficit 14 year-olds away.

And though I didn't listen all the way through, the commentaries for Get Carter, Jandek on Corwood, Edward Yang's Yi Yi and the first disc of the Carnivale series seemed worthy. I'm going to watch all of the latter before listening to it because I don't want to know any plot details ahead of time.

On the other hand, the commentary for the new release of Buñuel's L'Age D'Or is by a Buñuel scholar and it sounds like it: the commentary is brief, very informed and dry, with long spaces in between. Read the book instead.

7:00 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Spell Wavering Shard

The new Akira Rabelais seems to be getting good reviews, and indeed what I've heard of it is very nice

Still haven't heard his album-length remix of the last cut on Avalon Sutra.

6:43 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, December 13, 2004

Ian Simmons of nth position reviews the release of 2 landmark works of sound art which have never been heard in their entirety: Brian Wilson's Smile and Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate

...I can't help seeing the story about the collapse of Schwitters' mental health during his period of internment as an enemy alien after fleeing to Britain to escape the Nazis during World War II in a different light. He apparently appalled fellow inmates by barking like a dog, causing them to fear for his sanity, having heard some of Ursonate it may have been he was just reciting his work. Either way Ursonate is a piece that still lives today and, like Smile, exists outside time. Both are as fresh and brilliant today as when they were first conceived.[link]

Streaming versions (they might be excerpts, I haven't listened) of Jaap Blonk's rendition and others' are available at Ubuweb. There's also a reproduction of the score.

10:34 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, December 12, 2004

"Painting all your treasures black..."

Just watched the Jandek on Corwood DVD and it's a hoot -- and now I have to have at least one of his CDs

Before this I'd read about him in Irwin Chusid's landmark book Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music, and only heard the track on the accompanying CD.

The movie's creators are selling the disc at the site above, which is the best route if you have the bucks. Deep Discount DVD has the best price if you don't. And netflix carries it too -- that's how I found it in fact -- on last week's "New Release" page.

They really did a fine job with this doc, and if you know anything about Jandek you know he's not an easy sell.

Link to Steve Tisue's apparently definitive website in the "Music: Artists" section on the left.

Jandek played his first ever live show in Scotland in October.

As one reviewer put it, Jandek hasn't changed, the times have just moved closer to his reality (I'm paraphrasing).

10:30 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, December 05, 2004

A new book getting rave reviews that deals with the effects of fundamentalist religion on a Canadian teen and her family (might be relevant, eh?): A Complicated Kindness by Canadian Miriam Toews

10:18 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

You can now (or soon, depending where you live) get a free copy of your credit report (for real) here

10:02 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, December 04, 2004

I attended Rutgers College in the mid-70s and then again in the early 80s, and enjoyed it for the most part. But how different things might have been if I'd taken art courses when these folks were in town...

In 1959, when Lucas Samaras was a flamboyant, patchwork-dressed undergrad at Rutgers, his senior thesis show included a concrete poem with the word "Fuck fuck fuck fuck . . ." inscribing a near square with a concluding "you" appended at the end. Samaras's brilliantly jejune production resulted in a huge administrative commotion, which led to his teacher Allan Kaprow being passed over for tenure and, in 1961, leaving the school. Such incidents are entirely characteristic of the wild and crazy mood at Rutgers in the late '50s and early '60s. Roy Lichtenstein, perhaps under Kaprow's influence, made his first hand-painted Pop works in 1961 while teaching at Douglass College (Rutgers's women's school) and living in Highland Park, New Jersey. The formative viewer-interactive games, assemblages, and subversive proto-Pop and Mail art strategies of Robert Watts and George Brecht (both Rutgers faculty) were hatched at the Howard Johnson's restaurant in downtown New Brunswick, and their bacchanalian "Yam Festival" ("Yam" is May spelled backward) took place in 1963 at George Segal's nearby chicken farm. Clearly the merry band at Rutgers created a nexus for performance, Pop, Fluxus, and Conceptual art a few years later.

I remember seeing stuff about Red Grooms around campus, but his work didn't strike me then. There's a new book of reproductions and essays that sounds intriguing.

2:51 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Ghulam Dastagir: Forgotten hero of Bhopal's tragedy


8:10 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Duchamp was here

9:20 AM - [Link] - Comments ()