A Gilded Planet

Melancholia 2011. 136 minutes. Denmark. Directed by Lars von Trier. Watchdate: 1/10/2012 This is the finest cinematic demonstration of expectations creating reality that I have seen. For that alone I will extoll its virtues beyond (perhaps) what is fair. But there was something deeply disturbing but also exciting about that idea of expectations. It's like the dark edge of Charles Dickens updated for our time, but it's also sort of the anti-Secret (fuck Rhonda Byrne).  Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is told not to make a scene before she actually makes a scene, Justine is told she is a workaholic before she actually does anything to indicate she's a workaholic, Justine is told she is not happy enough before she really does much of anything to justify that sort of expectation. Similarly, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is told to avoid going online to research her fears before we ever actually see her doing so and John (Kiefer Sutherland) - well in John's case he is such a swirl...

in this text I've seen through Eros and abstraction Let's write a speech about creativity in the back seat of a peach sedan: it reads as if each of the frames is contaminated with unknown pleasures' gaze. I read not as a Anatolian Outlaw not as a Japanese Diva or as a brief afterimage tearing under the skin but Our eyes in talking pictures enzymes capable of any viral trans fusing cells of rupture by which Our polymerase replicates the data of books written in search of mystery on a page as time's shadow given over to the grin, smile, smirk to the perpetual swoon of a kinetic antichrist and secrets behind the door about the mechanical age restored by the fragility of life with an authoré, her names: Denis, Costa, Ellison I am Our audience who Okazaki has forgotten

Today is the 159th Birthday of Cuban revolutionary hero and political theorist José Martí. As well as being equally contemptuous of both Spanish and U.S. imperialism, Martí possessed a badass moustache: Even Frank Zappa can't compete with that 'stache.  I will be keeping him and his facial hair in my thoughts all day.

Ariel Gardner asked me to contribute a top ten list to his top ten list blog.  Go check it out, I promise you won't be disappointed. I compiled a list of the funniest Wikipedia articles that I have encountered. Number 4 on my list is Liver-Eating Johnson : ...[o]ne tale ascribed to Johnson [1] [2]  (while other sources ascribe it to  Boone Helm [3] ) was of being ambushed by a group of  Blackfoot  warriors in the dead of winter on a foray to visit his Flathead kin, a trip that would have been over five hundred miles (>800 Kilometers). The Blackfoot planned to sell him to the Crow, his mortal enemies, for a handsome price. [ vague ]  He was stripped to the waist, tied with leather thongs and put in a  teepee  with an inexperienced guard outside. Johnson managed to chew through the straps, then knocked out his young guard with a punch to the face, took his knife and  scalped  him, then quickly cut off one of his legs. [ dubious   ...

Stop Making Sense 1984. 88 minutes. USA. Directed by Jonathan Demme. Watchdate: 1/26/2011 This is a movie about a giant suit that makes everyone happy and terrified. It's a giant suit that magnifies what is perhaps the craziest sense of rhythm in the Western World (whatever "the Western World" means nowadays). This movie is about sweat and white light and running and everything else people did in the 80s like wearing giant suits to make themselves seem bigger and more important than they actually were. It's great, it should be required viewing. PS - David Byrne looks startlingly like Cillian Murphy in this movie.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows 2011. 129 minutes. USA/UK. Directed by Guy Ritchie. Watchdate: 12/26/2011. Disclaimer: The best part about this movie is how gay it is. Usually you don't get a forbidden gay romance like this in a big Hollywood action blockbuster, and if you do it's usually about submerged homoeroticism rather than fine screwball gay romance complete with cross dressing and jealously of hetero relations which this movie has beyond its capacity to hold. I will say that on its behalf. Robert Downey Jr. had a one-two punch a few years ago with two clever, fun blockbusters that made use of his considerable charisma in just the right way. Now comes time for their disappointing sequels. Just as with Iron Man 2, the second Sherlock Holmes outing has occasional moments or sequences that recapture or even flirt with exceeding the pleasures of the original. But for the most part, it just feels like a waste. The action scene innovations of the first movie...

Amarcord 1973. 123 minutes. Italy. Directed by Federico Fellini. Watchdate: 10/5/2011. I commence with the consideration of an effect. Of the myriad impressions of which the heart or the intellect or even the soul is susceptible, I feel confident in choosing Amarcord for its vivid effect in these matters. Can Amarcord best be praised for incident or tone – whether its ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone? Looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, all aid me in seeing Amarcord as a brilliant string of precious stones.  PS - This movie contains the ORIGINAL masturbation contest! Eat your heart out, Seinfeld!

Art is anything you do with your hands. For example, as a species, we have built so many dams that 50% of all river flow on Earth is regulated by human whims. We have transformed the planet. This is the most grandiose artistic project that has come to fruition in human history. If sculpture is an art, than sculpting the land is an art. If writing is an art, than rewriting the genetic code of the plant kingdom is an art. If painting is an art, than painting the view of our planet from space with a Great Wall is an art. Art is anything you do with your hands. If fixing a motorcycle or performing heart surgery is not artistic, but fixing the narrative structure of a novel-in-progress or performing an avant-garde dance piece is artistic, we do not wish to have anything to do with that idea of art. If fixing a motorcycle or performing heart surgery cannot be artistic, but well-designed representations of such actions can be artistic, there is a serious imbalance of priorities that fetishi...

"I am increasingly convinced that the need to be right has nothing whatsoever to do with the love of truth, but to face the implications of this means accepting a painful inner emptiness; I am not now what I sense somehow I am meant to be. I do not know what I feel from the bottom of my heart, I need to know. The beginning of wisdom is not to flee from this condition or distract yourself from it. It is essential not to fill it up with answers that have not been earned. It is important to learn how to wait with that emptiness. It is the desire to fill up that emptiness which leads to political or religious fanaticism." That's John Garvey, via Charlie Kaufman speaking at BAFTA .

We, in Berkeley, are fortunate to have Telegraph Avenue which bustles daily with culture and commerce. Telegraph's vibrancy is a tribute to our community and to our faith in Berkeley's spirit. Today we are concerned with vagrancy amongst the young and able-bodied on Telegraph Avenue along with its causes and its effects. This article will only scratch the surface of the concern. However, we believe that public awareness is a first step toward a remedy for any problem. It is in this spirit and with this faith that THE WILD STREET KIDS OF TELEGRAPH AVE was composed. You’ve seen them on the street corner, you’ve passed them on the sidewalk, you’ve heard them ask for change. They disdain tests and grades and resumes, they care not for extracurriculars and externships and Panhellenic exchanges. They do not live by the daily shower or the hourly wage. They go their own way, and they seem somewhat proud of it. But who are they? Who are these ageless children, these eternal youths ...