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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1414
Rip it up, rip it up. But I take a moment to peruse - not read - everything, and - a lot of it, most of it, appalling, but - remarkably, not all, and in the drawing arena I'm surprised to find a few sketches that aren't so bad. By which I don't mean good, just not the worst, I scan through, remember old ideas - briefly, we're breaking the logjam, there are fewer days ahead than behind, rip-it-up, rip-it-up,...
Overwhelming, because it's all my shit, if it was somebody elses, anybody elses, I could breeze through here in a day, for everyone it's the same, dealing with their own shit takes forever, dealing with somebody elses is easy.
I find some old notebooks of "wants and needs", diaries of my material ambitions, and surprising how many I realized, given my hunger, a lot of the shit I wanted 20, 25 years ago I now have, and laughable given that I'm in the process of getting rid of it all...
Another picker
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: For Sale
- Hits: 1266
It's poor pickings, I haven't died and there's stuff I don't want to part with yet, there's an order to this diminishing of self, skewed towards big things first, then small, and smaller until finally the legion of things I haven't yet thought about yet.
After all the miscellaneous randoms the books will go, first by a half, then another half, then another, surely I don't need every book by Somerset Maughm, Nabokov even, "Ada", "Lolita" and "Pale Fire" will suffice, and so I'll work through the list, a couple of the best by my favorite authors, keep the reference, psychology, mythology, fairy tales, dictionaries of mythology, phrase and fable, and my books will become manageable, there will be room to live.
Another picker, random enquiries on Kijiji - thought it was a another one of those, YOU KNOW - just want to talk, but he came by, pleasant enough, he's here for the artist's models, he knows what they cost at the art store, as well, a chain mail glove, I suggest the fencing foils but he says no - his wife would kill him (then why the glove?), a pair of dumbells, a microphone stand. Maybe he's a picker, but he's got pretty eclectic tastes...
He asks about the story with the artists models - they're for figurative drawing, and I had written about a lady I had met down the street about 15 years ago who was selling all these paintings she had done, of the little mannequins posed in various settings, somehow she didn't understand that they were supposed to be placeholders for real people, and he's laughing, he thinks I was joking. I wasn't, I don't need to make much up, life surpasses me in absurdity at every turn. His English, it's not so good, and I'm always surprised when foreigners get my sense of humor, few enough of the locals do, and he's laughing harder now when I tell him it's true...
So another day, more shit gone, time now to unpack some more boxes...
Dogtooth - Dente Canino
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 888
And, going now in reverse with writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos of "The Lobster" and "The Favorite" - we here have a director - while getting more polished in his technique by coming to Hollywood, losing his edge...
His films have grown more mainstream, which is - while better for him, worse for me.
Dogtooth (Dente Canino) - a completely surreal satire on (? and here I'm not sure? Greece & Government? OR The Middle Class? It works either way) - and it's amazing. 5 Stars in the first 15 minutes, more as the film goes on. Brutally funny, incisive, he annihilates the conventions and morals of the middle class, touching upon the contagion of home-schooled crazy, it's insane and works on more than a few levels...
Apparently he's done a few others, I will have to look for them and rescue them from obscurity, this is terrific stuff.
Blind Chance - Kieślowski
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 802
The premise - A man's life forks when he's attempting to board a train, and the movie traces each possible destiny from the fork. That is the plot. It's set against Communist Poland, and as such is worthwhile just for the reminder of how devastating the Soviets were to culture (and - in different ways, still are today), but it has some of Kieslowski's signatures, uncomfortably intimate moments, atmospheric, haunting.
Overall, my least favorite of his movies. Which is to say it's a damned good film by any standards, but what followed was breathtaking. If you're just discovering him maybe view the Dekalog first, then go back to the first two, then forward to the Blue, White & Red trilogy & La Double Vie de Veronique.
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