Home
A credit at the 2nd hand bookstore
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 177
(restless night, up, down, many dreams of which I only remembered the last)
That I was in the bookstore - warm, ambient light, exchanging a big bag of books, in which there's a 2 volume set of ...
The clerk (no clerk of the bookstore that I'm aware of) a large, good-natured woman gives me my total - some $670 - and I'm taken aback by the amount of the credit, and she offers to pay me cash and I say "no, no, I'll take the credit..." because I read, I'll read that this winter, and then I reconsider, the cash would be handy, I have bills, only now she's come to my desk (across the bookstore) and she's apologizing, that two volume set is actually a couple of guns in holsters, and she's not able to take them, setting them on my desk - and I'm surprised, sure enough, 2 guns in their holsters and so I take them out, quickly tuck them in a drawer, they're unregistered, I have no permits...
...and as she's standing there apologizing a bunch of police force their way into my area, they're looking over my desk, and I understand that she must have called the police when she realized her error, she's looking a little like she's betrayed me; the police, all in black leotards with white masks that resemble fencing masks, they look like the AI renderings of police in the style of Gorey I just did, and they're there, looking at my desk, and I know I'm in trouble and wondering how this happened...
Snow...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 206
And the snow, falling the first day of December and every day since.
It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...
The first day, postings on Facebook of a list of streets to avoid, one watched 3 accidents in 15 minutes, to embark down the hill, steep, 45 degrees, sheer ice, and uncontrolled slide into parked cars, this is the moment a lot of people realize they shouldn't have parked on the hill, they should have put on winter tires, and a hundred other such considerations as the slip-slide uncontrollably down the mountain...
By the second the idiots have largely been culled, now it's just the wintry days and perpetual snow, absolutely beautiful, this town could easily be the setting for a Hallmark Christmas Film.
Red Rock West - 1993
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 205
This pretty much completing my "Western Binge" - a neo-noir thriller starring Nicholas Cage, Dennis Hopper, others you'd know from the era.
It was good, of a type reminiscent of David Lynch, the "neo-noir" elements reminding me of Mulholland Drive and other movies of the era, a young and dashing Nicholas Cage, Dennis Hopper as Lyle or hired assassin or pretty much just being himself, an increasingly tangled plot and - rarity of rarity - a rather or somewhat unpredictable ending.
I didn't mind it, but not a "Canon" film, not necessary, no new insights, but that cozy Xmas feeling of familiar celebrity faces.
The Searchers - 1956
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 195
I did not enjoy this. Not a little bit.
A few notes: First of all - John Wayne couldn't act.
Second of all: John Wayne couldn't act.
I could go on this tangent for a while, but you get the idea.
In the scene with the Cavalry taking the Comanche prisoners if you look close you can spot an automobile driving in the background.
But that's trivial. What's more to the point is that the movie introduces ideas that are genuinely interesting and complex, only to abandon them in the service of an entirely unworthy plot and absolutely banal character development. Politically incorrect in the extreme - how did this even fly then? I mean the scene where "One Who Follows" kicks his newly acquired squaw-bride down the hill, not funny. Not at all. Or the depiction of the Comanche as "children", and the "back story" given to "Scar" - he's on the warpath avenging the death of his sons, or John Wayne's character of an Indian Hating vengeful uncle, the implied horrors of Indian Captivity, the finding of the girl to discover that she wants to continue living with the Comanche - "her people now" - I mean, there were an abundance of morally complex themes that were brought up and then completely ignored. There were the ideas of the greatness - and vastness - of the undiscovered West, the final frontier, yet it was not filmed as such, moments of grandeur - such as when they reach the winter territories - are almost accidental, dialogue, irrelevant and frequently idiotic, characters, stock types every one. I could go on.
SO, for a movie with some reputation I was offended beyond measure, it certainly has a place in the history of American prejudice and bigotry but is more a model of how NOT to make a film.
That said, like James Cameron's "The Titanic", seldom has such a mediocre film so inflamed me. So there's something.
Page 40 of 1021