Even when it's a quick trip to Las Vegas, I love traveling. Whether driving or flying, and as of last year, going by train, I just like the idea of getting up early in the morning, grabbing my backpack, maybe my computer and camera, and being off into the city. Any city. In the last nearly eight years, last year what the only one that only afforded me one, maybe two quick trips. And both were lovely in their own way. But that was it. All of it, really, my fault, but it doesn't make for me stopping wanting to go...somewhere.
I just spent an inordinate amount of time looking through hotel websites and through Expedia, trying to see if I can plan a trip, and book it this coming week. I want to commit to a trip. I suppose it's the one thing that I love the most that isn't something you can touch: travel. I mentioned at the beginning of the month the same thing. And as I was exchanging messages with Derrick (hi!) on Tumblr earlier, and my ridiculous lusting after online just now, I'm all set to go...
...except that I'm not certain to where, and why, and how much. All the practical details you know.
Since he posted on his blog, Warren Ellis's COUNTDOWN TO AN EARLY GRAVE always comes to mind when I start to think about traveling. Lots of my experiences out in the world, have involved great people, some who I love greatly, some who I can no longer stand, and as I've gotten older, and my venturing out has diminished, I'm finding that I prefer to be somewhere new alone. During the traveling part. At the destination, as it's been in not-so-recent years, I tend to walk a lot, talk to more strangers in a couple of days than I think I do in an entire year, have drinks, write more, and am happy.
This is when I'm the happiest in life.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Date
Just so you know, when you end up handcuffed in the back of a police car, get your shoelaces taken from you, you have to describe your tattoos to the booking cop, and then have to get a ride home from the same officer who arrested you, it was a bad date.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
READ: Blue Pills by Frederik Peeters
At one point in 2008, my friend Jodi and I were in Book Soup in West Hollywood. She remembered many years later I nearly got a parking ticket when we were about to leave. We were in Book Soup, just looking about, and we split up briefly at one point (it's such a rather small space, frankly), and I was at their then-new graphic novel section. there really wasn't much that grabbed my attention aside from two books, Adrian Tomine's SHORTCOMINGS (a gift for the best friend) and Frederik Peeters's BLUE PILLS.
When I was finally home, I read BLUE PILLS and I cried and cried as I read it. It's a memoir, telling Peeters's story about meeting his girlfriend Cati and her son, and how they came to be together. Cati and her son are HIV-positive, and Peeters tells us how it was that their relationship came to function, how wonderful it was, how mired in uncertainty it initially was, and how, ultimately, there wasn't necessarily anything spectacular about it. And I cried because for a very long time at that point, I was still having a lot of difficulty with my own then-recent diagnoses.
Christ.
I remember so many nights of not sleeping and thinking about it. Feeling as if I was off-limits, thinking that no one would want me, that I was broken and damaged, and that I was sentenced to an isolated life. I remember as I'm reading BLUE PILLS, when Cati tells Fred of hers and her son's infection, how he reacts, because it wasn't how nearly everyone I knew did. And it made me love him. The romantic in me made me think that even though this was a memoir, guys like Fred were only fiction. I cried because he seemed, rightly or not, hesitant but honest, and still very much willing to take the chance, you know? Ah! It all seems a little muted now, but I remember how great I felt for Cati! I wanted him to want her and he did!
And I remember when talking about Cati's son, when Fred begins to think about this child's future being forever tied to the medical system, and whose live will potentially end in sickness, I was broken apart again. Because that is how I felt, how I foresaw my life. And it didn't matter that everyone seemed terribly upbeat, including my doctor. All I saw, much like Fred, was a life forever linked to a hospital and pills. Blue pills for Cati and her son.
I think this comic did more for me at the time when I needed it the most than anyone or any other thing did. Because it wasn't talking in bullshit: it's direct and a little difficult to read through, but it gave me a glimpse at something other than what my brain had cooked up for months prior. It showed me in rather obvious way that it didn't need to be the end of anything for me, just adding a few more steps to life. And it illustrated very much how a lot of us who're HIV-positive so feel such guilt for seemingly inflicting ourselves upon others, how many mistakes lead us to where we are, and how scary it is to face the world sometimes.
This is the most important book in my life since 2008. Peeters got me. And I'm not even sure if that was his intent. But it accomplished so much for me than I think I can ever be grateful for. Perhaps you think this is all hyperbole. Whatever. I'd read other things (around this time I also read Shawn Decker's MY PET VIRUS, which in trying to talk to people about, they'd rather talk about their asshole boyfriends) and talked to several people about being HIV-positive, but everyone seemed to be either too blase, or too gloomy for me to ever get something useful out of it (I remember telling my doctor then that if "living with HIV" isn't such a big deal, why did everyone around me burst into a little chaos of tears around me). It's one of the instances in my life wherein comic books seem to have more value and truth and love and anguish and even hope than the rest of the universe has.
What I find curious now, even after just re-reading it is that one of the medications I take are blue pills.
[cross-posted everywhere.]
When I was finally home, I read BLUE PILLS and I cried and cried as I read it. It's a memoir, telling Peeters's story about meeting his girlfriend Cati and her son, and how they came to be together. Cati and her son are HIV-positive, and Peeters tells us how it was that their relationship came to function, how wonderful it was, how mired in uncertainty it initially was, and how, ultimately, there wasn't necessarily anything spectacular about it. And I cried because for a very long time at that point, I was still having a lot of difficulty with my own then-recent diagnoses.
Christ.
I remember so many nights of not sleeping and thinking about it. Feeling as if I was off-limits, thinking that no one would want me, that I was broken and damaged, and that I was sentenced to an isolated life. I remember as I'm reading BLUE PILLS, when Cati tells Fred of hers and her son's infection, how he reacts, because it wasn't how nearly everyone I knew did. And it made me love him. The romantic in me made me think that even though this was a memoir, guys like Fred were only fiction. I cried because he seemed, rightly or not, hesitant but honest, and still very much willing to take the chance, you know? Ah! It all seems a little muted now, but I remember how great I felt for Cati! I wanted him to want her and he did!
And I remember when talking about Cati's son, when Fred begins to think about this child's future being forever tied to the medical system, and whose live will potentially end in sickness, I was broken apart again. Because that is how I felt, how I foresaw my life. And it didn't matter that everyone seemed terribly upbeat, including my doctor. All I saw, much like Fred, was a life forever linked to a hospital and pills. Blue pills for Cati and her son.
I think this comic did more for me at the time when I needed it the most than anyone or any other thing did. Because it wasn't talking in bullshit: it's direct and a little difficult to read through, but it gave me a glimpse at something other than what my brain had cooked up for months prior. It showed me in rather obvious way that it didn't need to be the end of anything for me, just adding a few more steps to life. And it illustrated very much how a lot of us who're HIV-positive so feel such guilt for seemingly inflicting ourselves upon others, how many mistakes lead us to where we are, and how scary it is to face the world sometimes.
This is the most important book in my life since 2008. Peeters got me. And I'm not even sure if that was his intent. But it accomplished so much for me than I think I can ever be grateful for. Perhaps you think this is all hyperbole. Whatever. I'd read other things (around this time I also read Shawn Decker's MY PET VIRUS, which in trying to talk to people about, they'd rather talk about their asshole boyfriends) and talked to several people about being HIV-positive, but everyone seemed to be either too blase, or too gloomy for me to ever get something useful out of it (I remember telling my doctor then that if "living with HIV" isn't such a big deal, why did everyone around me burst into a little chaos of tears around me). It's one of the instances in my life wherein comic books seem to have more value and truth and love and anguish and even hope than the rest of the universe has.
What I find curious now, even after just re-reading it is that one of the medications I take are blue pills.
[cross-posted everywhere.]
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Partner
We were talking earlier in what ifs and wouldn't it be nices, in that sort of way, and I asked if when people decide to get married or live together, if one of the things they consider is what their partner, whether wife or husband or boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, brings to that union in terms of something practical. Our ridiculous example was, of course, work and money. As in, if I didn't feel like working for, say, a week, would my partner say to me, "Of course! Take time off and I'll get paid. Don't worry about it." Is that part of it, or were we just talking crazy?
Monday, January 3, 2011
Junk Drawer
I'm listening to Isis's IN THE ABSENCE OF TRUTH right now after nearly posting a whiny rant about the band breaking up. I only just now discovered this, the end of the band. Which is terrible. But I posted a clumsy bit on why I love Isis over on Flickr...
This year I'm not optimistic at all, nor even realistic. 2011 will probably suck. Already, in 2011, the DMV is winning again, my car is falling apart more, and my wallet is crying. Boo-hoo, right? Anyway:
This year I'm going to do a bit of a 365 thing again, but because I'm pretty sick of myself still, I'm telling you about things I love. Because, well, I love me already, and a lot of people need better pop culture bits in their life that don't have the words 'gaga' or 'lakers' in them. Click here, there are two already, the aforementioned Isis and writer Neil Gaiman.
On the latter, I'm trying to study Gaiman's work. Because it would be fun to dissect his comics and novels and children's books and even blog posts. And at the same time, as I begin with NEVERWHERE, I'm wondering why am I doing it aside from my secret obvious reason? I think there's an underlying thread through all of his work that says something to me about our world; even in Wall or The Dreaming there are aspects of our universe. I kick myself for not being more academic over the years. Anyway, as it is, at the very least, I get to re-read some of the best stories I've ever read anywhere.
January is only three days old and already I know it won't be the end of all the personal life bullshit from last year. "So it goes..."
I'm not prone to body image issues. Sure, I complain about the few gray hairs I have, about my belly being too big for its own good, and, man, if I was only six inches taller! but I don't really take it to the next level, you know, when you start obsessing over it (if the folk I knew would just fucking stop that already!). I took a picture and immediately deleted it last night. That's it.
Saw David O. Russell's THE FIGHTER. Which was absolutely fucking great! I would totally have added it to my list if I had six spaces in it. So, let's see, Top Ten Movies: BLACK SWAN, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, INCEPTION, NEVER LET ME GO, SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD, THE FIGHTER... see? that's it! Whatever, go see it before it's out of theaters!
When Golden and I were recently on the phone, the two of us on the verge of tears for different reasons, I told her I wanted to give myself something new. I haven't traveled in a long time and I want to again. I love traveling. I love traveling alone most of all because I am better without people that way. Truth be told, the last trip I took I enjoyed the most was the alone bits in Dallas and San Diego and New York. But these places, I've been to and I want something new. I want to go to Seattle again, and Chicago, and again to Philadelphia. I never once imagined going anywhere else in the United States than these places. However, on my browser there is an open tab with a list that includes New Orleans, Austin, Cleveland, and Denver. Also, London would be lovely.
(Hm that last paragraph reminds me of Warren Ellis's COUNTDOWN TO AN EARLY GRAVE.)
I'm not sure what compelled me to jot all this down.
This year I'm not optimistic at all, nor even realistic. 2011 will probably suck. Already, in 2011, the DMV is winning again, my car is falling apart more, and my wallet is crying. Boo-hoo, right? Anyway:
This year I'm going to do a bit of a 365 thing again, but because I'm pretty sick of myself still, I'm telling you about things I love. Because, well, I love me already, and a lot of people need better pop culture bits in their life that don't have the words 'gaga' or 'lakers' in them. Click here, there are two already, the aforementioned Isis and writer Neil Gaiman.
On the latter, I'm trying to study Gaiman's work. Because it would be fun to dissect his comics and novels and children's books and even blog posts. And at the same time, as I begin with NEVERWHERE, I'm wondering why am I doing it aside from my secret obvious reason? I think there's an underlying thread through all of his work that says something to me about our world; even in Wall or The Dreaming there are aspects of our universe. I kick myself for not being more academic over the years. Anyway, as it is, at the very least, I get to re-read some of the best stories I've ever read anywhere.
January is only three days old and already I know it won't be the end of all the personal life bullshit from last year. "So it goes..."
I'm not prone to body image issues. Sure, I complain about the few gray hairs I have, about my belly being too big for its own good, and, man, if I was only six inches taller! but I don't really take it to the next level, you know, when you start obsessing over it (if the folk I knew would just fucking stop that already!). I took a picture and immediately deleted it last night. That's it.
Saw David O. Russell's THE FIGHTER. Which was absolutely fucking great! I would totally have added it to my list if I had six spaces in it. So, let's see, Top Ten Movies: BLACK SWAN, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, INCEPTION, NEVER LET ME GO, SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD, THE FIGHTER... see? that's it! Whatever, go see it before it's out of theaters!
When Golden and I were recently on the phone, the two of us on the verge of tears for different reasons, I told her I wanted to give myself something new. I haven't traveled in a long time and I want to again. I love traveling. I love traveling alone most of all because I am better without people that way. Truth be told, the last trip I took I enjoyed the most was the alone bits in Dallas and San Diego and New York. But these places, I've been to and I want something new. I want to go to Seattle again, and Chicago, and again to Philadelphia. I never once imagined going anywhere else in the United States than these places. However, on my browser there is an open tab with a list that includes New Orleans, Austin, Cleveland, and Denver. Also, London would be lovely.
(Hm that last paragraph reminds me of Warren Ellis's COUNTDOWN TO AN EARLY GRAVE.)
I'm not sure what compelled me to jot all this down.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Better
I'm prone to terrible moodiness. The good is GREAT! and the bad is BAD! Suppose that goes for most anyone. But as ever, the end of the year brings it all back, you know. And instead of getting rest, I'm thinking about it all, bad and good. Because why wouldn't I?
What you might not know is this is the first year in my adult life where I feel I'm ending up worse than I began, for several reasons, which you probably already know. I feel vulcanized in a way. Tenderized. Contrary to popular opinion, I think my problem is kind of give a fuck. So, good bye, 2010, you were terrible. You and your little cohorts; shouldn't be so surprising people kind of ruin everything. Good bye terrible friends, and horrible job, and money problems, and emotional immaturity, and physical ailments, and you little emergencies that fuck with me every god damned day. You're all done. Blips in history. Some of you deserve better, the rest of you can fuck off.
Here's to better.
What you might not know is this is the first year in my adult life where I feel I'm ending up worse than I began, for several reasons, which you probably already know. I feel vulcanized in a way. Tenderized. Contrary to popular opinion, I think my problem is kind of give a fuck. So, good bye, 2010, you were terrible. You and your little cohorts; shouldn't be so surprising people kind of ruin everything. Good bye terrible friends, and horrible job, and money problems, and emotional immaturity, and physical ailments, and you little emergencies that fuck with me every god damned day. You're all done. Blips in history. Some of you deserve better, the rest of you can fuck off.
Here's to better.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
2010: Read
I used to do a top comics bit as well, but I somehow stopped buying comics over a year ago. Still, here are the books I liked the most this year. It's very difficult for me to compile the books list because, for the most part, I love most everything I read. I read everything from popular books (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO was kinds of awesome, UNDER THE DOME was no), nerd books (I really wanted to put NEUROMANCER here but I bumped it for NEVER LET ME GO), and plain old literary books (THE GRAVEYARD BOOK and POINT OMEGA were astounding!). So, here it is. Honest: I think after watching the film, NEVER LET ME GO earned a rather unfair advantage, and YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? is here not just because of its content but also because of Ms. Breslin's spate of writing over at her various blog posts and her THE WAR PROJECT and THEY SHOOT PORNSTARS, DON'T THEY? Anyway:
COMING & CRYING, edited by Meaghan O'Donnell and Melissa Gira - When these ladies do a second edition of this book, I encourage you to purchase it. Keep an eye here.
SCOTT PILGRIM'S FINEST HOUR by Bryan Lee O'Malley - Can a comic book series be more perfect that SCOTT PILGRIM...? (well. actually, Y THE LAST MAN was pretty perfect too!) Not going to lie, by the time the book ended, I was teary! O'Malley does in a few pages what others at all comics companies can't do in thousands of decades-worth of pages: give us the most romantic, exciting, hilarious, heartbreaking, and relevant (to a certain generation) story. Steeped in musical and pop culture, SCOTT PILGRIM's characters meander through their lives in the same way you did in your early twenties, but in SCOTT PILGRIM'S FINEST HOUR, the titular hero learns a few things about himself, what he needs to do in order to not just rescue the woman he loves from her ex but also from herself. And along the way, basically, Scott Pilgrim discovers how flawed a man he is, he steps up his game, not only for his love, but for himself. By the end he isn't perfect, no. But him and his girl, have a chance to continue growing, together.
YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? by Susannah Breslin - I first discovered writer Susannah Breslin through a post Warren Ellis made years ago, when she ran her THE REVERSE COWGIRL blog, and I've been a fan since. This year I sound this small collection of her short fiction and it cemented why I became a fan of hers: her language. YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? is the various ways in which men are, well, bad. Whether it is the mand who ushers a midget into porn superstardom, the man who really just hates everyone and everything (the title story), the man who wonders about eating a woman, or the man prone to fornophilia. Breslin's words cut right to it, no time for niceties, and it is evident not just in her journalism nor blog writing, it's more than clear here. And that's what draws me the most to her writing, to her bits of fiction in YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? she doesn't fuck around, plain and simple. Reminds me of my initial reads of Chuck Palahniuk. And, all through this, because of her stories, I don't get the idea that Breslin doesn't like men, quite the opposite: I think she loves them, but is not naive to the social failures most of us are. If you're a man, or know a man, read this book and it'll show you maybe ought to know less men.
NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishiguro - Ishiguro writes about becoming an adult with pretty sharp ear for the things adults do not tell children. Everything is ambiguous or flat-out false. Adults leave out a lot of the terrible things we all have to live through, the honestly brutal bits. NEVER LET ME GO, for me, explores these ideas but expands upon them by giving us Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth to view the world through. A sci-fi story that does more than linger on what possible future may lie ahead of us. Thematically dense, Ishiguro reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's most recent novel THE ROAD: where McCarthy dealt with a father and his son in a post-apocalyptic world, Ishiguro shows us archetypes of boys and girls, and eventually men and women, who're raised mainly via their pop-culture (which could seem prescient always), which, at first may seem a bit of a reach, but if you remember finding things out your father, your teachers, your first girlfriend, your mother said were true but really were not, these stories will speak to you. NEVER LET ME GO seems to go far deeper than McCarthy, however, by exploring what the meaning of the soul is, and how it may be proven or not, along with showing the sheer naivetee with which we tend to approach the honest world, even when it's staring us dead in the heart. I want to point out plot bits but feel I would be ruining how much the story builds upon itself. Mark Romanek's film was also great.
GENERATION A by Douglas Coupland.
COMING & CRYING, edited by Meaghan O'Donnell and Melissa Gira - When these ladies do a second edition of this book, I encourage you to purchase it. Keep an eye here.
SCOTT PILGRIM'S FINEST HOUR by Bryan Lee O'Malley - Can a comic book series be more perfect that SCOTT PILGRIM...? (well. actually, Y THE LAST MAN was pretty perfect too!) Not going to lie, by the time the book ended, I was teary! O'Malley does in a few pages what others at all comics companies can't do in thousands of decades-worth of pages: give us the most romantic, exciting, hilarious, heartbreaking, and relevant (to a certain generation) story. Steeped in musical and pop culture, SCOTT PILGRIM's characters meander through their lives in the same way you did in your early twenties, but in SCOTT PILGRIM'S FINEST HOUR, the titular hero learns a few things about himself, what he needs to do in order to not just rescue the woman he loves from her ex but also from herself. And along the way, basically, Scott Pilgrim discovers how flawed a man he is, he steps up his game, not only for his love, but for himself. By the end he isn't perfect, no. But him and his girl, have a chance to continue growing, together.
YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? by Susannah Breslin - I first discovered writer Susannah Breslin through a post Warren Ellis made years ago, when she ran her THE REVERSE COWGIRL blog, and I've been a fan since. This year I sound this small collection of her short fiction and it cemented why I became a fan of hers: her language. YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? is the various ways in which men are, well, bad. Whether it is the mand who ushers a midget into porn superstardom, the man who really just hates everyone and everything (the title story), the man who wonders about eating a woman, or the man prone to fornophilia. Breslin's words cut right to it, no time for niceties, and it is evident not just in her journalism nor blog writing, it's more than clear here. And that's what draws me the most to her writing, to her bits of fiction in YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? she doesn't fuck around, plain and simple. Reminds me of my initial reads of Chuck Palahniuk. And, all through this, because of her stories, I don't get the idea that Breslin doesn't like men, quite the opposite: I think she loves them, but is not naive to the social failures most of us are. If you're a man, or know a man, read this book and it'll show you maybe ought to know less men.
NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishiguro - Ishiguro writes about becoming an adult with pretty sharp ear for the things adults do not tell children. Everything is ambiguous or flat-out false. Adults leave out a lot of the terrible things we all have to live through, the honestly brutal bits. NEVER LET ME GO, for me, explores these ideas but expands upon them by giving us Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth to view the world through. A sci-fi story that does more than linger on what possible future may lie ahead of us. Thematically dense, Ishiguro reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's most recent novel THE ROAD: where McCarthy dealt with a father and his son in a post-apocalyptic world, Ishiguro shows us archetypes of boys and girls, and eventually men and women, who're raised mainly via their pop-culture (which could seem prescient always), which, at first may seem a bit of a reach, but if you remember finding things out your father, your teachers, your first girlfriend, your mother said were true but really were not, these stories will speak to you. NEVER LET ME GO seems to go far deeper than McCarthy, however, by exploring what the meaning of the soul is, and how it may be proven or not, along with showing the sheer naivetee with which we tend to approach the honest world, even when it's staring us dead in the heart. I want to point out plot bits but feel I would be ruining how much the story builds upon itself. Mark Romanek's film was also great.
GENERATION A by Douglas Coupland.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
2010: See
In a contradictory (to my last post) way, my movies' list nearly always consists of films from the past year. It's been a good long while since I've watched an older film that I missed or some such that had an impact on my little brain. Anyway...
Darren Aronofsky's BLACK SWAN isn't so much about ballet as it is about the high standard we hold ourselves to. A little on the nose at times, but Aronofsky manages to get you to empathize with Nina (played by Natalie Portman), who is clearly very driven and a very technically talented dancer, even as her own sense of self and her mind fracture to the point of doing herself more harm than good. The outside forces in Nina's life (her mother, her director, her would-be adversary) seem to play a huge part of her oncoming deterioration, but I think each is enhanced more and more throughout the film by Nina's own insecurities. Still, it's not that we want Nina to see what she's doing to herself and to those around her: WE want her to be perfect, even after blood's been spilled. Aronofsky's mentioned this is a companion piece to his THE WRESTLER and it is, not just as stories, but cinematically and thematically as well. Where I think BLACK SWAN excels is in the imagery Aronofsky's DP, Matthew Libatique accomplishes as Nina, finally, gets to become the Black Swan. She's perfect, of course.
David Fincher directed a script by Aaron Sorkin is all I kept hearing in regard to THE SOCIAL NETWORK for most of the year. Never having seen anything written by Sorkin, I didn't know what that meant; it was just the Facebook Movie to me. But I went due to my being a nerd fan of Fincher's since ALIEN3. And, unexpectedly, it blew my entire set of expectations away! The art direction is solid, the acting is superb (I can see why Andrew Garfield was picked as the new Spider-Man, and Jesse Eisenberg immediately was forgiven for being the poor man's Michael Cera), Fincher's direction is spectacular as usual, if not a bit more personal than in his other features (a lot of lingering shots on the solitary (mostly) Mark Zuckerberg drive home the point each time without being obvious), and, yes, the script was so fucking good! There wasn't a line in the film that felt unnecessary nor wasted. It's not just the Facebook Movie, it is the movie for this generation, trying to be more with others, to be closer to each other, but only at a distance. THE SOCIAL NETWORK isn't about what it means to be Zuckerberg or a Facebook user, but about the lengths that we might go for a vestige of attention, of admiration, of, yes, love. The internet's provided that for people who're born for the 21st century, and Sorkin and Fincher adapted THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES very well, and to say more about the current change in the pop-culture that is most of our lives.
In my eyes, Christopher Nolan can do no wrong. INCEPTION is a perfect film: it questions our way of thinking, our way of seeing our dreams, but not just our literal dreams, but the dreams we speak of when we talk about "I used to dream..." or "I dream of..." Tom Cobb and his team are thieves in dreams, stealing ideas, but now, the harder task they've accepted is inserting an idea into a man's brain: this is inception. At the core of this heist film is the constant idea that is what we dream real or not, how solid is it in our reality, do we really understand what any of it means, or is all of this completely unnecessary since in our dreams we have everything? I want to spoil the movie for you but won't. But what I will say that Nolan as writer and director is a fucking genius: he's done with practical and digital effects things that no one else has done in a long while (THE MATRIX comes to mind in technical, not story, terms), and the way in which his characters, in particular Cobb's go-to man, Arthur, played by the stellar Joseph Gordon-Levitt, seem more normal and true than they should be considering their profession. INCEPTION is the kind of movie every director should want to make: perfect.
I am a sucker for writer Alex Garland, and when I discovered his new screenplay was being directed by Mark Romanek, how could you go wrong? Adapting Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, NEVER LET ME GO, Romanek and Garland accomplished in giving me a parable for the future, what it means to grow up, what it means to raise children, and what it means when you discover, as an adult, that everything isn't as good as you're taught to believe. A story set in an alternate Earth that begs several questions about life, morality, love, death, and when it's time accept the world for what it is. Kathy (played by the spectacular Carey Mulligan) is carer, and has seen all the death for a better cause for most of her life. But in recalling how her life and her friends' lives from Hailsham to now have changed, Kathy and her friends show us what it means to be human when you're thought of (if thought of at all) as a product. Romanek broke me with Ishiguro's three main characters. I can identify with each of them, not as various stages of growing up, but as archetypes in the modern world: Ruth (Keira Knightley), a petty and jealous and torn and damaged person, who doesn't quite know what to do with herself so she becomes what she sees around her, what she thinks people will like, what she thinks people want; Tommy (Andrew Garfield), not so much the wide-eyed optimist, but he isn't very pragmatic, willing to believe what he's told, and learning the hardest possible way that the world will fuck you over; and Kathy, a stoic realist because she's seen the truth out in the world and recognizes that accepting it as it is isn't necessarily a bad thing, although I wager she finds herself a little lonely and a little cold. I know I did at the end.
I'll just say it: SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD is perhaps the best comic book movie of all time. Screw off everyone else. Directed by Edgar Wright, SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD is the adaptation of the comics series by Bryan Lee O'Malley, and gives us 23 year old Scott Pilgrim's trials and tribulations through young adulthood, his flailing band, his romances, and, finally, his growth as a man, as a person. You have not see any modern movie like this, perfectly capturing what is in a black and white comic book and putting it on screen the way it should. And this movie has everything: a bad ass soundtrack, great acting (including the titular character played by Michael Cera), kick ass action, tons of heart, lots of humor, and something you'll take home with you: how do you step up your game when it comes to love, when it comes to yourself?
Darren Aronofsky's BLACK SWAN isn't so much about ballet as it is about the high standard we hold ourselves to. A little on the nose at times, but Aronofsky manages to get you to empathize with Nina (played by Natalie Portman), who is clearly very driven and a very technically talented dancer, even as her own sense of self and her mind fracture to the point of doing herself more harm than good. The outside forces in Nina's life (her mother, her director, her would-be adversary) seem to play a huge part of her oncoming deterioration, but I think each is enhanced more and more throughout the film by Nina's own insecurities. Still, it's not that we want Nina to see what she's doing to herself and to those around her: WE want her to be perfect, even after blood's been spilled. Aronofsky's mentioned this is a companion piece to his THE WRESTLER and it is, not just as stories, but cinematically and thematically as well. Where I think BLACK SWAN excels is in the imagery Aronofsky's DP, Matthew Libatique accomplishes as Nina, finally, gets to become the Black Swan. She's perfect, of course.
David Fincher directed a script by Aaron Sorkin is all I kept hearing in regard to THE SOCIAL NETWORK for most of the year. Never having seen anything written by Sorkin, I didn't know what that meant; it was just the Facebook Movie to me. But I went due to my being a nerd fan of Fincher's since ALIEN3. And, unexpectedly, it blew my entire set of expectations away! The art direction is solid, the acting is superb (I can see why Andrew Garfield was picked as the new Spider-Man, and Jesse Eisenberg immediately was forgiven for being the poor man's Michael Cera), Fincher's direction is spectacular as usual, if not a bit more personal than in his other features (a lot of lingering shots on the solitary (mostly) Mark Zuckerberg drive home the point each time without being obvious), and, yes, the script was so fucking good! There wasn't a line in the film that felt unnecessary nor wasted. It's not just the Facebook Movie, it is the movie for this generation, trying to be more with others, to be closer to each other, but only at a distance. THE SOCIAL NETWORK isn't about what it means to be Zuckerberg or a Facebook user, but about the lengths that we might go for a vestige of attention, of admiration, of, yes, love. The internet's provided that for people who're born for the 21st century, and Sorkin and Fincher adapted THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES very well, and to say more about the current change in the pop-culture that is most of our lives.
In my eyes, Christopher Nolan can do no wrong. INCEPTION is a perfect film: it questions our way of thinking, our way of seeing our dreams, but not just our literal dreams, but the dreams we speak of when we talk about "I used to dream..." or "I dream of..." Tom Cobb and his team are thieves in dreams, stealing ideas, but now, the harder task they've accepted is inserting an idea into a man's brain: this is inception. At the core of this heist film is the constant idea that is what we dream real or not, how solid is it in our reality, do we really understand what any of it means, or is all of this completely unnecessary since in our dreams we have everything? I want to spoil the movie for you but won't. But what I will say that Nolan as writer and director is a fucking genius: he's done with practical and digital effects things that no one else has done in a long while (THE MATRIX comes to mind in technical, not story, terms), and the way in which his characters, in particular Cobb's go-to man, Arthur, played by the stellar Joseph Gordon-Levitt, seem more normal and true than they should be considering their profession. INCEPTION is the kind of movie every director should want to make: perfect.
I am a sucker for writer Alex Garland, and when I discovered his new screenplay was being directed by Mark Romanek, how could you go wrong? Adapting Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, NEVER LET ME GO, Romanek and Garland accomplished in giving me a parable for the future, what it means to grow up, what it means to raise children, and what it means when you discover, as an adult, that everything isn't as good as you're taught to believe. A story set in an alternate Earth that begs several questions about life, morality, love, death, and when it's time accept the world for what it is. Kathy (played by the spectacular Carey Mulligan) is carer, and has seen all the death for a better cause for most of her life. But in recalling how her life and her friends' lives from Hailsham to now have changed, Kathy and her friends show us what it means to be human when you're thought of (if thought of at all) as a product. Romanek broke me with Ishiguro's three main characters. I can identify with each of them, not as various stages of growing up, but as archetypes in the modern world: Ruth (Keira Knightley), a petty and jealous and torn and damaged person, who doesn't quite know what to do with herself so she becomes what she sees around her, what she thinks people will like, what she thinks people want; Tommy (Andrew Garfield), not so much the wide-eyed optimist, but he isn't very pragmatic, willing to believe what he's told, and learning the hardest possible way that the world will fuck you over; and Kathy, a stoic realist because she's seen the truth out in the world and recognizes that accepting it as it is isn't necessarily a bad thing, although I wager she finds herself a little lonely and a little cold. I know I did at the end.
I'll just say it: SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD is perhaps the best comic book movie of all time. Screw off everyone else. Directed by Edgar Wright, SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD is the adaptation of the comics series by Bryan Lee O'Malley, and gives us 23 year old Scott Pilgrim's trials and tribulations through young adulthood, his flailing band, his romances, and, finally, his growth as a man, as a person. You have not see any modern movie like this, perfectly capturing what is in a black and white comic book and putting it on screen the way it should. And this movie has everything: a bad ass soundtrack, great acting (including the titular character played by Michael Cera), kick ass action, tons of heart, lots of humor, and something you'll take home with you: how do you step up your game when it comes to love, when it comes to yourself?
Saturday, December 25, 2010
2010: Listen
These are my favorite records and my favorite tracks of all last year. Not all of them were released this year, but as ever, each was new to me in 2010. As it turned out, if you listen to the songs below, it's a horrible sketch of 2010. I could sit here and say it's all coincidence and be truthful, but you wouldn't believe me. I don't care.
Top records:
THIS IS HAPPENING by LCD Soundsystem
THE BOXER by Kele Okereke - I've a crush on Kele Okereke, incidentally.
COSMOGRAMMA by Flying Lotus
TURNING DRAGON by Clark
WHEN PLANETS EXPLODE by Dorian Concept - Like Clark, Dorian Concept made noise the most beautifullest thing in the universe, a song at a time.
Top tracks (click to listen and improve your life!):
I CAN CHANGE by LCD Soundsystem
EVERYTHING YOU WANTED by Kele Okereke
NOSE ART by Flying Lotus.
DAILY ROUTINE by Blockhead
LOSER WINS by Atmosphere
(Incidentally, I don't think I gave the new Atmosphere a fair shake this year. I blame the boy for it. Whatevs.)
Top records:
THIS IS HAPPENING by LCD Soundsystem
THE BOXER by Kele Okereke - I've a crush on Kele Okereke, incidentally.
COSMOGRAMMA by Flying Lotus
TURNING DRAGON by Clark
WHEN PLANETS EXPLODE by Dorian Concept - Like Clark, Dorian Concept made noise the most beautifullest thing in the universe, a song at a time.
Top tracks (click to listen and improve your life!):
I CAN CHANGE by LCD Soundsystem
EVERYTHING YOU WANTED by Kele Okereke
NOSE ART by Flying Lotus.
DAILY ROUTINE by Blockhead
LOSER WINS by Atmosphere
(Incidentally, I don't think I gave the new Atmosphere a fair shake this year. I blame the boy for it. Whatevs.)
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Two
Yesterday afternoon, my best friend and I were on the phone for a bit. We caught up on some menial work things, not-so-menial life things, and we talked about boys. One of the things that came up during conversation was how 2010 sucked. Well, I'm the one that started because it did. As I said in the previous post, wishing is for regrets, but there was something I arrived to yesterday: 2010 taught me nothing.
Maybe my little cursory glance back to the preceding year is mired in my own bitterness and hate. Who knows? I think anyone who knows me well will say I'm probably wrong. Good thing they're all sleeping. So, in our talking, I was telling Golden how there are two moments that stand out to me from 2010 that make me feel good in their own way.
The first, back in February, when we were in San Diego and he was sleeping and I walked out into an early and sleeping downtown to get coffee and juice for us. I walked out and it felt so great and glorious because I can't really recall: I was alone and there was a bit of chill and no one was about and the sun was out. And I remember very clearly walking toward a main street , making a left, and the glare from the sun coming off a building hitting me especially strong but not hurtful. I was isolated in the city. And for a few moments, before I had to head back to the hotel where he'd be waking, it was the best place I could possibly have been (a while back, I listened to Mogwai's NEW PATHS TO HELICON PT 1 and it reminded me of that).
The second was in March, when Golden was in town and we were off to meet her and Terry so see J-Live in downtown Long Beach. Ricardo and I pulled into the parking lot, I don't remember what we were talking about (probably some bullshit having to do with drinking or girls or both), but we laughed and laughed. And as mean as it sounds, I remember glancing over at a group of girls who were getting out of a car, a few of whom were dressed ridiculously for the type of show we were about to catch, and I made a ridiculous comment about how the whores are out in full force. But Ricardo didn't laugh because he saw that they were girls we knew. Oops.
Golden asked me if even the relationship taught me anything useful and I don't think it did. Neither did constant doctor issues, neither did family troubles, neither did money problems, neither did work issues. I don't recall a single good thing - even learning experience - that I can take away from 2010. At least I had that in 2009.
But this is all coming off rather depressing and emo.
It's not necessarily that 2010 was all bad, even I know this and readily admitted. But as the year comes to a close, I'm left with a feeling of "was that it?" I'm left thinking that there was no forward movement in life. There were not transformations, there was no transgression, no illumination. Maybe I'm to fucking stubborn to see it and recognize it, all of these things, but I'd gamble 2011 that I'm not wrong.
Maybe my little cursory glance back to the preceding year is mired in my own bitterness and hate. Who knows? I think anyone who knows me well will say I'm probably wrong. Good thing they're all sleeping. So, in our talking, I was telling Golden how there are two moments that stand out to me from 2010 that make me feel good in their own way.
The first, back in February, when we were in San Diego and he was sleeping and I walked out into an early and sleeping downtown to get coffee and juice for us. I walked out and it felt so great and glorious because I can't really recall: I was alone and there was a bit of chill and no one was about and the sun was out. And I remember very clearly walking toward a main street , making a left, and the glare from the sun coming off a building hitting me especially strong but not hurtful. I was isolated in the city. And for a few moments, before I had to head back to the hotel where he'd be waking, it was the best place I could possibly have been (a while back, I listened to Mogwai's NEW PATHS TO HELICON PT 1 and it reminded me of that).
The second was in March, when Golden was in town and we were off to meet her and Terry so see J-Live in downtown Long Beach. Ricardo and I pulled into the parking lot, I don't remember what we were talking about (probably some bullshit having to do with drinking or girls or both), but we laughed and laughed. And as mean as it sounds, I remember glancing over at a group of girls who were getting out of a car, a few of whom were dressed ridiculously for the type of show we were about to catch, and I made a ridiculous comment about how the whores are out in full force. But Ricardo didn't laugh because he saw that they were girls we knew. Oops.
Golden asked me if even the relationship taught me anything useful and I don't think it did. Neither did constant doctor issues, neither did family troubles, neither did money problems, neither did work issues. I don't recall a single good thing - even learning experience - that I can take away from 2010. At least I had that in 2009.
But this is all coming off rather depressing and emo.
It's not necessarily that 2010 was all bad, even I know this and readily admitted. But as the year comes to a close, I'm left with a feeling of "was that it?" I'm left thinking that there was no forward movement in life. There were not transformations, there was no transgression, no illumination. Maybe I'm to fucking stubborn to see it and recognize it, all of these things, but I'd gamble 2011 that I'm not wrong.
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