(no subject)
watched il-gon song's "git. feathers in the wind" (70+ minute version) after an occasional but enthusiastic pimpage in "film comment". it scores barely above the usual slew of quality korean melodramas of past 4-5 years - slow pace, rich colors, beautiful scenery, 13yr old target audience (think "il mare"). i will reserve his remaining movies for those low moments when nothing else seems to help, but cute quiet korean girls trotting in the rain alongside the beautiful countryside.
i did make up for it by admiring duchamp's "wedge of chastity" (in a closed form, and still a blush-enducing experience) in a local museum; plus i noticed two early miranda july vhs tapes in our video store ($35 and about 10 minutes long each).
i also saw "my dinner with andre" (louis malle), which was great - a quirky bizarre conversation during the dinner, camera closely tracing the faces of two people, outlandish stories, very intense and fun. although there is no "action" at all - it is just a conversation over dinner, almost two hours of talking heads - the result is a lot of fun (and probably as anti-bressonian or "anti-film" as possible). it was carefully scripted, took a few months to shoot and a year to edit. now i can see where films like "melvin goes to dinner" is coming from. another director that is fond of these setups (besides rohmer?) is linklater ("tape" and others).
speaknig of roots and coincidences, a loyal tsai ming-liang fan would undoubtedly recognize a special relationship that tsai's characters have with watermelons ("vive l'amour" and "wayward cloud"); it turns out that one of the definitive films on the subject is robert nelsons' "oh dem watermelons" (1965, 11 minutes, 16mm; soundtrack by steve reich). i found a reference to it in "film as a subversive art" book.
and, finally, a quote:
When I was a kid, every time I came home from school I would go and lock myself in the toilet, take out the washcloths, and talk to them, like my character in Chungking Express. I am a very lonely kind of person. That's why I wanted to be an actor. And I feel good about it.
i did make up for it by admiring duchamp's "wedge of chastity" (in a closed form, and still a blush-enducing experience) in a local museum; plus i noticed two early miranda july vhs tapes in our video store ($35 and about 10 minutes long each).
i also saw "my dinner with andre" (louis malle), which was great - a quirky bizarre conversation during the dinner, camera closely tracing the faces of two people, outlandish stories, very intense and fun. although there is no "action" at all - it is just a conversation over dinner, almost two hours of talking heads - the result is a lot of fun (and probably as anti-bressonian or "anti-film" as possible). it was carefully scripted, took a few months to shoot and a year to edit. now i can see where films like "melvin goes to dinner" is coming from. another director that is fond of these setups (besides rohmer?) is linklater ("tape" and others).
speaknig of roots and coincidences, a loyal tsai ming-liang fan would undoubtedly recognize a special relationship that tsai's characters have with watermelons ("vive l'amour" and "wayward cloud"); it turns out that one of the definitive films on the subject is robert nelsons' "oh dem watermelons" (1965, 11 minutes, 16mm; soundtrack by steve reich). i found a reference to it in "film as a subversive art" book.
and, finally, a quote:
When I was a kid, every time I came home from school I would go and lock myself in the toilet, take out the washcloths, and talk to them, like my character in Chungking Express. I am a very lonely kind of person. That's why I wanted to be an actor. And I feel good about it.