(no subject)
'In football, I root for the Oakland Raiders because they hire castoffs, outlaws, malcontents, and fuck -ups, they have lots of penalties, fights, and paybacks, and because Al Davis told the rest of the pig NFL owners to go get fucked... Someday, the Raiders will be strong again, and they will dip the ball in shit and shove it down the throats of the wholesome, white, heartland teams that pray together and don't deliver late hits’ - George Carlin
Bergman's The Virgin Spring -- Max von Sydow's daughter gets raped and killed by some shepherds on the way to deliver candles to the church. So, later they unknowing stop at his place asking for shelter from the cold. He figures out who they are. Well, normally, you would just whack them all out, like if you were still a pagan, but what do you do if you're a Christian now? Well, you whack them all out anyway, then promise to build a church for your sin. Based on an old Scandanavian legend/poem. Did I mention that Sven Nykvist is the greatest cinematographer ever? Well, he still is.
Bergman's The Passion of Anna -- yet another from his 'person has a mental/emotional breakdown' series (the 'personal disintegration stage, if you want). In this one von Sydow is a lonely dude living on a little farm kind of place when he hooks up with Liv Ullman, who is a crippled widow. Turns out their both liars, and he attacks her with an axe. They scuffle a bit. Movie ends. Also, Sven Nykvist is the greatest cinematographer ever.
Mike Leigh's Naked. This is about a real loser asshole, also called an anti-hero, who wanders around Thatcher's London, talks a lot, smokes a lot, hate fucks a number of chicks. Lest you think the moral of the story is that poor people suck, there is a rich guy who is a literal rapist and psycho. Nothing much bad happens to either of them though. A lot of people seem to have thought the movie is misogynist, but that's silly. None of the guys have any remotely redeeming qualities, and it's the poor lot of the women to have to put up with them, take care of them, etc. I'm not sure how that equals hate.
Ken Burns's Mark Twain documentary. Fuck Mark Twain was such a badass. People actually used to like, go and do cool shit, like wandering off to some exotic locale, or captaining a steamboat, or going to the Nevada territory to prospect, then write about it, instead of this modern shit way of reading shit, or watching movies, or just growing up and writing about that. How pathetic is it that James Frey made up a bunch of shit for his 'autobiography' and all he could come up with some banal fucking drug addiction, as if there was anything edgy, interesting or exotic about a junkie at this point. I mean, fuck, man, Chuck Barris claimed to be a CIA assassin. That's the kind of shit I'm talking about. Go big.
Anyhow, the details of Twain's life were relatively known to me since I read his autobiography on the plane to Ireland. His childhood in missouri, his complete and total failure as a businessman, tragic deaths of his kids and wife. It did focus a little more on the darker side of him, the constant need for attention and the spotlight, his incredibly short temper, his constant debts from high society living. I think I'm going to read everything he's ever published when I'm done with Oscar Wilde. As a matter of fact, I think I'm not going to read any more modern fiction writers, novelists or playwrights at all until I'm finished with Twain, Wilde, Shaw and all of the Big Russians. History's natural filtration process hasn't had time to work, and there's too much shit floating around in modern publishing. His house is also apparently preserved in Connecticut. I will go.
Bergman's The Virgin Spring -- Max von Sydow's daughter gets raped and killed by some shepherds on the way to deliver candles to the church. So, later they unknowing stop at his place asking for shelter from the cold. He figures out who they are. Well, normally, you would just whack them all out, like if you were still a pagan, but what do you do if you're a Christian now? Well, you whack them all out anyway, then promise to build a church for your sin. Based on an old Scandanavian legend/poem. Did I mention that Sven Nykvist is the greatest cinematographer ever? Well, he still is.
Bergman's The Passion of Anna -- yet another from his 'person has a mental/emotional breakdown' series (the 'personal disintegration stage, if you want). In this one von Sydow is a lonely dude living on a little farm kind of place when he hooks up with Liv Ullman, who is a crippled widow. Turns out their both liars, and he attacks her with an axe. They scuffle a bit. Movie ends. Also, Sven Nykvist is the greatest cinematographer ever.
Mike Leigh's Naked. This is about a real loser asshole, also called an anti-hero, who wanders around Thatcher's London, talks a lot, smokes a lot, hate fucks a number of chicks. Lest you think the moral of the story is that poor people suck, there is a rich guy who is a literal rapist and psycho. Nothing much bad happens to either of them though. A lot of people seem to have thought the movie is misogynist, but that's silly. None of the guys have any remotely redeeming qualities, and it's the poor lot of the women to have to put up with them, take care of them, etc. I'm not sure how that equals hate.
Ken Burns's Mark Twain documentary. Fuck Mark Twain was such a badass. People actually used to like, go and do cool shit, like wandering off to some exotic locale, or captaining a steamboat, or going to the Nevada territory to prospect, then write about it, instead of this modern shit way of reading shit, or watching movies, or just growing up and writing about that. How pathetic is it that James Frey made up a bunch of shit for his 'autobiography' and all he could come up with some banal fucking drug addiction, as if there was anything edgy, interesting or exotic about a junkie at this point. I mean, fuck, man, Chuck Barris claimed to be a CIA assassin. That's the kind of shit I'm talking about. Go big.
Anyhow, the details of Twain's life were relatively known to me since I read his autobiography on the plane to Ireland. His childhood in missouri, his complete and total failure as a businessman, tragic deaths of his kids and wife. It did focus a little more on the darker side of him, the constant need for attention and the spotlight, his incredibly short temper, his constant debts from high society living. I think I'm going to read everything he's ever published when I'm done with Oscar Wilde. As a matter of fact, I think I'm not going to read any more modern fiction writers, novelists or playwrights at all until I'm finished with Twain, Wilde, Shaw and all of the Big Russians. History's natural filtration process hasn't had time to work, and there's too much shit floating around in modern publishing. His house is also apparently preserved in Connecticut. I will go.