Rod Stewart ain't no Tony Bennett
Nov. 14th, 2004 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ffloWhat a joke!
I just put the TV on to type to, and there's Rod. Feh. Maybe some 20 year-olds are buyin' it?
Too spacey to do freelance stuff tonight. Good day today, though. Several folks touched base with me, and I with a few, so a Sunday with no social contact planned ended up with a nice, casual variety thereof.
And I saw the Huckabees movie.
Back in college I knew this charismatic compulsive liar---we'll just call her KK for short---who once reported that seeing After Hours (Scorsese, 1985) had just completely snapped her out of a months-long depression. As with a lot of what she said, there was something attractive about that idea. Sudden complete aesthetic transport; a sort of miracle pill of instant total art therapy (fill in the art in question). To me the cinema has the greatest potential for this sort of business, though music is probably the more obvious choice. Anyway, I don't know if I ♥ [Heart] Huckabees will be able to pull off such a miracle with me, but it did speak to me. Or I understand its languages. Somethin' like that.
I'd started the movie-going experience thinking about our lousy economic system, a subject that haunts me more and more these days. I favor a Marxist attitude, such as I understand Marxism---but navigating life in this country in near-constant consideration from that perspective SUCKS. Today, here where for days we've already had more than one local radio station playing Christmas carols 24/7, my choices of time for Huckabees were quite limited---and even Ray is on only one multiplex screen---apparently because, in addition to The Incredibles (which I did rather much enjoy the other day), screens have to accomodate a blockblustery Christmas movie already, too: The Polar Express. So I hit the theater for the last show of the day (1:25 p.m.). I bought a $3.75 pop & walked down the long, ugly-carpet hall, contemplating the big-box efficiency of the joint as a money-maker, then went in to watch several commercials and ---well, in this country the fight to make things not all about money is a losing battle. I was thinking how it's dehumanizing to feel so much like part of a demographic being marketed to---that kind of attention being the organizing force behind so much of our daily experience in the world of commerce, which is a helluva lot of this world.
Thinking stuff like that, I finally got to look at the movie, which is silly, but silly about very serious shit. And it seems to aim at, and maybe succeed in, making the serious shit feel a little less serious. Let's just say: if you're a thinker, and not religious, you might dig it. At least if you feel tortured by your own brain sometimes. Particularly if it sometimes tortures you with (riot) policing of how you're living even the little details of your life, and if there's an existential element to your core agonies. It counsels the audience in movie language while the characters receive counseling from other characters---who themselves represent possible world views for the hyperthinking. And all of that, it felt good.
Of course maybe I just like the idea of Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman spying on me in their goofy-ass, slapsticky way.
Would that I had the presence of mind and that special combo of inclination/language/mood to write ya'll a real review.
The preview for Sideways, along with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
disclaimerwill's comments on't, has me psyched for that one. Wanna get a look at Kinsey, too, if it ever comes to town.
Have any of you also seen the Huckabees movie?
I just put the TV on to type to, and there's Rod. Feh. Maybe some 20 year-olds are buyin' it?
Too spacey to do freelance stuff tonight. Good day today, though. Several folks touched base with me, and I with a few, so a Sunday with no social contact planned ended up with a nice, casual variety thereof.
And I saw the Huckabees movie.
Back in college I knew this charismatic compulsive liar---we'll just call her KK for short---who once reported that seeing After Hours (Scorsese, 1985) had just completely snapped her out of a months-long depression. As with a lot of what she said, there was something attractive about that idea. Sudden complete aesthetic transport; a sort of miracle pill of instant total art therapy (fill in the art in question). To me the cinema has the greatest potential for this sort of business, though music is probably the more obvious choice. Anyway, I don't know if I ♥ [Heart] Huckabees will be able to pull off such a miracle with me, but it did speak to me. Or I understand its languages. Somethin' like that.
I'd started the movie-going experience thinking about our lousy economic system, a subject that haunts me more and more these days. I favor a Marxist attitude, such as I understand Marxism---but navigating life in this country in near-constant consideration from that perspective SUCKS. Today, here where for days we've already had more than one local radio station playing Christmas carols 24/7, my choices of time for Huckabees were quite limited---and even Ray is on only one multiplex screen---apparently because, in addition to The Incredibles (which I did rather much enjoy the other day), screens have to accomodate a blockblustery Christmas movie already, too: The Polar Express. So I hit the theater for the last show of the day (1:25 p.m.). I bought a $3.75 pop & walked down the long, ugly-carpet hall, contemplating the big-box efficiency of the joint as a money-maker, then went in to watch several commercials and ---well, in this country the fight to make things not all about money is a losing battle. I was thinking how it's dehumanizing to feel so much like part of a demographic being marketed to---that kind of attention being the organizing force behind so much of our daily experience in the world of commerce, which is a helluva lot of this world.
Thinking stuff like that, I finally got to look at the movie, which is silly, but silly about very serious shit. And it seems to aim at, and maybe succeed in, making the serious shit feel a little less serious. Let's just say: if you're a thinker, and not religious, you might dig it. At least if you feel tortured by your own brain sometimes. Particularly if it sometimes tortures you with (riot) policing of how you're living even the little details of your life, and if there's an existential element to your core agonies. It counsels the audience in movie language while the characters receive counseling from other characters---who themselves represent possible world views for the hyperthinking. And all of that, it felt good.
Of course maybe I just like the idea of Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman spying on me in their goofy-ass, slapsticky way.
Would that I had the presence of mind and that special combo of inclination/language/mood to write ya'll a real review.
The preview for Sideways, along with
disclaimerwill's comments on't, has me psyched for that one. Wanna get a look at Kinsey, too, if it ever comes to town.Have any of you also seen the Huckabees movie?
no subject
Date: Nov. 15th, 2004 04:48 am (UTC)The people here I talked to about it had liked it... but didn't seem like they'd really gotten it. And I don't know if it was a frame of mind, or the warm fuzzy place in my heart that existentialism get to have... but I loved it. From lots of angles.
no subject
Date: Nov. 16th, 2004 08:19 pm (UTC)I even want it in that shade of red.
no subject
Date: Nov. 16th, 2004 11:30 pm (UTC)I s'pose I could go for a black and white check. But it really *ought* to be red.
::smiles:: But it is an excellent... i don't know. Model for something. Mental image. Actual realization-practice. All of that. :^)
no subject
Date: Nov. 17th, 2004 12:09 am (UTC)nice nose!