Alex de Campi: Gojira!

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FILM & TV

COMICS & BOOKS

1.10.05 The Sweet Smell of Shellac

I've been cantering down one of my cul-de-sacs of musical obsession recently - ancient blues and gospel on 78 - and yesterday afternoon Mr Love and I managed to spend $150 of each other's money in the course of a single IM conversation. This is not good, because while Mr Love is a rising star of TV and film and can afford these things, I'm just a broke pulp-fiction writer who works nights to keep her head above water.

Anyhow. I opened with how Mr Love needed this compilation, especially Bessie Brown's "Song from a Cotton Field". Pshaw, he said. Already heard it. So I upped the ante: well, nobody's really lived until they've heard the Reverend A.W. Nix sermonizing about the Black Diamond Express Train to Hell, as found in this little number. See, Mr Love understands these things, so he immediately announced his intention to order this not inexpensively-priced item. He then said, well if you like old Southern gospel, you can't be without this. I succumbed.

Gentle stranger, be afraid of my next mixtape. Be very, very afraid.

Barry Lyndon was, as Coop says in his comment, utterly amazing. The cinematography was jaw-droppingly beautiful from the opening scene, and as a Class-A, card-carrying Art Nerd I was having fun matching Kubrick's framing and designs to well-known society portraits by Gainsborough and Reynolds. One of my few luxuries in life is the way I watch films: projected on the wall opposite my bed, six feet wide and four feet high. For some films, seeing it large doesn't really matter. But for Barry Lyndon, it made all the difference.

Oh, and I never should have doubted Cocteau or Melville. Les Enfants Terribles was as good as hoped, with some scene-framing devices that I will steal for use in comics in the very near future. Note that for some reason it's not available in America...

Wait! Drop everything! The Criterion Collection have finally gotten their act together and are releasing Melville's Le Samourai in the USA. Don't argue, don't question, just go buy this film. It is the seminal French film noir, a stripped-down, minimalist masterpiece; a story told in silences. It's also the inspiration for films like John Woo's The Killer (he rips off Le Samourai shot-for-shot in some places) and Besson's Leon the Professional.

From the Murakami story in the latest New Yorker: "Your work should be an act of love, not a marriage of convenience." Indeed. Good weekend, gentle strangers.

( 11:44 AM )

1 Comments:

Good call on Kubrick's use of paintings in Barry Lyndon, as he in fact did do just that.

Le Samourai is also great. Didn't know it was coming on DVD. The world is a wonderful place, most of the time.

By COOP, at 2:26 AM