Collage Ripped from My Scrapbook: "Hegel's Philosophy of History"

I made the above collage when I was an undergraduate philosophy student at K.U.L. (The Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium), living as a Catholic seminary student at the American College (Amerikaans College) at 100 Namsestraat.

Looking at the above collage starting from the top lefthand corner moving clockwise here are the items:

1. A cutout of an illustration from a book on Hegel's Philosophy of History

2. An Audrey Hepburn First Class postage stamp from the United States Post Office

3. A tag for a GFCI outlet

4. An illustration of a stack of books seated on by what appears to be two magicians in rapt conversation. A third magician seems to be surprised (standing at the bottom)

5. An Andy Warhol First Class postage stamp from the United States Post Office (37 cents)

6. A memento of my many sojourns to the Studio (a movie theater) on the Bondgenotenlaan (the town's main drag) to watch movies. This is a ticket stub for a screening of Bladerunner.

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Movie Review: Salt

In this post, I review the new Angelina Jolie movie Salt.

image credit: NYT

Despite insane physical hijinks, Salt (2010) is a pretty damn good spy thriller. Jolie is Evelyn Salt, a Russian mole, and CIA agent. She is married to an arachnologist, which means he studies spiders for a living, played by August Diehl. Her cover's been blown. She's been accused of being a Russian spy by a Russian defector who shows up just when she's gearing up for an anniversary feast with her hubby. The defector (Daniel Olbrychski) claims she'll assassinate the Russian president. It's a big ole mess. Who is Salt? At least, that's what the tagline asks. The director Phillip Noyce keeps us guessing and Kurt Wimmer's screenplay is taut and satisfactory. The jumbled mess keeps us interested. The story grabs your attention from the start and does not let go.

Salo: A Film You Really Don't Need To See

Learn about the Pasolini film Salò. It's another film I add to my list of films I cannot stomach to watch completely. 

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1975)

I know it's presumptuous of me to suggest a person not see a film, but I think Salò is the only film I would ever give the warning, "You may not want the images in this film to scar you for the rest of your life." If you're okay with people eating feces and very graphic torture/sex scenes, then you'll have no problem. It's not so much that the violence is so intense; rather, it's Pasolini's underlying message. 
The film documents horrific events masterminded by members of Italy's fascist elite during the Second World War. An oligarchic assembly chooses from the most beautiful youth in the surrounding towns and rural areas to systematically torture and destroy. The message is blunt. Given enough prestige and power, people will live out their cruelest nihilistic fantasies if given the opportunity.

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Movie Review: The Most Dream-like Film Has to Be Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror (1975)

The Mirror by by Andrei Tarkovsky has to be the most dream-like movie ever made.

Mirror (1975) Dir. by Andrei Tarkvosky

The Mirror

Andrei Tarkovsky's evocative homage to his mother, the Mirror, is not unwatchable because of gratuitous violence, but rather, the film itself has a sophorific lilt to it that will make you fall asleep, unable to watch the entire feature. But, I am thinking, perhaps Tarkovsky planned the film to be like a dream. I watched it coming in and out of consciousness.

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Movie Jot: A Vincent Gallo Film You Most Likely Won't Finish

The Brown Bunny (2003) 

A paean to the road trip, bad fellatio, and gross men is enough to make you stop watching this brilliant, albeit disturbing, film directed by Vincent Gallo and starring Vincent Gallo, with Chloë Sevigny.

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Seven Exciting Interview Questions for David Gordon Green

In this post, I imagine an interview with the film director David Gordon Green.

David Gordon Green, American Film Director, and Producer

David Gordon Green is most famous for his hash success Pineapple Express. He once said that McCabe and Mrs. Miller is the most beautiful movie ever made. He also wrote and directed George Washington, a film about black youth in an impoverished southern town. This earlier work interweaves the kids' lives, pursuits, dreams, and the consequences of choice and fate.

I liked the film so much, I concocted an interview I'd like to give:

1. You mentioned in an interview with Charlie Rose, that you were okay with making "C's" in school. Do you think creativity is different than academic achievement?

2. In your film George Washington, there is a scene filmed in an abandoned school, completely filled in with kudzu, making it invisible from the street. As an artist from the south, what do you think needs to be done to rejuvenate our educational systems? George Washington depicts kids who are brimming with life but cut at the buds because of societal limitations. It reminds me of Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men. What do you think?

3. You seem to capture the beauty and ambiguity of youth so accurately, and differently, than any other artist, I have seen. What is your vision for youth in America, especially in the wake of Columbine, 9/11, and No Child Left Behind?

4. Whatever happened to the Confederacy of Dunces? Is it a cursed project?

5. Have you ever dabbled in fiction?

6. How is your house in New Orleans coming along?

7. One final question. Will you marry me?

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Movie Review: World's Greatest Dad

Read a movie review by Greig Roselli about Bobcat Goldwaithe's dark comedy World's Greatest Dad (2009).

Two scenes are striking in Bobcat Goldwaithe's World's Greatest Dad (2009). THE FIRST is the scene where Lance Clayton, a beleaguered middle-age writer-cum-high school poetry teacher (Robin Williams) finds his strangled son, dead in his bedroom. The scene is doubly jarring for the viewer because, one, the first fifteen minutes of the film deliberately sets you up to despise the kid (Daryl Sabara, played with an acute douchebag factor). Kyle curses like a sailor, looks at scat porn, calls girls at school whores, proudly glorifies his own insouciant stupidity, uses his dad and his best friend Andrew to his own benefit, and is pretty much openly non-repentant about his deeds -- to the point of rebuffing every ounce of care his dad, Lance, has to offer.

     Second, is the cause of the boy's death (basically he dies via auto-eroticism). Go figure. Goldwaithe goes through extensive pains to make sure you absolutely hate this kid -- but at the same time -- when he is found in his bedroom, despite the embarrassing circumstances -- the viewer feels for Lance and the grief over his dull, insipid son. Even a douchebag son's death elicits authentic catharsis. Wow. I don't think I've seen this in cinema in a long time. I think this is partly due to Williams' engaging performance. Williams is an actor who can make you identify with the absurd. Think of The Night Listener, for example (which has eerie parallels to this film). The entirely silent soliloquy of finding the dead boy, checking to see if he is alive, releasing him from his makeshift noose, and mourning over his dead body was a genuine cathartic moment.

Movie Review: Adaptation of a Children's Classic Now on DVD

Whoop. Woot. Rawrr. Claw. Battle. Rumpus. Fantastical beasts. An omnipotent little boy. A busy mother. A boat. Feed me. Let the wild rumpus start!

Where the Wild Things Are is out on DVD. I remember vividly as a child reading Sendak’s book. The potent image in my mind is Max’s whiskers. And the almost excessive use of dark, black lines to form the outline of the bodies, the monsters, and the jungle-like setting. I appreciate Spike Jonze’s adaptation of the story and Karen O’s soundtrack. The film is true to the heart of the story. I recently saw the film Synecdoche, New York and realized that Jonze and Kaufmann are similar artists. Perhaps we forget that Kaufmann and Jonze are in similar camps. Both directors understand an adaptation of a book or a story for the film is not the same as a retelling of the story. The film of the Wild Things is not the book. It is something different. For example, in the film, Max is swallowed alive by one of the wild things as an act of protection but as well as a projection of the Freudian id. But its difference does not offend the original heart of Sendak’s story. The simple message of a boy's journey from raw emotion to belonging, the meal was still hot, is still intact. A must see. The film is in the spirit of “Let the Wild Rumpus Start!

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Movie Review: Club Silencio Scene "Llorando" Muholland Drive

Mulholland Drive by David Lynch is one reason why I increasingly favor film as a superior art form.

"Llorando" 

why you must see Lynch

A superb film depiction of the blurry divide between dream and reality:

      Mulholland Drive by David Lynch is one reason why I increasingly favor film as a superior art form. In this scene, a singer at Club Silencio (Rebekah Del Rio) sings "Lllorando," a turning point in the film's plot. The scene is a dividing line between the character Diane/Betty's dream world, and her awake world. When you see Betty's face, her tears, she realizes all has been a dream - the shocking intrusion of reality into her constructed fantasy world - and her coming to grips with her complicity in the murder of her unrequited lover and femme fatale Rita. When I watch this scene all the painful memories of past loves comes rushing into my body and I choke up. Notice at the end. The final sequence is important. The singer collapses (the dream has ended) but her voice remains (the fantasy persists). Both women cry. Diane/Betty reaches into her purse and pulls out the blue box; the blue box is the film's MacGuffin; the hidden object we desire to learn its meaning, but in the end rather meaningless. Similar to most dreams, I guess. The scene reminds me of a person who goes to bed with serious guilt in their heart; uses dreams to escape their guilt, but in the end, the dream collapses on itself and reveals nothing in the end, no salve to take away the irreparable act. The film is tragic in the end. I don't want to reveal too much ... you just gotta see this film.

Credits:

"Club Silencio"

Muholland Drive (2001) directed by David Lynch.

Laura Harring

Naomi Watts

Rebekah Del Rio

Digital Version

Anatomy of a Scene: Au Revoir Les Enfants (Scene 20)

Movie Still - Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987)

In Louis Malle's haunting autobiographical film, Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987), figures come out of the Northern European mist as if half-dead, draped in dark shrouds of black. The setting is not Auschwitz or the Western front, but a small Catholic boarding school outside of Paris, Winter 1944, months before the fall of the Third Reich. Malle's focus is not the battlefield, nor is it the concentration camp, but rather, he focuses his exploration on the effects of racism and evil on the lives of young French adolescent boys holed up in a confined space, apart from their upper-class parents. The school's headmaster, Father Jean, has decided to matriculate three new students at the start of the Winter term. What no one knows is that the three new students are, in fact, Jewish stowaways, hidden by the school to save their lives. In this scene (scene 20, according to Malle's screenplay), students are marching to the public baths for their periodic soapy wash. The scene is a mixture of everyday rituals of boarding school life, similar to other scenes in the film, of the boys sleeping, praying, attending class, playing war games, playing the piano, and taking tests. The "normal," almost painterly scenes are punctuated by news from the war zone: talk of hatred against Jews, the Resistance, French collaborators with the Germans, and the impending intimidation enforced by the conquering Germans. Rations are scarce. Even the wealthy schoolboys suffer; their only allowance is jam and sugar which they exchange for cigarettes. France is occupied by Germany but the Resistance is rumbling. News of German defeat on the Russian front has been circulating.

Excerpt from My Book of Essays Inspired by New Orleans and New York: "Turning Over a New Leafs [sic]"

Read the rest of the book here.

Setting a crate of laundry on top of the washing machine, I told my landlord, who happened to be standing at the doorway, "I'm turning over a new leafs - I mean, leaf -hah hah, I can't spell." He was doing his Sunday laundry chores as well, convivial as ever, and we were chatting about getting stuff done, the usual small talk between landlord and tenant. My landlord is a 40 something single man who runs his own non-profit; he has light brown hair, average build, and a pleasant smile. We barely see each other; mostly our meetings are necessitated by my late rent checks.

Waiting for a Movie

Plush seat.
cup holder.
Lights turned on.
When will it be dark?
Restlessness grows.
Mind meanders.
Practice prayer.
Impatient.

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Movie Review: Some Like It Queer

Some Like It Hot — Directed by Billy Wilder — Starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Joe E. Brown
    Some Like It Hot (1959) directed by Billy Wilder cleverly uses musical language to code for queer behavior. I will admit I had queer on my mind when Taryn called me and said, “Hey, Greig, they’re playing Some Like It Hot at the Prytania Theater.” I said to her, “I cannot wait for a gender-bender adventure!” The theater is a one-screen cinema that plays blockbusters at night and classics in the daytime. The house’s proprietor, Mr. Rene Brunet, a sweet, intelligent geriatric, bemused us with some benign trivia about the film. When he talked about Marilyn Monroe I wanted to quote Roger Ebert, who said of the star: she’s "Poured into a dress that offers her breasts like jolly treats for needy boys.”

    But, after Mr. Brunet gave his spiel he motioned the camera guy — “Hey, Robert get those melodies rolling!” — and played “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” before the show started. Seated in a nearly full house, as if we were back in 1959, Bugs Bunny gave his last grin and the feature began.

    The black and white film is covert homosexuality created under a suspicious McCarthy era period posing as a comedy of errors murder mob mystery — the cross-dressing so seamlessly dropped into the plot as to seem virtually harmless even to the most suburban, collected type. Seeing the film fifty years after it was made, it is easy to see the sex beneath the subtext. Almost every line is a double entendre if you can catch it quick enough. Daphne (Jack Lemon) proposes a cross-dressing scheme to Josephine (Cary Grant) to get them out of debt in circa 1920s Chicago. 

    The rest of the movie is all out drag. Let me just say this about the film: Daphne is queerer than Josephine. If you know the film you know what I mean. If you don’t know the film, then you are in for a treat and I won’t spoil the uproarious ending. Josephine resists until both are found by the mob as witnesses to a murder. Donning a wig and a dress, Josephine and Daphne take a train to Florida to join "Sweet Sue's Society Syncopaters."

    Ostensibly a pair of straight guys has to save their asses dressing up as women, retaining their straight status only by the extension of voluptuous Marilyn Monroe. Without her Daphne is a drag queen in love with a millionaire played expertly by Joe E. Brown and Josephine is a dominatrix queen with a penchant for saxophones.

    It is here we hear the film’s title, “some like it hot,” when Jack Lemon’s character refers to the women’s syncopated rhythm as “hot.” I cannot help but think the word hidden beneath the word is “queer.” Plain Jane straight people probably prefer un-syncopated tunes, but we queers like our beats syncopated! Some guys and girls like it different than other guys and girls: they like it hot, suggesting breaking musical boundaries is akin to crossing over into sexual taboos. 

    Geraldine warns Daphne not to sleep with Sugar, but in the end, it is Josephine wooing Sugar and Daphne running with the girls on the beach enjoying his womanhood. Cary Grant, with angular lines and a pair of succulent lips, is a more beautiful woman than Jack Lemmon’s less than beautiful ogee and awkward broad shoulders Marilyn Monroe seems to admire!

Some Like It Hot is an example of queering straight.

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Quasi-Movie Review: On Pondering the Movie Wall-E While Doing Chores

I woke up this morning and weirdly began to ponder that movie Wall-E that I saw last Winter. I woke up oddly early this morning, which is uncommon for me when I do not have to work (and the fact that I had a piercing pain in my lower dorsal area). I made my cup of coffee and went and sat on my deck (not my desk) and began adding to a Wiki I am working on for my MLIS program. I was feeling uncharacteristically productive -- which led me to the Wall-E premise and the added fact that I have been following David Pogue's advice to add typing expansion software to a computer (I decided on TypeItForMe after reviewing Typinator and TextExpander).
  So, with all of this productivity racing in my mind Wall-E seems to be an apt patron saint. On screen he seems so pleasant in his daily diurnal chores, that for a minute, I was co-joined with him in a kind of ecstatic state (not like Saint Teresa in Ecstasy, but close to it), as I went about my apartment, which is usually quite a mess, but has been recently quite clean and organized (although I still cannot find anything). If you are wondering: the motivation to clean my house is threefold: 1.) I thought I was going to have my better friend on Saturday and 2.) on Monday I have a house guest for a week so I thought it kind to spruce the place up a bit. The third motivation is summertime and I have nothing else to do but add to the décor of this apartment in which I will probably be staying for at least another year. I added a runner rug to the hallway leading to the bathroom; I found a wooden red upholstered bench behind a dumpster; I hung some picture frames in my bathroom; I cleaned a pile of dishes (ahem) that had been uncleaned and hanging out on my deck for three months (I am not even joking); I vacuumed my house with a Dyson that Lorie lent me; and, I have a cleaning appointment with Stanley Steemer later this month. Fucking Christ, I am becoming a veritable Ms. Molly homemaker. Can someone please come over and confirm my identity? I think I have been taken over by a poltergeist who goes by Martha Stewart in the daytime and Julia Child by night. Jesus. But, really, this has been good for me. This past year I have lived in basic squalor, so it is nice to know what a real apartment should look like. And the fact that Wall-E was able to keep his junk closet neatly organized has given me grace.

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