Look with your eyes, not with your hands.


Such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.



A grad student muses on her life, film, friends, politics, reality televizzle, and music.

 
Just a girl and her sad little dog

Today marks a week of being an invalid alumnae. This is the worst I've felt in years and today was better than other days, but I am still not in the pink of heath, still not up for being a professional lady of leisure - it's more of being a couch rat and watching reruns of the Osbournes and some bad made-for-tv movies on the Lifetime Movie Network. I've actually seen some good movies this week, god bless you cable. In addition to Basquiat, a film that bears a similar aesthetic to its contemporary Pollock, maybe because it was produced by our friend, Peter Brant, but also a doppleganger in its attention to pronounced story-telling devices, the way painting scenes are synchronized to melodic jazz, using an interview to allow the painter to reflect on his work in his own words, loving a single woman (though painting and the lifestyle seemed to get in the way), and a similar tragic end in drugs. Basquiat, however, reaks of an art film in the Samo mythology and the added chromakeyed footage of surfers. As I recall, JM Basquiat equated the Zen of painting and creating to surfers finding the perfect wave and being encompassed in the blue room. I really enjoyed the film - most of the film is shot below 14th-Street in SoHo in what resonates as my Dean and Deluca and Washington Square Park New York. The film also included one of the most tragic yet eloquent sequences I've seen in a while, set like most of the film to Leonard Cohen-esque ballads, a perfect use of ol' dirty Tom Waits' "Waltzing Matilda."

Yesterday, I finally saw the once-talked about with great fervor, American Movie: The Making of Northwestern. The film got a lot of attention and awards at Sundance in 1999 - and I am not sure if it falls under the catagory of true documentary or under the jesting mocumentary. It's a film about a poor midwesterner who dreams of making a horror film called Northwestern. In order to get the requisite $45,000 he needs to make his dream come true and finish a feature-length movie, he intends to finish a short film called "Coven." When I heard about the movie in college, people said it was funny. I thought it was depressing. It is set near Milwaulkee, Wisconsin - perhaps this is part of the reason I was finally inspired to sit down and watch it (I admit that being a captive audience helped). The poverty and the impossibility of this guy's dream, well, I didn't find it funny. The accents, very midwestern, and the guy was certainly poor white trash, but I didn't think it was laughable. After some research, it appears that American Movie is a factual documentary, so I guess it's charm is that it clings faithfully, sacrificingly, to an unreachable dream.

The third film worth mentioning was a Vietnamese movie I had rented from the library a couple of months ago but never ended up watching called The Vertical Ray of the Sun. It focuses on the story of three sisters in present-day, but far from modern, Hanoi. It deals with love, marriage, infidelity, and featured characters that, by vocation, were writers and photographers -- additions that made the beautifully shot film more artful. There were some erotic scenes, tastefully handled. In my mind, there was a good contrast of tradition and modernity, a pronounced theme in women's stories from around the world, especially post-colonial countries. There was a sexual tension between the youngest sister and her brother that was played out to beautifully shot morning scenes of waking up, exercizing, and taking breakfast in a saturated grass green apartment set to Lou Reed songs. I think it was the first Vietnamese film I've ever seen but it would probably appeal to any art-cinema type.

Anyway, my parents are across the street at a party. I am in my third set of pajamas of the week and loafing around, drinking coffee, with my lonely little dog (he's been very down today). Having reached my official threshold of morningstar farm products, I might go out and get some take-out. A drive might do me well.
posted by lmjasinski at 6:59 PM