fine whine

Any future we have now will be its future's past.

That line just came to me, bringing with it a rhythm as though detached otherwise intact from a song or chant. Whatever that means. I'd meant to write about The Future for this entry but find myself needing to address the past. Namely, 1997, the year that Donnie Brasco premiered, just before the month of March. I was in High school then, wrapping up what was a pretty decent senior year, complete with angst-y relationships and college decisions. The extent of my exposure to sophisticated film culture was a fanatical devotion to all things Monty Python and the knowledge that a number of movies about The Godfather had been made and I should probably see them. The idea of DVDs had not occurred to me, let alone laserdiscs, and I owned a mere hundred and twenty CDs. And I missed Donnie Brasco completely—had no clue it had come out or anything like that. I probably knew only of The empire strikes back's special edition which also played that weekend. Knowing this really only helps me in my personal quest to determine exactly when the current version of my personality solidified, and it bears no meaning on the rest of you or the rest of this entry.

As I mentioned, I was thinking about the future recently. Wasting two dollars on an old widescreen laserdisc of Demolition man I watched the movie in all its letterboxed glory, and I can't say I was any more excited or disappointed from the last time I watched it, even with the additional visuals. I want to like that movie because the ideas underlying it (at least on the futurist side, not the meatheaded action) are pretty interesting and some even original. What gets me, though, is that all of the doors open themselves. Is energy so abundant that they can spare power to open every door, every time? Clearly we're not dealing with non-renewable resources here; though nobody ever mentions what makes San Angeles tick. Likewise the city in Blade runner and scads of other near future visions. I'd like to think that the future lies in clean nuclear power, but I doubt most filmmakers share my optimism. Is it so rare to find a Gene Roddenberry, who, in the course of creating a virtually completely original periodic table, invented a vastly powerful new power source such that ships hurtling through space would not only have doors that opened themselves but artificial gravity to boot? Lucas tackled the problem pretty feebly by mentioning power converters and widget generators and never showing how they work, though I am sure that in the books or comics the engineering is explained in great detail. I just don't read those books, sorry.

What books I do read are pretty varied. I'm working my way through Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn and it thoroughly impresses me. Not since The curious incident of the dog in the night-time have I read a book so convincingly portraying a detective with a disorder, this time Tourette's syndrome. Of course all that I know about Tourette's is that which I've seen on TV, but the tics and compulsions as he presents them certainly have the ring of authenticity if not outright truth. Lethem's Gun, with occasional music was one of the best books I read last year and though this one's subject matter and setting differ, the hooks still pull me in just as much.

And I'd just like to settle the coolest house cat name debate now with Lethem's mention of a feline named Shelf.

Here I am, having watched a number of movies and said nothing about them. Where are my manners? I think I left off with Platoon, which was probably the most conventional Vietnam war movie I've watched in the last month. But I wouldn't watch it again before Full metal jacket, but definitely before tackling Apocalypse now again, redux or not. Following that was one of history's forgotten spoof movies, The big bus of 1976. It's meant to be a rip-roaringly hilarious send-up of the disaster movie genre with its exploding buildings, quaking earths, crashing airplanes and sinking boats. It had a couple jokes, but more of its absurdity came from the lengths those responsible went to make a joke that fell flat. Surviving movies like this makes watching ZAZ spoofs like Airplane! and Top secret! so much better, as they pull it off so much more gracefully. In the middle of the bus's carnage is a fresh-faced Rene Auberjonis as a faith-questioning priest. I couldn't help but recall the last mess of a movie in which Rene played a man of the cloth, Altman's M*A*S*H, which is by far considered to be a better movie despite being an absolute mess. A mess with better characterization and more subtle joking, though.

Continuing the transportation theme was Von Ryan's express with Frank Sinatra and a bunch of recognizable people whose names nobody remembers. That reminded me of Burt Lancaster, the name everybody knows but not the face, who starred in Frankenheimer's The train. I watched that a week or so ago and bring it up primarily because its also a WWII movie about hoodwinking the Germans about a train. Both are decent though neither is a classic. Other than that, the two aren't much the same at all and I'm just going to move onto the next film.

I'm skipping over the previous paragraph to talk about Robert Altman again. On skippy's recommendation I borrowed Gosford park. Like many of the movies I've seen by the "greats" (Scorsese, Altman, Kubrick, et al.) I can recognize it for its technical merits but I cannot fall in love with it. I enjoyed a goodly amount of it, though, and it was fun to try to recognize actors I've seen in few other roles, the Clive Owenses and (Trainspotting's) Kelly MacDonalds here and there. I know that I confused the sisters and the kitchen maids (with each other, not the others). The authenticity is very convincing (though I didn't watch the supplements discussing such) and remains accessible, but in the end I'm not so sure I need to see Altman re-imagine the whodunit. I'd much rather see what he can do within the constraints of the genre, how he can elevate a conventional film out of the box, not put it in another one altogether.

Whatever. I know that it will be funnier the next time around, and then I'll be able to better spot the red herring(s? It's a possible plural) and more of the jokes, but I'm not in a hurry at present. After all I have such "great" films as Scanners, one of David Cronenberg's goriest, to slog through. Somehow the flick just didn't do anything for me. I'm no fan of gore, and to have a film bookended with an exploding head and a gooey, decomposing corpse with mainly filler in between to justify them doesn't turn my crank. I think somebody should put together a reel of his and Paul Verhoeven's exploding heads just to settle the matter once and for all as to who is the master of the blown-up cranium. And then the two of them can go on with making their subversive films that are so much more worth the time.

So that's what I've been watching lately. And I finished reading Houellebecq's Elementary particles; for a book by a Frenchman it cleansed my literary palate of the remnants of "France's greatest philosopher" Bernie Levy's Who killed Danny Pearl?. As far as the book cover is concerned Houellebecq's no philosopher, let alone a great one, but the writing's eons ahead of Levy's for philosophical musings and brutal humanity. Yadda yadda yadda I can blather on all night about books and movies, but instead I want to sit back and watch the rest of the second half of Trainspotting. I don't think Kelly MacDonald's aged a day since then.

I noticed two odd coincidences today, though neither really counts for much of anything. First of all, today whilst walking to the library with my wife we discussed excitement and the things that excite me. I can't remember the context of any of it save for the fact that I said that not much excited me. I think that it was something about food or something like that. Anyway, not five hours later I had some cause for excitement. Popping into Half Price Books to sell some magazines I stumbled across a small cache of Criterion Collection laserdiscs for rather low prices. Surprisingly the only one that I already owned was The big chill and the other ten or so were new to me. As I flipped through more and more of them I started to get excited at the prospect of finding something really good, and lo and behold I had in my hands a copy of one of my holy grails, The Fisher king. It was marked down to a mere two dollars, even better! But just as I got my hopes up I noticed that it felt a little lighter than two discs should feel, and in the next moment my hopes sunk. Somebody had lost the second disc, the one with the ending, the deleted scenes and all the good supplemental materials. I was mildly crushed (well, very crushed) until I noticed copies of both Dr. No and Goldfinger.

Now it was once common knowledge that there were a couple different versions of the Bond Criterions. I knew that the earliest pressings had some extra features that the studios demanded struck from the rest. I didn't really know much more than that, though, and would have bought both were it not for a little sheet explaining the whole situation nestled in with the Dr. No disc, and it mentioned that the missing features were primarily a commentary with the filmmakers, including demigod production designer Ken Adams. So No was a bust, but Goldfinger did indeed list such a commentary on its back cover. I was sold. I bought it (for a measly eight bucks; it goes on ebay for over fifty) as well as the first half of The Fisher king for a dollar, Mike Leigh's Naked of which I know little but am willing to discover more for a few dollars more, Kasdan's Silverado and Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, both of which I know little about but again am willing to discover more. I might even go back for some of the others, though they could well sell in the next few days. The autographed copy of Repossessed wasn't there this time, after all.

Oh, and the other coincidence? Just yesterday I'd been wondering about The Fisher king and thinking I should replace my non-Criterion version of it soon. Little did I know that I would be halfway there the very next day.

Once recently I was at a loss to come up with any of Stanley Kubrick's films other than The shining and A.I.. 2001 had slipped my mind, as well as A clockwork orange, both of which I've watched. I own Spartacus (and A.I. for that matter) and at one time also owned Eyes wide shut but traded that up for a Criterion Robocop. I even forgot the ones I'd liked, Full metal jacket and Dr. Strangelove. Why should I list them when imdb does it so much better? I hadn't known the guy even had his hand in The spy who loved me, one of the better Bond movies I've endured. Anyway, the whole point of this is that I don't appreciate ol' Stan for the work he's done. Take the film I watched tonight: The killing which he directed in 1956. It's a heist movie but it's so well made and unconventional to be elevated over what even then was already becoming a tired genre. Joe and the gang keep everything at a quick pace and the nonlinearity and narrator lend an original edge or two to the proceedings. I know now that the next Kubrick for me to watch won't be Lolita or Barry Lyndon but 1955's Killer's kiss, at least if I can track it down easily. Gradually I'm changing my opinion of the guy, and enjoying the process.

Without hesitation I'd say The Killing is one of the best movies I've seen this year, and without laughing I'd probably back it up for quite a while. Diner too would be on that list, and the more I think about it the more little things make me grin: the whole idea of holding a vengeance against a baseball team but explaining it only when only one is left to hit, throwaway lines about words like "nuance" and the immature guy banter are just the beginning. The rest of the movies this year are going to have an uphill fight to match these two gems, but that won't stop me from watching a whole bunch of them. Eventually I'll make a short list of the best films I watched last year; expect to see it in February, I'd guess.

This is unrelated to anything, but how cool would it be to have a song with the bass and/or guitar lines played backwards? I think such a thing would sound cool, though it may well have been done. This is something worth looking into, methinks.

You know what I like about Diner? All of the cars are dirty. Even the classic '57 Chevy is filthy. It lends a very authentic look and makes a believable film even more real because, after all, these cars aren't new nor are they well maintained by these teenagers. It's a good movie, too—I'm glad I picked this one up despite its prominence on greatest movies lists. Not to say that I'm going to go out now and rent Singing in the rain but maybe I won't be so jaded about the accepted canon of great movies of which I was not aware. I certainly liked it more than the more well-known American graffiti, one my earliest DVDs from Columbia house namely because it helped maximize my savings or something like that. Needless to say I was not impressed by it so much. I'll revisit it someday, likely before I unwrap my laserdisc of More American graffiti, but I'm not keeping my hopes too high. Setting my expectations too high has ruined more than a couple movies for me and I don't like having my movies ruined.

I had other things planned to write, but unfortunately I spent the afternoon laying in a half-napping state on the couch and forgot them. I wanted to ask people about the plot of a book I vaguely remembered, but now its details are lost to me. I suspect it was part of a Terry Pratchett book, given its zaniness, but I can't remember the details. I may well have dreamed the whole thing. I think I'm almost completely caught up on the Discworld series, having read Pratchett's Monstrous regiments within the last several days. It, like his others I've recently read, was more coherent throughout and didn't have an odd undercurrent building to a whirlwind of activity and confusion like some of his other books; this is about the only complaint I can level against the series.

I wish I could remember this lost plot of mine—I really wanted to know what it was so I could read it again. Not that I don't have enough books to be reading right now, being still in the middles of Michael Moore's Dude, where's my country? and Michel
Houllebecq's Elementary particles. And I still need to watch The omega code with Jessica so that I can complain about or laud it as I see fit.

In the title of this ("the horror, the horror...") I refer not to Apocalypse now but to The omega code that I will likely be watching tomorrow. To be fair I had allowed Jessica to pick out a couple videos this time around, and the latter was her choice, probably more to get out of there more than to see that particular movie. But at least it gives me something to write about, perhaps even as I try to watch it. Or, God willing, it might be good and I'll be so riveted to the screen as to not want to get up and, say, gag myself with a spoon after using it to gouge out my eyeballs—an action which had crossed my mind three fourths of the way through Willard but two days ago.

Even watching Repossessed yesterday wasn't that bad, and in fact it had a couple genuinely funny jokes. The two that I remember were the naming of the girl as Nancy (in the Exorcist she was Regan, get it? ha ha ha) and the other involved exercise bikes. You see the two priests were doing a training bit in a gym and just about outside the frame was a kid on an exercise bike wearing turn of the (last) century clothes and throwing newspapers. I laughed and it tided me over at least the next twenty jokes. Why, you may ask, did I watch this "gem", temporary insanity or perhaps a little demonic possession? Neither. I had stumbled across a laserdisc of said movie in the store for a cool twenty bucks and though I had passed it up (the supposed authentic signature of Linda Blair wasn't enough of a draw for the price—and it wasn't widescreen) the temptation to subject my wife to it remained long after I'd left the store. Oddly enough it wasn't available at the library in DVD form but they had a VHS copy that probably hasn't been checked out since the last Bush was in office, and we watched it yesterday. So it goes.

Speaking of the Bushes, I've been paging through the early sections of Dude, where's my country? by Michael Moore, and I can't help but think the same thing I always think about Michael Moore: I don't agree with everything he says nor all his logical leaps and bounds, but dammit I can't help but think that this country would be better off if there were more guys like him running around. He's just looking for the truth, and to reveal some of the insanity behind the curtains of the powers that gosh darn are gonna be whether we like it or not. Joe Conrad and Frank Coppola knew it too and that's partly how the engaging mishmash of Apocalypse now ever came about, though I cannot imagine an even longer version of it though I know that someday I will be watching that very "redux" edition, and probably soon. I already knew war was hell; now I know it's insanity too.