unknown post #50

I knew I should have done an update to the ON HIATUS post when I thought about it a couple weeks ago. I’ve been doing some serious slacking on this web log business. But my main excuse shall be that I needed time to adjust to this poor new desktop set-up. I’m no longer operating this off a laptop and well, I’ll just say, the desk part of the “desktop computer” still needs some work. And there's still many adjustments to be made to the new residence. And well, sorry, TV’s been good to me lately. Basic broadcast television no less. The tools purchased to connect that coaxial cable hanging in that closet proved the thing to be dead. But the Lost, Alias, Veronica Mars, all these Law & Orders, and yes those Gilmore Girls, have kept me pre-occupied to even fit in the Netflix backlog.

But excuses aside there's also been an ennui of sorts. Also just like using the word ennui... a perversion perhaps... But what I mean is, "Shit, if you're gonna do something, might as well do it right," a loose quotation from a book that guy wrote. But trying to keep a blog of some respectability in this day and age seems daunting to me. So my solution to that is I'm going to eventually have to put some real effort into this thing and have some bells and whistles implemented. And that could mean some lags in the posting until that all occurs.

Until then...



Where Are They Now?
Highbrow urbanites swear by his sophisticated oeuvre, but with just three films to his name, brevity may indeed be the soul of Whit - Stillman, that is.

I’ve been thinking that same question for the past few months. What the hell happened to Whit Stillman? And why can’t I find Metropolitan on dvd? So I was happily surprised to find that article up there, which is a good thorough answer. Though not about the dvd, just about what he’s been up to in the past 6 years or so. This guy Phil’s got a good archive going on there—everything you wanted to know and more, so I point you there for the linkage.

Now, Whit Stillman isn't going to be everyone's idea of fun cinema. Comparisons to Hal Hartley come to mind when I think to describe Whit Stillman. But if you know one, chances are you already know the other, and their similarities and differences. They don't really have that much in common other than they're both sometimes very dry/subtle-humored and tend toward being driven by lots of heavy conversation. But where Hal Hartley is going to have his fun with dead-pan opera moves, Whit Stillman stays perfectly firm-footed in his over-intellectualized, literary urban world. I don't really agree that the term "comedy of manners" suits his style, but I can see why he'd be working on a Jane Austen adaptation. Anyway, all of what he has is three movies [Metropolitan, Barcelona, and Last Days of Disco] that form a sort of trilogy with a few interweaving characters -- but are meant to stand on their own. And I consider it a small tragedy, for I feel like being dramatic right now, that only Barcelona is available on dvd right now. But hey, there was no reason to go throwing out those vcrs in the first place.



Toward the end of Waking Life there was the bit with Richard Linklater playing pinball and spouting about how Philip K. Dick had a moment where he met the couple in his dreams that he was writing about at a party or something. And now with the same technology he used to create that movie he joins the oh-so-great lexicon of film adaptations of Mr. Dick's material. I think I need to re-watch Minority Report but at the same time, having not read that story of his, I'll probably still feel that it doesn't quite live up to the source material. I was still trying to get the taste of A.I. out of my mouth. There's a mood to Dick's writings that, as everyone else will say, only Blade Runner has captured.

But what the real point is of any argument about these adaptations is the matter of making a good sci-fi movie. And this is something that has been hard to come by for a good many years. Please name me the last good sci-fi movie that came out. Even Code 46 and Solaris left me shrugging. What Blade Runner, Kubrick sci-fi, the original Solaris, and even those early Star Wars and Crichton movies did was make the atmosphere organic and the characters to come out of this environment. Spielberg's been trying to bring that out but I think even he's susceptible to making the flashy lights the reason the seats get filled. Which is why I'm much more excited about Hitchhikers than I am War of the Worlds. But even more than those, I'm excited about A Scanner Darkly.

Some acknowledgements should be made for the following: Nik Strangelove, with his rock star/porno name, has some nice photos to browse through -- one of Hal Hartley, Whit Stillman, and Richard Linklater. Not far to go for a six-degrees thing here. The Philip K. Dick drawing came from Ivan Jerônimo, who has some nice material as well.