1/2
So when we left off Spock was on trial (and taking it rather well) and we were receiving images from these buttheads on Talos IV. (And this is long before they’d be parodied by Itchy and Scratchy.) I don’t want to give it all away, but turns out Mr. Spock is being altruistic and — just in the nick of time — Uhura gets a signal from Star Fleet that they’re willing to look the other way and not condemn our second billed character to the death penalty after all. . .just because. And Jeffrey Hunter gets to live in an underground rock cage with a make believe blonde for the rest of his life. Now that’s a way to get written off a series!
Hello readers. Sorry the blog updates have been so few of late. We’re really cooking on post-production of Body/Antibody. We’ve got a first draft of a first assembly basically put together and now we’re fine tuning from the top. The first 8 1/2 minutes are, if I may say so, pretty frickin’ awesome. So far, no complaints. Anyhow, when I get a chance I’ll upload some fun pictures from last weekend as well as some updates of The Star Trek Project. (I’ve already violated one of my own rules and skipped ahead to some TNG, just to mix it up a bit.)
You’d think I’d really dig this episode. You’d think the fact that Michael J. Pollard, at age 27, was cast as a pre-pubescent is reason enough to love it. And while I do respect the base “what if” elements of the story (more on this in a bit) I just gotta say: this episode gets on my frickin nerves. And that was BEFORE New York Magazine based one of its all time dumbest articles on it. A race, looking for immortality, retards the aging process. As a result, one can live over 300 years — but one lives as a child, and dies upon entering puberty. So the question is: which system is better? Ours, where the expectancy is a mere 80 (if you are lucky), or theirs, where one can over three times as long — but with the mind of a child? Is this life an extended 300 year bliss? Or is it a 300 year waste where no one can undestand true reason or know the joys of responsibility? Heavy shit, no? But when they start yelling “Nyah nyah nyah!” I wish Spock would just give them all the Vulcan nerve pinch.
A banal documentary about the development and early years of LSD. To use the parlance: a drag, man. Only the 30 second clip of Aldous Huxley and the interior decorating of Ram Dass’ Taos, NM home are worth your attention.
Terrifically acted and finely observed. Would be tough to summarize and make it sound interesting, but not everything needs to have a plot, you know? Also: I didn’t realize this would be so laugh-out-loud funny. In all the talk about the film when it came out, no one mentioned it was such a scream. I could have done without the use of the music from “Risky Business.” Why take me out of one movie to have me think about another? In all, though, highly recommended.
The film opens with what I can now only interpret as an apology. Svankmajer says (in a nutshell) “this is not art, it is just a decadent horror film.” The problem is it isn’t all that scary. And it certainly isn’t all that much fun. I can deal with the fact that it doesn’t make too much sense (non-linear dream-like narrative is fine with me; Svankmajer has hit that out of the park many times) but I can’t deal with boring. Ann and I left the theater faced with a big problem. Do we really press to find meaning in the long sequences of dancing, rotting meat — or are they just in there because they look cool? I’ve never felt I’ve had to justify Svankmajer’s imagery before. Stick with any of his other works (or seek out Greenaway’s A Zed and Two Noughts if you like raw animal flesh.) I give this a gentleman’s C.
Some recent shots:
The house we live in in Queens is ringed with peach trees. They are now in full bloom and they are delicious. Our landlady gave us a huge sack of them and tells us she is “making marmalat!” They serve both sides of the pesticide argument well. Never has a peach tasted juicier, but Ann had a worm in one of hers.
I came home late the other night and found a man stalking on the staircase. He looked at me glumly, apologized, then zipped away on his bike. He had his arms full of peaches. I told this to my landlord when I saw him the next day. He said, “Is good — let them take!”
Obviously, everyone in this shot needs that next yellow cup of Jagermeister.
Goober on his way to Aunt Barbie’s on East 74th St.
George & Sibby at Federici’s on Main St. Note George is wearing a Preservation Hall T-shirt.
The Great Kerry Douglas Dye.
Me and Banana.
Me and Evan.
Michelle, Che & Raoul. If you listen closely, you can almost hear Raoul going “Nuh-uh!!!”
Ann’s co-worker Rocco.
Rocco is a working cat, keeping the shop free of any critters.
But he doesn’t seem to be working very hard right now.
When I first saw The Cruise in 1998 I never thought I’d be a tour guide and do part-time work for the same company. And I really never thought I’d watch it at the terminal on a slow afternoon, with people who actually knew the guy. Those that did know him were a little jaundiced to the film — I think it’s fabulous. He’s not crazy — a lot of what he says makes perfect sense to me. His descriptions of a mutating relationship with the city, while perhaps a bit mawkish, are spot on. I wish I could give a tour like Speed Levitch. I don’t. I do my own thing and my own thing is good, but there’d be no feature length film in my tours. (A short, maybe, on a good day.) Levitch knows and loves the city to the point of it being his whole life, but I think the point is that if he happened to be in Michigan he’d feel the same way about that place. The final image, just a random bit of impishness as he debates to open a door to a roof that may or may not set off an alarm, is a perfect. This door, and the groovy shit he wants to show us on the other side, is synecdoche for Levitch’s entire existence. His tours delight passengers until he pisses them off; the brass think him a cute oddity until his uniform smells; the city will let him wander and flow through its streets until a construction site interrupts him. Will he open the door? What will he find?
Laurence Olivier and John Hurt screaming in the middle of a storm is good stuff. Video/soundstage production is not-so-good stuff. Similarly, trying to watch this after a hot day in the sun. . .a recipe for dozing off. But I saw all the important scenes. I don’t want to blaspheme, but I think I prefer the Ian Holm version shown on PBS from a few years back.
If you are a young adolescent male watching Star Trek, you might be spending some time wishing you had a hot sexy robot who listened to all of your commands. And a giant skeletor robot to beat up anyone who picked on you. This episode has both and, for that, it gets sterling marks. Also, a weird spinning thing (straight out of a “Batman” episode) and (yet again) another fake Captain Kirk running around. And some groovy looking caves. This is all secondary to the fantasies one can cook up with an army of sexy female/skeletor protector robots.
Very, very entertaining. That’s two verys. (Scarlett Johansson kinda reminded me of Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz for some reason. I need to analyze that a little bit.)
Not a happy bunch. The priest who has lost his faith, the spurned lover who only lives to please him, the parishioner who needs any reason not to kill himself (but can’t get a word in edgewise) and a lot of cold, cold, cold. Wear a blanket when you watch this one. No one does bleak despair like Ingmar. Fascinating in how not-un-watchable this is.
I wanted to watch this again, this time without commercials. Foolish me, to do it on a night when I was all alone. I had nightmares about the Cylons and got no sleep. (Those damned Cylons! They’re everywhere! And it is all…our…fault!!!!) Kidding aside, this is some intense stuff. New Yorkers can’t help but think of Sept. 11, no doubt Beiruitis of the future will think of July ‘06. The first time I watched it I thought the love interest stuff was kinda annoying — now I’m much more into the characters. On to the series!
Another spectacularly shot, but completely unwatchable film by Dario Argento. Life would have been easier for everyone if Argento just made plotless art films like our friend Matthew Barney. His look — the moving camera, the unmotivated sources of light, insane use of primary colors — is marvelous. But these stories! Eeegads! The central gimmick, sort of a more violent Ludovico technique, is the work of a truly sick mind. Can’t say I’ve seen anything like that before. But I must admit my finger was twitching on the fast-forward button at the sixty minute mark. Pursue this only knowing the risk/reward elements.
