(no subject)
I was browsing a fashion blog today when I came across this:
It's a remix of sounds found throughout Snow White, spun to an electro kind of music veil. idk how to describe this really, but I can't stop listening to it. (B
Everytime I wash my brushes, I have this immense guilt over wasting water, because holy crap I've yet to encounter brushes that can hold this much water. Even when I think it's half-dry, it's still enough to create a huge water spot on my shirt. (Lucky it's black.)
Chinese painting is fun though. Or maybe the correct word is meditative. It's a totally different thing from western painting- you have to know exactly what you want because once you've made a mark, it's there. You can't remove it. You can change it, but it'll never go away.
Also recently I watched this arthouse film called 'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives'.
Hoo boy. I still don't know if I wasted $6.50 on the ticket or not.
I've talked about it to a few people, but it's still rattling around inside my head. Maybe it's because I'm too used to trying to analyse almost everything; I find that a lot of people into fine arts tend to over-analyse things. See things that aren't there, and well. It gets tiring, because as much as the artwork belongs to the audience once it's left the hands of the creator, sometimes you just end up attributing genius to nothing at all, and that's kind of stupid.
In any case, much of the movie is made up of long shots of people-- pretty much doing nothing. I suspect this is why the reception to the movie is so mixed- you have the people creating meaning out of nothing and then you have people who take it at face value. Me, I'm still torn between taking it as a meditation on spirituality or just plain pretentious art-housing. There's just way too much you can get away with if you have a smart mouth. And I think the movie, at some points, does make use of that. With pretty good skill, seeing how the critics are praising it.
The oddest scenes were the appearance of the dead wife and the long-lost son, the catfish sex and the very last scene.
The way the wife appeared startled me; she just faded into view. It was special effects at its basest kind. What was even more mystifying was that only the nephew seemed to be surprised. Uncle Boonmee and Aunt Jen were just... nonchalant about it. Then there was the appearance of this large monkey man in black fur. The ghost-wife just asks him why he's grown his hair out so long (and I'm like, HELLO, YOUR SON'S A GORILLA DUDE, IS THAT REALLY A GOOD QUESTION TO ASK?). Another weird part is just how the wife wisps in and out, whether it's daylight or night. She's there as a solid entity, a corporeal person, and I don't know why, but it just makes me. Uncomfortable. Perturbed. But I think that says a lot more about me than it does the film. The scene where she changes the saline pack for her still-alive husband is also just-- oh, I don't even know. Sweet? Weird? Completely indescribable?
And then there's the catfish scene. This has got to be the first time a film made me crawl back in my seat and try not to run through every animal fable I've read/heard of ever concerning bestial sex. Idk, the sight of a catfish flapping between the princess' legs is just. Huh. I always wondered secretly about Zeus and his conquests-in-animal-form, but this is just plain-- I'd say weird, but the whole film is weird, so what's the point? It was an interesting scene, but I really hesitate to place meaning to it. It isn't clear who Uncle Boonmee was- the princess, the catfish or the manservant, but that isn't important. The one thing that I did love about this scene was the way the princess reached out for the manservant while on her sedan; it was quiet, and understated and perfectly lovely.
Last scene I can't get out of my head is the very last one, after Uncle Boonmee has died, and when his nephew sneaks back from the temple because he can't take the few days of monastery life. He comes out of the shower, asks Jen whether she wants to eat. She procrastinates a little, he sits down on the bed. After a while, she gets up and tells the nephew to go. The camera pans to them standing up, the background becomes the wall instead of the bed. Then it pans back to include the entire room, and to the nephew's shock, they're still there. On the bed. But he and Aunt Jen are also standing next to the wall. The visual of doppelgangers always gives me a huge scare, because I've had a couple of dreams of them, and it's always deadly creepy to me. In the very last few seconds of the movie, it's implied that the nephew changed, into something or someone else, or something happened, but it's not shown what.
If ever there was a film about dreams that's a hundred times more dream like than Inception, I'd vote Uncle Boonmee for it (although Inception's not that dream-y in the first place anyway).
Click to viewIt's a remix of sounds found throughout Snow White, spun to an electro kind of music veil. idk how to describe this really, but I can't stop listening to it. (B
Everytime I wash my brushes, I have this immense guilt over wasting water, because holy crap I've yet to encounter brushes that can hold this much water. Even when I think it's half-dry, it's still enough to create a huge water spot on my shirt. (Lucky it's black.)
Chinese painting is fun though. Or maybe the correct word is meditative. It's a totally different thing from western painting- you have to know exactly what you want because once you've made a mark, it's there. You can't remove it. You can change it, but it'll never go away.
Also recently I watched this arthouse film called 'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives'.
Hoo boy. I still don't know if I wasted $6.50 on the ticket or not.
I've talked about it to a few people, but it's still rattling around inside my head. Maybe it's because I'm too used to trying to analyse almost everything; I find that a lot of people into fine arts tend to over-analyse things. See things that aren't there, and well. It gets tiring, because as much as the artwork belongs to the audience once it's left the hands of the creator, sometimes you just end up attributing genius to nothing at all, and that's kind of stupid.
In any case, much of the movie is made up of long shots of people-- pretty much doing nothing. I suspect this is why the reception to the movie is so mixed- you have the people creating meaning out of nothing and then you have people who take it at face value. Me, I'm still torn between taking it as a meditation on spirituality or just plain pretentious art-housing. There's just way too much you can get away with if you have a smart mouth. And I think the movie, at some points, does make use of that. With pretty good skill, seeing how the critics are praising it.
The oddest scenes were the appearance of the dead wife and the long-lost son, the catfish sex and the very last scene.
The way the wife appeared startled me; she just faded into view. It was special effects at its basest kind. What was even more mystifying was that only the nephew seemed to be surprised. Uncle Boonmee and Aunt Jen were just... nonchalant about it. Then there was the appearance of this large monkey man in black fur. The ghost-wife just asks him why he's grown his hair out so long (and I'm like, HELLO, YOUR SON'S A GORILLA DUDE, IS THAT REALLY A GOOD QUESTION TO ASK?). Another weird part is just how the wife wisps in and out, whether it's daylight or night. She's there as a solid entity, a corporeal person, and I don't know why, but it just makes me. Uncomfortable. Perturbed. But I think that says a lot more about me than it does the film. The scene where she changes the saline pack for her still-alive husband is also just-- oh, I don't even know. Sweet? Weird? Completely indescribable?
And then there's the catfish scene. This has got to be the first time a film made me crawl back in my seat and try not to run through every animal fable I've read/heard of ever concerning bestial sex. Idk, the sight of a catfish flapping between the princess' legs is just. Huh. I always wondered secretly about Zeus and his conquests-in-animal-form, but this is just plain-- I'd say weird, but the whole film is weird, so what's the point? It was an interesting scene, but I really hesitate to place meaning to it. It isn't clear who Uncle Boonmee was- the princess, the catfish or the manservant, but that isn't important. The one thing that I did love about this scene was the way the princess reached out for the manservant while on her sedan; it was quiet, and understated and perfectly lovely.
Last scene I can't get out of my head is the very last one, after Uncle Boonmee has died, and when his nephew sneaks back from the temple because he can't take the few days of monastery life. He comes out of the shower, asks Jen whether she wants to eat. She procrastinates a little, he sits down on the bed. After a while, she gets up and tells the nephew to go. The camera pans to them standing up, the background becomes the wall instead of the bed. Then it pans back to include the entire room, and to the nephew's shock, they're still there. On the bed. But he and Aunt Jen are also standing next to the wall. The visual of doppelgangers always gives me a huge scare, because I've had a couple of dreams of them, and it's always deadly creepy to me. In the very last few seconds of the movie, it's implied that the nephew changed, into something or someone else, or something happened, but it's not shown what.
If ever there was a film about dreams that's a hundred times more dream like than Inception, I'd vote Uncle Boonmee for it (although Inception's not that dream-y in the first place anyway).