Comments | danschank: ten good things returns (february 2007)

danschank

ten good things returns (february 2007)

Mar 03, 2007 01:50

hi folks... so, i guess december and january's editions of this have bitten the dust. i'm gonna try to get back to doing this monthly again though, and i've been brainstorming things to mention for a while now (some of the following is old news in real life, actually)... anyway...

10.

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Comments 41

u r th only person i know who listens to bablicon lostcosmonaut March 3 2007, 11:23:24 UTC

saw C-Boz perform those songs live, it was just as you say: from th gut. She stepped off th stage and got right awkwardly up to people, and no one knew whether to hug her or run away.--mza.

everyone else you know is missing out danschank March 4 2007, 18:28:57 UTC

as for c-boz (heh heh), i love reactions like that. i remember something similar happening after seeing smog like ten years ago. he was at his most minimal and depressing, and people didn't really know what to do with themselves afterwords.

mistercreepy March 3 2007, 15:00:15 UTC

am i one of the 12 people?

danschank March 4 2007, 18:32:20 UTC

sure. you're a wild card, though r00b$z. not sure if you'll like it or not. and if you don't like it, you might want to kill me after enduring all four hours of it.

i still haven't seen science of sleep (or paris texas)... but i like your argument about flaws in movies (on your own page, obvs... this is two-comments-in-one). i think that's what i like about spike lee's less all-around successful films... and it's certainly what i like about dennis hopper's last movie and out of the blue. truth be told, i don't even think dennis hopper is particularly talented. it's more like he's really good at revealing himself-- or being himself-- in awkward and vulnerable ways.

but if you comment here, i don't get my necessary commentlove mistercreepy March 7 2007, 09:32:10 UTC

i'm actually beginning to think i'm not as much as a wild card as i like to parrot myself. my dedication to the monumental task of rewatching and reviewing all of my top 100 has taught me two important things

1) never again

2) there are a lot of themes that surface in lots of different films. some i've mentioned before: america/suburbia and its problems and values. others include extended play and genre or MOOD blending, the ability to as lj returning might put it blend the transcendent with the gritty.

also people in love and WORK as rewarding...! yes

i was thinking about my own argument, and i think if any AUTEUR deserves great mention as championing flaws as a potent and important way to express one's self, it's SAM PECKINPAH whose films are as aesthetically flawed as they are morally, paced as poorly as he treats his womenfolk. AND YET ( ... )

myglock_yrface March 3 2007, 16:26:34 UTC

My library has that copy of Dhalgren! I am thinking I will check it out after I finish up Nightwood, despite the length.

i never read "nightwood", but i think i'd prob. like it danschank March 4 2007, 18:36:44 UTC

yeah, definitely give it a couple of weeks. it's the kind of book you sorta need to throw yourself into. also, a little background on delany might make the experience more worthwhile, being that he's also a theoretical scholar, and a bisexual activist for radical sexual politics, and a pornographer (my friend justin swears by his pornographic novel the madmen, which supposedly includes some potent descriptions of scat-stuff)... definitely not your typical sci-fi writer.

i think you'll dig it though!

agoraphiliac March 3 2007, 17:44:05 UTC

Thanks for this; this post may have changed my weekend, and it's not even noon yet on Saturday. I got up very early today, and was all set to mope over various things I will never have--a PhD from Cornell, a title in the peerage of the kingdom of Redonda-- but just after reading this I took out an essay I've been writing, brought it to a good stopping place, and now I am off seen to see Rivette's Out1: Spectre. Which I had been planning to miss.

(the connection between reading your post & writing my essay, that's not obvious, I don't know what it is, just a change of mood and a change of plans.)

I also loved Iraq in Fragments. It's a real film, and not a piece of DVD agit-prop. (I like those rough-and-ready MoveOn house-party documentaries too, I guess, sometimes. But they do dominate the documentary form lately; they make the documentary a sub-genre of television news.)

I've only seen parts I & II of Spike Lee's documentary so far.

(The comment has been removed)

Re: I take it you live in Seattle? agoraphiliac March 4 2007, 18:25:30 UTC

You'd think I'd have noticed a person like that; you must have been as surreptitious about the hat as you were about the liquor.

danschank March 4 2007, 18:45:54 UTC

this is a very nice comment.

truth be told, i've had one of the worst weeks of recent memory myself (thanks to an astoundingly bad bit of work-related drama that i will refrain from complaining about around here), and i wrote this to kinda blow off steam. i just finished a painting, so i couldn't guilt my way out of livejournal for once. so it's good to hear that people are reading and enjoying it. sorry to hear about cornell... sounds like there's been some quasi-good news along with the bad though, right?

i hear you completely about iraq in fragments. it's the first of those documentaries that i've seen where the non-western two cents isn't used to parrot the arguments of the american left. i remember when watching control room, i kept feeling like the interviews seemed somehow cherry-picked to make al jazerra seem like they've been out canvasing for moveon.org, or whatever (and where was the duscussion of iran? or israel? but i digress...) iraq in fragments was almost suspiciously movie-like. especially the first sequence with ( ... )

Thread 6

ironchefpinoy March 3 2007, 17:50:41 UTC

deng.

yer like, um, smart and stuff. huh?

nah danschank March 4 2007, 18:46:25 UTC

just long winded!