Saturday, April 2, 2011
William S. Burroughs: The Cat Inside
Life, such as it is, goes on. Dillon's is still open from seven a.m. to twelve midnight, seven days a week.
I am the cat who walks alone. And to me all supermarkets are alike.
I am drinking Dillon's fresh-squeezed orange juice and eating farm-fresh eggs out of an egg cup I bought in Amsterdam. Wimpy rolls, nuzzling my feet, purring I love you I love you I love you. He loves me.
Meeeowww. "Hello, Bill."
The distance from there to here is the measure of what I have learned from cats.
Alien: Resurrection (1997)
200 years after her death, Ellen Ripley is revived as a powerful human/Alien hybrid clone who must continue her war against the Aliens.
Too ambitious for its own good this installment of the Aliens series is quite messy, but has some moments, especially concerning the visuals.
And on a new viewing: this time around the effects are much more visceral, the plot darker and more nihilstic, the most human character is an android.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
In an alternate Victorian Age world, a group of famous contemporary fantasy, SF and adventure characters team up on a secret mission.
The idea sounds better than the actual result, although it is visually appealing, the rest is quite forgettable.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
First Lines: John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor
In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point.
First Lines: Katherine Dunn - Geek Love
“When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,” Papa would say, “she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.
Illustrator: Dora Batty
Find more at:
http://www.ltmcollection.org/posters/artist/artist.html?IXartist=Dora+M+Batty
Monday, March 28, 2011
The Hired Hand (1971)
A wandering cowboy returns home to his farm after his wife had given up on him.
A classic in its own right as a modern Western, beautifully photographed, with a simple plot that edges onto to more existential questions.
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
A retiring Captain takes out a last patrol to stop an impending massive Indian attack.
Classic John Ford western with its star bringing in one of his greatest characterizations, still watchable, although some of the gung-ho and the music is quite dated.
Ginostra (2002)
An FBI Agent from America and his bride and young child travel to the Sicilian island of Ginostra to solve the murder of a key witness.
Wonderfully set on the Sicilian islands and obviously ambitious mafia thriller, but with a meandering and drifting plot which leaves the actors at a loss most of the time.
The Night of the Iguana (1964)
A defrocked Episcopal clergyman leads a bus-load of middle-aged Baptist women on a tour of the Mexican coast and comes to terms with the failure haunting his life.
Brillant, feverish, excellently played adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play, though at times a bit flamboyant.
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