October 2009
1 post
An Eisenstein Marathon
Dear Stella,
I’m afraid to admit how little I learn from watching Eisenstein. I’m afraid to tell anyone but you. I mean how little I learn intentionally, like the student of film I try to be. It’s true that I’m learning at some level, and I’m not talking semantics here: I am intuiting a certain amount of lessons by watching four Eisenstein films in two nights. I...
December 2008
1 post
Creative Deconstruction on a Deserted Island
Dear Stella,
I don’t know where to start, which is where I’ll start. You know me to not shut up from fear of seeming ignorant, ill-informed, wrong. A long time ago I began my struggle against totalities, authoritative knowledge, the idea that right and wrong are opposites. Sometimes good and bad are the same thing, and sometimes the need for 1/0 binaries is less than the desire to...
October 2008
1 post
10.23.08 -- Vagabond
Dear Stella,
I rarely understand films. I have a hard time condensing a film into a “what it’s about” capsule. I’d be horrible at writing copy for the backs of DVDs. I think I’m too uncertain, unconfident, uneasy with locking down meaning. I’m better with feelings than with messages. In my myopic world, I like to imagine that no film ever has meaning, that...
September 2008
3 posts
9.18.08 -- La Chinoise
Dear Stella,
The excitement when I decided to watch every film from Godard’s New Wave period. The satisfaction when I checked another one off the list. And now, the sad humor of wanting to not watch any more. The joy of disappointing myself, and how that can feel empowering at the same time.
I’ve let myself down, intentionally, with enthusiasm.
So I think about the Situationists,...
9.8.08 -- Cléo from 5 to 7
Dear Stella,
Who would I be without French culture? I try to imagine sometimes. So much of my favorite art comes from France. And why is this? Surely part of it is the rich culture of original thought there. But always a chronic skeptic, I wonder if I enjoy French culture more because I enjoy identifying myself as a person who enjoys French culture.
The temptation is strong for me.
I want to...
9.6.08 -- Jubilee
Dear Stella,
Watching Jubilee, directed by Derek Jarman, I said to BilJax that films like this remind me that new ideas are still possible, that there are films to make that don’t yet exist.
And so, a poem by Richard Brautigan comes to mind.
THE LAST SURPRISE
The last surprise is when you come gradually to realize that nothing surprises you anymore.
I was surprised and inspired by...
August 2008
3 posts
8.28.08 -- Othello
Dear Stella,
A few days ago Edward asked me for my opinion on the cinematography of a film shot by his friend. Edward and I have a history where I can tell him my opinion bluntly without worrying about feelings or other lesser friendship pitfalls; we’ve got more serious things to worry about. So I tell him his friend’s film looks like it was shot by a director, by someone who is clearly not a...
8.26.08 -- Pierrot le fou
Dear Stella,
I wanted to punch someone this week. No one in particular, and almost everyone I saw. I haven’t felt this generalized pissiness in a long time, maybe decades. Part of this lashing out stems from dissatisfaction, another part from disappointment that I can turn into someone who lashes out from dissatisfaction. Self-defeat, a snake eating its own tail, vision as blindness. ...
Cinema II: the Time-Image
Dear Stella,
In the class where a professor once said, “I give up,” walked out, and didn’t come back for twenty minutes, that was the class where I first met The Highlighter. We all had handouts — readings on Manx grammar, the history of the Tillamook tribe, definitions of language death — and we’d review these handouts in class, in groups. One day a burly,...
July 2008
1 post
7.18.08 -- Close-Up
Dear Stella,
I am so hateful, so cruel and vicious. With such quickness can I reach the end of a person. This ability is not without shame or regret. And the shameful realization: it is not without its utility, my talent at coming to conclusions, in reaching conclusions, in a forced finish.
As with the film Close-Up, directed by Abbas Kiarostami. I wanted to love this movie before it even...
June 2008
1 post
6.17.08 -- 2046
Dear Stella,
Do you remember when I watched a horror movie a day for one month? It was January: 31 days, 31 horror movies. I had started reading a book on gender in horror films, and wanted to complement the book with some research. I’m a method reader: I like to live the books I read. Remind me to tell you about my Marquis de Sade phase sometime.
And so an opposite too: a month with no...
May 2008
1 post
5.9.08 -- Audition
Dear Stella,The parts and the whole, the forest for the trees, every vote counts, a drop in the bucket, the child of the revolution, a clock that stops working but keeps ticking: the little lives in the bigger picture, who shapes who. This is one stream of thought I had while watching Audition, directed by Takashi Miike. I flashed back to a conversation I had about Chasing Amy. Kristen, who...
April 2008
11 posts
4.28.08 -- Ten
Dear Stella,A couple of months ago I learned the term “soft power,” which refers to the effect that cultural products have on a country’s global influence, as opposed to the hard power of military or financial might. In the NYTimes article where I read about it, China was discussed, how they benefit from the exporting of films, literature, fashion, icons, etc. Obviously this...
4.27.08 -- Ju Dou
Dear Stella,If you ask me to recommend a great introductory film for non-martial arts Chinese cinema, I’ll give you Ju Dou. If you ask me for a film tragic enough to rival Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, I’ll show you Ju Dou. If you want to see a delicate mix of beauty and sadness, love and pain, tenderness and cruelty, I’ll give you a mirror. And then I’ll watch Ju...
4.19.08 -- Raise the Red Lantern
Dear Stella,Watched Raise the Red Lantern recently, another Zhang Yimou film. More China, more more more needed, lots more to go. This one takes place pre-revolution, in a China I know even less about than the recent China. Thankfully, I remember the reassuring words of Cixous: “There is room for two Chinas in your soul.” She probably wasn’t referring to my film-watching...
4.18.08 -- Magnolia
Dear Stella,Listening to Aimee Mann a lot lately. which makes me fiend for Magnolia. Remember the Keystone Theater in Portland? I saw Magnolia four times there, and not just because I was crushing on Mandy either. While working two jobs and going to school full-time, I spent twelve hours within two weeks on this movie. Every time I watched it — and each time since then — I learned...
4.17.08 -- To Live
Dear Stella,At some point years ago, I learned not to be embarrassed by my ignorance. Which is not the same as embracing it. But I decided to start asking questions instead of faking comprehension. Maybe it was reading the Tao Te Ching. I think the Tao is a great book for underachievers, for pathetic youth, for the socially awkward and perpetually bullied: the Tao somehow turns being...
4.12.08 -- A Woman is a Woman
Remember the story of the ship at sea on a long journey, forced to make continual major repairs along the way, so by the time it finally reaches its destination, the boat has been reconstructed from new materials, the boat is simultaneously entirely different and still the same. I lost the source of this story — if I ever had it — and asked Daniel (he says it’s a Borges story),...
4.10.08 -- All That Heaven Allows
Dear Stella,The first time I saw Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of LIfe, I cried. And I cried the second time. Usually I have to be sick to cry. Remember when I had a really bad flu and cried during a commercial for allergy medicine? I went from near-coma to bawling in less than thirty seconds. I wish I could remember that commercial more; I’d love to meet the director, the writer, the...
4.9.08 -- Sweetie
Dear Stella,How many women cinematographers can you name, off the top of your head? Realized last night I can only name one: Ellen Kuras. It’s been maybe six-ish years since I started paying closer attention to cinematographers, eight-ish years studying feminism, so why don’t I know more women cinematographers? This is something I’ll have to remedy, and quick. I realized...
4.7.08 -- The Blue Kite
Dear Stella,Watched The Blue Kite last night. I’m on a real China streak lately, trying to take in as much history and culture as I can while still being a recluse, which means a lot of films and books. I guess I’d like to find out if China is really the horrorshow that the US media paints it to be. Of course, it’s hard to know who to trust sometimes.Propaganda is on my mind. ...
Ran vs. Debord
a screengrab from Ran (1985) vs. “In a world that really has been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood.”— Guy Debord, from The Society of the Spectacle
Eisenstein on prolificness
It is difficult enough to find oneself working with such frenzy. But it is even more difficult to achieve anything adequate without this frenzy. Miracles of composition—this is merely a question of persistence and the expenditure of time during the “training period” of one’s autobiography.— Sergei Eisenstein from Film Form