Doghead

Best book I have read in a while. Another one of those ludicrously accomplished first novels!

If I had to invoke other names, think John Irving or Gunter Grass.

I must admit, I have not finished it yet but over time I have come to realize that great books do not require great endings. I have read about three quarters of the book so far, and if it ended in a couple of pages, even if certain issues are unresolved, I would not change my opinion.

This is one of those wonderful quirky family sagas; one that takes place in Denmark and Norway and beginning just before the 2nd World War. Under the entertaining foibles of all concerned is the view into how the war was experienced in those countries. But content aside, the writing is superlative.

Excerpt:

“God came last night to get your kitties,” Hans Carlo Peterson, the former proprietor of the frame ship, once said to his six-year-old daughter Leila as he patted her head to comfort her – using exactly the same hand which, the night before, had tossed his daughter’s seven kittens into a sack and drowned them in the creek behind the house. Leila, whose father had just given her a big ice-cream cone, noticed something bitter mixed in with the taste of the ice cream. Five years later her father came to get her from her aunts house and drove her down to the forest lake where he bought her the biggest cone the ice-cream stand had to offer. Then he said, ‘God came last night to get your mother,’ thus imparting to his daughter not only a great sorrow but also an unremitting loating for God and sweets.

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Above is from within Angkor Wat, and below are some views from Angkor Thom.

I came to Cambodia to see these heads. They exist within an ancient Khmer city, dating from the 12th century, and roughly nine square miles in size. The faces themselves are taller than the average person, and there are hundreds of them.

And folks, if there was any lasting question of whether size matters? It does. These great stone faces are powerful presences indeed. And calming. Each are different and they vary slightly in size as well. They often faced in four directions on the top of a tower, and not necessarily in a symmetrical fashion. They were sometimes far above and sometimes at eye level.

Tati’s Playtime: astonished and bored

My favourite Tati film over time has been Hulot’s Holiday. Even that work I found utterly unique in the history of film. It’s singular version of the silent film but with everyday sounds but no dialogue, its almost anthropological approach to the material and though there is a main character, the true sense of community on film.

Playtime takes it a step further. This film which took 10 years to make and bankrupted Tati takes film into a further democratic realm in that Hulot becomes not only a minor character but is subverted by his many doubles throughout the film. It is, as someone once said, a glimpse of how film might have developed on another planet.

There are practically no closeups and though there is some direction to the viewer, and the camera does move, it is constructed in such a way that you decide what to pay attention to. It has also been said that it is a film that you must see many times to fully appreciate it. And the composition is a joy.

But how can it be, even as I am overwhelmed by the sheer genius of the film, of its singularity in a medium distinguished by its lack of originality, of its meditative depth and beauty, and even with the knowledge of the trials behind the making of the film, how is it that I still find myself bored here and there.

Usually if I find myself bored in a film I blame the maker but this is a case where I blame myself, and I blame modernity.

I find that even as I appreciate a long slow entrance to a novel (as many of John Irvings or of Mervyn Pearce), or a slow paced film (such as Barry Lyndon), and even as I am feel that this is the real stuff, works that actually demand not only thought but challenge their media, I am looking at the clock, using the fast forward, flipping ahead or just scanning quicker in anticipation of a change.

I say this as a lover of the Tarantinos and high octane thrillers. I know that these greater works actually add something to my life, and that if I could somehow return to a time (like the time when I was in film studies, when I actually enjoyed classic fiction) where these could better compete with the other fare, I would be a more satisfied human being.

The culture has ruined me.

It has made me more of an art consumer than an art appreciator. I want to be more like the traffic in Playtime. The cars move slowly in the film, as if in a dream, and I was wondering after, what if we had developed just a little differently, and we drove leisurely instead of like madmen. What if we were strolling on wheels.

Unconnected readings and ruminations..

eye of horse

1. FemiNoshing: Why can’t even female TV cooks be fat?

via Sirens

Not a long post but a great question.

2. The Death of Macho Manly men have been running the world forever. But the Great Recession is changing all that, and it will alter the course of history.

via Foreign Policy

As the crisis unfolds, it will increasingly play out in the realm of power politics. Consider the electoral responses to this global catastrophe that are starting to take shape. When Iceland’s economy imploded, the country’s voters did what no country has done before: Not only did they throw out the all-male elite who oversaw the making of the crisis, they named the world’s first openly lesbian leader as their prime minister. It was, said Halla Tomasdottir, the female head of one of Iceland’s few remaining solvent banks, a perfectly reasonable response to the “penis competition” of male-dominated investment banking. “Ninety-nine percent went to the same school, they drive the same cars, they wear the same suits and they have the same attitudes. They got us into this situation—and they had a lot of fun doing it,” Tomasdottir complained to Der Spiegel. Soon after, tiny, debt-ridden Lithuania took a similar course, electing its first woman president: an experienced economist with a black belt in karate named Dalia Grybauskaite. On the day she won, Vilnius’s leading newspaper bannered this headline: “Lithuania has decided: The country is to be saved by a woman.”

Although not all countries will respond by throwing the male bums out, the backlash is real—and it is global. The great shift of power from males to females is likely to be dramatically accelerated by the economic crisis, as more people realize that the aggressive, risk-seeking behavior that has enabled men to entrench their power—the cult of macho—has now proven destructive and unsustainable in a globalized world.

-I’ve never believed in the moral superiority of either gender however I fully endorse throwing the foxes out of the henhouse. I feel no guilt as a male because I don’t think I even share species with these creatures. These are a special breed even if they represent the logical outcome of unfettered capitalism.

3. Adam Smith was closer to Karl Marx than those showering praise on Smith today

via Links

-Nice reminder to people who forget that Adam Smith placed capitalism within the context of government and controls and was full aware of the natural tendencies of those who play with money rather than work for a living.

4. The last word: Why old dogs are the best dogs

via The Week

What dogs do not have is an abstract sense of fear, or a feeling of injustice or entitlement. They do not see themselves, as we do, as tragic heroes, battling ceaselessly against the merciless onslaught of time. Unlike us, old dogs lack the audacity to mythologize their lives. You’ve got to love them for that.

5. PEOPLE OVER 30 ARE GROWN-UPS, SAYS REPORT

via Daily Mash

Research director Dr Tom Logan said: “When it came to tobacco and alcohol we made the startling discovery that people over 30 were no longer little children who still pissed the bed.

“In fact, not only were they able to read the gigantic warnings on cigarette packets, they were also fully aware that drinking two bottles of Muscadet on an empty stomach could lead to hangovers, half-remembered unpleasantness and chronic liver disease – but they were going to do it anyway because they were adults and it was no-one else’s fucking business.

“When we asked them how they knew these things, they stressed that was also none of our fucking business and that politicians should stop trying to make everyone the same. Or they had seen it on Scrubs.”

Yesterday was the first day of summer…

Recent dvds

When I wasn’t out visiting the horses in the valley this weekend, I watched a few dvds….a few quick comments:

1. Gran Torino

Its often been mentioned and I could not help but notice how dark Clint Eastwood’s film was, and how it made me think of how unrealistically lit most films are. Though his lighting serves the purpose of conveying the hidden depths in character and story, it also adds versimilitude by matching real life lighting, even if at times you wish you could see a little more.  If life were lit like most films, we’d all be wearing sunglasses at night.

Best film of the bunch seen. Funny in places and moving in others. Explores the idea of how you treat people is a lot more important than how you express yourself or how you refer to them. Racial epithets are so ubiquitous in this film that they lose their unwarranted power.

Kind of reminded me slightly of Josey Wales with the companion dog and tobacco spit.

2. Light Sleeper

An old Paul Shrader film which is only half bad and so much of the badness comes from the worst and most obtrusive soundrack ever. Its as if a number of horridly dated music videos (all with Willem Dafoe pensively sitting in the back of a car or walking the street) were strung together with bits of plot.

The film teaches a lesson about how its probably best just not to have any music than to make it so central. This has destroyed many films for me such as Once (loved everything about the film except for the songs), Rachel Getting Married (it may have sparked off my intense dislike of this film to the point where my one favourite line in the film is where one person asks if the interminable noodling of the folksy wedding minstrels can just for once stop playing), or for me the weakest moment in Collateral where my total involvement is jarred by the Chris Cornell “video” in the middle. The thing is that whether music in general is universal or not, we all have pretty strong feelings about what we like, and it is strongest if there is a singer and discernible lyrics, so were I a director, I’d probably stick with instrumentals to stay safe. That being said, if I did make a film I would probably load it up with Pixies tunes.

For an example of the best obtrusive soundtrack I would pick Nicholas Roeg’s Bad Timing.  And for the best single song ever to cap a movie, Beck’s version of Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. (Link here to that song).

3. Seraphim Falls

Great simple cowboy movie with one idea,Liam Neeson chases Pierce Brosnan over the landscape. They are good, and the photography is wonderful but it all comes apart about fifteen minutes from the end where out of nowhere a vision or ghost appears (a mirage I suppose since they are in the desert). Up to that point it has been a realistic film and to introduce this deus ex machina, and a pretty sad one at that, is like forcing you to swill some stagnant bilgewater after a great meal.

In the next couple of days have two films I have not seen in a while, Hombre and Tati’s Playtime, as well as Taken.

Lazy blogger

Need something to read? Head on over to my food blog and join me in an encounter with an entertaining and thoughtful, and utterly original essay about food and sex. Just step this way to Is food the new sex?….

And check out this trailer for Jeremy Piven’s new The Goods; the first scene is one of those wish fulfillment fantasies.

Emperor’s New Photographs

This has been bothering me for some time.

At the moment I read a number of photography blogs.

I unreservedly recommend Exposure Compensation, Kathleen Connolly’s Walk Through Durham County, Sam Javenough’s Daily Dose of Imagery, Lens Culture (sometimes more about photographs than actual images) and The Gate, and Matt O’Sullivan’s The Narrative.  These all exemplify the well composed, often striking, often beautiful image.  I’m kind of biased toward that sort of thing.

And there are two further blogs which are not exactly photo blogs but in the case of the first, English Russia, there are moments of great epic photography, and in the case of the second, Eating Asia, there is photography perfectly suited to its purpose, warm evocation of food, travel and Asian culture.

And then there are File Magazine, Flak Photo and J.M.Colberg’s Conscientious.  Colberg’s was my first from a number of years ago and his column has introduced me to many remarkable photographers.  However I seem to sense a tendency on his part, and in general form the others here towards what I can only call the unremarkable, and sometimes the purposefully unremarkable,  image.

And though I prefer to reproduce great images, for the purposes of this discussion (or rant) I present these taken from those three last sources.

Conscientious 1 and 2

File 1 and 2

Flak 1 and 2

I don’t mean to castigate the actual photographers who most likely have technical skills beyond my own. What I question is their self editing parameters and those of the publishers.

A professional photographer friend opened my eyes to the necessity of light, and of being aware of its nuances. I’m still working on that. His work is landscape and strives towards beauty and singularity. I also strive for that.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that even as a complete novice, I would not consider the above photographs worthy of keeping much less of publishing.

I understand the notion of reducing arts to the elements, of considering beauty a bourgeous notion or a veil but the mundane is already well enough represented in the world. Beauty is all around us and it cries to be reproduced, or drawn out of captures that don’t quite match up to their intentions.

To me, this unveiling of the intrinsic nature of images or reality through discarding beauty, light or symmetry is like saying the only way to truly appreciate food is to dispense with taste and colour, to reduce it to semi-nutritional (and maybe nutrition is a distraction as well) mush, and then and only then will we get it.

I think not. Beauty and light and symmetry are the nuts and bolts. They are the deepest reality.

Various things: photographs, music, books

From Pierre Gonnard: remarkable portraits.

And just today picked up Grizzly Bear’s great new cd. Here is a cut, not the best one on the disc but kind of a creepy odd video.

Also taking turns on the player are the latest from The Bicycles, and some Neil Young after watching a biopic last night, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, still listening to Mother Mother, see below

But really waiting for the new Wilco.

And finally, local songstress Colleen Brown with this atypical, for her, offering.  Kinda retro, a bit Call me angel in the morning, and a little Fatboy Slim. And the video is low rent almost enough to be subversive.

And reading my third book by Martina Cole.  What a find.  I’d seen her books around before but they had those godawful British tabloid bestseller covers that made me think they were basically soap opera.  What I had been missing was one hell of a crime writer.  She is not only as violent and graphic as any of her male peers but her particular twist is that she spends half her time with the partners and families of the criminals and shows the crush and grind there.

Wat Arun

From even further than this picture, like from across the river, this temple appears as if it is carved unadorned stone.

The closer you get the more colourful it becomes, the less “classic”, and for me, the less interesting. I’ve always preferred the old broken stone, time worn ruins; I suspect those beautiful Grecian structures, had I seen them when young and painted (the ruins that is, not me), would have disappointed me.