Thursday, February 25, 2010

Slow

The thing I'm translating now is literally so stupid that I can't get through it. I lose my grip and fall off into the Interwebs every other sentence. Gruelling, low-paying, ridiculous shit.

So maybe it's time to write that I saw The Ghost Writer last night, and loved it. The cinematography, the color themes, the grand, classical feel of it, the way the threat was always only implied, the fact that I was actually constantly engaged and kept wondering where the plot was going, the way some bits were included only to build and enhance the mood (the constant phone conversations behind closed doors, the "false alarm"), and how seamlessly they were woven into the general story.

But I think my favorite element was the sense of deliberate containment, as the story unfolded in that isolated island manor*. I felt as I were watching some sort of intricate clockwork ballet, with various players fading in and out of the center stage spotlight in ever more intriguing configurations.

Oh, and they actually used the International Criminal Court as a plot device! The international law nerd in me rejoiced.

* I actually tried to find one of the shots showing the study, because they were so exquisitely framed, but no luck

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

When it falls

So yeah, not really of use in any sense that matters, but when it comes to party tricks I'm a very deft monkey indeed.

The Scotsman appeared out of the blue saying he's visiting Poland with his boyfriend and asking if I could maybe show them around Warsaw. I was ready to reply that I'd love to, except I'm having a nuclear charge detonated in my eyeball around that time, but it turns out I'll be in Wroclaw then anyway. Still, the mind boggles.

I think the hardest part is being stuck with the thought that you could have somehow done more. As for the other 54 hard parts, I imagine I'll get acquainted with them pretty well in the coming weeks. Hey, maybe I still have the roadmap lying around somewhere.



Also: The Hurt Locker was somewhat underwhelming.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Memento Whori

I never expected cliches to start crawling out of the woodwork so soon, and yet here they are, in all their prosaic hilarity. I guess all I can do is laugh and be thankful. God knows I need all the reality checks I can get.

I like to think so too.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Parenthesis

I finally watched Up in the Air last night. At first I felt it was another case of a movie not really living up to my inflated expectations. I wasn't bored while watching it. I liked the structure - how the city names, popping up randomly at first, became gradually infused with meaning, providing a nice dose of foreshadowing. The dialogue is really good, with a few choice sit-back-and-go-huh moments. There was even a scene with some serious emotional impact (when the girl has to do the remote sacking for the first time), and I really liked the ending, but it seemed like the movie as a whole didn't quite connect with me.

The scene I mentioned before actually seems exemplary of that - it's well crafted, there's real substance there, but the "message" somehow gets underdelivered at the last moment, that final hammer stroke just glancing the nail. And I'm not sure if that wasn't intentional.

The thing is: when I sat down to pick out a screencap to go with this post, and flicked through the whole thing all over again, I found myself pausing and going "oh, this bit was actually good..." at almost every scene.  Which leads me to believe that if I had let it set and wrote this note in a week's, or a month's time, possibly after a second viewing, I might have gushed. Then again, I might have not.


Tonight, most people will be welcomed home by jumping dogs and screaming kids. Their spouses will ask about their day, and tonight they'll sleep. The stars will wheel forth from their daytime hiding places. And one of those lights, slightly brighter than the rest, will be my wingtip, passing over.

Idoru

I've never fully embraced the whole Gaga phenomenon. I find her utterly hilarious at times, was somewhat content to learn that she seems to be very articulate and thoughtful, and for a few weeks I couldn't get Paparazzi out of my head, but that's about it. Enter this performance:



I'm still not sold on the music, and I suspect I might never be. But the truth is, I was completely hypnotized, especially during the 2nd part. It's like a scene taken straight out of The 5th Element, or some other over-stylized vision of the future. So completely otherworldly and performance-oriented... It's like she fast-forwarded a couple of hundred years and reached a point where showmanship is the substance.

I'm not saying there weren't great performers before her, that she's one of a kind, or anything like that. I'm not making any universal claims. But try watching the 2nd part of that clip and imagining the darkness beyond the stage is filled with extatic aliens. Wasn't difficult, was it?

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Dead ends

My kingdom for an anonymous, hermetic, or at least dedicated landfill.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Credo

It was a week filled with the sound of tethers snapping and fans getting pulverized by fecal meteorites. I sat down a couple of times to chronicle it, even if only in obfuspeak, but then remembered a handful of people still actually read this thing.

You can't change me. I'm a gypsy. I'm a seacow. I know these motorboats are going to hit me, but THIS IS WHERE I FUCKING SWIM.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Mortar

The curse of Brick persists. First I bought a DVD without English subtitles (which makes the film all but impossible to decipher for non-native speakers), then I got the US version with subtitles but lent it to someone and have been unable to recover it since, and now I ordered another copy from Amazon and the package got lost in the mail.

In other news - apparently handsome nerds attract Asian spambots. Hence the deleted comments 2 notes down.

Trying to muster up the will to go out and:
a) buy a new USB storage thingie, as I've lost mine yet again
b) buy some... air in a can, I guess. My DVD drives have completely stopped reading CDs and DVDs and I was told it could just be the lens getting dusty
c) collect my Florence and the Machine tickets
d) grab some DVDs for work

It's not going well, mostly because Zlote Tarasy irk me.

Oh - for some reason blogger started treating breaks (hitting the Return/Enter key) as starting a new paragraph. In other words, hitting it now results in a BRACKETpBRACKET, as opposed to BRACKETbrBRACKET*, which is really annoying. I basically have to micro-manage the editing in HTML as I write. Anyone know if there's a way to fix this?

* no idea how to write this thing so that it doesn't get interpreted as code

Disappeal

This winter is wreaking havoc on my housekeeping regime. I have to clean the floor at least once every THREE DAYS, and it's taking its toll, people. Snow begone.

My parents had to take on a lodger (cashflow problems), and it's a Russian physicist lady from the Ural. No joke. She only moved in yesterday, but mom says she's really nice and quiet, so hopefully it won't be too weird. They both seem in good spirits, but chemo's starting to take a toll on dad. Theoretically he's only got two sessions left. I really hope they leave it at that.

As for me... I'm watching the world in powersaver mode, feeling a bit like some kind of petty princeling, plucking randomly at strings of power that isn't even mine to give up. It also happens to offer absolutely no protection from errant Thurn und Taxis moments, which sting as much as they ever did. So yeah, fading fast.

There's work, there's films, there's the Angel finale, but unfortunately, there's absolutely no will to continue writing this thing. Maybe later.