Now that Caveh Zahedi’s I am a Sex Addict is out of New York, I need to keep reminding myself to continue to go to Zahedi’s blog, which he is keeping up with great posts on any number of topics. Here he is at the Wellington Film festival recounting his thoughts following a meeting with the great Iranian director Jafar Panahi: We are exactly the same age. His English isn’t very good, and my Persian is even worse, so we communicated by means of a translator (note to self: learn Persian). But it was fascinating to hear him talk about […]
Over at Talking Points Memo Cafe, Art Brodsky has a broad-strokes summary of the situation facing the net neutrality bill currently pending in the Senate. Net neutrality is a complicated issue that I’ve been erratic in blogging about, but Brodsky’s piece does bring the issue back down to its core roots. Here’s Brodksy on the political situation: That leads us to the first number today, 60. That’s how many votes Stevens needs to round up before he can bring his bill to the floor. Senate rules require 60 votes to cut off debate on legislation. Otherwise, practically speaking, the bill […]
Over at his blog, Mark K-Punk riffs on Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley books, their filmed versions, and glam — specifically, Roxy Music: Significantly, Highsmith wrote the first Ripley novel in 1955 and only returned to the character in 1970. Tom Ripley was not a character that could fit into the rock and roll era, with its emphasis on teen desire, social disruption and Dionysiac excess. But Ripley’s‘hedonic conservatism’, his snobbery and his facility with masks and disguise, mean that he would be perfectly at home in the Marienbad-like country estate of Glam. If Sixties rock was characterized, on the one hand, […]
Okay, it’s not film related, but… Blog of a Bookslut notes that the new Thomas Pynchon novel, Against the Day, is scheduled to be released by Penguin on December 6. Pynchon himself has penned the description on the book’s Amazon.com page: “Spanning the period between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, […]
Chuck Tryon’s The Chutry Experiment points to an interesting and, if my own behavior is any indication, accurate article in The Wall Street Journal Online on how Netflix is changing people’s DVD viewing habits. Specifically, the article talks about how the service’s easy access to great movies encourages those movies to stay sealed in their little red envelopes unwatched for weeks and even months at a time. From the article: Netflix Inc., which boasts nearly five million members, often trumpets how its all-you-can-eat rental model is changing the way people are watching movies. But Netflix may also be changing the […]
Screenwriting inspiration can come from anywhere, even, if Donald Fagen and Walter Becker can be believed, from their Steely Dan song “Cousin Dupree.” In a letter on their website they ask Luke Wilson to do them a solid by speaking to his brother Owen about a matter that’s on their minds — the storyline of You, Me and Dupree, which they, with tongue partially in cheek (or at least I hope so, otherwise the bit at the end about the Russian bodyguard becomes not so funny), say seems inspired by their song. The lyrics in question: Well I’ve kicked around […]
Some video links for your weekend viewing pleasure. Here’s a link to a rejected (for being too weird) series of jeans commercials by Jean-Luc Godard commissioned by Marithé + François Girbaud’s Closed Jeans. From the amazing Ubu Web comes a a new page devoted to the “Cinema of Transgression,” an underground film movement that flourished in New York during the ’80s. Along with Nick Zedd’s Cinema of Transgression Manifesto you’ll find free downloads and streams of films by Richard Kern, Beth B, Kembra Pfahler, Jon Moritsugu, Tessa Hughes-Freeland and others. (The above two links courtesy of Dennis Cooper’s blog.) A […]
It’s great when one of your favorite directors releases something starring one of your favorite actresses… and you had no idea that it was even in the works! James Ponsoldt just emailed me to tell me about this new Chris Cunningham music video, his first in seven years, which features Samantha Morton. The band is The Horrors, the song is “Sheena is a Parasite,” and, according to Director File (linked above): …the 1.5-minute clip, narrated by lead singer Faris Badwan, stars Samantha Morton as the song’s manic, transmogrifying subject who whips around like a banshee and spews her intestines at […]
For those wanting to cut through the MSM filters to read first-hand experience about life in Lebanon at the moment, The Huffington Post has linked to this blogger map on Truth Laid Bear that identifies all the blogs being posted from Lebanon right now by location.
Brooks Boliek in The Hollywood Reporter reports on a bill being voted on by the Senate that extends the reach of the Justice Department’s 2257 regulations, which we’ve blogged about often, to Hollywood films. Bizarrely dubbed “the Adam Walsh Act” — after the murdered son of America’s Most Wanted‘s John Walsh (what does his death have to do with simulated sex scenes in mainstream films?) — the bill seems to have been severely scaled back from its original drafting. From the piece: The bill potentially reaching the Senate today has been significantly altered to address the concerns of the motion […]