Saturday, July 20, 2013

Finally saw Daisies, whose soundtrack is admired by some in the H-ological milieu.


Tried to work out if the heroine duo are "manic pixie dream girls", but  concluded they're not because of their total lack of interest in their male suitors, whose attentions they spurn and whose desires they frustrate. Unlike with the MPDG they do not figure in the narrative as a fantasy figure / solution-salvation dreamed of, or dreamed up, by a geeky male; they're forces unto themselves....  if anything closer to a certain current in riot grrrl, the "regressive" brat / pottymouth....  cutesy but wanton. Kept thinking of the video for Sonic Youth ("Bull in the Heather"?) that starred Kathleen Hanna prancing around charismatically.

They're also not manic pixie dream girls because of their appetite -- they are constantly shoving food in their gobs, there's a voracious orality that's not the least bit ethereal. The gorgeous gorging reaches a climax with the banquet ravaging / food fight scene, which actually contributed to the movie being banned by the Czech authorities on the grounds of being wasteful of food!





When the girls break into the dining room and discover the feast laid out (presumably for Communist Party dignitaries), I suddenly remembered that the last art-movie I'd borrowed from South Pasadena's most excellent trendy-DVD store Videotheque was La Grand Bouffe, which I'd seen as a student (at Oxford's most excellent Penultimate Picture Palace,, a cineaste education on the cheap for generations of students) and which I had always wanted to re-see.




What a gendered contrast there is between the Bahktin-ian banquet of Daisies and the middle-aged men gourmets / gourmands who decide to kill themselves over the course of a long weekend through over-eating!  Talk about imprisoned by "sad passions"!





Friday, July 12, 2013

shout shout let it all out



"The Shout stars Alan Bates as a mysterious travelling man who invades the lives of a young couple, played by Susannah York and John Hurt. Hurt is a composer, who experiments with sound effects and various electronic sources in his secluded Devon studio."



part one

part two

Thursday, July 4, 2013

サカナクション/僕と花

heard this tune "Boku To Hana" by total accident on the plane back from the UK, someone had left the entertainment system in my seat tuned to the J-Pop channel



know nothing about Sakanaction, but rather liked "Boku" -- okay the chorus does emo out with some generic ascending-notes uplift, but the verse bit has some exquisite playing in a sort of neo-soft-rock / rock-with-a-little-funk-in-it style somewhere between what Ariel P was going for with "Round and Round" and what Daft Punk are going for with "Fragments of Time"