The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Author: DC (Page 228 of 1086)

Galerie Dennis Cooper presents … Leslie Thornton

 

‘Leslie Thornton has long been considered a pioneer of contemporary media aesthetics, working at the borders and limits of cinema, video and digital media. Such seminal works as her ongoing series Peggy and Fred in Hell (1985- ) operate in the interstices between various media-forms, often using simultaneous, interacting projections of film and video to address both the architectural spaces of media, and the imaginary spaces of the spectator’s involvement. Thornton uses the process of production as an explorative process, a collective endeavor “position(ing) the viewer as an active reader, not a consumer.” She is a contemporary of such fellow explorers as Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman, Gary Hill, Michael Snow, Alan Sondheim and Harun Farocki, all artists who are opening up new spaces for media, re-mapping its boundaries within the projective spaces of the museum or gallery as well as within the public spaces of the cinema, television and internet transmission. Thornton’s career to date has been a unique and unusual one. She was one of the first artists to bridge the boundaries between cinema and video, to explore their complicities and resistances, and to embrace their differences as positive, and even complementary, attributes. Thornton’s complex articulations are both edifying innovations in media form and content and tacit deconstructions of the principles, presumptions and promises of technically reproducible artworks. Her projects are ongoing and provisional, and she had been unafraid to return to, and rework, and rethink, issues, topics, subjects. Her works have had a profound impact, and an enduring influence on an entire generation of media artists, critics and theorists.

‘”Her work found its first location, and inspiration, in what in those times was understood as an ‘avant-garde’ film practice; the quoted term, suspiciously suspended, is rarely invoked in these times, but the rigor, the pure oppositional avowal, and the belief in moving imagery’s electro-shock potential evinced in her work insist on its essence and instincts to be one with those of what now seems undeniable as the classical genius of, first, American, and second, transnational, non-industrial cinema, in the questioning, ransacking mode familiar since having filled one of the spaces left vacant (gaping) after modernism moved away from here.” — Bill Horrigan

‘One of Leslie Thornton’s earliest interests was mathematics, a fascination that was encouraged by her father Gunnar Thornton, a nuclear physicist and engineer, and her grandfather, an electrical engineer. During the Second World War both men had–unbeknownst to each other–worked on the Manhattan Project, the top secret development of the atomic bomb. Gunnar Thornton was one of the youngest scientists working on the project. He had determined, while still a student, that an important new frontier in scientific research was probably well underway, and that it would be his chosen area of research. His professors at Harvard were evasive or noncommittal, but inference and persistence paid off, and Gunnar Thornton was brought into the project early on. His father, Jens Thornton, was the electrical engineer whose task had been to design the electrical plant at Oak Ridge where the methods of refining radioactive materials were developed. It wasn’t until after the cessation of hostilities that the men discovered–through an article in a local Boston newspaper–that they had both been working on the Manhattan Project. “I had always wondered,” remarked a family member, “why, for a couple of years, these two men, who were so passionately involved in science, only talked to each other about sports when they were home, a topic they weren’t even very much interested in.”

‘Perhaps it is within this context that, even as a child, Leslie Thornton began to develop certain insights regarding technology and ethics, language and silence, and a sensitivity and attentiveness to the contradictions, ironies, and ambivalences between localized actions and global events. How was it possible to reconcile the brilliant, gentle man she loved and admired with the revelation of the consequences that ensued in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Both images are true: he, Gunnar, was a man of character and ethics, who believed in the peaceful development of atomic energy, yet whose work had played a role in the shaping of an anxious and dangerous future. Thornton’s dark and magisterial Peggy and Fred in Hell, in its strange divarications between promissory terror and transcendence, might be read as a profound examination of the tropologies of cold-war apocalyptics, the vicissitudes of conflicting narratives, and what one might call a certain paratactics of the image. Peggy and Fred in Hell charts a troubled trajectory between event and mediation, with a profound skepticism throughout concerning the favored foregroundings of technical modernity: photography’s verisimilitude and the index of the photo-chemical trace as guarantor of the real, the consequent presumption of a privileged link to the true and actual, and the promise of recuperability through ever-extenuating forms of technical reproducibility. She finds suspect the naturalization of prosthetic instruments, and the political interests behind certain orders of narratological closure. Thornton has an almost tragic sense of loss, of what is incommensurate in technologies of the image, of the impossibilities and aporias circumscribed by language and in media, a sense of what is profoundly irrecuperable and inconsumable. And a very strange relation to cinema, its histories and practices.

‘Recently Thornton has begun making larger scale installations related to Peggy and Fred in Hell, which she refers to as “environments.” Utilizing fragments from already accomplished sections of this work, mixed with newly produced sections from the 30 hours of archived footage she has shot, and with new or found footage, she has constructed a series of site-specific works. Using multiple screens and transmissions, they are a natural development of Peggy and Fred in Hell, which used simultaneous interacting film video and audio projections, which forgrounded their habitation of specific spaces. In these recent media installations she uses three registers (precisely edited loops of differing durations) which are ‘mixed,’ almost as one would music, producing a resonant three-month-long para-narrative work. The different loops are precisely edited and set to play in a randomized phase pattern so that no repetitions occur between the three registers of images on screen over the course of their exhibition, producing a tacitly self-editing work, an ‘artificial intelligence’ allegorizing itself.

‘Thornton’s exploration of an intermittent episodic structure in Peggy and Fred in Hell, in her site-specific installations, and in The Great Invisible are, in an important sense, one of the most direct articulations of the problematics of media’s artifactuality in confrontation with its forms of transmission, dissemination and distribution. Media’s strange economies, reflecting a globalized and dispersed data-space far different from the traditional projective/consumptive spaces of cinema and television, become an integral axis of Thornton’s formal and conceptual working. Her works are variable, ‘mixed’ and dispersed across time, they punctuate a given architectural space or context, they are permeable and plural, stable within their instabilities. In this they reflect, and engage, a deep substrate of media, one which has always been the case, and which has always been suppressed: that technical reproducibility in and of itself, is both uncontainable and uncontaining, and that, moreover, it becomes, in itself, a structuring principle of subsequent media. As Leslie Thornton is well aware, this does not abnegate what of the world passes through mediation, but inflects and reflects upon that passage in fundamental ways. In this sense her works are also a tacit and critical link between both contemporary digital dataspaces and the tradition of formal, technical, aesthetic, and theoretical innovation within and between media.’ — Thomas Zummer

 

___
Freeze frames












































 

___
Further

Leslie Thornton @ Senses of Cinema
Leslie Thornton @ Video Data Bank
Video: Leslie Thornton works @ Crane.tv
‘Hell Is for Children: ED HALTER ON LESLIE THORNTON’S PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL’
Leslie Thornton’s films on Ubuweb
‘The Kaleidoscopic Visions of Leslie Thornton’
‘Leslie Thornton by Feliz Lucia Molina’
‘ARTIST IN FOCUS: Leslie Thornton’
Leslie Thornton’s movies on MUBI
‘Leslie Thornton. Aesthetics of uncertainty’
Leslie Thornton @ Strictly Film School
‘Constant Discovery: Leslie Thornton’s ‘Radical Symmetry’’
‘horror film 1: shanghai blue’, by Leslie Thornton
‘For the Hell of It’
‘Worn Story’, by Leslie Thornton

 

___
Extras


Leslie Thornton. Looking and Seeing: “I Like to Watch”. 2012


Midnight Moment May 2014: Leslie Thornton, Binocular Menagerie


Serpentine Galleries Park Nights 2013: Leslie Thornton & James Richards


Cognac Wellerlane interviews Artist Leslie Thornton at Winkleman Gallery

 

_____
Interview

 

Irene Borger: I’ll begin with a quote from you, Leslie. “My own interest is in the outer edge of narrative where we are at the beginning of something else.” What led you, at this time as an art maker, to de-stabilize the narrative?

Leslie Thornton: That grew out of a kind of dislocation for me. The way language works has been a life-long preoccupation, starting in childhood when I was painfully shy and had trouble speaking. The kind of extreme self-focus of shyness, the kind of analysis and appraisal that is nearly constant, and in a way objectifies language, even for a child. Language is something outside. Speech was like an object, an enemy, a barrier. It was externalized. Language was overwhelming, inadequate to describe or convey many things – I had a basic sense of this in childhood. Much later, when I began to study linguistics and also semiotics, I found an intellectualization of something I had already been struggling with – the point being that I didn’t get there through a predominantly intellectual process. Then came more complicated questions about culture and language, how culture is embedded in language. Which led – it’s not a linear process exactly – to concerns about the dynamic nature of any one culture and cultural proximities and crossing-over, change. I think my own estrangement from speech has very much shaped all of my work, and may account for some of its qualities, because it’s deeply rooted emotionally for me.

IB: I’m stuck on this phrase: “to de-stabilize the narrative”. To even question form in the way that you’re interested in is unnerving because it questions a core of the way we learn to think. The reason that [divergence] is so threatening to people is because it doesn’t operate according to the conventional structures or habits of the mind.

LT: Yes, culture as narrative. The mind as narrative. Narrative reflects specific cultural presumptions. Recognizing that, one can’t help but think: then there must be other possibilities for narrative – reflecting other times and places and agendas, past, present, and future. I’m not capable of an involvement in the dominant forms of narrative in cinema, for instance. To study, it feels oppressive and limiting. I choose to be engaged on another, perhaps more critical and intuitive side. But on this other side, there’s a potential for ecstasy that I don’t think you find in conventional forms.

IB: Why is it that ecstasy becomes possible?

LT: It is probably the case that thought is largely structured like language. But, there is a kind of thinking outside of language that can surface sometimes, especially in art-making, probably in a lot of other arenas as well. Intangible, erotic, intuitive, pre-verbal, but precise. Those moments are extremely pleasurable, frightening, or stimulating.

I’ve been reading and thinking about mysticism lately, because of the film I’m working on, The Great Invisible (2002) [about a 19th century woman, Isabelle Eberhardt, who passes herself off as a man and becomes an exalted Sufi in North Africa]. Every form of mystical practice involves techniques for reaching an ecstatic state. However, couched in religious or philosophical terminology, the process is usually body-related and could involve exhaustion, a lot of repetition, a lot of movement, and music or rhythms. One’s physical and psychic environment becomes de-familiarized. I think I use a related strategy in film to produce a heightened experience. I will work with a familiar trope like suspense, or anticipation, and then just keep pushing that button, without the expected next step or resolution. There is a familiar residue of narrative form. The exciting part is then bringing in other elements that aren’t familiar at all but that are saturating to the viewer.

IB: Like what?

LT: Illogical things, mispronunciations, peculiar combinations of sound and image that are somehow startling, excessive beauty. Working with duration that seems inappropriate. The viewer has to deal with it; it stimulates the mind to cope with boredom, for instance. Generally, in culture these discomforts, stimulations, are blocked out; they are not speakable, packageable, or they are disruptive. The closest to transcendence that we get in pop culture might be violence, the lust for violence.

IB: There are many roots into trance-making but there are two poles, even in meditation practice. One is a saturation, the other is the ascetic. In our culture, you seem to be saying, we just use the mode of over-stimulation.

LT: Probably there are similar things going cognitively at either extreme. I’m interested in boredom. My interest comes out of the experience of the most hardcore structuralist films from the ’60s and ’70s. I think these films often produced profound boredom, which forced you somewhere else. None of the artists or critics would ever say that [laughter] but in a way, watching three hours of the camera whirling around in a barren landscape, as in Snow’s La Règion centrale (1971), you have a profound response, if you commit to stay. You feel you’ve had a life-changing experience. A voluntary experience of boredom. The mind becomes very active. All kinds of images and scenarios begin to play. I think of John Cage too.

IB: I was just thinking of him.

LT: There’s a kind of mystical aspect to this.

IB: Are you saying that in your way of making films you’re very conscious of the experiential aspect for the spectator?

LT: I think that’s my main focus. And, as the stand-in spectator, I have to judge by the intensity of my own responses. It’s a thinking and feeling moment, where the thinking and the feeling – we don’t have a word for it – when they can’t be separated. That’s the moment I’m always looking for. It’s not something that comes back to rational formations or very focused arguments or ideas. It’s about a spreading out, spreading and coagulations, chemical reactions in the work that can produce surprising moments and thoughts for the viewer. It’s also important for me that the work not just be addressed to an “enlightened” or experienced audience. I’m trying to make things that are stimulating to watch at the same time that a critical voice is operating.

IB: If people are not used to looking at structures that differ from the beginning/middle/end of the classical Aristotelian scheme, how could they learn to enter your work?

LT: Seeing things more than once helps. Seeing that there is a kind of pattern or structure across several works. Talking about it. Relaxing. Often the people who are having the most difficulty are my colleagues, and not, let’s say, an audience off the street.

IB: Why?

LT: Conflicting agendas or aesthetics. The crowd that bothers me is the visual artists, the art people who don’t get into this kind of work and say they watch films for entertainment only. And the fine arts system that supports one-liner video installations, but can’t deal with anything more complex. Avant-garde film and video take up similar issues to those in the art world, yet there’s very little acknowledgement of this. The film or video work can be more sophisticated, more developed conceptually, yet media remains the most marginalized of the art forms. It’s an orphan. Because media is associated with entertainment and information systems, it’s not perceived as a formal artistic medium. The apparatus per se is limited by the conventions for its use. Photography went through this stage in the 19th century. Experimental media belongs within the history of art. Photographers fought for recognition. I think media artists haven’t done enough to try to change the system, but they are up against something huge. And now the preoccupation with “new” technologies – that has really become the bandwagon. It will take a long time to sort out what’s of value here.

 

______
Show

Ground, 2020
Ground was filmed during Leslie Thornton’s residencies at Caltech (California Institute of Technology) and CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), layered atop scenes of a sprawling LA. The voice of a scientist – his body reduced to frequency lines – theatrically narrates his lifelong work at the station. The video centers around his mode of address and the increasing presence of technology in shaping and organizing human thought and perception. An ever-more anxious society is one of the invisible and omnipresent effects of this rapid takeover, countered by the gargantuan machinery that operates technologies. Thornton traces the duality in human advancement and knowledge creation with the inherent disruptive effects on human existence itself.’


Excerpt

 

Cut from Liquid to Snake, 2018
‘Thornton evokes the instability that humankind acts upon through a combination of several voices – from cold to melancholic to anxious – all at textural odds with one another. An entry point into the work is the artist’s metaphorical use of the Higgs Boson, first encountered during her recent residency at CERN.’

Watch an excerpt here

 

They Were Just People, 2016
They Were Just People is a broad homage to Bruce Conners’ work Crossroads, using an archival recording of an eyewitness account of the atomic bomb dropping on Hiroshima during WWII.’


Excerpt

 

w/ James Richards Crossing, 2016
‘Richards and Thornton’s collaborative video, Crossing (2016), alludes to Conner’s film in its title. It is collaged from footage the artists had shot but not yet used. The crossings in the work are the intersections in meaning that emerge where their sensibilities overlap. The work is built from ordinary or innocuous images that together obliquely evoke some danger: solarized footage of ants and bodies, tight close-ups of scaly animals, digital kaleidoscope effects.’


Excerpt

 

Binocular Menagerie, 2014
‘In Binocular Menagerie, Thornton plays with vision, perception and transformation. A series of images of animals—a virtual menagerie of birds, reptiles and mammals—is framed within a format of two circular windows. Each animal’s movements on the left are remapped into an elegant abstraction on the right, transforming the “real” into a digital kaleidoscope. In this unexpectedly profound meditation on the minutiae of perception, the smallest shift in the animal’s movement ripples into resonant motion, multiplied, recast, and folded back upon itself. Thornton’s manipulations intensify the viewer’s focus, offering revelatory ways of seeing and perceiving the ordinary that are both strange and beautiful. Binocular Menagerie premiered as part of the 2014 Midnight Moment Series, a project of Times Square Arts and Times Square Alliance, in which an artist’s work takes over the giant LED billboards in the heart of New York’s Times Square every night for a month, just before midnight.’


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

LUNA Trance, 2013
‘”Coined the “Eiffel Tower of Brooklyn,” the legendary Parachute Jump at Coney Island was built in 1939 for the World’s Fair in Queens. In a moving image triptych exploring nature and technology, memory and place, Thornton follows swarming seagulls through three iterations of the same image to her imaginary space—a whole new universe, she’s said, that’s much different from the world we live in.” – Artsy. LUNA is based on a single image of the decommissioned Parachute Jump in Coney Island, with seagulls swarming the structure. The iconic image is digitally re-processed to embody different eras of cinematic and televisual imagery, beginning in 1900 and leading into our present. The artifice of the digital image is accompanied, haunted, by actual (authentic) archival sound recordings spanning the same period, beginning with early Edison recordings. LUNA moves through six variations on a theme, in poetic traces that cross the span of a century.’


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

The Last Time I Saw Ron, 1994
‘Made in memory of the actor and my friend, Ron Vawter. Ron passed away shortly after the opening performances of the play “Philoktetes Variations,” directed by Jan Ritsema and co-authored by Ritsema and Vawter. It was produced by the Kaaitheater in Brussels. All of the images in this video were originally created for the play.’

 

Strange Space, 1994
‘Thornton asks viewers to question how one sees “space”—whether literally or figuratively— and what is being revealed? Images of a sonogram session grant viewers access to what is typically reserved for medical analysis—“inner space.” The body, probed and revealed through technology, is collaged with imagery from lunar probes, drawing parallels with how technology also allows us to see where we were previously unable—“outer space.” A poem by Rilke about the interior quality of thought is contrasted with the clinical voice accompanying the images.’

 

Photography is Easy – Version 2, 2010
‘In the ongoing project Photography is Easy, Thornton continues her investigation of the production of meaning through media such as photography, film and video. Thornton and a companion are seen hiking through a desert, photographing and recording the journey. Shots of desert landscapes are overlaid with the artist’s running commentary and text about Thornton’s experience of making a photograph. Questioning the value of the rarified image, Thornton investigates the porous boundaries between the still and the moving image.’

Watch it here

 

Novel City, 2008
‘In her new work, Thornton confronts the economic and cultural transformation of contemporary China, evoking a new spectacle of capitalism run amok. Thornton shoots from her window of the Jin Jiang Hotel in Shanghai, the site of Mao’s 1972 meeting with Nixon, and projects images from the earlier movie, creating a layered landscape of alienation and dislocation.’

Watch it here

 

Peggy and Fred Go to Kansas, 1989
‘Peggy and Fred, sole inhabitants of post-apocalyptic Earth, weather a prairie twister and scavenge for sense and sustenance amid the ruined devices of a ghosted culture. The improvised and playful dialogue of the children provides a key to understanding the tape; their distracted sense of make-believe floats between realities, between acting their parts and doing what they want—patching together identities that, like fidgeting children, refuse to stand still.’

Watch it here

 

Dung Smoke Enters the Palace, 1989
‘An anti-narrative adventure traveling through a phantasmagoric environment void of stability. The video presents a bizarre compendium of archival and industrial footage accompanied by a noisy soundtrack of music and voices from the past, as if echoing the ether of the viewer’s mind. Thornton’s distinctive visual style of collaging random elements elicits an eerie sense of being lost amidst past and present, breeding a confusion that complicates any clear reading of the image.’ — Video Data Bank

Watch an excerpt here

 

There Was an Unseen Cloud Moving, 1988
‘Isabelle Eberhardt, born in 1877 in Geneva, died in 1904 in Algeria, while she was visiting the Maghreb disguised as a man. She related her journeys in numerous writings published after her death. Several of Leslie Thornton’s projects are based on the surprising career of this explorer. There Was An Unseen Cloud Moving is the first sequence based on this research. Her interest in this historical figure is part of the overall questioning of gender issues in her work and the role of women in society, as well as on the emergence of modernity and the notion of documentation that resulted from it, in the form of photographs, films and other media. The film uses fragments, forming a collage of reconstitutions of various actresses playing the heroine, archives from the era, but also press photographs, documents, extracts from films and so on. By presenting interventions of several actors playing the same character, the spectator is directly confronted with the problematics of representation. The different faces of the actors are superimposed, destroying the identification mechanism inherent to the film, which obliterates the actor in favour of the character. This multiple portrait reveals a flaw in the possibility of a reconstitution, both on the historical and the personal level.’ — New Media

Watch an excerpt here

 

Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue, 1985
Peggy And Fred In Hell is one of the strangest cinematic artifacts of the last 20 years, revealing the abuses of history and innocence in the face of catastrophe, as it chronicles two small children journeying through a post-apocalyptic landscape to create their own world. Breaking genre restrictions, Thornton uses improvisation, planted quotes, archival footage and formless timeframes to confront the viewer’s preconceptions of cause and effect. “At its most distinctive, as in the endless and eternal Peggy And Fred In Hell cycle, Thornton’s work wanders past the medium’s limits and finds the medium’s origins.” —Bill Horrigan, Wexner Center’ — collaged


Excerpt


Select scenes

 

Jennifer, Where Are You?, 1981
Jennifer, Where Are You? is structured by a speech-act, a constant proleptic call, a man’s voice which has been edited and recut into a repetitive and pervasive presence. The insistence of this male voice, which repeats the phrase “Jennifer! Where are you?” every 30 seconds, parodies the authority conceded to voice-overs in the cinema. The voice is patriarchal, relentless, and runs the entire length of the film. Cut-aways to a small girl, glancing at the camera as she plays with lipstick and matches, reapportion the relation between patriarchal phonocentrism and masculine gaze. But is this small child subject to either? No. Not really. There she is, hiding in plain sight–ours, not ‘his’–a ‘purloined subject’ successfully evading subjugation through response or acquiescence. ‘Jennifer,’ whoever she might be (a cipher, a pseudonymous textual marker of gendered cinematic presence) is never apprehended, and the film, for all of its suspense, simply ends.’


Excerpt

 

X-TRACTS, 1975
‘This was my first 16mm film, made with Desmond Horsfield. For the image we created a gridded score of movements, both within the frame (‘subject moves right to left’) and between the camera and the subject (zooms, pans, tilts…,) using this as a shooting script. The sound was derived from an old journal, read out loud and then cut-up into the same units of time as the image, ranging from 3 seconds to 1/4 second. Assembling the material was largely mechanical, following the predetermined score. That a tonal portrait of a person emerges was an after effect; we thought of the film as a structural or indexical system of sound/image relations, and viewed the soundtrack as a linguistic experiment, working with the building blocks of speech.’


Excerpt

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yes, fingers very crossed about the festivals, and thank you. I know, ‘I caved’. So good. I envied whoever wrote it, I mean, um, for his linguistic skills. I fear love may not triumph over nature in this case based on the speed with which the sky is heating up already this morning. Alas. Ooh, nice love like a mobius strip. Love upgrading the crappy seats I had no choice but to just buy for a Playboy Carti concert, G. ** David Ehrenstein, I have many Ozu faves, but ‘Late Spring’ is my #1. ** Tosh Berman, Yep, yep, and yep again. ** Misanthrope, Don’t count out those crazy talented young’ns who sometimes burst through the pack at these kinds of things. Yeah, our week is going be a hottie too. The last desperate burst from a generally pretty friendly summer, oh well. So did Lil D’s attentive tennis match observing magically turn him in to one of those crazy talented young’ns? ** Steve Erickson, No matter what, I’m just happy that Korine is back to causing trouble again. Fuck knows indie film du jour desperately needs that. Heat wave here too, but no air conditioning to save me. ** Nick., Hi, N. Awesome: your weekend’s mysterious upbeatness. Mine was just work and not work. Last night I had a big bowl of rice with mushroom sauce and shredded tofu and some scrambled up veggies and a couple of crumbled falafels mixed in. Not bad. A little boring though, it’s true. ** John Newton, Hi. I’m sure I’ll be sharing our film’s ups ands downs here seeing as how the film in my entire life for the next while. I don’t know Cruz de Malta yerba mate, but I’ll see what it is. Sounds pretty up my alley. Interesting post-college sojourn you had there. As I’ve said, I’ve never had an actual real job. I started doing journalism and record/movie/book reviews in high school, and that was my low income for a long time. Best of luck with the taxes thing. I’m miserable at taxes and always years behind and in trouble. ** ellie, Hi! My favorite is actually ‘Late Spring’, strangely enough. His films are difficult, at least in the sense that they’re very, very what they are, and you have to either sort of surrender to his style or not. As you may know, most of his films are shot from the prayer position — that is, he has the cameraperson sit on the floor in a prayer position and shoot everything from there. That gives his films a very particular quality. I don’t think you did tell me that about the publishing house. You read French?Envy/guilt. It sounds kind of okay really, the gig. Where’s the link? Sorry, I don’t understand. I’d love to see the piece. Films are very hard to make, at least when you’re used to writing novels like me. When it will show depends on things that are out of our control. Initially, which if any festival accepts it. That’s what starts the ball rolling. Thanks, ellie! Have a swell today. ** Zak, I think Ozu is pretty available DVD/Bluray-wise in France, but I’m not 100% sure. Thanks about the financial woes. Yeah, it’s very fucked. We’re soldiering on as best we can. Doing a Crowdfunding thing is sort of a last ditch. If we don’t get one of the grants we applied for, we’ll have no choice. But I really don’t want to, and neither Zac nor I are social media/self-promoting types at all, so it’s not a good fit. Maybe we will, but I hope not. Of course it’s great you’re back in the publishing saddle. And I’m curious to see your films. Are any of them seeable? There are a number of very good experimental film festivals. The one based in Paris, Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris, is excellent. I’ve seen great things there. Warmest of the warm to you, man. ** _Black_Acrylic, ‘Tokyo Story’ is his most famous film, and it’s really great, so you won’t start wrong if you start there. He’s the kind of filmmaker, like Bresson, where if you watch one of his films, you’ll know whether you want to go further because his films are all in kind of the same style/register. ** Sypha, Hi, J. Thanks for checking in from out there in nature. I just restored an old post of yours that’ll pop up here not next Saturday but the following one. I’ll let you be surprised. Eek: the locals, or that one at least. I figured you’d hit the mini-golf course. Sigh, plaintive sigh. Congrats on the hole in 1! Yeah, the mini-golf courses over here are so pathetic I don’t even bother. I’m hanging in there, or, well, in here, I guess. Have a continuing blast! ** Corey Heiferman, Hey, Corey. Weirdly, I remember that ‘TS’ scene too. Huh. I never check a bag when I travel unless it’s an extreme emergency. I just wear the few clothes I have much longer than I should. Yeah, you probably know that Frankfurt is not physically pretty whatsoever. It was bombed in the war, and it was not rebuilt in a beautiful way. But there’s stuff there. I met Amy Halpern once or twice, and it was memorable, yes, and I like her work. That sounds really, really fun, man. ** Cody Goodnight, Hi, Cody. I’m ok. I had a day off from editing and am slightly raring to go again today. ‘Late Spring’ is my favorite. It’s hard to go wrong with him. I wouldn’t start with the very earliest ones, is all. It took him a few films to find his style, sort of like Bresson. I’m fond of ‘King of the Hill’ too. I never could get into ‘Futurama’. I know a lot of people who love it though. I know Pharaoh Sanders’ work, but I’m not sure if I know that particular album. I’ll find out. I saw him play live once. It was great, of course. I hope Monday is beginning on a high note for you. ** Right. Today I present a galerie show of works by the awesome media/video artist and filmmaker Leslie Thornton that I hope you will find to be of interest, naturally. See you tomorrow.

Yasujirō Ozu Day *

* (restored/expanded)

 

‘What everybody notices first in Ozu is the visual form. He apparently decided at the very beginning of his filmmaking career to adopt his own cinematic language, an idiolect that is both conservative and radical.

‘It is conservative because the choices within his system are severely limited and because in some respects it is just a purification of the standard continuity system. Each scene follows the standard pattern: in, out, repeat if necessary. The scene begins with a long shot that establishes the characters, then moves into medium close-ups. If it is a lengthy scene, it will cut to the long establishing shot again and then back to the close-ups. At the end, it will return to the long shot.

‘The average shot length in his films adheres closely to the norms that prevailed in Japan and Hollywood, and Ozu keeps the duration of the shots within a film remarkably consistent: there are no long takes and very few noticeably quick shots. Most of the cuts are ‘return cuts’, to borrow Klaus Wyborny’s term – that is, they return to a shot already shown.

‘It has been written that Ozu pared down this system further by gradually eliminating camera movement, fades, and dissolves, but these figures appeared only exceptionally even in his first films. From this description an Ozu film might seem like a highly conventionalised TV series, such as Dragnet.

‘But he does everything wrong; he breaks every rule of conventional cinematic grammar. He always puts the camera too low, but he doesn’t angle it up, so the subject of the shot always occupies the top of the frame. The eye-line matches are always wrong.

‘A fundamental rule of standard continuity requires that the camera always stay on one side of an axis created by the actors’ gazes. Thus the camera may not be moved 180 degrees from one set-up to another; it must always stay within a semi-circle on one side of the axis.

‘Ozu doesn’t simply violate this rule, he overturns it: every cut crosses the axis of the gaze. Every cut is a multiple of 45 degrees, most often 180 degrees (especially when he cuts on an action match) or 90 degrees. The standard continuity system was developed to make cuts invisible, to the conscious mind at least. Ozu denaturalises the cuts, making them as noticeable as possible.

‘Then there are the shots of ‘empty spaces’: still lifes, unpeopled interiors, building facades and landscapes. They are Ozu’s trademark, the one part of his system that has been adapted by modern European and Asian filmmakers, and they have given his interpreters a great deal of trouble when they try to assign them a meaning.

‘In his essential book on Ozu, David Bordwell calls these empty spaces “intermediate” because these shots generally occur between scenes (although sometimes as cutaways within scenes). But they are not establishing shots, although some shots in a series may serve that function. They have an autonomy that led Noël Burch to call them extradiegetic, that is “on another plane of reality”, although they exist in the same space as the characters. Perhaps it suffices to define them simply by the absence of the characters and the suspension of the narrative.’ — Thom Andersen, Bfi

 

______
Tributes


Aki Kaurismaki on Ozu


Claire Denis on Ozu


Wim Wenders on Ozu


Hou Hsiao-hsien on Ozu


Stanley Kwan on Ozu

 

__________
Documentaries


OZU Yasujiro Story / 小津安二郎物語 #1


Video Footage of Yasujiro Ozu


Yasujirô Ozu – The Depth of Simplicity


Wes Anderson & Yasujiro Ozu: A Visual Essay


Visiting Ozu’s grave

 

___
Stills





























































































 

______________
Japanese actor Ryu Chishu remembers his great mentor

‘As I entered the film world in 1925 and Mr. Ozu became a director in 1927, I was given chances to appear in almost all his films, except The Beauty’s Sorrow (1931), a silent film, and What Did the Lady Forget? (1937), a talkie. For the first few years I was given only bit parts, and it was in 1930 with the film I WasBorn, But… that I played rather an important part for the first time. After that, I was lucky enough to have important parts in five of his pre-war films; and in his other films he never failed to give me the chance to appear in a few shots as a bit-player. After the war, I was cast as leading man in almost all his films.

‘As to Mr. Ozu’s way of direction, he had made up the complete picture in his head before he went on the set, so that all we actors had to do was follow his directions, from the way we lifted and dropped our arms to the way we blinked our eyes. That is, we hadn’t to worry about our acting at all. In a sense, we felt quite at home when we were playing in his pictures. Even if I didn’t know what I was doing and how those shots would be connected in the end, when I looked at the first screening I was often surprised to find my performance far better than I had expected.’

 

______________________
Interview: Donald Richie on Ozu
from Midnight Eye

 

It is now about 50 years since Ozu’s heyday. What relevance do these films still have for today’s generation of viewers worldwide?

Well I think that the strongest appeal of Ozu is, certainly one of the things he was most concerned with, was character. The way he worked, the kind of films that he made – the major interest was people, how they react, how they don’t react. The way he made a film, for example, was that he and his fellow writer Kogo Noda would write the dialogue first, without even knowing who was going to say it. They wanted to create characters out of dialogue. Then they allocated the dialogue to the people who became the characters, and it was only later on that they decided the locations where this should happen. Usually most films are written the other way around: they get the settings and then they put the people in them and then they decide what’s going to be said. Ozu’s films are made completely backwards from that, so consequently there’s a rightness, there’s a logic, there’s an inevitability, there’s a reality about the character. The main thing we feel when we watch an Ozu film for the first time is that we don’t want it to end. We don’t want to leave these people. I’ve heard this from people over and over again. So since this is a universal thing, and since it never gets old-fashioned, and is the same thing we desire and look for in all films, no matter how new or old they are, I think that this is the strongest point. I don’t think anyone in Japanese film could create character as well as Ozu does, and I think that through the characters the films remain alive.

In terms of the aesthetic then, there’s nothing intrinsically Japanese about how the films look…

Certainly not when they were made, no. He was very careful. He hated locations. He liked complete control. Everything was a set. He did it because he wanted control to that extent. I mean when you compare the Ozu script with the Ozu film, there’s no discrepancy. The script is a blueprint. Everything is already decided. There’s not any room for spontaneity, or anything like that. It is going to be done exactly like it was in the script. So consequently he needed it to look as realistic as possible. And so, 1954, ’55, ’56 are there, preserved on the screen exactly as they are, forever. However, we’re now in 2003, and there are no more interiors like that in Japan, and there are no more people who act like that in Japan. The youngsters don’t act like that anymore. So what we have in Ozu appreciation in this country is a retro appreciation, like appreciating Andy Hardy or Doris Day or something like that. Abroad, it still doesn’t look as exotic as it does to the Japanese. The kids know what it is because they’ve seen pictures, but where they live looks nothing like where the Ozu characters live. They don’t have the tatami anymore, they don’t have fusuma [paper doors]. Today these features of Japanese architecture are not included any more, and so we don’t have that severity. So they can look at an Ozu film as a trip to grandpa’s house.

You have labelled Ozu a “modernist”. One thing that struck me, in terms of modern Japan, the surface details such as the costumes and the iconography seem to have changed, but the internal dynamics of the family are still very consistent with what Ozu was doing …

Remember that when Ozu started making films in the 1920s, this was the time that Europe, and consequently Japan, was becoming interested in the possibilities of the new way of observing, which is much less fussy, much less Victorian, much less Edwardian, stripped down through the age of the century of progress, the new silver bullet train in Chicago, new techniques of air resistance in design. Everything was being streamed down. Art as well, with Art Deco. Art Deco is self-conscious about its own design in the way that Ozu’s films are. Ozu was very fond of Art Deco. If you look at the number of his sets, they are very Art Deco, very modernist in their design.

He didn’t know anything about mainstream modernism, by which I mean James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, all the other people who were doing modernist literature. He knew mainly through what he observed about what came in from Europe and America, the kind of modernism which you could see in Japanese cafés in Ginza.

There’s this idea of cutting down, of restriction, of making things coherent by making them less, an avoidance of any redundancy and this great ability to make the continuity without all the links, leaving the audience the option, or the necessity to do this. In most Ozu pictures, for example, the wedding is left out. This idea of leaving out these links and testing your audience to make the links with you, or build the bridge halfway to you, these are all attributes of modernism as a literary form. And so, for these reasons, plus a tremendous influence of European photography – that is still photography, or art photography – on Ozu who would use these still lives to make something like he’d already seen in photographic magazines, all of this gives a modernist tinge to everything he did. So there are two things; he’s a traditional artist and a traditional aesthetician, because he knew Japanese aesthetics. At the same time he was a real modernist. He used the modernist visual vocabulary, and would very often take the plots of American films. A lot of his best films take their inspiration from films he had seen.

 

_____
Further

A Website Dedicated to Ozu Yasujiro
Missing Ozu
Ozu Teapot blog
Digital Ozu
‘Ozu’s Angry Women’
‘Yasujiro Ozu: an artist of the unhurried world’
Ozu vs. Avatar: This really is what cinema has come down to
Roger Ebert’s ‘Silence is Golden to Ozu’
‘A Great Auteur: Yasujiro Ozu
Ozu @ The Criterion Collection
Ozu @ Senses of Cinema
Ozu @ Strictly Film School
Ozu @ mubi
Ozu @ The Jim Jarmusch Resource Page
Book: David Boardwell’s Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema
Video: ‘Ozu – Color “Pillow Shots”‘
Ozu’s Lost Films
‘The Films of Yasujiro Ozu’
‘A modest extravagance: Four looks at Ozu’

 

_____________________
15 of Yasujirō Ozu’s 53 films

__________________
An Autumn Afternoon (1962)
‘Yasujiro Ozu’s last film, about a middle aged man who gives in to his friends’ urgings to marry off his daughter, has me making associations with, of all people, Howard Hawks. Not only is the theme of individual desire subjected to communal duty typical of both directors, but this film delights in the nuances of human interactions much in the way of Hawks’ late masterpiece RIO BRAVO; both films seem to treat narrative as an afterthought for the sake of exploring and celebrating the ritualized behavior that blossoms when old acquaintances come together. The virtues of Ozu’s artistry may not be appreciated by most people, and even by those who do have trouble explaining his significance. It remains one of the great mysteries of the movies that Ozu’s seemingly light, commercial entertainments can contain such an abundance of human experience, enhanced by an assiduously developed style that demands extended contemplation.’ — alsolikelife


Trailer


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

_____________
Late Autumn (1960)
‘A trio of old buddies intervenes in the affairs of their old college crush, now a recent widow, and her daughter. The daughter won’t marry, afraid to leave her mother alone; the guys attempt to arrange a marriage between one of them and the mother, with near-disastrous results. Ozu’s attentiveness to the pleasure of small moments shared between good friends is at its peak of perfection — as in all his best films, one forgets that they’re following a story and is just “hanging out” with the people onscreen. However, there’s much more to this film than a matchmaking lark — the pleasure that the viewer gets as a fellow matchmaker conspiring among the men gives way to the quiet pain of mother and daughter as they face imminent separation, leading to an ending every bit as heartbreaking as that of LATE SPRING.’ — alsolikelife


Trailer


Excerpt

 

______________
Good Morning (1959)
‘The story, which at times feels incidental, centers around two boys who refuse to speak when their parents refuse to buy a television set. What appears at first to be a lightweight effort is actually a remarkable meditation on human communication in all its forms: the “good mornings” of the title, insidious gossip, fart jokes, hand signals and awkward romantic conversation all figure into the cavalcade of brilliantly rendered interactions between parents, children and nosy neighbors.’ — alsolikelife


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

______________

Equinox Flower (1958)
‘Ozu’s first color feature, following the harsh, pessimistic black-and-white worlds of EARLY SPRING and TOKYO TWILIGHT, returns to the more whimsical disappointments of domestic life, and the use of color adds to the film’s soothing quality and delight in everyday details vibrantly observed, qualities that Ozu would continue to develop in his remaining color films. A father butts heads with his oldest daughter when she refuses to comply with his wish to arrange her marriage. Another quality to this film that Ozu would develop to better effect in his later works is a movement away from overt narrative — things happen in this film in a static, almost incidental manner, which seems to reflect the experience of the father, insisting on things being the same as always, and yet perceiving gradual shifts almost in spite of himself.’ — alsolikelife


the entire film

 

_______________
Tokyo Twilight (1957)
‘A deeply, uncharacteristically dark film, even among other “dark” Ozu films (i.e. A HEN IN THE WIND, EARLY SPRING) that may require a theatrical setting for the viewer to be fully absorbed in the strange, dark textures of the world Ozu presents. I myself was pretty alienated for the first 1/2 hour or so until the wintry chill of the mise-en-scene (brilliantly suggested in the slightly hunched-over postures of the characters) found its way into me instead of keeping me at arm’s length. And from there this story builds in unwavering intensity as it follows a family on a slow slide into dissolution: a passive, judgmental patriarch (played by Chisyu Ryu, subverting his gently accepting persona in a way that is shocking), his elder daughter, a divorcee with a single child (Setsuko Hara, playing brilliantly against type — who’d have thought the sweetest lady in ’50s Japan had such an evil scowl?), and his younger daughter (Ineko Arima, a revelation), secretly pregnant and searching for her boyfriend, get a major shakeup when their absent mother, who the father had told them was long dead, re-enters their lives. A masterpiece, without question, one that throws all of Ozu’s depictions of modern society in a beautifully devastating new light.’ — alsolikelife


Excerpt


The entire film

 

____________
Early Spring (1956)
‘Ozu’s longest feature is a tricky one to read, and quite possibly one of his best works. The running time would indicate some kind of epic statement being made, and Ozu is certainly aiming high by offering a comprehensive examination of how the corporate salaryman mentality has deeply affected the lives of ordinary Japanese people. The film, which centers around a frustrated salaryman, his failing marriage, his dalliance with a younger co-worker and his co-workers increasing concerns, is often solemn and staid but not humorless in the least; in fact I can think of few Ozu films that do a better job of capturing communal ritual in all its highs and lows, which the 2 1/2 hour running time accomodates splendidly. Typical of Ozu, the story moves in a ritualistic pattern through interactions between friends and family, in homes, offices, bars and group outings. There is the recurring instance of a group getting together to eat dinner, often breaking out into song as they celebrate each other’s company — these scenes for me are clearly a highlight of the entire Ozu oeuvre, they shine with spontaneity.’ — alsolikelife


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

____________
Tokyo Story (1953)
‘Each of the three times I’ve seen this film I wonder more if there is a more perfect film out there. My latest viewing once again filled me with a dual apprehension: that this film in its two hour span states everything on my mind that I would want to say in a movie, so that there’s nothing for me to say, my job has been done; and that I still need to say something anyway, but it will have to be in a way that stands apart from this flawless work of human beauty. No one can use the word derivative to describe director Yasujiro Ozu’s style. His way of assembling a slowly unraveling series of carefully selected, unmoving camera shots explores film space in a subtle but powerful way that brings attention to the spaces between people and comments on the physical nature of human interactions. He sets a lofty standard for original, meaningful filmmaking.’ — alsolikelife


Trailer


The entire film

 

_________________________
The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952)
‘An unassuming husband finds the nerve to employ non-violent resistance against his contemptuous wife after hanging out for an evening with a rebellious niece who skipped her own interview with an arranged fiance. I really could have cared less about the story as the characters were so lovingly drawn and their interactions were a joy to listen to, and that’s really where the action is in Ozu movies, the sounds and spaces between people as they repeatedly bump into each other and modify each other’s state of mind in ways both large and small.’ — alsolikelife


The entire film

 

______________
Early Summer (1951)
‘I can attest that not only are no two Ozu movies the same, but that each marks a notable development along the continuum of one of the most formidable artistic visions in film. This mid-career masterpiece is no exception — its unique qualities lie partly in its assiduous exploration of interior space in an ingenious opening sequence, beautifully capturing the rhythms and choreography of a family household as they go about their morning routine. It’s no wonder that this is the favorite Ozu movie of formalist film scholar than David Bordwell — Ozu frames and re-frames his compositions, reinventing spaces with each cut and shot, turning an ordinary house into a cinematic funhouse — only PLAYTIME, IVAN THE TERRIBLE and LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD have offered similar wonders as far as I’m concerned. Neither is this style for style’s sake: as we follow the story of how this family is pressured by social convention to marry off their daughter, the inevitable disintegration of this family makes the synchronicity and synergy of that marvelous opening sequence all the more poignant. In between, there is a rich variety of interactions between three generations of families and friends as they meet their fates, individually and collectively, one exquisite, fleeting moment at a time.’ — alsolikelife


Credits


the entire film

 

_____________
Late Spring (1949)
Late Spring provided a chance for me to collaborate with Noda Kogo. Not since An Innocent Maid did such an opportunity present itself. If the director and the scriptwriter are always at odds with each, their work relationship is bound to collapse at some point. Say if one were an early to bed, early to rise type, while the other happened to be a night bird, they’d never strike the right balance, and would just let each other down. Whatever Noda, Saito and I did were in sync, even down to when we chose to take a break or have a drink. This was very important as Noda and I tended to think through every line or dialogue together when we wrote the script. Even without discussing details on props or costumes, there was an unspoken rapport between us. There was never a problem of disagreement, even when deciding to use an “oh” or an “ah” (wa or yo) in the dialogue. It was incredible. Naturally, there were times when we clung to our own opinions. After all, we were both rather stubborn and wouldn’t compromise so easily.’ — Ozu Yasujiro


Excerpt


Excerpt


the entire film

 

_______________________
Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947)
‘Ozu’s first film after the War is a moving and highly effective piece whose plea on behalf of the underprivileged feels remarkably akin to what the Italian Neo-Realists were doing contemporaneously. Choko Iida gives a marvelous performance as a dour widow who finds herself in custody of a stoic orphan boy with a nasty bedwetting habit. For much of this film Ozu is at his best, when narrative concerns take a back seat to the unbridled joy of witnessing the rhythms of human interaction with all its quirky mannerisms: you’re no longer following a story, you’re watching life unfold before your eyes. Towards the end, the social agenda upsets this rhythm somewhat, but the last shot of numerous orphans lying about in a playground has a deeply troubling quality that lingers in the memory.’ — alsolikelife


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

__________________________
Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941)
‘The family atmosphere here is similar to that of The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice. For this very reason, I paid special attention to making material love the dominating theme. The final scenes were shot hastily. The company said, “if we don’t wrap up the film today, we will miss the screening schedule.” “Today” actually meant “two hours!”. I had to resort to a long shot to finish up. Although this was not the most ideal way to film, one could not tell from the composition. If everyone got on well and had a good time during production, then I would become fond of that film, irrespective of the end result. In that respect, Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is a work I’m pleased with. I worked with Saburi Shin and Takamine Mieko for the first time. By the standards of those times, it was a classy production which perhaps explains why it become a box office hit and refuted the theory that my films could never sell. Ever since then, my films had started to perform better at the box office.’ — Ozu Yasujiro


The entire film

 

_____________
The Only Son (1936)
‘Ozu enters William Wyler terrain with a somber upscale family drama about a mother and daughter who are shuttled in unwelcome fashion from one family member’s home to another following the death of the family patriarch. The thematic elements of displacement within a family unit anticipate TOKYO STORY — there’s even a bedtime scene between the mother and daughter that echoes one in the later film. There’s a startling lack of music in this film, esp. during Ozu’s normally music-filled transitional shots, that contribute to an overall sense of tense unease that touches on what might have been the general wartime state of mind among Japanese at that time.’ — alsolikelife


The entire film

 

____________________
A Story of Floating Weeds (1934)
‘Remakably similar in structure yet different in tonal effect to Ozu’s more famous 1959 remake, this story of a travelling troupe’s last days in a seaside village was one of Ozu’s first forays into a quiet, rural background, though it still feels brisk compared to the more staid and sumptuous remake. The depictions of stage life are more slapstick-oriented than in the remake (most notably in Tokkan Kozo’s hilarious turn in a full-sized dog costume), but are counterbalanced by sensitive portrayals of all the characters, especially the great, dignified lead performance by Takeshi Sakamoto. The romantic interludes are as powerful as in the remake, though without employing the overt sensuality of on-screen kissing; instead there appears to be the use of a filter or gauze to give the scenes between the young couple an otherworldly effect, which gives more emphasis of the idea of the actress employed to seduce the troupe leader’s son enacting a “performance”.’ — alsolikelife


The entire film

 

__________________
I Was Born, But… (1932)
‘Put in simple terms, this is one of the greatest silent movies ever made. Though the film was intended to be screened with live voice-over by a benshi narrator, this masterpiece works stunningly well without sound, because Ozu’s unparalleled sense of visual rhythm, choreographed movement, and humor keep one’s eyes dancing in delight. The story concerns two boys who fight their way to gain status and respect among the local bullies, only to realize that their father is a bottom-feeder among the adults. As such it’s loaded with acute observations of Japanese society, and not without Ozu’s penchant for subtle but potent criticism. For people who are used to the “slow” Ozu of the 50s, this film will be a revelation, inspiring speculation as to how and why he changed a style that already was exceptional.’ — alsolikelife


Excerpt


Excerpt


the entire film

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Mark, Hi. The French post is notoriously unreliable, I have no idea why. Anyway, I am going to investigate and see what I can come up with. Ha ha, I would obviously be totally down for that Santa event with David. We used to be friends years ago. I like him. I have friends who count Santacon as the single worst human manifestation ever, but I have no idea why. I think there’s some kind of frat boy + alcohol issue. I’m pretty sure Paris doesn’t have a Santacon, but I’ll find out. Santa its not the giant star of Xmas here. Right, the Elgin Marbles scandal. I don’t really see England having a case? Have a swell, very LA weekend, man. ** Zak Ferguson, Well, hello there, Zak! How ultra-nice to have you here. The post-production is proceeding well albeit with enormous financial difficulties. All I’ve been up to is the film. We’re on a deadline right now, so it’s a morning-to-night proposition at the moment. And you? I follow your progress on Facebook, of course, but what have I missed? Huh, I just checked and I haven’t done a Saramago post before. How bizarre. I’ll fix that post-haste. I like his work, yeah. Thanks for the reminder. I’m the wrong person to ask, but, yes, I do suspect that purchasing the new UK edition of ‘Closer’ is a wise move for some reason.  I think the only double books I have in my collection are owning both the hardcover and softcover of a few top priority authors. Thanks a lot, pal. Again, awesome to see you. Respect galore. ** Dominik, Hi!!! My friend showed me an episode of ‘Roar’. Kind of medieval/ fantasy kind of deal, if I remember. I think the only reason one would watch it would be to gawk at the young Ledger if one found him fetching, as I remember. Thanks, yes, that’s basically it with the haunted house section. It’ll take us a couple of months to get right, so we just have to try to give it an attractive seeming bandage at the moment and hope the festivals are swayed. New SCAB! Crazy, yes, great crazy. I could definitely use that. Yay! Oh, yes, that public cutter was interesting, wasn’t he? I had so many questions. Love convincing Nature to change its plans and not give Paris another spell of high heat starting tomorrow because I am really not in the mood, G. ** Tosh Berman, Oh, cool, on the timing. Jeff gets all the credit. Well, maybe the timing is my doing, okay. Lucky lucky lucky you about the Japan trip. As soon as the film is finally locked into place, Zac and I are going to get there one way or another. ** Nick., Hey, Nick.! I’ve gotten reasonably good at sussing out the good natured people after a brief audition, but it’s hard, yeah, because the bad ones make me so curious. I hope your weekend leads you somewhere quite inspired. ** _Black_Acrylic, Holy crap, that’s a remake/remodel there. Do you think the players they’ll replace are suitably expendable? ** Corey Heiferman, Hi, Corey. There is a lot of generically artsy and homoerotic old stuff out there getting overly lionised by ‘good old days’ nostalgists. Safe trip home and then on to Frankfurt. Envy on the experimental film festival. Frankfurt is not the loveliest place in the world, I have to warn you, unless you’re a fan, and those do exist. Thanks about ‘I Wished’, man. No, I’m afraid our post-production problems are just huge problems. The lesson is to be much more careful and discerning about who we work with in the future. But that is a big lesson. Thanks! ** Jeff J, Hi, Jeff. I wondered if you would catch wind of the repost. Thank you, and it seemed to have done the trick again. I was almost sure I had done a Heiner Muller post, but a quick search of my archive says no. Huh. So I’ll make one, fresh. Great idea! Oh, man, I’m so sorry about the stem cells conking out on your elbow. Fucking hell. Yeah, so sorry. But at least you’re still headlong into the novels. I, at least, will take comfort there. The editing is very pell mell at the moment because we need to get the film into viewable shape for a festival deadline in three weeks. The editing goes very well. Everything around it is pure hell. We have no funds to help us find people to put in the special effects and to clean up the sound, etc., which we desperately need to make the film presentable. So we’re doing what we can on our own and basically praying. The producer has gone beyond being mere garbage. He is nuclear waste. His ugliness as a human, not to mention as a ‘producer’, is shocking, not to mention very destructive. But enough about that. I did see ‘Asteroid City’, and I totally loved it. My favorite since ‘Moonrise Kingdom’, I think. Fantastic! Great to see you, and love back, and I think I’m safe in saying Zac sends his love too. ** Steve Erickson, Yes, I read this morning that AGGRO DR1FT got massive walkouts and boos, which only excites me more about it no end. Nice: you on ‘The Mother and the Whore’! Everyone, Steve has written about Jean Eustache’s great, classic film THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE here. Should be a fascinating read. Thanks. I hope your weekend is chill too, should you crave that vibe. ** Cody Goodnight, Hi, Cody. I’m still a bit stressed and burnt, but for very good reasons mostly. Editing is exhausting for sure. I watched ‘Beavis & Butthead’ back when, yes. Didn’t they do a recent revival of it? Did you see it? I’m suspicious. Have the very, very best weekend! ** Okay. I’ve restored an old post about the sublimely great filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu for you. Know his work? I think it’s as great as it gets. See what you think, and I’ll see back on Monday.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2025 DC's

Theme by Anders NorénUp ↑