Did not see Pynchon in the trailer, ...

Didn't see Pynchon in the trailer, ...











Mwah, ...

I am currently rereading

Thomas Pynchon's novel, Inherent Vice.  And, the book is even better the second go around.  I am catching more of the puns and jokes, I guess.

I am checking that book out again because PT Anderson is making a film of the novel, the first film ever of a Pynchon book.  The film debuts tomorrow in New York City at the New York Film Festival.  (It will not get to the rest of us heathens until mid-December.)

I am intrigued and scared for sure.  I respect Anderson's talents as a filmmaker, but I am most certainly not an adoring fan.  I am a besotted Pynchon worshipper, however, so my butt will be firmly planted in to a cinema seat when the film gets to me.  (Even though I am a little worried about Anderson's claim that he was watching movies like Naked Gun and Airplane! for inspiration for this film.)

There was this fantastic NYT article last Sunday, wherein Anderson talks about changing the ending of the book for the film, and working with Pynchon on certain parts of the script! But, the best part of the article is Anderson's fierce dismissal of the notion that Pynchon makes a cameo in the film.

Pynchon is a stone cold genius, for sure.  Here is one of the world's most reclusive and private "celebrities", who has already made two cameos on The Simpsons, both with him being illustrated with a bag over his head, and now, he apparently he is going to do it again in Inherent Vice.

But the genius part is is nobody knows what he looks like.  How will we recognize him? Who on the set knew that Pynchon was actually there.  It could have literally been anybody.

That is just all kinds of brilliance.

xxxoooxxx

This is most def a red letter day for me,

What with Thomas Pynchon's latest novel, Bleeding Edge, being released.  And the new eponymously titled MGMT record released, as well.

One savvy reviewer of the MGMT record even mentioned the word entropy in their review.  He must be like me, seeing the harmonic convergence of these two events on the same day.  And, a Pynchon fan to boot, most likely.

And speaking of reviews, the NYT Bleeding Edge review written by Jonathon Letham is one of the finest reviews I have read in a very long time -- for any type of art.  Letham totally gets Pynchon, but at a distance, and he is not a slobbering fan, or pretentious Pynchon freak like so many others.  Plus, anybody who mentions Hakim Bey and T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone in a review of Pynchon is super fine in my book.

Work sucks today, but these two things will brighten my mood, but double quick!

xxxoooxxx,
Ardent

What a ruddy good little tetralogy you are.

I am about one third through the first Parade's End book; first novel, Some Do Not ... And, at this point my only complaint thus far is the wretched title.  How frickin pretentious can you get, Mr Ford?

But from there on in it is an absolute masterwork.

You Tory genius you!

It is actually a service that I have seen the HBO miniseries first.  The brilliant playwright, Tom Stoppard, has put, in his adaptation for the miniseries, everything in chronological order, whilst still maintaing Ford's faintly surreal, stream of consciousness method of writing, wherein major plot points are ever so barely alluded to, and then forgotten about for scores of pages or so.

Ford's style for these novels is one I am so envious of.  Perhaps I could write like this.  But it is a style so dedicated to precision and discipline that I fear I would not have the muster.

Each roman numeral part of a major section of each novel is dedicated to describing just one short period of time in the current day of the characters involved.  And, then spinning off in to the memory and recollection of each of those characters, forgetting timelines, jutting back and forth, dropping clues forward in time that mean something later (flash forwards! In the Twenties, dangit!) The style envelops you and sucks you in.  Refreshes you, leaves you wanting more.

And, then there is the language.  Strictly, majestically colloquial in dialect, dialogue and prose, yet sumptuous in descriptions of garments, furniture, makeup, landscapes, dales, etc, ... Ford seems to straddle to the greatest effect the worlds between the Victorian novel, and Hemingway or Fitzgerald.

My favorite character so far is the General, though Sylvia is a close second (she just does not give a farthing what anybody thinks or says about her, a supreme contrast to her last Tory husband, who thinks he is like her, but cowers along behind, always doing the right thing, "Yes, Dear.")

The General is so officious, and correct, and indignant, and loud, and well-spoken, and circumspect, and so wrong about every single thing.

(The Wife picked up on this fabulous creation of Ford's while watching episode four of the miniseries, perhaps my favorite.  Episode four was the Apocalypse Now of Parade's End, the episode that best illustrated the surreal madness of stupid wars, i.e. all wars.)

Just fantastic rich stuff, this thick little paperback.

I wonder what Pynchon thinks of these novels, and Ford.

Stoppard, and the Beeb, and HBO, and Cumberbatch, and Hall, have all done us a great service here.

It will be exciting to see how many people on the subway trains, buses, coffee shops, and elsewhere are taking up the book like Nick C and I are.  (Nick just got his copy on his kindle app on his iPad.  Cool.  He is up to page twenty something, just started.)



Mwah, ...

Kubrick, Pynchon, Room 237, etc, ...

There is certainly a shade of eerie Collective Subconscious going on at "room" 223 in Walnut Creek right now.  Is it Halloween? (A holiday I could not give two hoots about.) Is it something in the stars? A Mercury fucking retrograde; that my lover, my life, the fire of my loins; an amateur astrologer herself, might predict with her ephemeris?

The facts are these:  He (MDS) finally posted about The Master, a film made by PT Anderson, a supine adorer of Kubrick's work, which resembled, in parts, some of Pynchon's great novel, Gravity's Rainbow.  Moreover, there were set-ups in Mr Anderson's film that also reminded him (MDS) of Kubrick's work, as well.  (Lolita, Barry Lyndon, etc, ... )

And, the Lonely Boie, I, MDS, discovered through research that PT Anderson's next film would be an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's latest (comic) novel, Inherent Vice.

(Right now, can I say:  My largest problem with PT Anderson is that he is just not fucking funny.  One of the greatest play productions I have ever seen was in college, The Bacchae, which ain't no fucking comedy, but was absolutely hilarious -- presented in an absolutely truthful manner to the period, NOW and THEN -- and was still amusing and tragic at the same time.  Pynchon is, at the heart of it, a comic novelist, perhaps the greatest American novelist of that genre ever.  Pynchon's great play is:  I can do everything, anything.  He is as Prince, or Hendrix; I cover all; I am absolute.)

So, there is your Pynchon connection.

So, then I, Lonely Boy, MDS, was taking a shower, thinking of Halloween, and that I would love to watch The Shining.

(No, MDS was thinking about something else in the shower.  What is up with the bear and the oral sex scene? What is up with Nicholson's over the top performance?)

Kubrick, The Shining consumed my brain.  And, then I fell asleep.

For a couple of days.  I woke up about seventy-two hours ago, early early these things mean something, I went to the porch, and smoked.  High on that, checked out the intertubes, Grantland, Klosterman, his take, on all this.

I do not believe that Kubrick faked the Apollo 11 landing.  I believe that Kubrick gutted The Shining by Stephen King, gutted it to reveal that the moon landing was a fraud.  (The moon landing was NOT faked.)

************
Kubrick and Pynchon, amongst the greatest American artists in history, share the same belief: There is a club of folks really rolling the dice and ruling over us.  You are not a member.  You might mingle with those that are the deciders.  To join the cult, you must pass a test in public, and even that may not be enough to grant you entree.  

Humbert refuses to declaim his love for Lolita.  He is excluded from Qulilty's private, decadent world.  And he suffers by executing his ultimate expression of true love.

Jack Torrence passes the test, yet attempts to kill his family.  Tom Cruise appears to meet the standard, but is brought down by crazy, silly rules.

You may play with us, yet, you are NOT one of us, for sure.

If that is not an allegory for our modern times, I do not know what is.

mds

Good morning! Much more coming tonight about

The Shining, Kubrick, Pynchon, the Apollo 11 mission, and who knows what else.  I love you all. Miss you Pnut.






M

The trees are better than the forest.

There is a lot to like about The Master.  Like Amy Adams' performance, for instance; the skeptic scene; the breathtaking sixty-five millimeter cinematography -- a real poke in the eye to the Hollywood auteurs who have switched to digital; the first two sequences of the film, one of which reminds me of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (the rumor is that PT Anderson's next project is an adaptation of Pynchon's latest novel, Inherent Vice), and the other an absolute marvel of production design, performances, palette, photography, and story, that one becomes disheartened with the next two hours of the film -- and is left wondering what is on the cutting room floor.

You have a great chance this time, but you should have won for Junebug (a much better film than The Master.)

Did someone lose their nerve?

Expectations are nearly always a problem for the critic. They are impossible to subdue completely, and I should give you a short back history re my relationship with PT Anderson.  I like Boogie Nights.  The convenience store scene is one of the finest things I have ever seen in the cinema.  It, somehow, completely breaks down the barrier between the audience and the images on film.  Every time I see it, I always feel like a witness in that Hollywood "buy it and go fuck yourself" shop.  I am in the movie.

Magnolia, on the other hand, is an absolute disaster.  One of the most pretentious and derivative one hundred and fifty minutes of any one's life, as far as I am concerned.  The performances are awful.  The stories are ludicrous, yet predictable.  The resolutions to each story are delivered in the most ham-handed, melodramatic way; and the frogs, and Supertramp, and Aimee Mann, etc, ...

That is when I swore off PT Anderson.  I skipped Punch Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood -- despite a dozen of my cinema buddies swearing I should see it.  But, when I heard that PT Anderson was going to do a film about Scientology; perhaps a film that would satirize, or skewer Tom Cruise's beloved cult, then I became a bit more willing to forget and forgive.

Of course, well before the time I put my fanny in the chair at the cinema, I knew that this was not going to be as I had hoped.  Anderson was not going to lower the boom on Scientology.  (Or, did he? Is there a five hour Director's Cut due for release in 2022? One can only hope, yes?) Even understanding that, I was willing to give Anderson another chance.  I asked Renee if she was interested in seeing The Master, and she gave me a flat, No.

Fair enough.  I am not gonna cry about that.  Then Renee had a sudden change of heart.  She did want to see The Master, and we saw it, and finished off our fabulous date with a meal at Va De Vi.

We talked about the film at great length, and we have one major disagreement.  She thinks Phillip Seymour Hoffman really cares about Joaquin Phoenix and wants to change him.  I, and a couple of my friends disagree, and think that Hoffman wants Phoenix around as a bully, and as a reminder to himself that he, Hoffman, is not an animal.

This is tough.  I do not want to spoil anything for any one who has not seen the picture.  But, it appears to me that the driving force behind Hoffman's cult is Amy Adams.  Yet, we barely see her, at all.  It seems Anderson (to me, at least) goes to great pains to illustrate what a fraud Hoffman is, but, is reluctant to display Adams as the real master mind.  Why? What sort of sense of mystery are you trying to create here? And Adams delivers the finest performance in the film. How subtle are you trying to be?

The Master, honestly, begins to resemble The Magnificent Ambersons in the end, in the sense that you are shocked to discover that perhaps a half hour of the film has been lopped off between the desert motorcycle scene and Phoenix's cinema dream scene.

I am fine with that, actually.  I love Welles' studio-butchered Ambersons, despite wishing I could see the film as Welles' intended.  But, what I can not abide is what should be the most crucial scene in the film be such an absolute let down, when Phoenix finally goes back home.

The film picks up for one scene set in England, and then ends on a completely useless, predictable note.  (I am starting to suspect that Anderson has a real problem with resolution.)

Despite the sterling cinematography, and impeccable production design, and a couple of fine performances, Anderson has not made me like him more.  Or, made me more likely to sit through three hours of There Will Be Blood, than you v much!

Still, if Inherent Vice truly is his next project, as much as I love that novel, and Pynchon, I will most likely be putting my arse right back in to that cinema seat, with a big bag of popcorn and hody.

Ugh! Sometimes we never learn, yes?

************

In terms of the "horse race", I fully expect The Master to be nominated for Best Picture (along with the other Anderson's much more deserving, yet, no chance in hell of winning's, Moonrise Kingdom.)  Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman will all be nominated, as well.

The Master has a great shot at winning for cinematography, deservedly so.  Phoenix, at this point -- despite the fact that I thought his performance was markedly dripping of Method, screaming affectation, and, "Hey, look I am an actor, acting! How cool." -- is the clear leader for Best Actor next Spring.  Adams and Hoffman have an outside shot, too.  There is no way in hell that The Master wins Best Picture.

In my eyes, the only actor truly deserving of an Oscar from this motion picture is Amy Adams. (The bathroom mirror scene with Hoffman is one of the finest moments of the picture, and it is in spite of Hoffman.)  Hoffman was good, but not deserving of special accolade, for sure.
















All my love,
Ardent

************

I am trying to imagine

What it would have been like to go to a pub with Ken Russell, Oliver Reed, Alan Bates, and Glenda Jackson.  Say, back in 1970.  Perhaps they were all celebrating Women in Love and Jackson's Oscar? Or, maybe, it was someone's birthday?

Ms Jackson is an MP now.  Did you know that? I did not.

I imagine much drink would be involved:  first growths, ales, Scotch, etc, ... And I imagine the conversation would be fantastic:  The Old Vic; Sir Larry; Pinter; Finney; The "New" National Theatre; those old "pooftas" Gielgud, Orton, and Lindsay Anderson (and maybe Bates might have bristled here, or, perhaps, his friends all knew and did not care); Shakespeare; Lear; Othello; Richard III; D.H. Lawrence; Keats; Shelley; Byron; John Dunne; Blake; The Who; Swinging London; Beatle Wigs ("They're buying Beatle Wigs in Woolworth's, man.  The greatest decade in the history of mankind [the 60s] is over, man."  h/t Withnail and I); The Profumo Affair; The Suez Crisis; Vietnam; Tom Courtenay; Julie Christie (they probably hated her); Schlesinger; Midnight Cowboy; Kubrick; Sellers; Oliver's Uncle, Sir Carol Reed; and on and on in to the night.

Of course, Reed would probably have left the group two or three times to fuck a pretty lady in the loo.

It would all end up in a fistfight, arguing over who was the best Lear ever, or, some silly quotidian detail of D.H. Lawrence's novels (or criticism.)

Eventually, Tom Courtenay -- who arrived late -- and I would trundle "the lads" -- Ms Jackson browned off hours ago -- in to a London taxi, as they sang "Jerusalem" or "Sing As You Go" at the top of their lungs.

"You see, dear boy," Courtenay would say to me, "They simply cannot help themselves.  They're artistes, you know? Let's see if we can grab a pint before they call, 'Time'."

************

There is something to be said for the passionate, yet, uneven, artist.  I know that, personally, I like a fair amount of them.  Kubrick comes to mind, Nic Roeg, Thomas Pynchon, ...

In fact, Pynchon can go two hundred mind numbing pages before changing your life in an episode, or a paragraph.

Russell was certainly passionate, and he was horribly uneven, sometimes in a single film.  Yet, no one, no one, translated Lawrence to film better than him.  Sadly, no one really even tries nowadays.  Of course, this is currently not an era where folks are reaching for Lawrence novels, or Keats, or Shelley.  (If we are looking for Classic Novels, it is the gentle comic novels of Jane Austen or gloomy "bodice-ripping" Bronte sisters we seem to covet in film.)

Russell was born Out of Time.  He was a hopeless Romantic during an age of Vietnam, Watergate, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Disco, the money-mad 80s, and, eventually Reality Television.  Plus, he had a temper, and was ever so passionate about his art, which does not play well with movie studio types, at all.

Look at his career! He was constantly feuding with the movie brass over sexual content, movie titles, publicity campaigns, running lengths, what have you.  In fact, I am amazed he made as many films as he did.

In what many consider Russell's best film, Altered States, he feuded with Hollywood legend, screenwriter, Paddy Chayefski.  Well, for Hollywood, that truly was the last straw.

I am v glad that he returned to England and made films like Gothic and Lair of the White Worm, two of my personal faves, uneven and/or messy as they are.  And even in the Gordon Gekko go-go Wall Street America of that time, those films resonated with American audiences, and were art-house hits.

I saw Gothic with friends at the University of Texas Union Theater in its' first release.  We talked about it for hours afterward.  Even then, at that young age, I could recognize the films' faults, but there are to this day, still, moments that stay with me.  But, more importantly, Gothic clued me in to an amazing, different world, where poetry could unseat Kings; where art was the true path to Spirituality (or Damnation); and where intelligence and imagination are not things to be cursed.

Still, to me, Women in Love, is his finest film.  And that is what, hopefully, I will be curling up with tonight.

Passion is a virtue, not a curse.

There is truly something to be said for the difficult, brilliant artist.  Sometimes it is those who flail, fight, and fail the loudest that ultimately, we think of the longest, even if their failures might outweigh their successes.

One paragraph might change the world.  Or one moment in a darkened cinema.

RIP, Ken Russell.  We are desperate for more passionate film makers today.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955), dir by

Robert Aldrich, is a flat-out Camp Masterpiece.  How has this film escaped me for so long? The ending of the film is so ludicrous and over-the-top, yet, you are still there, sweating, on the edge of your seat.

Obv, Kiss Me Deadly is a big blueprint for much of Tarantino's work, but I also see this film as a huge influence on Todd Haynes and Thomas Pynchon.  Well, at least, on Pynchon's shorter (and better) "California" novels, i.e., Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, Inherent Vice, etc, ...

(Sidebar:  A fun game to play w/ those truly sad Pynchon freaks, who carry a copy of Gravity's Rainbow in their hip pocket, is to get right up in their grill, and tell them that Gravity's Rainbow is a pile of shit, and that Vineland is Pynchon's best novel, by far.  Watch theys heads explodes.)

The violence in Kiss Me Deadly is shocking, at times laughable, certainly full of malice, small, mean, and brutal.  The "sex", as it were, in Kiss Me Deadly is sub-tropical, at times laughable (the "make-out/pumping my assistant for info scene" comes to mind), full more of malice than love certainly, small, mean, and a little unseemly at times.

And, who the hell is this Mike Hammer? I do not know poop about Mickey Spillane, but I thought Hammer was supposed to be a seedy, down on his luck dick, trying to make his fortune by setting the honeys up with his client's deadbeat, loser husbands.

(Sidebar two:  There is a fantastic, real-life crime story going on up here in Walnut Creek right now, wherein a private dick had a deal with the cops that he would get his client's husbands sloshed at the frickin' Spaghetti Factory in Concord, seducing the dudes w/ hot chicks he had hired, and then having the cops immediately bust the dudes for DUI as they left the restaurant.  There is so much more, too, all local.  But that is for another time.)

Anyhoo, in the movie Mike Hammer is a sadistic, bitter, v rich (?!), renaissance man, who can relate to boxers as well as mezzo-sopranos.  He lives in a penthouse apartment (in L.A.?, wha?) and has an answering machine (1955, mind you) built in to the wall.  You half expect for him to bust out humming Esquivel at any moment.

Moreover, Hammer has absolutely no problem essentially pimping out the love of his life, his "secretary/His Girl Friday/assistant" (who basically does all the leg work, if you'll pardon the expression, while Hammer looks tough, drinks, and punches guys down staircases.)

It has got to be a joke, right? This film is so mean.  It is meta-Noir.  Natch, Spillane was displeased, but authors are always hurt, yes? A bunch of poor, whiny cry babies, authors are.

If you are hungry for a Space Age Bachelor Pad Film full of gritty, weird-ass amazing cinematography, unseemly sex barely skirting S&M, nasty violence, and ludicrous apocalyptic endings (and who is not hungry for that) than Kiss Me Deadly fits the fucking bill.

An absolute Camp Masterpiece.  I'll watch it again and again and again, ...