7.27.2009

7.21.2009

Japanese Cinema

I feel that you can find a distillation of all film in the Japanese cinema of the 1950s. Akira Kurosawa understood how to cut film (i.e. storyboarding, montage). Ozu understood how to set the frame, exposure, and contrast, perfect compositions of ordinary motions in every frame. Mizoguchi understood how to move the camera (i.e. dolly, pan, crane; Mizoguchi said that he wanted his scenes to unfold (without cutting) as one might unfold an emaki scroll). Each one had skills in each department, but each had a definitive advantage in his area.

William Burroughs


via big fun
"Yo had a dream last night that I was living in the future in a DUNE like world but less expansive and with a history more resembling Mad Max. At night in a desert valley, buying cubes and of hardened dense marijuana which actualy looked more like hash. It wasn't addictive like crack, but still brought you back over and over. And it wasn't dealt by your local weed head, it was guarded with guns and sold by thugs as personable as they were. Over the hill of the valley these robot cars came armed withtargeted missles, somehow i was the onl one who knew and started to run warning everyone of the impending danger, but they notice in time and all i could see from behind me was flashes."

--via comie

7.14.2009

Gaitskill Reading Nabokov

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/06/09/080609on_audio_gaitskill

"He must be always on his guard and devote every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things."