| new painting, some good lectures to check out, other stuff too maybe |
[Aug. 3rd, 2009|10:19 pm] |
hi livejournal! sorry i've been quiet for the past few weeks. i've been busy. but i've got a bit of a dry spell, work-wise, for a while now. so i'll be updating more. to start things off, this is one of those obligatory art posts, with some youtube/podcast links listed afterwords.
i finished this painting a few months back:
Get Familiar, 2009 (Mixed media: pencil, gouache, india ink and paper collage on board, 16" by 20")
( a detail, some lectures, etc. ) |
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| ten good things |
[Mar. 25th, 2009|06:13 pm] |
hi, remember me?
looking over this journal, i notice that the past half-dozen entries have either been about self-promotion or wacky youtube clips. consider this my penance...
10. 
i never put one of those best of 2008 lists together for music. but if i did, lau nau's nukkuu would be at the top of it. "lau nau" is the rock-star-name of laura naukkarinen, who plays with a bunch of finnish psych folk acts like kiila and avarus. the psych-folk scene in finland has been reliably awesome for the past 4 or 5 years, but i have to say nukkuu is my favorite record to emerge from it.
it's not dynamically different than her earlier album (2005's kuutarha). and heard alongside bands like grouper or fursaxa or kemiallisat ystavat, it wouldn't sound particularly revolutionary. but, for me, it exemplifies everything that makes the current psych/folk/drone scene so exciting. nukkuu is a challenging record, but it's also listenable. it comes from a psychedelic tradition, but there's nothing painfully nostalgic about it. its mix of melody and noisy ambiance blends gracefully - it's neither precious nor pretentious.
nukkuu is finnish for "sleeps." a sticker on the shrink-wrap of my copy claims it was "conceived in tight attics & vacant dens on off hours when her young son nuutti was fast asleep." i like this. a sleeping infant is perfectly emblematic of this music - which is tranquil, gentle and occasionally foggy. the record carries a bit of the uncertainty that attends learning to speak. the mysterious side of childhood, instead of the cute stuff.
here's a nice youtube video. i'd probably dress like her if i was a girl:
( Read more... ) |
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| ten good things |
[Jul. 29th, 2008|10:33 pm] |
(it's been a while... hopefully the insane length of this will make up for my tardiness)
10. 
i was in NYC about two months back, which afforded me the opportunity to geek out old-skool-style with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) purldrop about music. apparently both of our tastes are moving ever closer to seventies soft rock, of all things. the deeper we both delve into the folksy side of psychedelia, the more a mild hybrid of the two begins to open up. this soft little niche offers a number of charming, pleasantly arranged, well-conceived albums that don't get the love they deserve.
nick garrie's the nightmare of j.b. stanislas is one of the best of the bunch. released-- in france only (???)-- in 1969 to little fanfare, it fits nicely next to "baroque pop" gems like bill fay's time of the last persecution, nick drake's five leaves left and the first four solo albums by my beloved scott walker. garrie's breezy vocal delivery calls to mind early donovan, but his arrangements owe more to the psychedelic momentum that followed the release of sgt. pepper. the orchestration is often wildly inventive, but never overbearing. perfect summer music-- and probably the album that's been in heaviest rotation around these parts lately.
( nine more... ) |
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| some quick notes |
[Jul. 9th, 2008|10:24 pm] |
1. you may have read about this already (i know alex and bess did, haha), but social theorist david harvey is currently posting video documentation of an entire course he teaches on marx's capital:
http://davidharvey.org/
i've been considering reading capital anyway lately. i try to read one big, intimidating book a year (more or less). maybe capital will be this year's moby dick? i might use harvey's project as the catalyst to actually do it. it's one of those books that seems insurmountable without a classroom to support it, and a cyber-classroom has apparently arrived.
if anyone else thinks this is a good idea, i'm considering setting up some kind of cyber-reading group? nothing too heavy-duty, maybe an email correspondence or a yahoo group or something (maybe even an lj community)? i read harvey's a brief history of neoliberalism about three months back and found it compelling. anyway, comment or email me at danschank at gmail dot com if you're into this. i probably won't start the actual reading for a week or two though.
2. i started teaching for the first time in about 7 years yesterday and i'm really enjoying it. i was in a thrift store today picking up stuff for a still life i'm making tomorrow, and i came across this beautiful promotional picture book about albert lamorisse's the red balloon. 99 cents. i love thrift stores.
3. political boy wonder ezra klein just posted an interesting chart from the center for arms control and non-proliferation comparing the american and iranian military infrastructures. as you might guess, it makes the current war-mongering sound ridiculous.
4. google blog search makes it really easy to download obscure records all day long. good thing i have steady work to distract me.
5. the gallery in milwaukee that's showing my paintings just posted an online tour of the show, and video interviews with me and the other artist (elizabeth ann lopez). the conversation in the interview comes right out of the artist's statement some of you have been helping me with (btw, you are all AWESOME for giving me advice). i love the idea of video interviews-- and i'm glad to do it-- but watching myself on quicktime makes me really self-conscious! anyway, to the 75% of you who've never heard my voice or seen me move around or wondered how many times a person can say "umm..." in one sentence, the link above is your chance. |
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| ten good things (after considerable delay) |
[Mar. 8th, 2008|09:26 pm] |
it's been a fairly dismal few weeks, folks. haven't been able to muster the energy to put one of these together for a while. i'd like to get back into the habit though. hopefully the SHEER LENGTH of this will help compensate...
10. 
as my obsession with caribbean music grows, my interests are splintering off in two directions-- super upbeat, happy stuff (desmond dekker, prince buster, most calypso... albeit not lyrically) and moody, ethereal stuff. regarding the latter, i've become increasingly enamored with nyahbinghi music.
labeling "nyahbinghi" a genre isn't entirely accurate. more specifically, the term refers to a particular type of chant performed by rastafarians, with its roots in african history. at its most elemental, nyabinghi chants require three specialized drums and human voices. but in jamaica, the practice was later combined with reggae music, most notably (and initially) by count ossie and the mystic revelation of rastafari. it's ossie's music-- and that of those that followed him-- that interests me most.
the nyabinghi sound is often slower and more percussive than most typical reggae. like a lot of my favorite jamaican music, it's usually melodic-- but the melodies have a distinctly hypnotic quality. rastafarianism isn't a practice i can claim any personal investment in (which i'm sure comes as a big shock), but it's tough to listen to things of this sort without an awareness of a spiritual dimension. it's meditative and contemplative. and a lot of it is deceptively simple.
my favorite album in this style (thus far) is fittingly titled nyahbinghi, by ras michael and the sons of negus. the album takes the atmosphere of count ossie's early music and applies it to bare-bones pop/folk structures. the results are gorgeous. here's an mp3 of ras michael re-working a song you'll find familiar:
ras michael and the sons of negus, "rise jah jah children," mp3
and here's a clip of ras michael performing:
( nine more... ) |
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| user interests meme, ahoy! |
[Oct. 19th, 2007|06:35 pm] |
i was tagged by murdermystery to do one of these interest list memes. i like this one better than most memes, so here it is:
"If you comment on this post, I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along."
if you want to comment and not do this on your own journal, that's fine by me, obvs. i'd like to read the accounts though. anyway, here's what mike picked for me...
1. 14 iced bears are a british band that can be described as indie pop, lo-fi, twee pop, etc. they were part of the C86 scene, so chances are they pre-date all the bands you currently resent for fitting the labels i just listed. i'm not wild about their second album, wonder, to be quite honest. they drifted into a bland "college rock" sound that i can't really hang with by the early nineties. but their early stuff is pop music at its simplest and most loveable. listen to this track, and picture me dancing like michael stipe throughout my house. you know you want to.
14 iced bears, "shy like you" mp3
 michael stipe has nothing to do with this band, by the way.
2. chinua achebe entered my life after a phase where i was reading a lot of graham greene novels. greene is a fantastic writer, but i wanted to look toward a different kind of voice in relation to his typical subject matter (end of colonialism, etc.). achebe was the perfect follow-up. like greene, his novels are concise and economical. and as a native of nigeria, his perspective on colonial occupation, etc. is obviously much different than greene's. achebe has a real knack for balancing a variety of allegiances and ideologies, and writes with a seemingly effortless lack of pretension. my favorite book of his thus far is a man of the people, but there are many i have yet to get through yet.
3. exact change press is a fantastic publisher, and i'm *really* glad mike picked this one for me to write about. they specialize in re-issuing lesser-known literature from the major art movements of the twentieth century (with a special penchant for surrealism). it's through them that i discovered novels like leonora carrington's the hearing trumpet, louis aragon's paris peasant and unica zurn's underrated dark spring. furthermore, exact change is run by damon and naomi, the psych rock duo that once made up two thirds of galaxie 500!
4. philip guston
...is probably the painter with which i feel the greatest affinity personally. he was pre-occupied with apocalyptic imagery... felt powerless in the face of an abysmal socio-political landscape (vietnam, upheaval surrounding civil rights, etc.)... worked with a fine-tuned vocabulary of icons and images... added immense amibiguity to the identity of his own icons (e.g. what exactly am i to make of his cartoon KKK hoods?)... and, hell, he even did his best work at night, apparently. minus his gooey application style, there isn't an awful lot i can't relate to about the d00d in my own work, honestly.
5. regis philbin reminds me of my grandfather. and jack lemmon. and jack lemmon reminds me of pretty much every man over the age of 60 on my mom's side of my family. somewhere in that chain of associations, i developed an affection for regis. we all have our quirks.
HEY LOOK IT'S YOUR NEW FAVORITE HAT!!!
6. ryszard kapuscinski is someone i wrote about not too terribly long ago. so i'll merely add that since i wrote that, imperium has become my new favorite book by him.
7. and finally, weird mouths are something i find sexy in the ladies. i'm particularly hot for big teeth, crooked-or-otherwise-irregular smiles, and-- sometimes-- big lips (though pouty lips are starting to become maxim magazine fodder in a way that doesn't do it for me). an example of a girl with a weird mouth that i'm smitten with:
oh chelsea clinton, i've been crushin' on you since i was like a senior in high school, seriously... |
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| ten good things (longest blog post EVER) |
[Oct. 13th, 2007|08:41 pm] |
i've been meaning to write this for about a month. which hopefully explains its ungodly length. truth be told, i've been pretty busy for an unemployed dude. i do want to write on here more often though, for realzzz...
10. 
richard hughes' novel a high wind in jamaica engenders the exact breed of surrealism i like best... its setting (initially a jamaican plantation destroyed by a hurricane, later a pirate ship!) is bizarre but also plausible, and its uncanniness owes more to thought out, atmospheric descriptions than to sudden disruptions in logic. in fact it's the logic itself that supplies its weirdness-- the way it naturalizes unlikely situations. its spookiness sets in as one page leads casually to the next. were it not for its occasional-- and totally inexcusable-- bursts of racism, i'd even say it rivals my other favorite classic-of-understated-surrealism: bruno schulz' the street of crocodiles.
like the henry darger painting that graces its cover, jamaica is largely a book about child sexuality. but unlike darger's constipated blend of innocence and repression (brilliant as it may be), hughes' handling of the subject is lucid and respectful. contrary to what i may have looked like in 1993, i've never been a pre-pubescent girl, personally. and i'd wager that hughes hasn't either. but as far as i can tell, he paints a convincing, comprehensive portrait of how that might feel, hormonally-- minus much of the lechery such question-raising might imply.
hughes isolates the tension between playfulness and learned morality with astounding accuracy. the book's precocious central character (emily) emerges at the tail-end of childhood's most limitless pleasures. she is solipsistic and confident-- almost to the point of megalomania. one of the great surprises of the book is the way that hughes reveres her confidence-- there's something convincingly utopian about her ignorance of gender norms, her willingness to follow her obsessive inclinations, and her ability to make a game out of everything. her "sexual awakening" occurs alongside her instinctual bravery in a variety of ways, most notably in her often dangerous interactions with adult men. hughes foreshadows the barriers, frustrations, and new pleasures that might soon arise for her as a growing person. these real-life dangers are rendered with a deep respect for the curiosity they provoke within her (and even, ickily enough, within the "pirates" aboard the ship). the taboos that arise are handled with an unforgiving investigative integrity, but there's a distant gentleness to hughes' writing as well. i found myself able to find parallels between emily's adventures and my own childhood-- particularly those weird, pre-"gendered" moments that society at large would rather not discuss. and it reminded me of the strange balance of confidence, insecurity, sexuality and socialization that determined my own creative abilities, for better or worse.
( nine more... ) |
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| ten good things (for the summer time) |
[Jul. 25th, 2007|11:25 pm] |
well, it's been a busy couple of weeks in danschank land... i thought i'd be more motivated for updates, but instead i've basically been doing a lot of hanging out... nonetheless, the summer edition is finally here:
10. 
i'm really feelin' this hippie-ish psych record called fly away, by agincourt. with its breezy nonchalance and casual optimism, it's the perfect record for the summertime. being recently unemployed has, i think, put me more in tune with the ideology of summer itself... i've been re-introduced to calm and ease... and to reading a book in my backyard... and to afternoon drinks in outdoor bars... and to the low-level panic that never quite goes away when you're unemployed and your future is uncertain. but that shit could be a lot worse. usually i'm in tune with agincourt, and their odyssey and oracle-esque vocal harmonies. and their calm and un-abrasive take on flower power.
peace, d00dz:
agincourt, "when i awoke" mp3
( nine more to follow ) |
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| ten good things (march and april, or whatever...) |
[May. 13th, 2007|11:09 pm] |
oh man, it's been a while since i've put one of these together. i miss it. anyway, i'll get started with a controversial observation...
10. 
like (presumably) everyone else in the universe, i wanted to puke when jason schwartzman appeared on the screen as louis XVI in marie antoinette. i mean, schwartzman fit nicely into the landscape of rushmore, but since then, it's like he won't leave the party... he lurks around a film as decent as i heart huckabees-- adding neither charm nor talent-- like some dude guzzling floaters in my living room that won't take the hint to go home. and no, i'm not gonna whip up some contrarian baloney about schwartzman's secret talents as an actor. nor am i a converted fan of any sort. but i do think he fits the tone of marie antoinette perfectly-- on account of the peculiar distinction of that tone, which i think is the film's real strength.
for a production that reached spike-lee-levels of reactionary hate-- long before anyone had even seen it-- marie is remarkably free of controversial declarations and questionable tugs-at-the-heartstrings, despite its pageantry. it doesn't feel like either of coppola's earlier films-- it's not quite icy enough to mirror the faux-existential, antonioni-through-the-eyes-of-hipsters feel of the virgin suicides, but i didn't feel obligated to pity marie either-- she's not the poor little rich girl of coppola's problematic (but unfairly hated) lost in translation. in place of commodity critiques or trust-fund-kid indulgences (to sum up two of its most typical knee-jerk reactions), i found a series of quiet paradoxes-- it's light-hearted, but never whimsical (and has a vague sense of dread about it that's somehow equally light)... the production is as handsome as it is awkward; everything grandiose and picturesque feels curiously out of place... the characters are rendered innocent by their lack of depth and dimension; there's an infantile purity about them that is neither enigmatic nor entirely idiotic-- it's a film about people who never bothered to learn how to be people.
i saw all of this in schwartzman himself. he wanders through the film in a childlike (though strangely un-curious) state of bewilderment-- he's too bland to be cute, and too gentle to deserve my contempt. much like myself as i watched the film, he swims through it in a haze of semi-disinterest-- out of sync with the motivations surrounding him, not sure why everyone's wearing such funny clothes, or when to be formal or casual or insightful or, hell, even horny...
( nine to go... ) |
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| ten good things returns (february 2007) |
[Mar. 3rd, 2007|01:50 am] |
hi folks... so, i guess december and january's editions of this have bitten the dust. i'm gonna try to get back to doing this monthly again though, and i've been brainstorming things to mention for a while now (some of the following is old news in real life, actually)... anyway...
10. 
i don't know too much about carla bozulich, actually. i know she was in the geraldine fibbers-- a band i've heard of for years but never actually listened to. i became curious about her when her record evangelista kept coming up time and time again among the top ten of 2006 lists on the WFMU blog (click on this link for *literally hours worth* of good suggestions).
anyway, evangelista makes a nice evil twin sister to scott walker's freaky epic the drift (which probably-- and predictably-- would have my vote for best record of 2006). both are demanding, peculiar and alarmingly vulnerable records that will undoubtedly make your friends call you pretentious. bozulich is a little more visceral than scott... sometimes scott sounds like he's floating in from outer space; bozulich comes straight from the gut. the arrangements have a similar non-melody to the stuff on the drift, but they're less orchestral-- more to the point, i guess. the same goes for her singing, which often reaches patti smith levels of fearlessness, and anchors the otherwise avant-garde arrangements to solid bases of raw emotion. it's not an everyday sort of listen, but when you're in the mood, this is deep, dark stuff.
the closest this album comes to an accessible single is her cover of a song by low, which is good to begin with. here it is, as a point of entry...
carla bozulich, "pissing" mp3
( nine more... ) |
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| ten good things returns (september and october, accordingly) |
[Nov. 7th, 2006|05:39 am] |
sorry it's been so long since i posted one of these. i've had most of this written down for nearly a month...
10. this is senator joe biden of delaware:
if the democrats take control of congress today, senator biden is positioned to become the head of the senate foreign relations committee in the u.s. government.
on may 1st of this year, biden co-authored (with leslie gelb) an op-ed piece in the new york times outlining a potential exit strategy in iraq. the plan relies heavily on tactics used by NATO in bosnia during the clinton years. there are a lot of arguments against it; daily kos slammed it, for example. now, i'm no expert on foreign policy, and i'm just beginning to get my feet wet in my understanding of the ethnic conflicts in the region, but i really like the idea of a guy who's willing to get a dialogue going in this position in our government. biden isn't belaboring things we already know about the dishonesty of the administration. nor is he necessarily entertaining the fantasy of a quick escape from the region... and as far as i'm concerned, the bottom line in iraq at this point is preventing civilian deaths. i have a cautious amount of confidence that biden might provide a needed jolt in the pressure on the administration to think up a quasi-ethical way out (according to his own plan, or whoever's)... if we can even use the word "ethical" at this point, which we can't.
so go vote these right wing fucks out of office. and if you're still entertaining sleepy, fatalistic fantasies about how both sides are equally corrupt, try to remember that five years ago we didn't have a government that *LITERALLY ADVOCATES TORTURE*... when you get back from the polls, you can read the remaining nine, ok?
( Read more... ) |
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| ten good things: special dan-is-old edition |
[Aug. 27th, 2006|02:46 am] |
as i type this, i am 8 days away from exiting my twenties. here's the good news...
ten things i like about turning thirty
10. the fading categorical differences between old school and just plain old might seem alienating at first, but they have their merits as well. i like to think i've done a decent job of avoiding the infinite popularity contests that attend my most specialized interests, but at thirty, a certain youthful "coolness" is next to impossible. which is to say that it's no longer a matter of abstinence-- all the irritating types of showboating i've observed over the years have lost their magical powers to father time himself... and the people who still cling to them look increasingly like ronnie james dio... but the rest of us can chill the fuck out, finally.
( LIKE A RAINBOW, IN THE DAHHHK!!! ) |
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| ten good things (july 2006, "computer-keeps-crappin-out edition" |
[Aug. 3rd, 2006|03:25 am] |
10. 
completing the holy trinity of late-to-the-party disco musicals-- which also includes can't stop the music! (the village people movie) and sgt. pepper's lonely hearts club band (the movie where peter frampton and the bee gees play the beatles)-- 1980's the apple, despite seeming the tamest in the abstract, is in fact the most outrageous, atrocious, glorious spectacle of all... set in a futuristic 1994 (where the world has inexplicably begun to resemble an airport terminal and everyone drives the car from ghostbusters), it tells the story of a quasi-fascist state in which meatloaf-style rock theatrics and tired disco beats are shoved down the throats of the masses like so much soylent green. it's all part of a grand conspiracy orchestrated by a state-sponsored, satanic record company (made up entirely of flash gordon extras and scary drag queens) to keep people from what they really want to hear-- namely the hippie-dippie soft rock of our two protagonists, who are eventually revealed to be a futuristic adam and eve (get it? the apple!!)... to say that this is a rocky horror knock-off doesn't go nearly far enough-- it's also the coke-fueled love-child of barbarella
and tron; a movie custom-made for everyone who thought zardoz would've been better as a musical...
(oh bearbait, i owe you big time for suggesting this...)
( Read more... ) |
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| ten good things (may 2006) |
[Jun. 1st, 2006|12:24 am] |
10. 
for years i had assumed exuma to be another one of those modern-day psych-folk acts. and i like that stuff, but never felt any urgent need to check him out, accordingly. then about a month ago (when everyone was making those "favorite records" grids on lj), he appeared on my friends' list like three times in one day. finally lostcosmonaut posted an mp3, and it was all over...
speaking of mp3's, have a listen: exuma, "mama loi, papa loi" mp3
exuma's first two albums (I and II, both released in 1970) are an odd mix of caribbean folk (he was born in the bahamas), african percussion, spiritual non-sequitors and psychedelia. it's not quite as inaccessible as all that might sound though-- most of the songs are structurally simple and beautifully arranged. something about his music sorta THUMPS, for lack of a better word-- it makes your heart pound alongside it; it makes you prone to freaking out. definitely one of the darkest, wildest folk records i've ever heard... precisely the kind of music that stops me dead in my tracks... and easily the most amazing new (to me) music i've stumbled across in at least a year. totally essential.
( nine more, as usual ) |
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| ten good things (april 2006) |
[Apr. 29th, 2006|05:55 pm] |
10. 
thomas hirschhorn's recent piece in the philadelphia museum of art's surprisingly well-curated energy yes! exhibition is pretty interesting. you can't really tell from the photo above (which i stole from a random flickr account that showed up while googling), but what you're looking at is largely constructed from old globes, newspaper clippings and camouflage duct tape. the piece is crappy and handsome at the same time-- which i tend to want to support, being a fairly inept craftsman myself. beyond that, it's an almost literally cut-and-paste cultural landmark, re-imagining war-related paranoia as so much fodder for a teenager's bedroom. i haven't decided if the piece affords its own provocations the proper weight demanded (or if it goes the warhol route and deliberately remains light?), but it got me thinking, which is more than i can say about a lot of art.
i should also add that energy yes! is that rare curatorial effort that actually encourages a dialogue. i think being a curator must be the toughest job in the world because your ideas are undoubtedly compromised by the quality of the work you're dealing with (and really-- when was the last time you liked all the work in a group exhibition?), but the informed arrangement in this particular space amounts to an artistic gesture unto itself.
( nine more below the cut... ) |
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| ten good things (march 2006) |
[Mar. 25th, 2006|08:39 pm] |
ten good things is now monthly. by popular request.
10. 
philip guston's painting, eating, smoking (1973) has been the image on my desktop for a few weeks now, and i can't think of a work of art i feel more in accordance with. guston's turn toward figuration has acquired such a legacy that it's a bit of an art school cliche to even dwell on it, i guess. still, there's something rather exhilarating in his declaring: "i got sick of all that purity!", particularly on the heels of the tasteful, second-tier abstract expressionist stuff he'd devoted the previous decade to.
in 2006, i can relate to the low-level terror with which he seems to view the world, and i appreciate the honesty with which he confesses his own socio-political powerlessness (and, yes, even laziness) in the face of it. but more importantly, i love the way he turns his anxieties into a landscape-- the way he spatializes his own distress, pushes his visual vocabulary to its own indexical breaking point (where cigarettes and kkk hoods always are and aren't what they imply, simultaneously). guston's images occupy an unprecedented middle-ground between commentary and intuitive invention. his topical worldly-ness compliments his strange sense of invention. never too pragmatic, never too escapist-- his work produces an affective confusion of the highest order.
( the remaining nine... ) |
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| ten good things |
[Feb. 12th, 2006|01:31 pm] |
well, it's been a while since i've done one of these. but here we go...
ten good things, 2006 style
10. french/netherlandish tapestries at the metropolitan museum of art
The Unicorn in Captivity, 1495–1505
South Netherlandish
Wool warp, wool, silk, silver, and gilt wefts; 12 ft. 1 in. x 8 ft. 3 in. (368 x 251.5 cm)
... the last time i was at the MET, we pretty much said the hell with obligatory modern art, and instead spent a great deal of time in the medieval, persian and chinese sections. the older i get, the less urgency i feel when i go into a museum. i don't immediately rush off to something specific anymore; i sort of let things come to me. it's a great feeling, actually.
and the european tapestries of the medieval/renaissance period (of all things) have this great combo of dimensional and decorative space that i can apply to my own work. i love it when something i'm struggling with comes to resolution at random-- when i stumble into things that fit into my own little project, i guess.
( nine more to go... ) |
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| top twenty films of 2005 (part two) |
[Jan. 24th, 2006|03:06 am] |
apologies that this took so long to get back to, folks (i know you were all holding your breath). i've been boozing it up and carrying on more than usual. anyway, if you're just tuning in, i've been listing the movies that meant the most to me, that i saw for the first time during the year 2005. and here are the final ten, listed-- once again-- in the order seen...
11. underground (emir kusturica, 1995)
http://imdb.com/title/tt0114787/
well, first off, it's astounding that this film was made in 1995 (and if anyone has any stories pertaining to that, comment away!). equal parts federico fellini and bugs bunny (and less tiresome than both), underground is one of the most bombastic and ambitious films i've ever seen in my life. the closest thing i can think to compare it to is salman rushdie's novel midnight's children. both leave you feeling like you ate a big meal. a big, snarky, lyrical, historically informative and politically relevant meal.
and if that doesn't sell you, i'll add that my friend steve rented it and couldn't get the "subtitle" button on his DVD player to work, but was so impressed by the first 15 minutes that he watched all three hours of it without translation.
( #'s 12-20 below the cut ) |
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