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The River/Pearl’s Dream from The Night Of The Hunter
An excerpt from Charles Laughton’s reading of Davis Grubb’s novel-turned-screenplay.
His voice is just from another planet.
This film has some incredible cinematography, the composition is just amazing.
For deeper look see the Criterion Collection’s Three Reasons Clip
Here’s the trailer to the new film Eames: The Architect and the Painter.
Is it just me or does James Franco’s voice sound weird?
Maybe like he’s a bit sleepy or something?
Oh and here’s a great TED talk by their grandson Eames Demetrios
Click to watch their fantastic short film Powers of Ten
At the end of the talk he mentions The Banana Leaf Parable, I found this extract from an Eames lecture:
There’s sort of a parable I’d like to … In India … I guess it’s a parable: In India, sort of the lowest, the poorest, the, those, those without and the lowest in caste, eat very often—particularly in southern India—they eat off of a banana leaf. And those a little bit up the scale, eat off of a sort of a un … a low-fired ceramic dish.
And a little bit higher, why, they have a glaze on—a thing they call a “tali”—they use a banana leaf and then the ceramic as a tali upon which they put all the food. And there get to be some fairly elegant glazed talis, but it graduates to—if you’re up the scale a little bit more—why, a brass tali, and a bell-bronze tali is absolutely marvelous, it has a sort of a ring to it.
And then things get to be a little questionable. There are things like silver-plated talis and there are solid silver talis and I suppose some nut has had a gold tali that he’s eaten off of, but I’ve never seen one.
But you can go beyond that and the guys that have not only means, but a certain amount of knowledge and understanding, go the next step and they eat off of a banana leaf.
And I think that in these times when we fall back and regroup, that somehow or other, the banana leaf parable sort of got to get working there, because I’m not prepared to say that the banana leaf that one eats off of is the same as the other eats off of, but it’s that process that has happened within the man that changes the banana leaf.
And as we attack these problems—and I hope and I expect that the total amount of energy used in this world is going to go from high to medium to a little bit lower—the banana leaf idea might have a great part in it.
I’ve just come across a fantastic definition of the term ‘Lynchian’. It’s by David Foster Wallace from an article he wrote after he visited the set of Wild at Heart back in 1996
‘An academic definition of Lynchian might be that the term “refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former’s perpetual containment within the latter.” But like postmodern or pornographic, Lynchian is one of those Porter Stewart-type words that’s ultimately definable only ostensively-i.e., we know it when we see it. Ted Bundy wasn’t particularly Lynchian, but good old Jeffrey Dahmer, with his victims’ various anatomies neatly separated and stored in his fridge alongside his chocolate milk and Shedd Spread, was thorough goingly Lynchian. A recent homicide in Boston, in which the deacon of a South Shore church reportedly gave chase to a vehicle that bad cut him off, forced the car off the road, and shot the driver with a high powered crossbow, was borderline Lynchian. A Rotary luncheon where everybody’s got a comb-over and a polyester sport coat and is eating bland Rotarian chicken and exchanging Republican platitudes with heartfelt sincerity and yet all are either amputees or neurologically damaged or both would be more Lynchian than not. A hideously bloody street fight over an insult would be a Lynchian street fight if and only if the insultee punctuates every kick and blow with an injunction not to say fucking anything if you can’t say something fucking nice.
For me, Lynch’s movies’ deconstruction of this weird irony of the banal has affected the way I see and organize the world. I’ve noted since 1986 (when Blue Velvet was released) that a good 65 percent of the people in metropolitan bus terminals between the hours of midnight and 6 A.M. tend to qualify as Lynchian figures-grotesque, enfeebled, flamboyantly unappealing, freighted with a woe out of all proportion to evident circumstances … a class of public-place humans I’ve privately classed, via Lynch, as “insistently fucked up.” Or, e.g. we’ve all seen people assume sudden and grotesque facial expressions-like when receiving shocking news, or biting into something that turns out to be foul, or around small kids for no particular reason other than to be weird-but I’ve determined that a sudden grotesque facial expression won’t qualify as a really Lynchian facial expression unless the expression is held for several moments longer than the circumstances could even possibly warrant, until it starts to signify about seventeen different thin sat once.’
Oh and there was this little trivia tidbit:
When Eraserhead was a surprise hit at festivals and got a distributor, David Lynch rewrote the cast and crew’s contracts so they would all get a share of the money, which they still do, now, every fiscal quarter. Lynch’s AD and PA and everything else on Eraserhead was Catherine E. Coulson, who was later Log Lady on Twin Peaks. Plus, Coulson’s son, Thomas, played the little boy who brings Henry’s ablated head into the pencil factory. Lynch’s loyalty to actors and his homemade, co-op-style productions make his oeuvre a pomo anthill of interfilm connections.
Click to read more
Danube Incident by Lalo Schifrin
Originally composed for the 1960s-70s Mission: Impossible TV series
I had no idea how funny Leonard Cohen was, here’s
Ladies and Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen
Directed by Donald Brittain & Don Owen in 1965
‘This informal black-and-white portrait of Leonard Cohen shows him at age 30 on a visit to his hometown of Montreal, where the poet, novelist and songwriter comes “to renew his neurotic affiliations.” He reads his poetry to an enthusiastic crowd, strolls the streets of the city, relaxes in this three-dollar-a-night hotel room and even takes a bath.’ (Via)
Alec Baldwin’s podcast had just launched, the first one’s got an interview with Michael Douglas. Click play to listen or click to add to iTunes and there’s more info here.
Johnny Depp and Bruce Robinson at the Austin Film Festival screening of The Rum Diary.
Seems like everyone’s drunk.
This is the trailer for Act of Valor, coming out next year some time, I couldn’t work out why it was so familiar until i realised they’re using the exact same script from Team America: World Police, but playing it like it’s not a comedy.
What a brilliant trailer!
Loving the Honda Zot!
Must have got a paint job before going on to be split in half in Malcolm
This is Vive La Tour made by Louis Malle in 1962. Click for part 2
It’s a great little film, there’s a rad bit about 5 minutes in which shows the cyclists on a ‘drinking raid’ where they storm into a cafe and just grab red wine, beer and champagne or even water if they must, and then just leg it… Hilarious… Apparently the bill just gets sent to the director of the tour.
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