45 Best Freeware Design Programs.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #25: Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville.

Watching this film, one of the first things I realized is that Jean-Luc Godard has no idea how to make convincing science fiction. The next thing I realized was that Godard was merely using enough of the science fiction idiom to display and enact his dialectic battle between love and logic. From this point of view, the inconsistencies and pathological inability to fully suspend disbelief are of secondary consequence to observing philosophical gymnastics that only the French are capable of. Alphaville is a city controlled by a computer called Alpha 60, whose goal is to remake humanity in his own image, purely logical and without even the slightest ability to express emotion. Alpha 60 also sounds like you’d expect a guy who smokes through a stoma to talk. Thank God the Intergalactic Secret Agent Lemmy Caution has been sent from the Outlands to do a little recon, kill a man and destroy Alpha 60 if he can. As a bonus he gets to sleep with Anna Karina.

Since this was shot in the 60s it feels pretty dated, because the sci-fi is cultural, it becomes anachronistic in its setting; whereas something like The Day The Earth Stood Still brings in all the science fiction from an extra-terrestrial source, and while dated, remains believable. Alphaville is more on the order of Philip K. Dickian, psychological trauma fraught with paranoia. Alpha 60’s omnipresence facilitates cultural comparisons to Orwell’s 1984 and David Bowie’s song Saviour Machine. At the same time, the 60s were the perfect time to find visual cognates to reflect the technological advancement of society. You’ve got to think in that frame of mind to recognize buildings that look like punch-cards though. Much like sci-fi from that period couldn’t predict personal computer or the digital age, and you end up with spacemen using slide-rules.

At one point Lemmy is interrogated by Alpha 60 to determine whether he can be successfully assimilated or whether he should be executed. He manages to present the computer with a conundrum that eventually short circuits the thing, simultaneously freeing and destroying most of the inhabitants of Alphaville. The ones who had become fully logical and emotionless, who had forgotten words like weeping and redbreast, went mad and died when the lights went out. Only those with some emotional bearing left to them had the ability to survive the death of logic in the face of universal poetry wielded by the ugly crag of a man called Lemmy Caution. Light is both safety net and the yoke of logic in Alphaville, and it is only in the dark recesses of intergalactic space, and in the human heart that emotion can find the strength to triumph.

• Criterion Essay by Andrew Sarris
• Criterion Contraption Review
• Cinematic Reflections Review
• Strictly Film School Review
• Epistemology in Jean Luc Godard’s Alphaville
• PIF Magazine Review
• Video:
  • Watch the Trailer
  • Watch a Clip
  • Watch the Whole Movie

My body is ready, but I am not. RIP \m/

Zerolandfill is a local group that collects and redistributes castoff materials from interior design firms to artists, schools and other folks. [via]

I ran around the secondhand furniture stores and antique strip on Lorain today in search of furniture. I’d forgotten how ridiculously over-priced most of the antique places are compared to back in Indiana, but I lucked out and found a dude actually interested in selling some merchandise and finally picked up the exact kind of library table I’ve been looking for years. Quartersawn oak with a middle drawer. I got it and a chair for $130. A better price than buying something new and not as sturdy.

I’ve also brought back the sidebar posts as my researches on various topics have been turning up lots of amazing links. Here’s a feed for it.

Massive Resource List for Autodidacts

I went to Pat’s in the Flats last night to see a couple of bands. I know The Very Knees and like them muchly, and wasn’t familiar with Heartwarmer. Heartwarmer are from Kentucky and had some danceable poppy tunes, a bit reminiscent of Of Montreal sans the glam and nods to the orchestration of Arcade Fire. My only criticism is that they’ve got too much tambourine and not enough melody or harmony. I’d like to see them add another guitar or let the girl sing along with the guy. Here’s the video I took of ‘em.

The Very Knees put on another raucous show and God saw it and said that it was good. They had a 16mm video to go along with their single and the video projector made me wistful, since I’ve been trying to find a functional one for the past little while. My 16mm film from college is moldering meanwhile. Not that it is any good in the first place. If I get a projector I might as well get a 16mm camera too, and it will all be downhill from there. Oh yeah, Very Knees video:

Here’s the video in easy-to-see format. It cracks me up in an inside-joke sort of way since I know about half of the people in it.

I ordered The Road from the library a day before I found out it won the Pulitzer, because of a year-old review from an old copy of Stop Smiling that I picked up at Pitchfork. The Pulitzer notification, coming as it did from a thread about literary critics and their derision for genre fiction, stayed in my mind as I read the book. It is the first thing that I’ve read by Cormac McCarthy, and I picked it up because the Stop Smiling review indicated to me that it was science fiction written by a non-sci-fi author.

What is immediately evident is that McCarthy doesn’t care for traditional reading cues like quotation marks around dialogue and chapter breaks. I’m a big fan of experimental novels, but at times in The Road it is very difficult to figure out who is talking to whom. Similarly, no character has a proper name. In fact, I don’t think there is a proper noun in the entire book. So when the man runs into another man and they talk to each other or have a tussle it is pretty much impossible to figure out who is doing what. The writing itself is often superb, but it seems to stumble just as regularly, as when words like ensepulchraled and crozzled sit together in the same sentence and have lunch. The quality of the writing doesn’t enhance or uphold the plot either, which to me seems like a fairly large problem, since I read books for the stories, not the writing. What I mean is that McCarthy seems interested in writing interestingly for its own sake and using the story itself to manipulate the reader into a certain mindset as opposed to writing and developing a plot purely for the sake of storytelling.

It could be argued and I would agree with the assertion that all story-telling is a manipulation of the audience, but what I’m thinking is that McCarthy is more interested in evoking a specific emotional reaction from his audience than telling the story. It is a determination of vectors. The story is about a man and a boy in a post-apocalyptic world [just what destroyed the world is unclear, but from inference I gather that it was some sort of meteor impact] where everything is dead except for a few other humans, and life is hiding from the others and scavenging canned goods.

They boy and man are dependent upon each other, but as the book progresses it becomes evident that the boy is the one best suited and morally understanding enough to live in this new world. The man cannot let the past go. The boy has no memory of it. The basic plot actions are easily foreseen; you know they’re going to find a fall-out shelter and that this will be the high point of the narrative, you know that their belongings will be stolen, you know that at least one of them will die [most likely the man, due to various other clues] and that this will be the low point of the narrative.

In the end, I wasn’t that impressed. The writing was excellent about half the time, but the story never got me going. I’ve read more effective and better written apocalyptic literature, and stories with just as much despair in less than the 241 pages of The Road. The dust jacket said this would be McCarthy’s masterpiece, and if that’s the case, I’ll pass on the rest of his stuff.

I’m working on refinishing the floor in what will be my master bedroom once the floor is refinished. And other sundry stuff taken care of as well. Anyway, the refinishing was going fine until I hit this strange spot where the stripper refuses to work. It won’t soften the paint or anything. I put up a question on Ask MetaFilter and while people are giving me other advice, no one really has a clue why this could be happening. The photos above illustrate what I’m talking about. The unstrippable area seems to be smack dab in the center of the room. Confounding. Looks like I’m going to have to use elbow grease to get rid of that paint. That’s certainly a mess waiting to happen.

[Update] It appears that the section that would not strip is paint over untreated wood. Thus, the stripper was soaking through the paint and lifting up the varnish on the easy to strip portions. Since the paint was on top of this it came right up. On the unvarnished portion the stripper must have just soaked right into the wood. My guess is that there was a rug on the floor in the center of the room originally and they just chose to varnish the exposed wood. Halfasses.

• Samurai Appliance Repairman rules.
• HyperTemplates has some sweet stuff, but finding it is a bitch.
• I swear to God that the panhandling one-legged saxophonist that sits outside the West Side Market on Saturdays was playing Albert Ayler’s Love Cry today.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #21: David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers.

Dead Ringers is based on a true story about identical twin gynecologist drug addicts; both played by Jeremy Irons. The film is a psychological thriller deeply concerned with obsession, sexuality and co-dependence. Cronenberg doesn’t overdo the shots that contain both Mantle brothers, but the most effective aspect of the film is also the subtlest, there are virtually no exterior shots apart from the beginning and end. So the entire film occupies a claustrophobic internal space both physically and psychologically, and these spaces tend to reflect each other as the plot develops. The twins are Elliot and Beverly, both male, Elliot the oldest and extroverted, the businessman and marketer of the two; Beverly younger and reserved, the medical genius. They share everything, including patients, including banging patients. In particular, an actress with a trifurcated uterus named Claire Niveau. Jesus Christ, you’ve gotta love Cronenberg.

Beverly becomes attached to Claire and vice versa, until she learns that she banged Elliot initially. They break up but get back together. Beverly’s love of Claire begins to separate him from Elliot and their relationship changes in small ways at first, but when Bev starts pill-popping his personality begins to degrade rapidly. His nadir results in his attempts to operate on a using “gynaecological instruments for operating on mutant women”. Elliot has his own psychological eccentricities associated with his twinship [at one point he gets twin escorts and has one of them call him Elliot and the other Beverly]. He also attempts to score a threesome with his brother and his girlfriend. When detoxing Beverly fails, Elliot decides that he needs to start taking drugs as well to get back on the same wavelength, so they can get off the drugs together. They deserve a Darwin Award for that idea.

There is no easy resolution to the myriad questions about gender, abnormal physiology and psychology, sexual deviance and relationships that are raised in this film. The resolution instead comes in the form of an abhorred pity for the Mantle brothers and a feeling of relief that such troubled souls find their rest. Meanwhile, the casual viewer is left with the need to examine his or her own predispositions about the nature of human relationship and cultural conformation. In this sense, this film owes a debt to Tod Browning’s Freaks. The references to the first set of conjoined twins is also relevant in this context, and the moral of the film, if there is one, is that deviance from the norm has disastrous consequences, even if the deviant parties are innocent in and of themselves. Or perhaps, that the heavy pressure to conform has disastrous consequences to offer another side of the same coin.

• Criterion Essay by Chris Rodley
• 30 reviews at MQRE
• Criterion Contraption review
• Psychological Determinism in Dead Ringers by Dan Shaw
• Cronenberg on Cronenberg
• Interview with Cronenberg in 4 parts:
  1. Part 1
  2. Part 2
  3. Part 3
  4. Part 4
• Trailer

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #360: William Greaves’s Symbiopsychotaxiplasm.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is most interesting to me because it is a experiment in which, for the most part, the people in the film know they are being experimented upon and then become participants in the experiment themselves. It is uncontrolled metafilmmaking that defies analogy by its sheer complexity. It is difficult to tell who is being authentic, who is acting, and just where the line between documentary and fiction stands. My favorite film professor probably loves this movie. Filmed in the seventies, it used egregious amounts of film, several simultaneously-filming cameras and a bunch of crappy actors constantly retaking an overblown, lurid and poorly written psychodrama.

Whether this is all deliberate or not is, initially, unknown. In fact, whether or not the whole film is scripted is or not is unknown. It might just be an excellent faux-documentary. Suspicions of this are constantly raised, especially when one of the crew members says something along these very lines, that the audience has no way of telling whether they are legitimately secreting themselves as an act of defiance, or if Greaves is just off screen directing them. The sincerity of Greaves on-screen persona is also called into question by the crew, it is said that he doesn’t act they way we see when the cameras are not rolling. One of the crewmen says that he hasn’t read the concept so many times, and is nonetheless so perspicacious that he must be lying. The crew scenes are the best parts of the film and it is certainly early reality-TV, and a bit like Project Greenlight, albeit unguided and decidedly independent. The film being filmed is supposed to be about sex, but in the crew discussions becomes more about what constitutes believable screenwriting.

So I guess it is no surprise that when someone with Hollywood clout like Steve Buscemi saw the thing and wondered where the promised Take Two was, that a new film got made. This is very very bad. Take One existed in a hermetic environment, no one knew more about the film, no one knew the truth. The resulting Take Two and a Half is utterly disappointing. Made with the help of Soderbergh, it is shot with DV cameras, has Steve Buscemi in it, and lacks all of the punch of the original and also takes away from the original’s mystery. There is a bit of tension at the end when a mimic acting coach shows up, but it was obviously staged, and while it is another example of metafilmmaking, at the same time it is like seeing the same card trick over again. Even though Buscemi meant well, Take Two and Half should have never been made. I recommend watching the first one and not the sequel, that way it will remain mindblowingly in need of analysis.

• Criterion Essay by Amy Taubin
• William Greaves Site
• Reel.com overview
• Metacritic links to 4 reviews
• MRQE review list
• YouTube clip

I was at the Pitchfork Music Festival this past weekend. I took the Megabus to Chicago on Friday after work, even though I still didn’t have my tickets. I’d called up Ticketweb and had them hold the tickets at will call instead. Once I got there it seemed to be the case for just about everyone. No one had gotten the tickets they’d ordered through the mail, no matter how far in advance they were ordered, and judging by the reams of paper they had to dig through to find my approval, I think my hypothesis was pretty much proven. I got in via will call with no problem though.

I saw a ton of bands, came away with a few sampler CDs, a Menomena album and an of Montreal limited edition EP in addition to a plethora of pins, stickers and little bits of nice design. I also got a subscription to Stop Smiling, which looks quite promising. I took a few pictures and a bunch of video. It was hot, but there was plenty of water at non-gouging prices. I think that the festival was well planned in general, but there were a few hiccoughs. The B stage was off in a tight corner with little room to move and not poor access when it could have easily been in a more open portion of the park that was occupied by merch booths. The B stage was also running behind, pretty much the entire fest, they overbooked it. If all had gone according to plan it would have been quite easy to go from one interesting act to the next, but I ended up having to miss both The Field and most of Cadence Weapon in favor of the bigger acts on the A and C stages.

Menomena was the big surprise for me. I really dug them. They’re one of those bands that I’ve heard about for a long time, but have never really gotten around to listening to. of Montreal still doesn’t do a thing for me; they just seem far too contrived. The MCing of Cadence Weapon didn’t knock my socks off, but the DJ was one sick motherfucking turntablist. De La Soul was an inspired end to the festival, after everyone is beat to hell they’re energy squeezed out every last bit of ours and then gave it back to us.

You can dowload 17 tracks from bands that were at Pitchfork via eMusic here: Pitchfork Music Sampler [You have to download each track separately unless you have an eMusic subscription, but they are completely free otherwise.]

It is video avalanche time. I’ll give a brief bit of descript after each one.

This video looks blue because I forgot to set the white balance on my camera. Iron & Wine bore the crap out of me. The musicianship is great, but I seem to be cognitively incapable of paying attention to the lyrics or becoming engaged with any of it.

I’m also not a big fan of Mastodon. They seem like a metal band more interested in using metal as the vehicle to showcase their technical expertise. This is the same argument Chuck Klosterman uses for Yngwie Malmsteen in his book Fargo Rock City. I buy it for them too. Nonetheless, metal is metal, especially when Mastodon is the only hard rocking group on the bill. After this song I jumped into the pit. I’ve not been in a good pit for about 6 years. There is definitely a difference in metal moshers and the things that approximate pits at punk shows. I feel safe in a metal pit. I was filth-city once I worked my way out of it. So thanks, Mastodon, for giving me that opportunity.

Lou put me on the track of Clipse. They were good, but I wish it had been dark when they went on. Miami Vice and accordion break beats.

Junior Boys were my main excitement for the festival, mainly because I’m in the right musical mood for the shape of their sound. One set of speakers kept popping out which marred their set a bit, but in my opinion, it is a testament to good musicianship, or a light hand in producing and mixing the record when a band sounds just as good live as they do on the disc. Junior Boys fulfilled that, alright.

The aforementioned Cadence Weapon. Unpretentious, authentic. Watch for the DJ wig out.

of Montreal, glammed-out, let’s see how geek-weird we can be. If they stuck to their poppier stuff, I’d dig it, but their prog-indie-post-rock hoo-ha bores the shit out of me.

This deliberately dismissive meta-ironic post brought to you by the realization that I think the hipster-indie scene is played out. I’m gonna stick with my local bros, because that is where the heart is.

I made another collage box last week. I’m still lacking a critical mass of materials to choose from but I think this one turned out a bit well despite the restrictions. It was also a welcome break from washing wallpaper glue, scraping linoleum off of wood floors and noticing various cock-eyed tipsies in my 107 year old house.

I’m taking another Flash class today, this time through CSU instead of Tri-C. Not only is it cheaper for a longer time period, but my instructor actually knows what the hell he is talking about instead of constantly having to backtrack and recant and figure things out as he goes along like the last dude. I’ve learned more in the first 4 hours today than I did in the entire 6 session class last time.

I’m Downtown too, at the Cole Center. I drove in this morning because of the rain, but I’m regretting it now since it is absolutely beautiful outside, perfect weather, only perhaps a tad too breezy. I’m so glad we finally got some rain, even as little as this morning’s fall. I think it is too late for the grass this year, but at least I’m not going to have to worry about a yard-sized fire hazard.

I’m anxiously awaiting this weekend. I’m going to Chicago to meet my friend and for the Pitchfork music festival. My mom asked if this was a Satanic festival because of the “pitchfork.” She’s been asking me if things I’m going to or doing are Satanic for at least 12 years. You’d think she would have figured out whether I’m a Satanist or not by now.

Oh yeah, just ran across this: OK X - A tribute of OK Computer by contemporary bands. Free download.

I’ve come to enjoy riding my bike to work, even on days like today when it is 82 degrees at 7:30 in the morning. It saves me money and is good exercise. For me it doesn’t take much longer than driving either. Time seems to be the #1 factor that people ask about; there seems to be an assumption that riding a bike is a waste of time when a car can zip along much faster. In the long run that is true, but at the same time in a car a person doesn’t get much exercise, unless they’re yelling with road rage. I look at my bike ride not as transportation time, but as exercise time. Biking is very much the most efficient regular means of transportation for me. The time difference is negligible, the cost savings is enormous, and the exercise is good for me. I decided to do some calculations. To see just how well it is working out.

I used this Bicycle Ride Calorie Calculator and the Gmaps Pedometer. And I also did some math on the cost savings as well. First the Exercise.

My route, according to the Gmaps Pedometer, is 3.3 miles each way. A total of 6.6 miles a day, or 33 miles a week. The ride takes me 40 minutes round trip, unless the wind is particularly powerful. Plugging in other details results in 220 calories burned per day, riding to and from work. That’s about 130 work days if I ride from May through October. I’m not going to take off days for rain or anything like that since it probably balances out based on the fact that I can probably ride in April and November as well. So, 130 days. That’s 28,600 calories, or just over 8 pounds. We’re also ignoring cardio impact and muscular impact from riding up the hills in the Flats.

Now, on to cost. Parking in the lot behind my building is $100/month. That’s $600 saved from May through October if I drove. Say I have to fill up once a month [currently it is about every 6-8 weeks] and that the fill-up costs $40. That’s $240 saved from May through October. I’ll ignore car insurance and servicing. That’s $840 saved in six months, just from riding a bike.

If I took the RTA, which I do in the winter, a monthly pass is $58. Riding my bike to work instead of taking the RTA saves me $348 from May through October.

• $840 saved versus driving
• $348 saved versus RTA
• I’m in better shape.

I don’t see a downside.

And since the numbers are sitting there, winter bus-riding saves me $492 versus driving. I could talk about environmental impacts of lowering my carbon-footprint and the benefits of living and working downtown as well, but I’m tired of doing math when I could be out walking around my new ‘hood.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #22: David Lean’s Summertime.

I didn’t like this movie. Sure, David Lean, sure Katharine Hepburn, sure Technicolor, sure boring. I think this is one of those films that doesn’t age well in terms of its accessibility to audiences. It plays pitch-perfect to pre-sexual revolution morality for the vast majority of the film; at times there are startling moments. The word sex is said! In 1955! And the laissez faire extra-marital affair is also a bit striking for the time. Perhaps there is a bit of prescience to the film in this regard. However, Hepburn’s character, Jane Hudson is a probably-virginal spinster in her late 40s who has come to Venice, somewhat subconsciously, looking for a fling. She finds one, but her Akron, Ohio bred prudity, repression of desire, and defensiveness keep her from giving in for quite a while. The first 40 minutes or so of the film are filled with her looking alternatively wistful and frightened. There really isn’t much plot apart from the sought-after golden year’s sex romp, although there is a tiny bit of pathos at the end when she must leave her Venetian shopkeeper while she still can.

Lean’s direction appears to illustrate an indecision in regard to what kind of film he is making. Much of the film functions as a travelogue, almost too touristy, and some of the shots are deliberately filmed to reflect what Hepburn is chronicling on her little 8mm [that apparently works in Technicolor!]. Then there are bits of slapstick with Hepburn’s character, she’s not good at comedy, her mishaps all seem contrived to be more about Hepburn doing comedy exclamation point, than integral parts of the film. The romance seems to have the most focus, but apart from one awesome scene where the Italian dude scolds Hepburn for being prude, it isn’t very romantic. It probably seems so very romantic for Hepburn’s character though, since she’s so inexperienced. The dramatic episodes are pretty facile, too. All in all it seems like the whole production was just having a good time filming in Venice and wasn’t too concerned with filming in Venice. The film is extraordinary in this regard. Technicolor was well suited as an homage to the city of Venice. Too bad the story itself wasn’t.

• Criterion essay by David Denby.
• Notcoming review with some good behind-the-scenes info.
• Criterion Contraption review.

Renovating a house is a bit like taking the clothes off of a woman; there always seems to be one more layer. Today I was walking to the kitchen for some breakfast when noticed a corner curl of wallpaper sticking away from the wall. “Pull me”, it said. I pulled. The whole sheet of wallpaper came off like a bra on Mardi Gras. Before I knew it, two hours had gone by and I’d torn the wallpaper from two complete rooms. Why do I feel spent and lightheaded and a bit giddy? Oh yeah. I never made it to the kitchen for breakfast.

Unfortunately, the plaster in the bedroom is so old that chunks of it came off with the wallpaper. I’m pretty sure Home Depot sells a repair kit. The bedroom still has its underwear on. I need to sand the paint off the floor and strip it from the woodwork. That reminds me. On my way to the grocery today I think I’ll stop by the Cleveland Green Building Coalition to get a refresher on the services they offer for residential homes. Hopefully they do a little pro bono consulting, since I don’t know much more about greening a home than to use non-VOC paint and look for the EnergyStar on appliances.

In a wonderful world there would even be a little cash available through grants or some such to folks who are intent on pimping out their home green-style. I could probably get a Restoration Society loan fairly easily, but I’d have to leave the original windows, which perfectly defeats the purpose of creating an energy efficient home if I have to keep 107 year old single-pane rattle-wood windows. I like the old style windows, but they’re draftier my wallet these days.

I still haven’t had breakfast.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #18: Samuel Fuller’s The Naked Kiss.

Sam Fuller is widely regarded as a very masculine filmmaker; his works associated with violence, bravado, exploitation, primitiveness and vulgarity. And while those associations are correct, the masculine label is misplaced. A film like The Naked Kiss illustrates Fuller’s claim to focus on undiluted emotion, emphatically ungendered. The character Kelly is central to the story in this film, and she essentially plays the role of the archetypal female. Maybe in Wicca [something I'm only tangentially familiar with] she would be the embodiment of the Goddess. Another way to look at it would be to combine all of the defining characteristics of Greek goddesses into her form. She’s by turns wanton, vengeful, motherly, sisterly, housewifely. She is everything that anyone has ever thought about a woman. This type of embodiment translates easily into a characterization of Kelly as power. She is what the film is about, and her unconscious inability to be pigeonholed by other characters is indicative of the “moral tract” that Michael Dare mentions in his Criterion essay.

Despite this reading, the film has moments of weakness in its portrayal of Kelly. Her prostitution is equated as a sexual perversion akin to pedophilia. It is obvious that Kelly isn’t a sexual deviant, but there is a brief moment that gives the film its name when she says she can tell when a man is a pervert by the way his kiss tastes. A naked kiss, prostitutes call it. This sort of sixth sense is nothing but hokey. Even in the 1960s I suspect. Despite and because of Kelly’s multifaceted characterization, she’s the least accessible character in the film. Illimitable. It helps that the setting and other characters are so purely one-dimensional. Grantville could be Leave it to Beaver’s Mayfield, except it is even more idyllic.

Of course, the lurid plot is exactly right for exploitation cinema: prostitutes, pedophiles, small town America. Dateline could learn a lot from Sam Fuller. Kelly, though a hooker with a heart of gold, has an extremely violent streak that appears when she must defend virtue and justice; an odd trait for a prostitute, but fully in keeping with the complex and imperfect characters that are trademarks of a Fuller film. There is a scene where she shoves money into the mouth of a cathouse madam, and the fact that the madam looks like Kelly might in 15 years is startling. The framing of each shot throughout the film is as tight and claustrophobic as possible, not until the end do we get a sense of freedom and release, as Kelly leaves town to make her way elsewhere. The Naked Kiss isn’t Fuller’s best film, but it is certainly a standout in comparison to his other works and the scholarship that has been done in relation to his defining auteur characteristics. If you’re a fan of anything Fuller though, you’ll enjoy this film.

Criterion Essay by Michael Dare.
Criterion Contraption review.
San Francisco Gate article.
Dan Schneider essay.
YouTube Clips: Clip 1, Clip 2, Clip 3.

I’m spending my 4th of July soaking the dining room floor with water and scraping up the linoleum that was under the carpet and over the hard wood floors. I’ve been pulling staples and nails out of the floors for a couple of days, one room at a time and was getting quite dusty and hacking a bit because of it. I bought myself a nice respirator today because there will be a few metric tons more of dust before I’m finished and the paper jobbers weren’t going to cut it. I think this linoleum is the same linoleum that was on the floor at the Last Supper. It appears to be that old. Right now I’m taking care of the labor-intensive but inexpensive bits of fixin’up until my finances have a chance to resolve back into something approximating equilibrium. So I bought a wallpaper stripper doohickey and once the floor stuff is fairly well taken care of I’ll start in on the nicotine-stained yellow woodgrained wallpaper.

I’ve created a collection on Flickr for house related happenings.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #133: George Sluizer’s The Vanishing.

The Vanishing is a very 80s movie with a very 80s score. It is a pretty good thriller/horror, especially because of its unorthodox methodology. Much of the film is spent with detailed views of a sociopath’s life; the man who kidnaps the main character’s girlfriend and drives Rex into obsessive search mode for the next three years. There ensues a game of cat and mouse that concludes with dire consequences. The film is engrossing from a psychological standpoint, mainly for the fact that the serial killer is the most sympathetic character and the protagonist is a fairly large jackass. This juxtaposition also takes the place usually occupied by suspense, something the film largely does without. I guess one could argue that wondering what happens to the victims is suspenseful, but I honestly didn’t care so much about how they died as much as I wondered how Rex would destroy his life next.

What I found most interesting about the film were its production values. The characters don’t have makeup crews and perfect clothing, the cars are similar to what anyone would drive. It is almost like a Dogme 95 film in these respects. Mostly because this was a European co-production and they didn’t have tons of budget to blow on mise-en-scene. Instead, the quality of the film comes with the cinematography. Nothing particularly flashy, but sometimes the decision whether to make a rack focus or not has powerful effects. An example of this occurs when the killer sends Rex a postcard telling him to show up at a certain café to meet. Rex arrives with his new girlfriend and as they conversate, the killer sits at a table behind them, very out of focus, but obviously him. Rex and his skirt take off and the camera lingers on the killer, but remains out of focus. This is basically the cinematic equivalent of the unfulfilled expectations that the narrative provides. The Vanishing is a well put-together film, but not a life-changing experience. I will say that if Hollywood put as much care into its screenplays as went into this one, many of its releases would improve dramatically.

• Criterion Essay by Kim Newman
• Links to tons of reviews
• Steven Jay Schneider essay
• kamera.co.uk review
• Roger Ebert review
• Qnetwork review
• Popmatters review

The day after I got the keys to my house the previous owner showed up unexpectedly and invited himself inside. He’s an old Lebanese dude, and very attached to the house. I probably could have gotten $5k less on the price if they hadn’t felt so sentimental about the place. Anyway, this guy told me he’d show me what the keys were for. I told him that I had it under control but he was rather insistent. So we went inside. I thought he was going to tell me to get the hell out of his house, or punch me when he saw that all the carpet was gone. He was seriously offended.

“Why did you tear up the carpet!?”

“I want wood floors.”

“It was less than three years old!”

*indifferent silence*

He then proceeded to grab all the keys and show me what went where. Amy got my friend Sandy on the phone and she pretended to be my landlord so we could get rid of the dude. Amy was great at ushering him out. I’m just not assertive enough at stuff like that. I feel rude. Hopefully he won’t be coming back all the time. I’m certainly going to change all of my locks though. He probably saved a set, since there were about 30 keys on the kitchen counter when I got the place. The last thing I want is to come home from work to find him lounging in my living room.

I took a break from pulling staples and inhaling what might be lead paint dust to go to the Beachland for a show. Just about everyone I know in the Cleveland music scene was there, which is always a good sign. I’d even found my old “THE BOSSES YOU LOSE” shirt on my last visit home, so I could bust out my old high school concert t-shirt again. Self Destruct Button started out, proving that bands in their vector are always better live. They’ve nailed the “craft chaos that tumbles to order” market. They played an unexpected Rush cover “Spirit of Radio” at the end of their set which made everyone go nuts in its strange but effective translation into experimental punk. Unfortunately, I’m a jackass and didn’t get video of them.

I did get some video of Proletarian Art Threat, playing their last show ever. Old style punk rock, and apparently they’ve been around for over a decade, off and on but mostly off lately, so I guess it isn’t surprising I had never seen them before. Lots of jumping off stage and beer spilled.

Parts & Labor wrapped up the evening with their 10th visit to Cleveland and my 3rd time seeing them. They said that they aren’t always received enthusiastically elsewhere and that “there are few places like Cleveland” which led to a few shouts of “Thank God!” which, I suppose, can be read in two different ways, depending on your mood. I was in a good one. They put on another fierce show, played some new stuff where the vocals got achingly melodic at times.