gloomy planets

too many blogs

this is partly due to enterprise but mostly due to sitting:  i have multiple blogs. too many. so, rather than trim and subtract, i made a new one. pretty self-explanatory i think but please feel free to follow, comment or ignore as suits your tastes.

h e r e

friday

one more time around the sun

'yesterday it was my birthday, i hung one more year on the line'. so goes a song lyric. here's what happened:

woke up and ran up to the mt tabor reservoir. it was my first time running in several weeks (was sick, then busy, then sick and busy). felt important to mark the day w/ a run because i can. i thought of my 5 birthdays since diagnosis and i ran a little bit harder. i thought of those currently in battle who can't run and i began to sprint. a loop in my head: life is a gift, life is a gift...

got a ride downtown w/ m. dropped her at work and walked to stumptown. had a double americano and read the new york times book review.

walked to living room theaters and saw no one knows about persian cats - about, among other things, the rise of creative expression in oppressive regimes. loved it. in addition to having the theater to myself, i learned about an iranian hip-hop artist named Hichkas. watch this.



After the movie i went to nearby food carts and took my lunch to newly opened Director Park. Walked back to burnside and browsed at Powell's for an hour. it was difficult b/c i had about 40 bucks on a gift card (or rather i was entitled to half of an 80$ gift card, m has the other half) and i kept finding expensive books to buy.

went back to living room and saw the girl with the dragon tattoo, which i quite loved. seen several genre movies lately that were all expertly crafted (mother, north face, the ghost writer, memories of murder).

walked to m's building and got a ride home.
we threw tennis balls with the dog.
we rode bikes to montavilla and ate at country cat.
we came home
i finished off the bottle of single malt scotch that i received at last year's birthday
i felt that message from the universe, still thumping in my chest
life is a gift, life is a gift...

you, the living

fri/sat

keep going back and forth on whether this is a source of pride or shame but: friday evening m was in seattle visiting her dad (who happened to be in town for convention) and i managed to get in 5 movies within 20 hours. i took breaks for eating and sleeping. the first one i saw at the nw film center (and it ruled) and the rest i saw at home (read: laying prone on the couch): head-on, a.i., mysterious object at noon, demonlover, ossos. 4 of the 5 are on my summer project list and the 5th (ossos) is the first in a trilogy by pedro costa and the next 2 in the trilogy on the summer project list so i felt i should see 1st.

The Garden

managed to get a couple of my summer project movies (see below) in in the past couple days. about one the less said the better, but as for the other: wow. Scott Hamilton Kennedy's The Garden,  is perhaps one of the more gripping, tense, heartfelt, soaring films i've come across of late, a documentary somehow managing to be about life, death, race, politics, industry, media, celebrity and at bottom, class warfare. if you're not fuming as you watch, then you are part of the problem. currently available on demand thru netflix. do yourself a favor - unplug the phone, dim the lights, and block off 85 minutes.

L'Intrus, etc

so there's about 115 movies on the summer project list (see below). this culled from sight & sound, and film comment and other sources but w/o getting too academic about it: stuff i keep meaning to see. the pool gets bigger by the day so this is a preventive measure akin to emptying a lake with a spoon. i'm going to see as many as possible by labor day wknd and chatter briefly about them if/when the urge strikes. to date i've seen three: 35 shots of rum, goodbye dragon inn, and L'Intrus. each glorious in different ways (though 2 have a director, Claire Denis, in common) but L'Intrus, man o man. what can be said? it's still resonating and humming through me, vibrating at a frequency i understand, even if i cannot translate specifically what it says or frankly what the plot is even about. Amazing piece of cinema. Could not find an embeddable trailer so go

here

s u m m e r /p r o j e c t

title/director/seen

12:08 East of Bucharest Corneliu Porumboiu 13 Lakes James Benning 2046 Wong Kar Wai 24 City Zhang Ke Jia 35 Shots of Rum Claire Denis A.I Steven Spielberg Antichrist Lars von Trier Audition Takishi Miike Black Book Paul Verhoeven Black Girl Ousmane Sembene Blissfully Yours 
Apichatpong Weerasethakul Bluebeard Catherine Breillat Café Lumiere Hsiao-hsien Hou Chocolat Claire Denis Come and See Elim Klimov Collapse Chris Smith Colossal Youth Pedro Costa Control Anton Corbjin Death Proof Quentin Tarantino, demonlover Olivier Assayas Departures Yojiro Takita Distant Nuri Bilge Ceylan Divine Intervention Elia Suleiman Dog Days Ulrich Seidl Downfall Oliver Hirschbiegel Esther Kahn Arnaud Desplechin Eureka Shinji Aoyama Fat Girl Catherine Breillat Femme Fatale Brian De Palma Friday Night Claire Denis Girl w/ Dragon Tattoo Niels Arden Oplev Glue Alexis Dos Santos Goodbye, Dragon Inn Tsai Ming-liang Gran Torino Clint Eastwood Head-On Fatih Akin I Don't Want to Sleep Alone Tsai Ming-liang Import/Export Ulrich Seidl In Praise of Love Jean-Luc Godard In the City of Sylvia José Luis Guerín In Vanda's Room Pedro Costa Inland Empire David Lynch La Captive Chantal Akerman La ciénaga Lucrecia Martel La Commune Peter Watkins La libertad Lisandro Alonso Les Amants Réguliers Philippe Garrel Lilya 4-ever Lukas Moodysson Lion’s Den Pablo Trapero Los Angeles Plays Itself Thom Andersen Los Muertos Lisandro Alonso Machuca Andrés Wood Memories of Murder Bong Joon-ho Miami Vice Michael Mann Millennium Mambo Hou Hsiao-hsien Moolaadé Ousmane Sembene My Winnipeg Guy Maddin Mysterious Object at Noon Apichatpong Weerasethakul Nine Queens Fabián Bielinsky Nobody Knows Hirokazu Kore-eda North Face Phillip Stotzl Notre musique Jean-Luc Godard Oldboy Park Chan-wook Open Hearts Susanne Bier Owl and the Sparrow Stephane Gauger Platform Jia Zhangke Police, Adjective Corneliu Porumboiu Private Fears in Public Places Alain Resnais Prodigal Sons Kimberly Reed Pulse Kiyoshi Kurosawa Reprise Joachim Trier RR James Benning Russian Ark Alexander Sokurov Saraband Ingmar Bergman Secret Sunshine Lee Chang-dong Séraphine Martin Provost Songs from the Second Floor Roy Andersson Spirited Away Hayao Miyazaki Star Spangled to Death Ken Jacobs Still Life Jia Zhangke Talk to Her Pedro Almodóvar Tarnation Jonathan Caouette Ten Abbas Kiarostami The Baader-Meinhof Complex Uli Edel The Duchess of Laneais Jacques Rivette The Garden Scott Hamilton Kennedy The Gleaners and I Agnès Varda The Headless Woman Lucrecia Martel The Holy Girl Lucrecia Martel The Host Bong Joon-ho, The House of Mirth Terence Davies The Intruder Claire Denis The Lady and the Duke Eric Rohmer The Last Mistress Catherine Breillat The Man from London Béla Tarr The Man Without a Past Aki Kaurismäki The Mother Roger Michell The Pianist Roman Polanski The Secret of the Grain Abdel Kechiche The Son Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne The Song of Sparrows Majid Majidi The Sun Alexander Sokurov The White Diamond Werner Herzog The World Jia Zhangke, Three Times Hou Hsiao-hsien Time Out Laurent Cantet Tokyo Sonata Kiyoshi Kurosawa Tony Manero Pablo Larraín Treeless Mountain So Yong Kim Trouble Every Day Claire Denis Turning Gate Hong Sang-soo United Red Army Kôji Wakamatsu You, The Living Roy Andersson Va Savoir Jacques Rivette, Waltz with Bashir Ari Folman West of the Tracks Wang Bing What Time Is It There? Ming-liang Tsai Woman on the Beach Hong Sang-soo