a writer's notebook
SPIRIT EMULSION on MUBI.
Made in 1987 a long time after the studio’s heyday this is an affectionate look at the golden years of Hammer Film Productions – the later TV work is ignored.
Gazing across a river at the human world from which she came, Chihiro turns translucent and almost disappears altogether: as if by losing one’s sense of place, one also loses any sense of self.Comments closed
On the Films of Wojciech Has:
Has’s understanding of cinema as an oneiric canvas is apparent from the very beginning, and his sense that its narratives were meant to trip over themselves through elisions, reversals, and collapses reinforced itself throughout his career. His films are frequently in a state of mutation and his characters always on introspective journeys; objects are the only constant, as their material weight exhibits more solidity than his stories’ whims or his characters’ souls. All the while, Has’s camera acts like an accordion, playing in its own time, starting wide and pushing in to follow his characters’ reveries deep into the frame.
“Don’t touch it, it’s a very important work of art”: The story of Rocking Machine – the phallic sculpture in A Clockwork Orange:
There are many sexual references in the film and perhaps these set decoration pieces were chosen to represent breasts or bulbous phalluses. In fact there are many film props used in a Clockwork Orange that protrude or extrude: Alex’s mask, the droogs’ cod pieces, the bulb lamps, Alex’s pointy bedspread, and so on. The largest and most obvious bulbous object however, is the Rocking Machine sculpture by Herman Makkink, which sits proudly on Catlady’s antique wooden console.Comments closed
Sharp turn to the cold today, rain and wind and single-digit temperatures. I got nothing done out here at the weekend because I was just too damn tired, so now I have to wait for the cold snap to pass. Always waiting for something. But I have a couple of weeks before I absolutely have to put seeds in the ground, so it should be okay.
Newsletter went out yesterday.
OPERATIONS: I am in the same two documents all week. One should be done by EOD Friday, the other will be half-done because it’s longer and more complex.
COMMS: Inbox 92, because I just haven’t been bothered. I’m getting smacked away by a cat while it’s still dark, and then getting smacked awake again when the little bastard decides he’s waited too long for his breakfast.
LISTENING:
READING: finishing VITA CONTEMPLATIVA, which seems to have morphed into a “internet bad/ Heidegger good/ Arendt bad” round of peculiar axe-grinding. I picked this book as a place to start with Byung-Chul Han, and it may be the place I finish. I’m starting to wonder if he doesn’t have that Zizek thing going on, where every book starts out notionally as being something different from the last, then there’s a decent joke, then it’s the same old slightly cokey blast about the same old things. There’s good and useful stuff in there, but the rot sets in around “The heart is the organ of remembrance and memory, and in the digital age we are without heart.”
LAST WATCHED: sampled episodes of THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM, BEACON 23
ORBITAL:
SHIPPING FORECAST: I actually took a little time this weekend to schedule the posting of some of my notes so that they didn’t all pile up.
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I only ever saw this on bootleg videotapes. When I was young, the film was largely unavailable. Saw a copy going cheap on Amazon and grabbed it. (UK) (US)
I worked with Malcolm McDowell once, and it was fucking magnificent. He came in while I was talking, and I suddenly heard this immense voice going “Oo’s that fakking cockney, then?” He was so nice, so funny and so good.
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The whole point of having a library is so that I can access the things I want to review over and over again, to keep me off streaming services unless absolutely necessary, and to look only at things that matter.
And screenshotting software is a much-used tool here.
It’s true that maintaining a personal library of physical media requires a certain amount of physical space – back in the Nineties I knew people who built vast monoliths of stacked VHS tapes – and that a lot of it can be done digitally. But I’m more likely to have a drive fail than irreparably scratch a disc. And there’s a thing about gathering stuff digitally… if I let myself fall back into that hole, I’ll end up with uncounted gigs of stuff that I may never have the time to listen to or watch. This was the rabbit hole of mp3 blogs, back in the day – I’m sure I still have zipfiles from that era that I never even opened. I have a feeling Simon Reynolds wrote about that some years ago, and there was a distinct ping of recognition from me.
I recently dug into one of my old external drives, in search of a song I only dimly remember – I can hear the sound of its last 40 seconds or so in the back of my head and wanted the whole thing. It was on a label sampler CD that came in a pink-and-white striped bag, of the kind you used to get sweets in back in the Seventies, but the CD came out in, oh, the early/mid 00s. I would have bought it from Piccadilly Records. The receipt is long since lost, and I cannot remember the name of the label. There was a point around 2012 when I digitised a lot of my CDs and got rid of them, because I needed the space, and I still regret that. I’ll never find that CD again, and the song – I only half-remember its title – is either misfiled or disappeared in a digital glitch.
It’s weird to be sad about the loss of a song you can barely remember, I’m sure. But I also remember the pang of frustration when THE DEATH OF STALIN, a film I like very much, was taken off Netflix just as I was in the mood to watch it again and make some notes on its dialogue. So I bought a physical copy.
Now I just need someone to put Jessica Beshir’s films on blu-ray.
My copy of 2001 is still available, (UK) (US).
Comments closed“I don’t come from there. I still feel It’s a bad thing, even for the eyes… it’s become such a problem with digital that we have too many images,” he said. “Some people love it, some people are sick of it, but you could say we’re all sick from it.”
“If I was a dictator, a nice dictator, says a king or queen, or sheikh or an emir, or whatever, I would not allow people to share more than 24 image a year,” he quipped.
24 Frames, even.
Also:
“It’s the only art for which a machine had to be invented for it to exist,” he said of cinema “It’s very young, only a century old, but it’s also very old.
“You have to reinvent it every generation… It goes back to what we were saying before about sacred images, you have to reinvent the power of the silent films. The people who watched the first film, this train coming into a train station [L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat], they were afraid. If you showed this film to a three-year-old today, he would be bored. You have to reinvent this power, this amazement, that’s the ambition and the hardship of making films.”
From a conversation between Robert Bresson and Jean-Luc Godard, from BRESSON ON BRESSON:
RB: And those people who think, who sometimes write (I’ve even read this recently) that silent films are the only pure cinema! Imagine!
J-LG They say that, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that when they watch a silent film they can’t stand it!
RB And what I was saying goes a lot further: There was never such a thing as silent film! It never existed! Because people still spoke, they just spoke into the void, we didn’t hear what they were saying. So please don’t say that we created a silent style! It’s absurd.
Related: Denis Villeneuve’s method considers dialogue a thing for theatre and tv, not for his films.
Comments closedTwenty-four pages down, eight to do today. Which is going to be a trick, as I was woken by an allergy attack in the middle of the night, consequently slept late, and today I can barely see straight and am a mass of pulled muscles.
Worked out last night that my March can be considered booked if I want it to be, which leaves me some spare time for garden and thinking. I can default to six pages a day, cruise through, and have the central stuff done by the end of the month.
I have just discovered Rarefilmm.
Reading BRESSON ON BRESSON.
Comments closedSusan Sontag: Spiritual Style in the Films of Robert Bresson
“Some art aims directly at arousing the feelings; some art appeals to the feelings through the route of the intelligence. There is art that involves, that creates empathy. There is art that detaches, that provokes reflection.
“Great reflective art is not frigid. It can exalt the spectator, it can present images that appall, it can make him weep. But its emotional power is mediated. The pull toward emotional involvement is counterbalanced by elements in the work that promote distance, disinterestedness, impartiality. Emotional involvement is always, to a greater or lesser degree, postponed.
“The contrast can be accounted for in terms of techniques or means—even of ideas. No doubt, though, the sensibility of the artist is, in the end, decisive. It is a reflective art, a detached art that Brecht is advocating when he talks about the “Alienation Effect.” The didactic aims which Brecht claimed for his theater are really a vehicle for the cool temperament that conceived those plays.
“In the film, the master of the reflective mode is Robert Bresson.”
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I now own telescoping loppers. Nothing is safe.
All shall be lopped. Telescopingly.
ON DECK: Need to get this piece of 2/2024 done today. After that, I’m into outlining and developing.
INBOX: 72
OPERATIONS: Already processed a contract this morning. Waiting on a couple of pending calls to firm up.
LISTENING:
CONDITION: 8hrs 22mins. A few months with this thing on my wrist has taught me that I sleep a lot, but not well.
THINKING ABOUT: old forms
OUTSIDE: No Other Reason: Marguerite Duras’s “My Cinema”
SHIPPING FORECAST: Tomorrow I plan to spend all day in the garden lopping things
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I found this on Amazon for £2.89. Couldn’t leave it behind at that insane price.
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