If i was any good at this I would back up and tell you how wonderful the last couple of weeks have been. They literally have just seemed to slip through my fingers. Of course if I’m being honest the bad weeks seem to go by at a pretty good clip as well. Hypericon was a blast and the weekend before it was as well, though the details are a little fuzzy, but for different reasons than Sunday morning at Hypericon. So I’ll just leave it at that except to say a late happy birthday to Stephen Zimmer and Roblyn.
This last weekend was pretty good as well. More time with family would have been nice but that was my own fault. Saw Mongol and the Animation Show on Saturday. Mongol was beautiful but flat, the Animation Show was as great as it always is. When we left the Belcourt people were lined up down to 21st waiting to see the midnight showing of Rocky Horror. I was glad to see it was going to be packed. I would have liked to see it but I was going over to Billy’s on Sunday to help him assemble some ARs.
The Belcourt finally announced what the16mm outdoor film for July was going to be. Which is good because I think it’s this weekend. I hope it is, because if it’s the weekend after next is RollerGirls. Anyway it’s Stagecoach the movie that made John Wayne a star. Okay that’s probably overstating it but it’s a wonderful John Ford movie. A Western in the old fashioned Western style. I really want to see it and watching it outside stitting in a lawn chair should be a blast, even if I’m by my self. I doubt I’ll get anybody else interested in going to see it with me, but ‘m going to try.
Anyway that’s all the catching up I’m going to do. I’ll see you later.
Well Friday was a nice relaxing night with friends. I like those nights. Which is good because I did the same thing on Saturday, except we broke it up with two movies. Up the Yangtze and Repo Man.
Up the Yangtze is a doc about the Three Gorges Dam project in China, watching the subtitles I realized I have been spelling dam, damn, for about the last month. More specifically it is about a young girl from an imporverished family going to work abroad one of the cruise ships that ply the river. It’s also about a young man from a more affluent family, there income is revealed to be around 3000 Yuan a month if I remember right, but how that relates to other families in China I have no idea. It’s also about the disappearance of old China, which is literally being torn down and flooded. To me it could have benefited from either tightening the focus or stepping back. Still well worth watching though.
Early Sunday morning around 2:05 Repo Man was invested into the Pantheon of “THE GREATEST MOVIES EVERaccording to Clovis Citwood.” It now resides in the same rarified atmosphere as Two Lane Blacktop, White Lightning, Thunder Road, and the sublime masterpiece Smokey and the Bandit III: Smokey is the Bandit. By the way not only motor movies are enshrined those are just the first three or four that popped into my skull. We went to the Midnight Screening at the Belcourt. I feel bad because I’ve missed half of them (uh, now that I’m thinking about it it’s probably more than half). I love what they’re doing but if people don’t show up why bother doing it. So I feel like I ought to be there for every one. It helps that they have all been movies I would like to see again. Back to Repo Man I sow this back in the early nineties. I don’t remember where or how, it may have been on TBS or something because I didn’t remember half of what was going on in the movie. I pretty much just remembered a weird movie with Emilo Estavez and Harry Dean Stanton, bout a bunch of down and out repo men, and there was some there weird stuff going on. I primarily remembered Harry and Emilo in that big green Impala blasting down the LA river. I don’t know if it would have made any difference if I remembered more or not, but I was blown away by what I saw Sunday morning.
Needless to say, I didn’t get into anything Sunday night. I barely got out of the house to make a quick run to Krystal’s, hmm chili cheese pups. Oh wait I did watch The Fellowship of the Ring for some reason I’m not quite sure of. I should have been watching the Comedy Central thing the I need to get reviewed. C’est la vie, okay that still looks super silly written out. Does it sound that pretentious when I say it?
Every week I have great intentions of posting a little something everyday. Of course that never happens. So here I am again on Friday summing up the week. Well last weekend was pretty nice. Let’s see what did I do Monday, besides work. Oh yeah I worked. My sister was having problems with her email so I went to take a look at it. Of course it started working by the time I got there. C’est la vie. Okay I can pull that phrase off in conversation but it just looks pretentions sitting there on the screen. Other highpoints of the week include doing the second CineGeek podcast and finishing my The Air That I Breathe review. I’ve turned in some less than stellar reviews. Not that I’m expecting perfection, but even I have some standards. So I’m trying to make a point of putting more effort into these. I’m really proud of the last two, this one and the one for Red Violin. Of course there is always the possibilty that it may be completely unjustified and misplaced pride.
There are two gun shows this weekend and I’m going to miss them both. Don’t have anything budgeted for guns right now so there’s not much sense in going. It’s fun to look around and drool though. I’ve still got to get my AR to the range. That’s going to be interesting, pulling the trigger the first time on something I put together for the most part. Of course the part that actually matters the most, the installation of the barrel extention on the barrel, was done by a professional so there’s probably less risk involved than the first time I fired the Nagant, the Makarov or the CZ-52.
What am I doing this weekend? Well I’m not sure about tonight, Maybe, Get Smart, maybe Love Guru maybe nothing. I’m not even sure if we are going to Opry Mills or Green Hills. I guess i should ask more questions. Tommorow is a little more nailed down. Up the Yangtze and the midnight showing of Repo Manat the Belcourt. I am interested in anything about the Three Gorges Damn project. I’m awed, horrified, intrigued, dumbfounded about the whole thing. I’m not any kind of enviromentalist but that thing even scares me a little bit but you listen to the engineers who are working on it and they have such an optimism about the whole project and what it will mean for China that you start to kind of turn your thining around, but then you hear about the archelogists who have been working non-stop the last several years trying to recover and document what they can. The sheer unprecedented human scale of the thing awsome, in the traditional sense of the word, as well.
Last Weekend, saw The Incredible Hulk on Friday night. it was okay but hanging out at Kalamata’s and Maggie Moo’s before and after was more entertaining. I loved the opening shot. and the way they rehased the origin in the beginning credits. I loved the old school lab where they crammed Bruce’s brain full of gamma rays. I loved all the little hints about the broader Marvel world, and I’m sure I missed most of those, but besides a few scenes early on I just didn’t really care that much. It’s a fun action movie, but I guess I’m just getting tired of wathcing CGI monsters wail on each other or maybe my organ of suspension disbelief is atrophing in general. Every time that Bruce got big or the Hulk got small I’m wondering where is all that mass coming from and where did is it going. Should there be a huge sucking noise as cubic yards of air are sucked in and a huge fireball from where it’s transformed into green flesh. I can believe someone drinks a potion, gets bitten by a spider, passes through a weird belt of radiation, intentionally shoots himself in the eye with gobs of gamma rays and weird things happen. Maybe they get stronger, have more stamina, they’re senses become sharper, their baldspot grows back in. It’s all extremely unlikely, but I can kinda of believe it. The Hulk is just flat impossible.
I have the most entertaining dreams, except for the ones where I dream I’m getting up and getting ready for work like I should when in the slightly more real world I’m managing to ignore the alarm clock and sleep late, those just suck. I can’t remember the last nightmare I had, unless you count the one where my dream house, when I say dream house I mean the house that I live in in my dreams not a “dream house”, slid into the street. Maybe that requires some clarification. I don’t remember much of my dreams but the ones I do remember take place in a relatively consistent world. My house for example, it’s kind of like my house but not really, there are more rooms and they’re smaller, less square. And there is a large screened in porch on the back that is literally filled floor to ceiling with even for me not really all that interesting junk left by the previous owners. The floor creak, there is a blue hallway and it’s a whole lot less stable than my real house, hence the sliding into the street in that one dream. The backyard is bigger and occasionally has cars that I am pretty sure I bought some time in the past. Sometimes they even run. In last nights dream there was this rather crude but spectacular multi level water feature. It even had some squatters on one level that I think were Hispanic but I’m not sure. We got along so i let them be. At one point Dad showed up and helped me turn this huge valve to turn it on. Then we stood n the driveway and chatted for awhile. About what I can’t remember. Anyway I didn’t even remember the dream until halfway through the morning when Jay IM’ed me about something and it jostled the memory into mt conscience. Sometimes it’s days before I remember a dream. I’ve tried to keep a dream journal but I remember them so infrequently that the desire has waned by the time I actually remember one upon waking. When I started this there was a point but like most of my dreams I can’t remember it now.
It’s been an interesting week. Work kind of sucked. Found out were losing someone next week. She’s moving to Mississippi. On one hand I’m kind of envious that she’s able to just up and move on such short notice. Were not really close at all but I’m happy for her that she’s doing something exciting. I’ve not really talked to her about it I’m just assuming she’s excited about it, but I think that’s a pretty safe assumption. It stinks for us that she’s leaving behind though. We really need the bodies and it takes at least six months before a new hire is able to really carry his or her weight. Just training her replacement is going to take away from time that could be spent on other stuff assuming they can even find someone in a reasonable amount of time. It took forever for them to find the last person they hired. Thankfully she seems to be coming along rather well.
Outside of work it’s been a great week. Deb had a birthday dinner for Stephania Wednesday night. That was fun. Thursday was Blue Sky with Stephen and Suzie and Alan, then tonight was Macaroni Grill and then KungFu Panda. It was alright story wise. Really just an animated Jackie Chan movie. Some of the stuff was lifted straight from Jackie Chan movies. I guess that’s not really a bad thing. The wisdom imparted by the wise old guru, a turtle, which explains why Suzie loved the movie so much, was a little bit on the fortune cookie or inspirational poster type. The moral of the story was “your special just the way you are.” Which in this instance translates to the fact that even a fat out of shape panda can become a KungFu master in a few days, just my being himself. Of course everyone is special and it’s important to know yourself and to be true to yourself, but does that translate to it being okay to being fat and out of shape? I’m not saying it’s immoral or bad to be fat. Hell I’m fat. Not chunky, not a little heavy, but fat and I know it. I’m not exactly happy about it though and I don’t really think I should be complacent about it. I know I would certainly be healthier and feel better and I imagine be happier if I lost weight. I can’t think of one thing that would be bad about waking up tomorrow less a hundred pounds, assuming I didn’t just wake up without a leg or some shit like that. Okay I wouldn’t have any clothes that would fit, but it would be a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to buy a whole new wardrobe if I was more conventionally shaped. I don’t think it’s a good idea to identify who you are with your body shape anyway. I can see that being a bad thing at both extremes. I think it would be just as pathetic if I thought of myself as a fat person and used that as a reason to stay fat. Not that it usually takes a reason to stay fat. I’ve not managed to be not fat in close to twenty years. But that would be just as pathetic as becoming an anorexic because to be happy I thought I had to be thin. Wouldn’t it be a whole lot healthier to think of who you are as what you think and do rather than what your body shape is? But even there my argument kind of falls down, I’ve never heard of a ninety eight pound sumo wrestler or a four hundred pound ballerina. Seems like somebody could go out on a limb and make an inspiring movie about a young person who through hard work and dedication, for longer than your typical movie training montage, ends up triumphing over mediocrity.
Damn, that was a little harsh, I didn’t start out to write a rant that just kind of came out. Just to play devil’s advocate, strange position for a non believer but I’m quite flexible for my size, it’s a sweet movie and the animation is top notch. The characters are all anthropomorphs of course but there are scenes that just look so real. Like somebody was out there in this strange world of talking pigs and ducks, China it seems is peopled mostly by pigs and ducks by the way, with a camera filming this movie. Some of the more stylised animation reminded me a lot of Samurai Jack which is not a bad thing at all.
Well this is turning into a long post but I want to mention something else I started this week. FOoSHNARG, Fraternal Order of Secret Human Nashville Area Resident Geeks. It’s basically a Google calendar that I made public, so if your using Google calendar you can see it and add things to it. Go wild. There is also a website fooshnarg.org where you can view the calendar. Hopefully we can keep everything on there and there will be less confusion about what’s going on. If you want to add something but are having troubles just email it to clovis@fooshnarg.org and I will try to get it up.
Oh boy, it’s late and I want to take a lap or two around Nurburgring before I go to bed.
It was a very good night! Plan 10 was the runner up, and My Dinner with K’zon won the Son of Rambow trailer competition. Just don’t tell anyone that their were only two entries Son of Rambow was amazing, funny as hell and full of heart.
Now I’m going through DV tapes and charging up batteries for Granville tommorow. I will only be able to take video. My still camera charger burned up on my and I’ve not replaced it yet. Oh well.
Egad, I’ve got a ton of video I need to go through. Leave it to me to shoot it and just let it sit.
I don’t know why the embeds weren’t working but hopefully they are now.
Whoa boy, Indy IV. All I can say is; go see this movie!!!
I was really afraid. We are talking about the guys who brought us midiclordian and magically turn guns into radios, but the buzz from late last week was positive so my expectations were rising. And they were met. This is easily the best since Raiders and in many ways it’s equal. If you’ve had fear of whether Harrison Ford can pull it off, don’t worry he’s still got it. This is the third time already this summer I’ve been blown away by a movie. Iron Man, ShotgunStories and now this. Oh yeah, I you are a Raiders fan you have to come out to theBelcourt to see The Raiders of the Lost Ark The Adaptation on June 5th. A bunch of kids in the eighties decieded that they were going to reshoot Raiders shoot for shoot. It took them a decade, you see them all grow up through the movie, but they did it. It is amazing. I know it’s a Thursday but because of licensing, at least until Raiders is in the public domain (and if you believe anything copyrighted in the last fiftey years will ever end up in the public domain you’ve got more faith in the process than me, you are never going to see this anywhere but a theatre and it very rarely screens. I lucked out and got to see it at a film festival a couple of years ago.
Speaking of the Belcourt you’ve got to come out Friday as well and see the trailers in front of Son of Rambow. Should be fun.
Oh boy, well it’s the beginning of another week. This one will flash by as fast as the last. Friday night is Son of Rambow then Saturday is the Granville Car Show. Who knows whats going on Sunday and Monday. Probably go see Grandma one of those days. Anyway, here’s something to look at till next time.
What a weekend, two great movies, five great meals with friends and family, let’s see that was pizza, mexican, pizza, chinese, catfish, hmm. TACA, driving aimlessly around Nashville with a car full of buds, brainstorming spoof trailers. Yep good weekend. Now I’m doing a load of laundry so i don’t have to teach naked tomorrow., also need to shave so I don’t have to spend twenty minutes removing scraggly pathetic excuse for a beard facial hair in the morning.
Before I sign off I want to say something about Iron Man. I’ve read some criticism about it that I think is missing a crucial point.
——–Spoiler Alert———-
While I’m not going to argue that it’s the greatest movie ever, it’s darn good. There seems to be some valid criticism that it loses some steam in the second half. If a movie’s working for me it’s pretty easy for me to get swept along so it really didn’t bother me, but in retrospect I can see people’s point. However one of the reasons I’ve seen reviewers give for this loss of momentum is that Tony Stark losses his moral focus. That when he halts the weapons production of Stark Industries he’s turning his back on his country by not providing the arms she needs. Then sort of willy nilly he deciedes to use this suit he’s perfecting more out of obsession to perfection than anything else to go out and play superhero. As a big fan of things that make a lot of noise and go boom if I got this vibe it would have soured the movie for me. I maybe engaging in a bit of projection here but that was not the read I got of Tony Stark at all. True he suspended weapons production at Stark Industries and this may be nit-picking but I think he even said production would be “suspended pending a review” which I took to mean he was going to clean house, find out how the weapons were failing into the wrong hands, fix the distribution problems and then start production back To my way of thinking disruption in the supply of weapons caused by this suspension would be enough to frighten skittish investors and upset Rhodes and the military. I may be on thin ice here as I can see there are moments in the film that seem to contradict this but there’s enough there to sustain, for me anyway, this interpretation. Regardless that’s the interpretation I’m going with because ceding this point would really knock the film down several pegs for me.
