Midnight in Paris
Midnight in Paris – Woody Allen
If you’re feeling nostalgic for Paris, art, wanderlust, and Owen Wilson/Woody Allen you should watch this movie.
It’s beautiful and weird. It’s a fantasy set in a very real situation.
Love the movie. Love Paris. Don’t love Owen Wilson, but that’s ok.
The opening scene…
Just Kids
Just Kids – Patti Smith
Just Kids is an autobiography by Patti Smith who is not only an interesting lady, but a good writer. I love stories based on real life, particularly autobiographies and memoirs, and this book is one of the best that I’ve read in a while.
I think that I particularly like Patti Smith because she wasn’t really into drugs (in a era and scene where many were), she had her own androgynous style, and she was involved with multiple art forms (i.e., music, creative writing, drawing etc). The book also talks about the intense relationship between Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe. She describes Robert as the artist of her dreams. He was a photographer and shot the album cover for Patti’s first album Horses.
Patti Smith’s story inspired me to start painting again and to look for new music. It also sparked an interest in the ’60′s scenes in both New York and San Francisco (hence the books that I am now reading). All the essential ’60′s sceneters are mentioned in the book at one point or another – Warhol, Hendrix, Dylan, Joplin, as well as a bunch of other people that I need to learn more about.
Excellent book! Easy to read, enjoyable and inspirational.
Here are a few pictures from the book (including the Horses cover):
RJD2 and St. Germain
One should never forget about RJD2 when contemplating music.
And also St. Germain.
Subway Reading
Finished a book yesterday (Just Kids - new favorite book, post to come) and forgot to pack a new one for my subway ride today. That’s 40 minutes of prime subway reading time wasted. I was forced to play Majong instead. Curses!
The Loved One
The Loved One – Evelyn Waugh
I read this book a long time ago and remembered liking it, so I decided to try and read it again. I failed. It’s fiction, a satire and the idea of the story is interesting, it’s a comment on the business of dying (e.g.., purchasing cemetery plots with good views), but I just can’t seem to get into it.
I’m going on a fiction hiatus.
We’re on a road to nowhere
We sure are.
The Bloody Chamber
The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter
The Bloody Chamber is a dark (aka gothic) story that, in my mind, is set in a climate that is always cloudy and on the verge of rain (like the UK – or what I imagine the UK is like). If the story was made into a film (and perhaps it has been), it would be very grey, except for the blood which would be deep red and glowing – think florescent pulsating blood.
Angela Carter’s writing is beautiful. I truly appreciate the use of language in her stories; it’s extraordinary and this is coming from someone who is usually far more interested in the content of the writing than the writing itself.
Carter wrote many short stories which can usually be found as a compilation called The Bloody Chamber and other short stories. She writes about a Count in The Snow Child; a COUNT! (Chocula + cape.) I like her stories because they are different, amazingly well written (I can’t say it enough), whimsical, fantastical and have a surprising realness to them. The best part is that they are totally different than what I usually read! Exciting, new, and highly recommended literary adventures await you, should you choose to indulge.
Here are some Angela Carter quotes (I get the impression that she was a pretty cool/interesting lady):
“Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.”
“Hollywood… was the place where the United States perpetrated itself as a universal dream and put the dream into mass production.”
“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”
An illustration of The Bloody Chamber by an artist named Abigail Moulder.
The Gadfly
The Gadfly is a story about a young boy, growing up in Italy and his rise to a political revolutionist. Without giving too much away, the book begins with betrayal from his father, and the girl he admires, and leads him to abandon those he loves and flee Italy. The book chronicles his life and travels, never forgetting his secret past.
The tension and shame runs so thick on the pages that you really feel the characters. You share their sorrow and shame and as the book continues you almost want to reach in and shake them vigorously by the shoulders to wake them from their sorrow.
From the back cover: “The Gadfly is an ordinary man with human failings and weaknesses, a secret love, and a complex burden of pain.”
This book took many sittings to read, not because it didn’t capture my attention but because I needed to digest it. I can’t wait to pick it up again and discover something new.
The book is cheap, I picked it up for $5 (love that classic books are so cheap!) so you can’t really go wrong here.
A quote from the book: “Then I am a happy fly if I live or if I die.”
Happy reading.
Post by: Jordan
Honestly Sincere
I think that more people should listen to Conrad Birdie. From ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ – 1963.
The Artist
The Artist (Director/Writer: Michel Hazanavicius)
I saw ‘The Artist’ last night and it was awesome.
Three things that you must know before watching this film:
1) It’s silent;
2) It’s black and white;
3) The dance scene (which I posted below) comes at the very end of the movie so don’t expect exciting dance moves the whole way through, like I did. I blame a slightly deceiving movie trailer for upping my dance scene expectations.
If the era (late 1920′s to early ’30′s) interests you, or you’re interested in seeing something different, I would definitely check it out.
Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo – they’re no Gene Kelly and Ginger Rogers but it’s a fun dance scene.
Pleasant side-effect: ‘The Artist’ inspired me to watch my favorite clips from ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ because of the obvious similarities between the two (i.e., the star of ‘The Artist’, Jean Dujardin, looks an awful lot like Gene Kelly and both movies are based movie stars resistant to moving from silent films to ‘talkies’).
Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly perform GOOD MORNING! in ‘Singin’ in the Rain’.