September 07, 2009
September 03, 2009
First Lost & Forgotten Short Film: The Horrors of the Sunflowers!
Spread it around the youtubes, world. Is that Robert Redford on the phone? Five Stars!
(If it's running slow on your computer, turn the HD off.)
The blurb from Mr Quill's All Forgotten Blog:
The moment you've been waiting for has finally arrived. The blockbuster hit of the summer is available for free right here! It features the brilliant acting and improvisational skills of the children of the Big Little. The music of Olaf Mary, S. Sandrigon, and Barış Manço provides the perfect backdrop. The cinematography of Graine Proinseas tells the story the way it must be told. The Big Little is proud to present...THE HORRORS OF THE SUNFLOWERS
In all seriousness, if you like what you see and want to see more of it, I highly encourage you to support my project here:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=313-129
This will be my last utterly shameless plug. As I've stated elsewhere in the blog, the idea is to create a media center for the students of the Big Little. The money will be used to purchase a camera and computer. I will teach the kids how to use them and to make their own films. My aim is both to provide them with new skills and to hopefully stir up some of that dormant creativity that I catch sublime glimpses of from time to time. Send the movie to your friends. Ask them for money. Seriously, tiny contributions are more than appreciated. One, five, ten dollars. It'll get us there. Enjoy the movie.
The Parents at the Great-Grandparents' Graves
My folks are on a camping trip Eastward along the Lincoln Highway, which we've been constantly reminded to follow on the facebooks. Good pictures have been resulting: These photos of them visiting their respective grandparents' grave sites in the Middle West. I'll have to do this trip myself someday.
Three Years Ago: E-mail to Liam Joseph Olaf Worland Golden
We've got a series of reposts, republishing what was written from this website exactly three years ago, when I wrote pretty sparsely. Here's a charming one from the Correspondences Department, when Mr Olaf Mary was lost in the Brazilian rainforest.
He writes her, a sentence -
house? - juxtaposing parties -
drinking a mimosa the fall of man
And Liam a painter a drunk asswhore -
drink, asswhore, drink - return to the fatherland -
And the virtue was impregnated with another man's retard,
And the drunk asswhore - we have the keys
to your parents' house - and the songwriter & Lisa
And the rainforest monkeys fondled -
home? - he's become a technocrat!
He's sold his ass-soul to tutor morality's idiot child!
He foreclosed on his morgage & turned to Portuegese Literature!
Motherland? Sudetenland? Sudan? - sweep up, poor asswhore.
September 02, 2009
September 01, 2009
Movie Review: Woody Allen's "Celebrity" (1998)
The story behind this movie is that, about ten years ago, I wrote the name down on a list of films, at my parent's house on one of my dad's pieces of scratch paper. (He cuts used computer paper into perfect quarters & leaves them in stacks around the house.) Half a decade later, when my parents joined NetFlix, they had that forgotten piece of scratch paper & added the names of the films to their new queue. I had never gotten around to seeing the movie Celebrity. But for years now, it's become a code word for, whenever I try to recommend anything to my parents, they're like, oh god, remember when we watched that one film you liked, it was so unbearably horrible, we can't trust any of your recommendations. This went on for years & years.
So I had low expectations, & a weird relationship with an unwatched movie. I had assumed it was as mediocre as some of Woody Allen's other toss-off flicks of the past few decades. And I have a high tolerance for Mr Allen's worst movies, verily, verily, I say unto you, I love most of them. (Did anyone else even make it to the end of Happy Ending? Don't even attempt it.)
With a free afternoon, a hookah packed with banana & pomegranate-flavored shisha, a few creamy Boont summer solstice ales, I watched it on a whim. I think it was my favorite movie I've seen all year. I used to think the only movie Kenneth Branagh was good in was Harry Potter II, but I couldn't get enough of him in this. His Woody Allen impersonation isn't perfect enough to be a knock-off, but it's own organic Allen-esque character. And the two vignettes with him & Charlize Theron (as a bizarre supermodel) & with Leonardo DiCaprio (as an abusive celebrity) are terrific. And this has one of Woody Allen's cooler casts, with Bebe Neuwirth as a prostitute sex-instructor who chokes on her instructional banana, & strange cameos by Hank Azaria, Donald Trump, & Jeffrey Wright, & Melanie Griffith, & I'm not cool enough to recognize everybody. And the relationship between Judy Davis' character & Joe Mantegna's character is extremely moving & lovingly crafted. And I love when Woody lets the plot get longer & more convoluted, with characters coming in & out & everything playing off of the theme & development.
So, Mom & Dad, I will now recommend this film to you.
"Stop Him!" & "Follow That Car!"
Go to a metropolitan park. When a bicyclist bikes by, perhaps shriek & yell "Stop him!!" Hopefully, three burly men will chase down the bike & tackle him. By this point, of course, you'll be long gone. (A scooter could help in your swift departure in the other direction.) The humor, which you can only imagine, is the baffled interaction between the helpful men & the cyclist. For safety, make sure you target a biker with protection, unlike this man setting a bad example:
A related prank is running up to & jumping in a taxi & yelling "Follow that car!" Hopefully the taxi driver will run red lights & cut off cars while changing lanes to keep up with whichever unsuspecting car you've targeted. Who knows, you might end up in New Jersey!
Illuminations: Fancy Asian Prayer
Posts
