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2008-03-24, 1:50 a.m.:
On Easter Sunday I woke up worried that I had forgotten both The Ice Storm and All That Jazz, but really I had just forgotten the latter ... and one other movie which presently still eludes me. The List. Then we hunted down Easter eggs (pastel/Spiderman theme this year) and played with 'Floam' and these sort of velcro-ey ball-catch mitts and balls that are so perfect for boys without the dexterity to catch stuff yet. There was shrieking and begging for more candy all along the way. I watched the rest of Worlds (skating) on TV, in which my absolute no. 1 male skater, Jeffrey Buttle, won gold and my absolute no. 2 fav male skater, Johnny Weir, won bronze. One of my least favorite skaters won silver, but oh well. All of Saturday, or nearly all, I spent at the Met HD performance of Tristan and Isolde, eating Milk Duds and drinking god-bless'd Starbucks coffee they sell right there in the movie theatre. Last week I saw Peter Grimes in the same live HD dealio. Both times with Gini. I love Benjamin Britten and decided I dislike the story of Tristan and Isolde, much preferring the Arthurian version. Mainly because the entire tragic epic love thing is caused by a love potion - a plot device, a construct. So it did not resonate emotionally with me at all. In the story of Guinevere, Arthur, Lancelot, it's innate, it's inexorable. And so much the more tragic as an entire kingdom, a kingdom of ideas, is lost. In T&I, mainly just lives are lost. Also feeling more conflicted than usual about the odious Wagner family, having recently been reading more in detail about his vicious anti-Semitism and his family's close, close ties with Hitler (godfather to his son). Ugh. I remember loving Parsifal, however, back in the day. The rest of Saturday I spent reading and thinking about Hamlet. Ah damn. I forgot Amelie, too. The list gets longer by the day. I haven't even seen Sweeney Todd yet. You know which way that is going to go.
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2008-03-21, 10:29 a.m.:
I *AM* writing, I'm just not very happy about it. And no one else seems to be either. I do have circa 30 poems in various states of doneness, however, and all in a uniform state of rejectedness.I am extremely, extremely down on submitting, the whole game. It's been since December 2005 that I was accepted anywhere. And yesterday, looking at a page of chapbook places, I felt nearly physically ill. I am annoyed with all of it. I did write a poem, a passable poem that I even like, in about 70 minutes recently to submit to a contest whose deadline was that night at midnight (this was a Second Life thing). And I had to upload a passable matching photo. Looking back over the poem, I only changed a couple of small things. Was happy with it, was thinking of Donald Revell talking about his 'poems of the moment.' (He does next to no editing after the fact.) Got excited. Wanted to write more. But instead of that, I am deep in the trenches of editing again, which is of course always what gets me downtrodden once more. I don't want to edit - I want to write and have it stick. Maybe I just suck at editing. Because spending three and four years editing a single poem(s) and still not getting it right ... well, that seems counter-efficient. I'm doing something wrong. I've fallen and I can't get up! 0 comments
2008-03-14, 12:12 p.m.:
My 77 favorite movies (I couldn't make the list any shorter, though I tried. I tried!):
1. Fanny and Alexander
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
3. Blade Runner
4. An Angel at My Table
5. My Brilliant Career
6. Brazil
7. Das Boot
8. Gosford Park
9. Annie Hall
10. Star Wars / The Empire Strikes Back
11. Hannah and Her Sisters
12. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
13. Wings of Desire
14. Paris, Texas
15. The Ice Storm
16. Persuasion
17. Apollo 13
18. Europa Europa
19. Cinema Paradiso
20. Coal Miner�s Daughter
21. Starship Troopers
22. Logan�s Run
23. To Kill a Mockingbird
24. This Is Spinal Tap
25. Waiting for Guffman
26. Harold and Maude
27. The Flight of the Phoenix
28. Raiders of the Lost Ark
29. The Princess Bride
30. Taxi Driver
31. Sleepy Hollow
32. Edward Scissorhands
33. Fight Club
34. Sense and Sensibility
35. Revenge of the Sith
36. Raise the Red Lantern
37. My Favorite Concubine
38. Smoke
39. Best in Show
40. Withnail and I
41. Swingers
42. Free Enterprise
43. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
44. Four Weddings and a Funeral
45. Fitzcarraldo
46. Aguirre: The Wrath of God
47. Jean de Florette / Manon des Sources
48. The Seven Samurai
49. Enter the Dragon
50. Heavenly Creatures
51. Jude
52. Pandora�s Box
53. Queen Margo
54. A Room with a View
55. Howard�s End
56. Impromptu
57. Marie Antoinette
58. Apocalypse Now Redux
59. Pelle the Conqueror
60. Marathon Man
61. Lord of the Rings / The Two Towers
62. Alien / Aliens
63. Muriel�s Wedding
64. Radio Days
65. Crimes and Misdemeanors
66. Batman Begins
67. M.A.S.H.
68. The Shining
69. Sophie�s Choice
70. The Deer Hunter
71. Far From the Madding Crowd
72. The Player
73. American Psycho
74. Kramer vs. Kramer
75. The Vanishing (original)
76. Working Girl
77. Ran
78. Tootsie I suppose there are more than 77, and I know I grouped some by the same director but not others ... but then again, no list is perfect. I originally made the list last week and incredibly left off An Angel at My Table, which is one of my absolute favorite fillms And THEN, this week, I saw My Brilliant Career for the first time. I don't know how I avoided seeing this movie, which was just made for me to love and admire, for nearly 30 years. The young Sam Neill was super-cute in his ever-bumbling way. I guess the optimum word for the characters he plays best would be "feckless." 0 comments
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