I've never watched that much television, but damn those lovely russians and volleyball competitions, dwindling away these last hours of summer. It's some kind of existentialist entertainment trap where everytime the TV's on, there's ALWAYS the olympics and the world series of poker going on-- as dependable and comfortable as an old habit.
Oog- the animation is going well if slow, but I think I'll be able to pull an independent study (doesn't that sound oohlala?) for the fall quarter. School's creeping closer every day and classes are going to be rough to deal with again. And I feel like a 15 year old with all this clubbing and bar hopping all the kids seem to be doing these days, and me, refusing to open the wallet for a fake and all the expenses that would come with it. After all-- the olympics are still on, aren't they?
Down by Law and 1946's The Killers were good purchases. I can see myself popping in the Killers every now and then in the future, its drenched in pulpy noir shadows and serves up every solid delicious cliche (of course it was the dame!). Down by Law was my first introduction to Jarmusch and while I still enjoyed it, quite a bit actually, I feel as if it'll age better or shed more (more?) in the context of Jarmusch's other work, which I'm trying to track down (read: borrow). I read somewhere that Jarmusch's work, initially, is style over content, but "by the end" its the content that wins out. He's one of those directors that I've been curious about for some time, as he's undoubtedly namedropped and oh-so-coolly referenced by anybody who's anybody so.... whatever. Down by Law was beautiful in its own right, in its brew of cliches and romanticized notions (the prison escape, the 1920's bayou), but most of all in its ambiguity and refusal to fully let those cliches suffocate the film; despite the, at least what I would call, stiff acting (Tom Waits- bad?? heresay!) and unnatural delivery, I felt as if all the characters were real people, drifting off somewhere right now down Lafayette. It's believability through context and not actions, and that's what intrigued me most about the film. It's not that we believe in the character Zack of Tom Waits, rather, we believe in the idea of Tom Waits as Zack, walking down the bayou in a fedora... going, "That's fucking Tom Waits!" or "that's the n'awlins pimp" or the "accidental tourist" all playing on a distant memory or movie you thought you've seen before. Though I still feel as if there's something missing. Or really giving too much credit and listening to what everybody says about it, so I'm not sure. Enough babbling.
As soon as I get my video off the art school lab, it's getting on here, I promise. And maybe some animation, if we're feeling lucky. Time to warsh some dishes