Viewing Log #34: Lateral Collateral [2/15/10 - 2/21/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

This past week I watched a bit of all of Wes Anderson's movies here and there*, I looked at A Serious Man and The Informant! again, and a whole bunch of basketball games, as well as a basketball movie on hulu. I also wrote a bunch about Wes Anderson, and then rewrote it a lot, and need to give my text one final pass right now. (More on this soon.) I read some Philip Larkin and some Cavell and even wrote some poems of my own. I worked a lot and my brain got tired in a different way. I plan to work out more in the coming months by swimming laps because running only hurts my knees ever since I fell. I still walked the dog in the sun and in the rain. I drank a fair number of beers on a few different nights. I danced at Soul Night and Barry introduced me to those DJs and they seem like swell dudes. Pretty packed. Still plenty left on the dining room table.

—Here's another goodrn, Tom
*Since people like lists, here's how I'd rank the Wes films in preferential order, which, of course, doesn't mean it's anything but my taste, which I think should be shown to favor the formal and the hilarious first. Do you remember just how funny these movies are? I'll expand on this more later, but, the gist is this: making comedy makes sense (in nonsense) as much as light of the world and its problems, is hard, should be a bigger part of so-called serious art and, for that matter, a bigger part of so-called serious people's canon.

• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 2004
  
• Rushmore, 1998
  
• Fantastic Mr. Fox, 2009
  
• Bottle Rocket, 1996
  
• The Darjeeling Limited, 2007
  
• The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001

This coming week I have some sure-fire movie-going bets, though, including the Dorsky night at PFA, which means Lost will get pushed back a bit, and I want to see Shutter Island three days ago, and I may even brave My Son, My Son if I have the time. What's more, there's a ton of SFIAAFF screeners to get to, like the new Hong, which I plan to write about in the near future. Anyways, back to editing before bedtime, before another week of madness. Here's hoping that, with the right attention and application and sleep schedule, everything heals.