Cannes 2011 #3: There is no tunnel, only light

by Ryland Walker Knight

After Tree of Life I made some eggs (above) and wrote my mom a letter about the movie, which I am very happy to have seen but that made me miss a lot of people at home and elsewhere. Here's the link to Cargo again.

UPDATE: If you want to see me still dazed (though also re-caffeinated) and bemused in the bustling lobby of the Palais after the film, watch this video at The Guardian.

One must eat

by Ryland Walker Knight

One way or another

Viewing Log #50: Deformed by pleonasm [7/6/10 - 7/12/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—It's clever, like you
Watched plenty of movies over the weekend with Haz but I didn't take any notes because I didn't have my laptop and I didn't have standard brain powers. Furthermore: we watched a lot of garbage. However, City of Ember was kind of good, or worth a look all tired and glossy; as predicted, Bill Murray's a big part of that. Diane Lane, too, is a big reason Unfaithful's worth watching, and not solely because of her body, her sexiness or the rather frank sex scenes—some of the best, most adult this side of the 2000s, along with In The Cut, though Adrian Lyne basically wants to turn you on and Jane Campion wants you to think about what's at stake between the sheets. We watched Home Alone for some memories and giggles, Death Race for the stunts I suppose, E.T. for some Steve's-got-dad-issues jokes, Fatal Attraction's first twenty minutes and the second half of Flashdance (on different days) because HBO Signature seemed to be running an unofficial Adrian Lyne marathon/retrospective, and both the World Cup games. (The less said about the final, though the more said about Diego Forlán, the better.) We did a lot of stuff outside on Friday—Jones Beach, dinner with Danny*, bridge walking, roof sitting, pissing, patio drinking in some "woods" with these beauties—and we did a lot of escape-the-heat vegetating the other days but we also ate bagels in the park and papusas at the flea and peaches at the farmer's market and salads on the street and that first night we immediately rode bikes over to a roof in Bushwick. We also went dancing until 5 at the Mr. Saturday Night party, which was fun though exhausting. So I don't feel too bad about being inside a lot. New York's not like San Francisco: you don't have to rush out as soon as it's sunny because it'll stay sunny, and hot, and when you've burned yourself lobster red on day one, you need more aloe than natural vitamin D.

* Maybe after work I'll jot some notes about the food we ate, from this place, which was even better than I'd expected and worth every red cent, every big greenback.

Top teats. Whoops, tweets.

by Claire Twisselman

[Ed's note: Though part of her charm on twitter (already!) is her lack of punctuation and/or grammar rules, I asked Claire to clean up those lists she came up with for our little blog party here.]

I gave in, I joined twitter. And what does Knight do? Asks me to then go back and blog about it? What a goofus. In any event, here's the lists I came up with for the year and for the decade. I'm not going to go back and change them, though, to add Antichrist, like I remembered just a minute ago, but, whatever, you know? These were the movies that taught me some things this year, this decade. I still don't know much! Also, I haven't seen everything, so some things might get pushed around when I see, oh I don't know, Police, Adj. So let me know what you think! Am I cool enough to play in this boys club from time to time? In any event, happy new year. Can't wait to grow up some more in this new decade.


2009

1. Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino — Yes, I'm a Jew.
2. Summer Hours, Olivier Assayas — Remember, readers, vinyl is heavy. And don't listen to anybody who tells you this isn't lovely, and smart; it's subtle in ways, say, Arnaud Desplechin never could be.
3. Julia, Eric Zonca — Tilda Swinton is my hero.
4. The Headless Woman, Lucretia Martel — Except for the Coens' movie and Wes Anderson's fox, nothing else is this dedicated. Demanding but rewarding. And terrifying.
5. Two Lovers, James Gray — Joaquin Phoenix is too, too good at being so, so bad at life.
6. The Girlfriend Experience + The Informant!, Steven Soderbergh — What Karina Longworth said. Something about the economy.
7. In the Loop, Armando Iannucci — Lubricated horse cock indeed! Sure, Malcolm's a horse (the movie rides on him, his shoulders), but Gandolfini kills it. I've watched it about five times.
8. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans, Werner Herzog — How come nobody talks about how bad an actress, and how boring a sex symbol, Eva Mendes is? Why does she get a pass? Oh, right, Nic Cage. Derr.
9. A Serious Man, Coens + Fantastic Mr Fox, Wes Anderson — Two polar opposite readings of Nietzsche: one's neutered, the other's fertile. This is what I'd propose for that fantasy double bill thing they've got at The Notebook.
10. Duplicity, Tony Gilroy — There needs to be more banter in movies, and more split screens. Their confessions of their mutual love was shockingly moving for this lil lady.
11. The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke — Dreadful, from frame one on. Yes: full of dread.
12. Broken Embraces, Pedro Almodovar — Penelope Cruz is the sexiest, duh, and Pedro seems to know almost everything about making movies. Great movie for tit lovers.
13. 35 Rhums, Claire Denis — "Marvin... you were this friend of mine..."
14. Drag Me To Hell, Sam Raimi — C'mon, man, go back to "real movies" more often!
15. Tetro, Francis Ford Coppola — All of it's in that scene with the cigarette.

The Decade

1. There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson, '07 — I see the worst in people.
2. Dogville, Lars Von Trier, '03 — Big time. Really taught me some things: about myself, about being a lady, about James Caan. Caan! He's, big surprise, the secret.
3. Esther Kahn, Arnaud Desplechin, '00 — Don't get Ry started! Don't get me started either! Any woman who wants to brush her face after her teeth is a-ok with me.
4. In The Cut, Jane Campion, '03 — Sexy and scary and everything I hate/love about NYC (and being a lady in NYC).
5. Yi Yi, Edward Yang, '00 — Fucks me up. In a delicate way. Like getting a soul massage, kinda.
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry, '04 — Fucks me up.
7. The World, Jia Zhang-ke, '04 — Everybody keeps saying Platform is Jia's movie of the decade, but this one is better, or more important, and digital, and it's got a way less happy ending.
8. Kill Bill + Death Proof + Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino, '03/'04 + '07 + '09 — The best movie movie movie run of the decade, but, hmn, who cares, huh?
9. Regular Lovers, Philippe Garrel, '05 — Black and white and red all over. This dude sure does make seem suicide seem painful (eep, not painless).
10. Flight of the Red Balloon, Hou Hsiao-hsien, '07 — If this is what being a mom is like, I could maybe be game. Except for all that deadbeat dad shit, this is what life should look like, I think.
11. The New World, Terrence Malick, '05 — Amazing, no doubt, but it's not anything that's not in The Thin Red Line.
12. Femme Fatale, Brian De Palma, '02 — I kinda dig how sleezy this flick is since, like a lot of this guy's movies, it's big hot air balloon full of prurience. And he's got some idea about movies being a dirty act he's always pushing. But here it's also about Paris and France. Also, De Palma gets Banderas.
13. Mulholland Dr., David Lynch, '01 — Taught me to see with my ears. Why are so many critics picking this one over INLAND EMPIRE? Because this one has lesbians! Nude! Imagine that!
14. The Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson, '07 — I know Ry's got a hard on for The Life Aquatic, but this one hurts more, is tighter.
15. Wendy and Lucy, Kelly Reichardt, '08 — Best dog movie I've seen and a great train idea or 8, too.
16. The Man Who Wasn't There, Coens, '01 — Obviously their best movie. It's got some hope.

We Live OK: 22 Selections, 07.09 + 10.09

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Lucky clouds (return)
This eddy ends now, and I'd like to share my final collage of imaginary reportage. These weeks have seen me see plenty. However, I worry I saw more inside than out. But that's why I'm finding a line back to a coast—in fact, back to the gold coast. That is, back home. Time to own up to that: I'm a Californian. So with my smile widening, I look forward to playing basketball in the winter, to eating fresh vegies as often as I can, to the PFA's healthy calendar, to trips up to Truckee's snowbanks, to a quick flight south or north, to The Trappist, to pho, to the Mission, to yelping my way around more dance floors, to breaking that habit of you. Here's to the steps taken, and the leaps yet; to footfalls, maybe, turning into feathered-up flights from our hard-earthed dirt and from our tubes of infotainment. We must remember to move amongst! Thus, there might be a little less frequency here (and elsewhere) as the calendar year winds-grinds to a close. Priorities will be re-arranged and if I'm to live alone by my next birthday I will have to make some kind of living happen quicker outside this site.

So, enjoy this latest and last collection over at VINYL IS IMAGES.

—I see your light touch my eyes.

turkey and cheese

by Steven Boone

The Host is Hungry

by Ryland Walker Knight

"That is, The Host is a movie chiefly concerned with food: who-how-where we get it from, what it is we choose to eat, and why we eat it at all."

[For the full review click here and you will be forwarded to The House Next Door. To buy the new 2-disc DVD from Amazon click here. To whet your appetite ever more, I've included some scrumptious screenshots below.]













02006: 119 minutes: dir. Bong Joon-ho: written by Baek Chul-hyun, Ha Won-jun and Bong.

What is They Eating? Holland Edition.

by Leile One

Yes, yes, y’all – straight from the mess hall…I have just returned to the States from a refreshing blast through Western Europe. Sure, we saw some museums over there and some foreign rap music and everything, but what was really interesting was the food. Basically, they eat really wild shit over there, ALL the time. For instance:


Pannenkoekenhuis Upstairs. “Pancake House Upstairs”. This is the real IHOP, if one indeed existed. You go up these stairs that are more like climbing a ladder than climbing stairs, I’m talking HELLA steep. There you are greeted by this guy - he is both the proprietor and the one who makes the cakes. It’s actually like you’re hanging out in this dude’s kitchen while he’s cooking up some marvelous shit, rather than sitting in a restaurant. There are only about four tables in the whole place, so we were lucky to have available seating immediately. I ordered the bacon and apple pancake, and put syrup on it just like normal, which worked out surprisingly well. You can also get such dishes as salami, cheese and tomato pancake. Or perhaps pear, egg nog, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream pancake is more your steez. Either way, you can get it here.


Febo. Just how impersonal could food get? Febo is one of the main fast food chains in the Netherlands, known as an “automatiek” type of establishment. Basically the restaurant is one gigantic vending machine; the food sits in these little illuminated warming-boxes and if you put the proper amount of money in you can open the door and have it. There is nowhere to sit in there and the overt philosophy is “buy the food and get the fuck out of here”. They sell regular stuff like chicken sandwiches and pile of french fries, for the most part. I’m surprised this idea hasn’t caught on in America yet. In fact, I read on Wikipedia that America did have automats like these back in the early 1900’s: for a time, they were the hip places to go eat. Predictably, the rise of the “drive-thru” format with Americans and their cars ended up pushing these mostly out of existence within our cities back in the 1950’s.

Mayonnaise. The rumors about how the Europeans really go crazy for mayonnaise are, strangely, not at all exaggerated. When I told people I was from America, the first thing they would comment on is how “That’s where they invented mayonnaise,” or “You come from the land of mayonnaise,” and so forth. And I’m like, word, but if anything, THIS is the land of mayonnaise. You don’t see us putting it on hot dogs and shit…goddam.


Pile of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Yep, it’s for real. In Amsterdam, you can cold buy a bag of psilocybe cubensis ‘shrooms like it was straight groceries, no problem. You can get them at virtually any coffee shop, along with your hash and your Northern Lights and what have you. Or, perhaps more amusingly, you can go to a specific store called “Magic Mushroom”, which specializes in herbal druggery. Can you imagine the bizarre sensation of purchasing a bag of ‘shrooms from a fiftysomething white woman, who urged us to “Have fun wid’ it”? The store also sells other crazy shit, like this “herbal speed” which you snort just like the real meth, except it’s made out of plants or something. They have a trial version right on the counter, which you are invited to make lines out of and sniff with these little pastel-colored sniffy-straws they provide. Not as good as the real thing, but it did put a little pep in my step. Thanks!

Katja Biggetjes. Roughly translated, this means “gummy pig heads”. The company also makes other gummy animal heads, like Gummy Ape Head (“Katja Apekoppen”), and Chewy Panda heads. These are delicious but pretty intense in a way, and eating them while tripping on the mushrooms I mentioned earlier presented a special challenge. They were just so CHEWY, to the point that eventually I was like, “I can’t deal with this. I can’t consume these right now.” And then I spit an un-chewed pig head into the wastebasket and was just standing there, staring at it, like “why is this a food that exists”. Then I convinced myself that Katja Biggetjes is probably rich in various vitamins, seeing as how it’s made of real fruit, and things seemed okay after that.

Top Ten Turkey Tidbits Two Thousand Six

by Stephen Farrell

I’ll be the first to admit it: I didn’t pay enough attention to pop culture this past year to compile any sort of coherent year end top ten list of either music (uh, Fishscale was good) or movies (uh, Little Miss Sunshine was…released). I did, however, do a bit of traveling the last few weeks of 2006, to a certain Eurasian country (the one that isn't isn’t Russia). Here are ten people, places, and things that I feel embody the essence of Turkey, in no particular order.

Mosques: 98 per cent of Turkey is Muslim. Of course, that’s li ke saying that America is 70 per cent Christian, or Japan is 95 per cent Buddhist. The fact is, many people in Turkey, especially those of the younger generation, have quietly rejected their traditional faith, in much the same way that people the world over have turned to atheism, agnosticism, or (in America at least) various strains of kooky new age “spirituality” in the last half-century. It seems that, in Turkey, Islam is primarily practiced by the same demographic that apparently clung tightest to the Orthodox church in Soviet Russia: Namely, little old ladies in head scarves. True as that may
be, the physical symbols of Islam are much more pervasive than their counterparts elsewhere in the world, or than one would expect from a society that prides itself on its secularity. The most obvious outward example is the sheer number of mosques in Turkey—Istanbul alone has some 2000. In the countryside, every one-horse village I saw had more mosques than what seemed appropriate given the local population – and never fewer than two per town. I found the most interesting temples to be those which had been churches during the Byzantine period, and then converted after the Ottoman takeover in the fifteenth century. Some of these old Eastern Orthodox churches are rooms the size of breakfast nooks, hollowed out of a cliff face, and decorated with, essentially, glorified cave paintings of the gospels (many of which had the faces scratched out by Muslims offended by representations of humans—particularly religious figures). They served as a fascinating reminder that this Muslim land had once been a center of Christendom, both in Christianity’s nascent “outlaw” period and later in its rise to dominance in the Western world. The greatest of these church-cum-mosques is Istanbul’s Ayasofya, which was built in 537 by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, and was the largest building in the world for just under a millennium, until Rome’s Saint Peter’s Basilica surpassed it in 1623.

Turkish Coffee: I have to say this is one of the only things that truly disappointed me about Turkey. While I do not quite consider myself a coffee connoisseur, per se, I have, over the years, developed a healthy addiction to the bean. And by American standards, I am probably a bit of a snob about it. I’ve reached a point where I consider anything other than Peet’s to be a sort of step down—hey, it’s not my fault I grew up in the East Bay. Anyway, you can imagine my excitement when I anticipated enjoying the much-fabled Turkish coffee. But the “authentic” way to drink it is loaded with sugar so that when you get to the unfiltered grounds at the bottom, you’re basically drinking a mudlike treacle of pure caffeine. The whole time I was there, I never saw a single Turk drinking the stuff; instead, they drink copious amounts of tea—which they call cay, and pronounce “chai”—multiple times a day. It was very good.

Space Issues: I never realized how uptight Americans are until I saw grown Turkish men walking down the street arm in arm (or, perhaps more remarkably, adolescent boys doing the same). This speaks to two ways in which American and Turkish norms stand in stark contrast: we are much less secure in our sexuality, and much more uptight about our personal space. I’m not exactly sure where to point the finger for the latter except at all the usual suspects and easy targets like, say, Puritanism? the social awkwardness of the Founding Fathers? Er…Manifest Destiny? Whatever the reason, one thing is for sure: we like our space. Or, we do not like it when people get all up in our grills. The Turks, however, do not seem to have a problem with this.


Cigarettes: As I said, 98 per cent of Turks are Muslim. If that surprises you, get this: After doing my own research I concluded that 126 per cent of the Turkish population smokes cigarettes. And I don’t mean some “one or two after dinner or when I’m stressed out” nonsense. I’m talking about full-on two to three packs a day, have-a-cigarette-to-celebrate-finishing-a-cigarette smoking. Nowhere I’ve been (in the U.S. or even Europe) comes close. And you can smoke anywhere: airports, corner stores, Starbucks, in trains, planes, and automobiles. The only place I didn’t see people actively smoking was inside the mosques. I managed to avoid seeing the inside of any hospitals on my trip, but I imagine there would be ashtrays on every surface. And I thought Kentucky was bad.

Food: One thing about Turkish food is that it covers a lot of ground. While old standby cuisines like Mexican and Italian are great, we all know that there’s not much difference ingredient-wise, between, say, cannelloni and enchiladas. Turkish food, on the other hand, combines the best of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines, but they mix it up a little more than you might expect. Instead of the typical pita (pide in Turkish) outer shell for the doner (what we would call gyro) sandwich, you can get the spit-roasted lamb wrapped in a tortilla-like flatbread – or served on an American-style sandwich bun, which was my favorite. It was hard not to eat these for at least two meals a day since they went for as little as 1.50 lire (about one dollar) a pop. Also represented are regional crowd pleasers like dolmas, kebabs (kebaps), and all kinds of yogurt and olive concoctions. The tapas-style meze appetizers were also delicious, as well as, of course, a dizzying array of deserts, the most well-known of which is baklava—whether baklava was invented by the Turks or the Greeks is a bone of contention between the two nations as big as Cyprus. Supposedly, the dessert culture in Turkey remains huge because one of the Ottoman sultans was convinced sweets were an aphrodisiac: you can still find a type of baklava termed “Turkish Viagra” for sale in the bazaars of Istanbul

The EU: Although we naively assume that Turkey is pro-EU, the Turkish people are quite fiercely divided on the issue. The concerns about Turkey’s possible admission to the club are more or less what you would expect. Proponents claim that joining would open up important European markets and give a powerful boost to the developing nation’s economy. Critics, on the other hand, argue that Turkey needs the EU like a hole in the head: the Turkish economy is the fastest growing in Europe (26 per cent in the last three years), and the relaxation of tariffs and other trade barriers required by EU membership could make Turkey susceptible to exploitation at the hands of the richer member states—sentiments which echo the arguments against globalization everywhere. Western Europe, for its part, is more than a little nervous about the prospect of Turkish membership, in large part due to the spike in Turkish immigration to the West that it would undoubtedly cause. After all, few things make Europeans more squeamish right now than a bigger Muslim presence on the continent.

Efes Pilsen: Efes Pilsen is the Budweiser of Turkish beers. It can be found in every restaurant and liquor store in the land, and you can go into any of these joints, ask for “a beer,” and be confident that you will be served none other than a nice cold Efes. It costs about as much as a pricey microbrew in the States (not price adjusted for the GDP difference between the two countries—all booze is really expensive in Turkey) and it tastes like Hamms. The fact that Turkey is so Muslim and yet everyone drinks beer (almost as much as they drink raki, the anise-derived aperitif that no one in the country seems to be able to eat a meal without) is yet another one of the many contradictions that make Turkish culture fascinating. The second most popular beer in Turkey is, of course, MGD.

Graffiti: While we complain about the co-optation of urban art culture by the mainstream and debate the merits of graffiti moving from the streets to the art gallery, the Turks have a bigger problem: their graffiti sucks. Most of the stuff that I saw was on some strictly middle school shit: triple-sixes and pentagrams, the ubiquitous anarchy logo, strange, vaguely threatening non sequitors (“LETHAL MAFIA MASSACRE”), and my personal favorite, “Love is Nothing Without FUCKING,” scrawled on the gates of the nineteenth century Ottoman Domabache Palace. More disturbing were the swastikas and other Nazi imagery which always seemed to accompany the anarchy symbols (“SS anarchy PUNK”). The strange thing is, the graffiti didn’t look as out of place as it usually does in American cities—something about seeing quasi-political things written sloppily on the walls of narrow medieval streets struck me as weirdly appropriate.

Fashion: On paper, Turkish style leaves something to be desired. The hot shit this season seemed to be pointy shoes, vintage-style army coats, and fauxhawk-mullets—all on both guys and girls. Yet what struck me was how their fashion sense is refreshingly less “cliquey”, and more homogenous than we’re used to. For instance, I saw very few people that in the States would be considered to be dressed “hip-hop” or “indie” or whatever. Everyone there just looked like they were drawing from the same huge pool of style options, instead of from the countless tiny (limited) pools here at home. There seemed to generally be less of the sense that someone’s personal style reflects his or her lifestyle/musical preferences/political leanings, and in so doing they have managed to do what no one in America seems capable of: being hip without being trendy.

A Bridge Between East and West: When Westerners think of Turkey (if they think of it at all), they tend to view it as some sort of middle ground between East and West, between Europe and the Middle East/Asia. Technically, of course, that’s true—the Bosporus strait runs right through Istanbul, separating Europe from Asia and making it the only city in the world to straddle two continents. But culturally, things are not so simple. What I realized in my travels is that the “East-West bridge” concept has some truth to it, but does sort of a disservice to Turkey. By regarding the country as nothing more than an intermediary zone between two clearly defined cultural spheres, this formulation does not allow much for Turkey to call its own: it assumes that every cultural aspect of Turkey must be derived from either Europe or the Middle East—or some combination of the two. Turkey, like everywhere else, of course has its own unique culture. But this proves a more important point: not only is the Turkey-as-bridge concept a fallacy, the whole idea of Eastern and Western spheres is closed and simple and wrong. While certain Europeans would like to believe that The West begins in the UK (or perhaps California?) and extends to the European shores of the Bosporus, this is a myth. This would imply that Bulgaria is culturally closer to Scotland than it is to central Turkey. I think not. There is, in fact, a great cultural continuum—and Turkey, like every other nation, sits in its own unique spot, just as it occupies its own distinct place on the map.

Ataturk: If Efes Pilsen is the Budweiser of Turkish beers, Ataturk is the Efes Pilsen of Turkish national heroes—which is to say, he’s inescapable. He was a military hero who led Turkey to independence after the First World War, the founder of the modern republic and the nation’s first president. Because of these accomplishments it is tempting to call him the George Washington of Turkey, but this doesn’t really do him justice. Not only does his handsome, benevolent visage grace every denomination of Turkish currency, more or less every place of business and family home has at least one picture of Ataturk on the wall—as does every official or government office, and most have a statue out front to boot. Sort of like cigarette smoke, the motherfucker is EVERYWHERE in Turkey. The guy’s cult of personality would give Stalin wet dreams, and it’s not completely undeserved: in a lot of ways, Turkey’s relative success in the modern world is due to Ataturk. His leadership in the fierce battle for independence (against the British and French, who were trying to carve up imperialist “spheres of influence” in the formerly Ottoman Middle East at the time) and the secularist reforms he instituted in the new republic are largely responsible for Turkey, today, resembling a functioning, upwardly mobile democracy and not a war-ravaged, religiously fundamentalist, third world sinkhole like most of the rest of the region.

Honorable Mention: Turkish baths, Turkish bathrooms (surprisingly clean), Turkish hip-hop, denial of the Armenian genocide, stray dogs, Santa Claus