Make a deal with your shine blocker.

by Ryland Walker Knight

A legend
a.
It doesn't hurt me
We block back the dark, moony
Dedicate, hound

b.
All the men she knew
None were fair or true
So she ran away and up
And up past the board blue

c.
Dance and flight and plain naked
alone, one's own property
purposed to light, to home, but not
done with that flipp'd flicker's flapp'n
all wind, wind post'd by you
who will not cannot shall not
sit still
in any calendar.

Viewing Log #19: Sea salt swordfish [11/2/09 - 11/8/09]

by Ryland Walker Knight

— Beaming and leaning

• Last Year at Marienbad [Alain Resnais, 1961] # I could watch this movie a million times. A lot funnier than I remembered, though I remembered it being funny, I think. Another reason to own a Blu-ray player, no doubt. I wrote a smarter, funnier response over here.
  
  
• City of Sadness [Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989] Not quite the emotional experience I'd expected, though it easily lives up to its title, this picture made me feel, for lack of a better word, small. That is, my political world is much smaller, or narrower, and thankfully/paradoxically/obviously less totalitarian. Not that the picture need be enjoyed strictly for its political-historical import. Plenty, as ever with HHH, is just about life, about living, about letting things happen. There's so much communion in its eating scenes. That baby working its clumsy way around that table was out of this world delightful. The interstitial "exposition" inserts bouncing off of, and sometimes replacing, the inter-titles—as modes of communicating for the deaf but still-sponge-worthy Tony Leung, whose end-of-an-era bridge type acts like a silent cinema stand-in—made my Bazin crush flutter up. Fine first rep feature back in town. —Read Brian at Hell On Frisco Bay.
  
  
• Wings of Desire [Wim Wenders, 1987] # The morning after I grabbed one image before conking out, I watched the whole thing over coffee and toast under grey clouds behind the kitchen. Startled, I'm writing this before my Auteurs piece, and here I'll say that I'm confused and moved in equal measure. It stirred up a bunch of memories; it feels, for better or worse, more formative than many other films.
  
  
• Va Savoir [Jacques Rivette, 2001] The first half-hour, until Sergio meets the delicious blonde in the library. Then I got tired of the headphones and went to bed. So far: love how Balibar narrates her life. Nice echo of Léaud in Out 1. Also, this earlier Sergio appearance changes 36 vues a bit.
  
• Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell [Matt Wolf, 2008] Surprisingly artful, though its structure is pretty standard. I was moved, as ever, by Arthur's story and Wolf does some fine juxtapositions and compositions of his own, layering light in nice ways. Can imagine it plays well for audiences of both fans and neophytes, though the fans may want more than 73 minutes and the neophytes are probably won over and content with what's been assembled.
  
• Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles [Chantal Akerman, 1975] # Shopping, duh, for pix. Lookey here why dontcha.

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.

Whistle while you widget

by Ryland Walker Knight

I don't have a license to sell you these.
After reading Shoals' relaunch of the FD widget earlier today, I asked him if he thought I'd do well to follow suit and bring some Amazonian presence back to my sidebar. The chat, though quick, was thorough, or thorough enough, and lead to the inevitable "Why not?" conclusion. It doesn't look too tacky, and if I make a feature out of it, writing little blurbs every now and again, maybe you'll be so kind as to start your Amazon purchases here, at VINYL IS HEAVY, so we (that is, I) can get a teeny-tiny kick-back every month. You know the drill: every bit helps in this economy! The occasional link here and there—and my old suggestion buttons at the bottom of the old sidebar in the old layout—brought in some unexpected and welcome beer money, and now that we're getting more eyes than ever, I thought, why not take up that old shameless shilling tag and put it to good use.

For our first batch of recommendations, we have some obvious VINYL favorites. And, note, that even if you don't buy any of these items, and buy something else, like, say, Gossip Girl Season 1 on DVD, you'll still be helping out if you start here. Thus, in no particular order, here's what we're hocking/highlighting:

• The New World: The Extended Cut on Blu-Ray. I don't have a Blu-Ray player, or a PS3, but if I did this would be the first disc I'd buy because, as many of you may know, it's one of my favorite movies ever, and possibly my second-favorite film of this decade we're ending. It's gorgeous. And the disc is super cheap, which is a bonus. You can read more of my thoughts back at The House Next Door.
  
  
• Stanley Cavell's The World Viewed, which I lost only two weeks into the new year on an A-train back to Bed-Stuy from a screening of the mostly-skipped-over California Dreamin, which is a fine little film that my buddy Keith Uhlich likes a great deal. At any rate, Cavell's book is seminal for my thinking. And I've leaned on it, not Bazin, for much of my ontological thoughts about the image. Here's our Stanley Cavell tag.
  
  
• Manuel Göttsching's E2-E4, which I first mentioned in the first-ever convergence back on Feb 28th, 2009. It's a bit pricey, since it's only available as an import, but, man, it's something special. The beginnings of so much cool stuff, including LCD Soundsystem's indelible 45:33 mix (according to Wikipedia).
  
  
• Arthur Russell's Love is Overtaking Me, which was compiled and released last year, which I made mention of back at this post. If you're feeling blue, or you want someone to touch you in your ears on your way inside, to your heart, maybe, then give this long-player a spin. The title track alone is worth the world.
  
  
• The one, the only, the massive, the hilarious: Don Quixote. I've been reading Edith Grossman's translation for a couple months now thanks to a gift from my dad and, boy, this thing is a hoot. Sure, it's big and it'll eat up your time, and you'll be committing to an undertaking, but don't think of it that way: think of all the jokes you get on every page, in every sentence. And Grossman's translation is rightly renowned for its readability (and footnotes).

—Sure do love you out there!

Viewing Log #7: Our pig's world [8/10/09 - 8/16/09]

by Ryland Walker Knight

• The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp [Powell & Pressburger, 1943] # Despite the propaganda, there is a critical eye towards tradition. Love the conceit about Kerr playing three ladies, and Wolbrook's tenderness is perfect; Livesey's got stuffy down pat to the point where I don't know how much he's acting.
  
• The Flight of the Red Balloon [Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2007] # A year later, at home by myself (with myself a little more), and I love it even more. About as lovely as can be. One of those movies you don't need to say anything about; just watch it. Cheers. Chin-chin.
  
  
• Terrace of Unintelligibility [Phill Niblock, 1985] Damned lovely. More back here.
  
• The Dirty Dozen [Robert Aldrich, 1967] Somehow, I'd never seen this beast. It was worth the wait. As ever, Cass is my hero: so hip, so cool, so fearless (so to speak). Also, he's a ham. (Love Bronson, too, for what it's worth.)
  
  
• The Big Heat [Fritz Lang, 1953] So brutal, full of real pain. All those doublings and violent reversals make you dizzy, almost. Fitting the opening credits show over a fuzzy spiral background. I should watch it again; I want to.
  
• Macao [Josef von Sternberg, 1952] Gloria Grahame is sexier than Jane Russell (I've never been into her) and Robert Mitchum acts tough real well. Obvious. The real crazy ideas here are about documentary. A real treat, if all over.
  
• Sylvia Scarlett [George Cukor, 1935] The first Kate and Cary pairing, and the first time I've really heard him use his Cockney heritage. Though it's a little sweet, the film is a fun look at her, chiefly, and gender as a costume. Too bad our now-famous pair (Cary was still starting to pick up steam in the machine) weren't allowed more chemistry, but, you know, it's a fun first step towards the rest, like Holiday.
  
  
• The GoodTimesKid [Azazel Jacobs, 2007] Andrew Grant sent me a copy of this and I enjoyed its limber go-nowhere antics. Love that the ship stays moored—a terrible haven, however impenetrable, from the kicks and screams of love outside.
  
  
• The Ghost Ship [Mark Robson, 1943] Questions of dominion and grace, and communication, plague these men. There's a fear of tyranny apt to the time, but it's also cool to think about the power of the director over against the power of the producer, especially in these Lewton pictures, as part of and partial to the cinema's constitutional power over the viewer, and our desire to escape that relationship.

—Finding a tune

Buddhist bubblegum, where the islands go.

by Ryland Walker Knight

Arthur Russell and Phill Niblock's "Terrace of Unintelligibility" is split in two on YouTube, thus this playlist I made. I first heard about the music-art-video when I read this Mark Richardson column a while back. As Richardson notes, the arbitrary start and stop make this document especially curious and lovely: how long could you listen to this? Forever? What strikes me now is the mask of darkness, the will to obscurity that can often result from perfectionism—or simply more "adventurous" art. All the darkness makes me think of Costa, and curious as ever to see what Ne Change Rien looks like on a big screen. Light leaks around the form, as the words Russell spills coalesce in the corners of his mouth, which is, of course, our first focal point. It's also an image of proximity where the ghost pushes present (however in shadow), transformed at least thrice over. But, again, this battered image endears the piece to me and my eyes so hungry for textures of light—even degraded pixel squares cobbled mosaic-like. In any event, Russell's not all minimal warbling and cello tapping and ethereal drones. He made disco, too, and gave Paradise Garage one of its hallmarks: "Is It All Over My Face." I made another playlist for its A and B sides below; the B side remix is by Larry Levan, who was also a superstar, and deserves his own post.

—Thanks, @cambomb, for reminding me of this earlier tonight.