.:Colter:.

At Amy’s behest, I recently completed watching all 7 installments of Michael Apted’s Up series. It’s a novel use of film. It started in 1964 with interviews of various young British kids, and then repeated the process every 7 years. The next installment is due in 2011.

To be able to watch someone grow up and find their way through life, to see how they change and yet don’t, is fascinating. In a way it’s a precursor to reality TV shows, but only on the surface. The Up series is a sociological document, not voyeuristic crap. It’s available on Netflix, and most of the installments are on the free instant streaming service. Check it out.

Meanwhile, I’ve been taking a ton of pictures and not linking to them, so here are some recent highlights:

Crying Hello Kitty
Waldorf-Astoria lobby
hat man
The Unisphere and Towers
round the corner from my place
McCarren Park Pool
Catholic Jazz band
saint on a boat
holy pole
Jewish Elvis
Jackson Pollock closeup

Here is the run-down on last week’s trip:

Tuesday - Landed, went up to this house where my cousin David’s girlfriend was house-sitting. Turns out the house belongs to Hyde from That 70’s Show, and it used to belong to Chuck Berry. I touched a guitar signed by Chuck Berry! And I played bass by a hot tub in which I’m sure Mr. Berry committed felonies numerous and varied.

Wednesday - Went to the House of Blues to see two guitarists of whom I’ve been a big fan of since 9th grade but I’ve never seen them play live: Paul Gilbert and Richie Kotzen. And I was surrounded by LA guitar nerds, the ones who love to cross their arms and pontificate about who rules and who sucks. I’m glad I don’t live near them.

Thursday - David and I went to Amoeba Records to find my mom a Leonard Cohen DVD (she asked for it specifically because that’s how cool she is). Then we watched I Am Legend on David’s Blu-Ray hi-def wide-screen T-V and afterward we freaked out on Lost, ’cause it finally got back to Locke’s storyline.

Friday - I took the bus and walked all over town because I forgot that my Arkansas driver’s license expired in March. I let it because I figured, hey, when am I going to need to drive a car in NYC, right? Oops. Rental car agencies frown on expired licenses. I’ll get that taken care of next week, though. Anyway, I walked up La Brea, where I passed Jason Lee and his wife looking at furniture. I then had lunch at Barney’s Beanery where I sat a few booths over from Jason Schwartzman. After that I met up with my friend Meredith and we saw a really terrible band somewhere.

Saturday - Here’s a fun story. Some years ago my friend Randall gave me a CD by an Austrian guitarist named Alex Machacek (pronounced “MOCK-a-check”), and I became a big fan. He’s as underground as it gets, so few guitarists even know about him. To anyone else, he’s just another jazz-rock-fusion guitarist in LA, but to me he’s on a higher plane from pretty much every other guitar player I know. I’ve talked with him a few times via email and MySpace, and so last week I sent him a message asking him if he had any shows going on. He said he didn’t, but I was welcome to come over for coffee and hang out. So I did. He made me a couple fantastic cups of espresso and we talked about music and guitarists, and he gave me a guitar lesson. The whole thing really made me realize the dichotomy that is Los Angeles: most people freak out over meeting famous people, when perhaps they should be freaking out over truly phenomenal people - artists who do things few can, who push the boundaries of their craft, who represent the pinnacle of what can be achieved in a given medium. For musicians, Alex Machacek is such an individual. I uploaded one of his tunes to Muxtape, so check it out there. I don’t think I’ve mentioned Muxtape yet, so take a look at them, too. I have another playlist uploaded here.

That night, David and I went to see the LA Galaxy play the New York Red Bulls. I sat with the Riot Squad, the officially sanctioned corner of the stadium populated entirely by authentic football hooligans. Good times, even though the Galaxy lost. I told no one I was from NYC. For once it was better to say I’m from Arkansas.

Sunday - We went to see Rush in Irvine. I realize of course, as someone who is occasionally paid to write about rock music, that I am almost obligated to say that Rush sucks and progressive rock is a pox on the face of authentic rock and roll, but to that I say quite simply: Bite Me. If you can’t enjoy the refined Canadian flavor of Awesome that is Rush, then you can’t enjoy anything in life without wondering if someone is going to think you’re uncool.

Monday - Flew home. Took all day. Special note to Virgin Airlines: the little TVs in the seats are nice but $7 to see a movie on a tiny screen with headphones? $8 for airline food? No sale.
At least give me a bag of peanuts or something!

Here are some other photographic highlights from the trip:

Pink’s Hot Dogs are apparently spectacular
Billy Bob at Guitar Center?
Giant Magnatone amp on Sunset
The biggest Indiana Jones poster ever
99 Cent Store window display
Very old candy
Old Simpsons promo statues
Vintage Film editing console
Vintage Coca-Cola machine
GORT!
German Muppets
Bungalows
The 50’s live on…
…in Culver City
Refurbishing LAX

Coming out of the sickness, I’ve opted to stay indoors all weekend. I only left once, on Saturday to go to the post office. Mostly I’ve been devoting my time to Netflix on-demand movies. Yes, I finally signed up yesterday. My queue is now full of obscure 80’s movies, Billy Wilder films, and European cinema. The first disc in line is a film that I’ve been wanting to see again since I was a child. I couldn’t remember the title, so I just started Googling and it turns out that the movie is called Dot and the Kangaroo. It was a mixture of live-action and cartoon; it’s about a young girl who gets lost in the woods and is taken in by a kindly kangaroo who lost her joey. I remember watching it more than once on HBO, but I haven’t seen it since.

The Watch Instantly service is something I highly recommend. I haven’t had any drops or lags in the streaming process, and the picture quality is really nice. Here’s what I’ve watched this weekend:

Dark Days - A documentary about some homeless people who lived in the train tunnels near Penn Station back in 2000. It’s amazing to see how they lived and what they accomplished (cooked meals, showers, electricity) by starting with literally nothing. I later discovered that the film was shot by one of the people who lived down there. They got the camera and film as charitable donations. It’s an astounding achievement. And DJ Shadow donated some extended versions of his tunes for the soundtrack. Lauren recommended this film to me, and after riding home Friday night looking out the back of the last subway car, I knew I had to see what life would be like to live under New York City.

Koyaanisqatsi - A hypnotic montage of modern life in 1982. Music by Philip Glass. Some parts were a little irritating and heavy-handed, but overall it serves its purpose by getting you to question the ways in which we’ve shaped our world.

Bedazzled - The original 1967 film, not the sub-par remake! If you like British comedy, you need to get to know Peter Cook and Dudley Moore as a duo. Bits of their TV show, Not Only But Also, as well as their stage show, Beyond the Fringe, are available on YouTube, so seek them out. This one is my favorite. This is really the only great movie they made together, as Peter Cook was reluctant to go into film. But Cook plays the devil so well - with wit, deviousness and humanity. Here’s a clip. Oh, and Dudley Moore composed the music score. What an insanely talented coupling those two were.

Cool Hand Luke - Best. Prison. Movie. Ever. Previously I thought The Shawshank Redemption was tops. Now it’s a close second.

Barry Lyndon - Apparently the most sane film Stanley Kubrick ever made. It’s 3 hours long, but once you get swept up in it, you hardly notice - assuming, of course, that you’re the type of person who can get swept up in 18th century European drama. It’s beautifully made; shot mostly with natural light, it has a very painterly look to it.

I’m sick again. Something flu-esque, I think. Anyway, I stayed home again today, and in my sleepless bed-ridden state I tried to find thoughts with which to amuse myself. I started to make up silly band names using only references from the film Blazing Saddles. Here are the highlights:

Lilly von Schtupp and the Schnitzengrubens
Sheriff Bart and Do What He Say
The Waco Kid and the Dazzling Urbanites
Hedley Lamarr and the Phoney Baloney Jobs
Sheriff Taggart and the Kansas City F*ggots
Governor Le Petomane and the Indignant Harumphs
Olson Johnson and Want Don’t Want the Irish
Mongo and the Bean Scene[1]
Candygram for Mongo
A Laurel and Hearty Handshake
Vatican Stampede
The French Mistake

1.) I picture this group as made up of cast members from a failed Sid and Marty Krofft pilot of the same name. And maybe the characters all went on to have parts in The Banana Splits or H.R. Pufnstuf.

As I’ve traveled to places where my Internet connection is less than strong, I’ve noticed what a marvelous thing YouTube is when compared to nbc.com or the recently launched thedailyshow.com. YouTube allows you to see how much of the video has loaded, so if you’re on a slow connection, you can pause the video and come back to it when you see that it has loaded. For whatever reason, this is not how the videos at nbc.com and thedailyshow.com work. And it’s endlessly irritating. I’m trying to catch up on Heroes and The Daily Show and I’m constantly stymied by a buffering process that gives me no indication of when the video will resume. Get it right, people!

Movie Gallery called me yesterday offering a free rental. Apparently they’re working hard to keep up with the advent of the Netflix and Blockbuster DVD-by-mail business models. I hope it’s working for them; I went there last night and while I was there, every other person who came in was there for their free rental, too. I have to wonder if the video store isn’t going the way of the music store. I don’t generally rent movies as a habit, mainly because I tend not to enjoy watching movies by myself. If I’m alone with nothing to do I’m usually playing guitar, keyboard or reading a book.

By the way, all of Movie Gallery’s pre-viewed DVDs are on sale at 50% off. I bought Pan’s Labrynth, Good Night and Good Luck, Children of Men, and Talladega Nights all for less than $7.50 each. I also rented The Painted Veil, which was thoroughly enjoyable.

I’m reading Lies My Teacher Told Me, and one of the latter chapters is called “Down the Memory Hole” (a reference to Orwell’s 1984), which was an interesting coincidence for me because I’ve been listening to Kevin Moore’s Memory Hole, a very, very interesting pastiche of found-audio that I highly recommend. It hovers somewhere between music and sample collage. It’s a meditation on politics, religion, and humanity. You can listen to it for free at ChromaKey.com (click on “Audio” and then on “Memory Hole.”

The first paragraph of that chapter in the book is the same paragraph that starts Kevin Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead. So I was twice struck. Here’s the passage in question, which sparked Brockmeier’s novel:

“Many African societies divide humans into three categories: those still alive on the earth, the sasha, and the zamani. The recently departed whose time on earth overlapped with people still here are the sasha, the living-dead. They are not wholly dead, for they still live in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and bring them to life in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor dies, that ancestor leaves the sasha for the zamani, the dead. As generalized ancestors, the zamani are not forgotten but revered. Many…can be recalled by name. But they are not living dead. There is a difference.”

-James Loewen. Lies My Teacher Told Me

In other news, I just got back from seeing Resident Evil 3, and while I lament the relegation of Milla Jovovich to the land of post-apocalyptic zombie movies, I have to say I completely understand the appeal of her status as an icon of bad-assery. I may even go see the inevitable part 4. But I won’t rush to see parts 1 or 2. Once upon a time she was a really good singer and musician. I also came to realize the appeal of zombie movies: they are the best excuse to see excessive violence without remorse. After all, they’re just zombies. They are the last frontier of justifiable slaughter.

I was watching the bonus features on Tideland, and Terry Gilliam hit me with this:

The dream that used to stick with me was my ability to fly. But it was never like in Brazil, flying through the clouds. It was only about 3 or 4 feet above the ground. I zipped along at about that height, but i wasn’t touching the ground. And years ago after having dreamt this for so many years I actually had a sense memory of the whole thing. My whole body felt that I had flown.

That is my most frequently occurring dream, and it is so vivid that, when I wake, I remember the experience so well that I feel as though I’ve actually done it. I was really just levitating a few feet above the ground, though. Nothing grandiose. No flying high above the trees. Anybody else have this?

Terry Gilliam has lost his mind. And made maybe his best film.

You haven’t seen Tideland. Even I was barely aware of its release in 2006. From what I’ve read, it may be the most polarizing film I’ve ever seen. Most reviews are either one star or five. If you’re the type of person who is a moral absolutist, you will hate this film. If you believe that morals and behavior are culturally and socially derived, then you might enjoy it. If you’re fascinated by child psychology and the ability of a child’s imagination to shield themselves from trauma, you just might love it.

It’s almost a horror movie. Without giving too much away, I should mention that it resembles Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre in one respect: it looks into the lives of people who exist off of society’s moral grid. Norman Bates and Leatherface freaked me out not with their violence, but with the norms they fashioned for themselves, particularly their reverence for their dead relatives. The scariest thing about them is the thought that people like them may exist in the darker corners of modern society.

Add into that mix an innocent young girl (Jodelle Ferland, who gives an astounding performance that puts Anna Paquin’s Oscar to shame) growing up in that madness, and you’ve got Tideland. There are a lot of uncomfortable scenes, but they’re only uncomfortable to adults putting themselves into the shoes of the child. What most often makes a film resonate with people is the empathy of experience with the main character. You put yourself into his or her shoes. But if you’re an adult, you can’t quite see through a child’s eyes. You have assumptions and boundaries and preconceived notions about how people should and should not act, but children don’t yet have that. For example, there’s no difference for them between heroin and insulin - they’re both just things that are administered with a needle.

From all that I read about the film before I saw it, I knew that this would test my loyalty to Terry Gilliam - the only director who has never disappointed me, and who has most consistently produced motion pictures that I adore (Billy Wilder, Cameron Crowe and Steven Soderbergh are close runners-up, though). I need never worry again.

I recently picked up The Night of the Following Day, starring Marlon Brando, for $5 at Wal-Mart. The film is a slow-burning nail-biter of a kidnapping caper. It has a great overcast French setting, and if you’re like me you can enjoy a film like this just for the distinctive compressed tone and rainy texture. It’s also very 1968. Its twist ending may have been inventive at the time, but would likely not impress modern moviegoers. This may be why I enjoy it.

But there’s more: the director’s commentary by director Hubert Cornfield. Or so we would be led to believe. Rumor has it (via IMDb) that the commentary was actually Brando using some type of voice disguiser. Here are the only two reasons I would believe this:

1. Cornfield’s voice is almost unlistenable. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to release a DVD with what sounds like a dying man breathing his last gurgling breaths. Perhaps Cornfield truly wanted to record it, despite his apparent ill health (he died three years after the DVD’s release, Brando one year). He certainly reveals a great deal about Brando’s arrogant and erratic behavior on the set. Perhaps he wanted to tell the world finally. Or perhaps Brando wanted to do it as both a prank and an apology.
2. There is one scene where the commentary reveals that Brando was performing while completely drunk. The narrator hails the scene as a grudging appreciation of Brando’s talents. But the trivia section for the movie at IMDb reveals “Cornfield had to delete the parts in which his drunkenness was apparent.” Brando probably wouldn’t know that. And if Cornfield wanted to get back at Brando, he would not have chosen to praise Brando’s skills if time had to be spent extensively editing him.

I have to admit the mystery surrounding the DVD is more tantalizing than the film’s plot. Still I highly recommend this movie as one of the best $5 DVDs I’ve ever purchased.