Jean-Luc Godard: 'Adieu au Language' / 'Goodbye to Language' (2014)

Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au Language / Goodbye to Language (2014) comes in 3D and 2D versions, take your pick. 

Marshall McLuhan probably would have liked this, a playful and colorful response to the world and its changing modes of communication. Godard, like McLuhan, is quite aware of the "electronic envelope" surrounding us; that "the medium is the message;" that we live in a "global village" and are actively participating in a "global theatre." Godard wants us to remain aware of our surroundings, and of our modes and methods of communicating. If all else fails, his dog Roxie will lead the way.

Goodbye to Language is not Dada. It's not a cut-up experiment such as might have been done by Brion Gysin, William Seward Burroughs, David Bowie or Mick Jagger. It has some similarities to a David Lynch film, so a touch of Surrealism, and to Woody Allen's philosophically toying with the lenses and filters of reality (such as in Deconstructing Harry, 1997, or Melinda and Melinda, 2004). 

"The present is a strange beast." People reading from a three-dimensional book. 

"This morning is a dream."

What is most important?  "Infinity and Zero." "Sex and Death."

"A line of zeros along the sea."

Writing in a journal with a pen. Do you write letters and send them off via postal service, or is that way not your way? 

"Do something."

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

James Ward's 'Adventures in Stationary' (2015): Postcards

James Ward, Adventures in Stationary: A Journey Through Your Pencil Case (London: Profile Books, 2015; first published in Great Britain in 2014). If you dig office supplies, art supplies and the like, you would/will absolutely dig this jaunty romp through the ups and downs of office artifacts, competing designs, rivalries and everything from paper clips and liquid paper to staplers. 

For this post, we shall consider only one chapter of Adventures in Stationary: Chapter 7: "Wish you were here" -- the postcard (mostly). 

"As a child," Ward notes, "I'd often send myself a postcard when I went on family holidays . . . . " (knowing it would only arrive well after his return home.) "The postcard was like a time capsule, sent from myself to myself, but the version of myself who sent the postcard was irritatingly smug. 'I'm sitting by the pool,' I'd write. 'I might go for another swim after I finish writing this. Anything good on TV in England? How's the weather?' Back at home, reading this message, I'd reconcile the sense of jealousy I felt toward the version of myself who was still on holiday with the fact that I knew things that he didn't. I knew, for instance, that he'd leave his sunglasses behind in his hotel room and that his flight would be delayed on the way home." (Adventures in Stationary, page 148).

Ward is a witty one, and clever, too: "I think postcards are probably more fun to send than to receive." (Ibid., page 149).

He then takes his readers through the development of "saucy" postcards, a section that morphs into a consideration of "floaty pens" such as the "tip 'n' strip" and on to "things shaped like other things" and "stationary shaped like other stationary" (Ibid., pages 158-159). 

It's a wild world. You don't even need to live inside of Twin Peaks to sense it. 

Next is but another true statement: Adventures in Stationary can help you light your way back through the dark swirls of the digital world -- with a smile. 

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown (2014)

Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown (2014): Directed by Alex Gibney, produced by Mick Jagger. Aired on HBO and available with extras in DVD format. 

This one's an entertaining and insightful documentary for any and all James Brown fans. The archival footage is worth the whole package; newer interview footage is also better than the usual in such motion documentaries. 

I'm pretty well-versed in James Brown musicology and cultural impact, but even so, with Mr. Dynamite I learned a lot of new stuff, new ways of considering things. 

(In one of the more surreal scenes of Mr. Dynamite, see presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey sing along with James Brown in 1968. It's plain bizarre!) 

Alex Gibney is a trenchant documentary filmmaker -- compare with some of his other works such as Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005); The [Lance] Armstrong Lie (2013); We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (2013); Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (HBO, 2015); Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (2015).

Today's Rune: Gateway.      

  

Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado: 'The Salt of the Earth' (2014)

Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado's documentary The Salt of the Earth (2014) focuses on the life and lens of Brazilian Sebastião Salgado, a total immersion photographer, including major projects, such as the awe-inspiring Instituto Terra reforestation effort, with Lélia Wanick Salgado. 

To deepen and widen the scope of his (or their) major photography projects, Salgado (and companions, from time to time) has traveled to the Ends of the Earth, the Far Corners of the World, from vast areas with no human habitation to locales filled with refugees of famine and war, or workers laboring as if from the dawn of time in mines (as above), from ancient peoples living half-hidden from modern economic systems, to migrants and nomads on the Edge of Tomorrow. 

The Salt of the Earth delivers a stunning blend of documentary film and photography in both color and black and white. Images range from disturbing atrocities (people dead from starvation or massacre) to mystic beauty, from social panorama to natural vista.

Whereas most photographers tend to focus on either natural or social settings, Sebastião Salgado does both, without privileging one kind over the other: to me, this is an optimal way of looking at the world, with very impressive results.

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

Roy Lichtenstein: New Orleans and Madrid

When you first come across this, you might think, "Aliens!"  At least I did -- looks like some kind of gigantic artifact from outer space. The setting is inside the vast covered courtyard (Nouvel Patio) connecting the old and new wings of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. Snapped this in the summer of 2014. It's a gigantic Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) sculpture called Brushstroke.

In New Orleans, there's a tall marauding demon creature carrying the exact same vibe -- or is that but a masked man striding around on stilts? Your choice. Go and see.

Last month, came across this sculpture and made the Madrid connection immediately. Here, Five Brushstrokes presides in front of the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) -- as it has since December 8, 2013. 

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

'Pawn Sacrifice' (2014/2015): Bobby Fischer vs. Boris Spassky

Edward M. Zwick's Pawn Sacrifice (2014/2015) delivers a dramatic rendering (with some comic touches) of the great but erratic chess player Bobby Fischer, culminating in his world championship match against Boris Spassky in 1972.

I love the cast of Pawn Sacrifice, which includes Tobey Maguire, Liev Schreiber, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Lily Rabe, Robin Weigert and Evelyne Brochu, among others. Overall, the movie is fun and interesting, definitely lighter fare -- and hokier -- than the documentaries Red Army and Best of Enemies -- although all three compliment each other within the Cold War Zeitgeist and all three are worth watching. 

In Pawn Sacrifice, Fischer (played by Tobey Maguire) is depicted as a person existentially located somewhere between an anti-social and paranoid "idiot savant," chess prodigy, and enfant terrible -- fittingly compared to Mozart (although Wagner might be even more fitting). Stuhlbarg and Sarsgaard, pictured here, play Fischer's handlers, the one an eager promoter-patriot and the other a worldly Catholic priest and chess coach. 

Liev Schreiber makes Boris Spassky seem a whole lot cooler and classier than Bobby Fischer, albeit tightly contained by his Soviet "management team" (which he resents, but begrudgingly understands). In 1972, both players are "pawns" of the Cold War. 

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

Charles Gramlich: 'The Adventures of an Arkansawyer' (2014)

Charles Gramlich has done a wonderful thing: combined his earlier Days of Beer: The Memoirs of a Beer Drinkin' Man, originally in ebook format (Razored Zen Press, 2011), with a new, bigger section, "Adventures of an Arkansawyer," which is twice as long as the first part, in the form of a traditionally printed codex book entitled The Adventures of an Arkansawyer (Razored Zen Press, 2014). As much as I enjoyed Days of Beer as an ebook, I very much enjoyed it again as part of a larger, printed book. So, I'd say, why not purchase both and see what you think?  If you haven't already, that is . . . (More details of how to acquire a copy here).   

My initial response to Days of Beer can be found in another post.  In this one, I'll focus on the new material. The setting is laid out clearly: the Gramlich family farm in Arkansas, " a few miles south of the Arkansas River . . . The closest actual town was Charleston, Arkansas," with "a population of around 1,400 when I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s. The closest city was Fort Smith . . ." (page 63).

Now, in the new section, Charles focuses more on the family and farming milieu than on beer-drinking adventures. He does so in a warm and wry way, loving toward his family, through vignettes -- many of them comical and some more serious. These can be read both as stand-alone pieces, and as part of the larger tapestry. A reader unfamiliar with family farming will learn things about the kind of work it entails, and indeed, this thread also serves as a valuable reminder that many or most people on earth, until the Industrial Revolution, were farmers, probably working in somewhat similar ways. But there is also a time element at work here. 

The Adventures of an Arkansawyer, beyond the farming element, says much about American life in general during the period after the Second World War and before the complete communications revolution brought on by the internet, digitization and wireless mobile devices by the beginning of the 21st century. In that, it is a testimony to American social and limited technological life from the 1960s to the 1980s -- and not just in rural areas far away from the sea coasts. 

We also catch glimpses of why and how Charles became a writer. A big element in his development came through his avid reading, which was given a lot of extra fuel thanks to his sister Dolores, once she began working at a nearby library and could provide him access to an expanding trove of reading material. 

Charles, even as a child, had a vivid imagination and colorful (even visionary) dream life. There are probably several factors that worked together to propel this inner life. 

Closeup of stained glass, St. Mary's of the Valley, Hot Springs, Arkansas, by EDF, 2015

For one thing, outside of school, Charles was isolated from others around his age. He couldn't just bop down a sidewalk or street to hang out with a friend or friends his age, as in a cityscape or suburb. 

Secondly, the Gramlich family was Catholic and Charles was given a Catholic education. "My Catholic grade school," he writes, "had a small library of maybe a hundred and fifty volumes, mostly about saints. I read all of those" (page 179). I guarantee you that this process alone would have fueled Charles' imagination. Beyond that, in 1960, only two percent of the population of Arkansas was Catholic (even though Catholicism in Arkansas dates back to 1541), so the Gramlich family was distinctive in their religious culture. 

Third, Charles has anosmia (see page 74), and cannot detect or discern scents or odors. This is one of the five or six senses, right? Charles anosmia has led him to clever strategies of getting around this, which reminds me a lot of the wisdom of Huck Finn. Do you remember when Huck forgets his made-up name, George Jackson, and tricks Buck into spelling it out for him? (cf. Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884-1885, chapter 17). Charles may be the very (re)incarnation of Huck Finn -- who knows?

And really, truly finally for now, a salute to Charles Gramlich for his fine, fun and evocative memoir, The Adventures of an Arkansawyer.

p.s. Charles is now an Experimental Social Psychology Professor at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans. How he got there is touched upon toward the end of the book. As you can imagine, that's an interesting story in its own right. 

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

From Moscow to Detroit and Back Again: Gabe Polsky's 'Red Army' (2014)

Red Army, Gabe Poslky's 2104 documentary, hands us a heady cocktail of strong hockey suffused with bittersweet history. Man, it's chock full of pizzaz and a lot of RED. 

(Note: the great German director Werner Herzog is listed as one of the producers.) 

From this action-packed yet thoughtful film, viewers will catch a pretty good glimpse at the arc of international sports (specifically ice hockey) and dueling propaganda machines within the context of the Cold War, ranging from the 1950s to the end of the Soviet Union -- and then spilling into the 21st century. There are dramatic twists and turns, especially toward the end. Believe me, это дикая поездка.  

Red Army features two of the elite Red Army hockey team's biggest coaches, Anatoli Tarasov (1918-1995) and Viktor Tikhonov (1930-2014).  The latter comes off as a ruthless bastard, with Tarasov as the more favorably critiqued. The cagey Tarasov is shown combining disciplines, studying hockey tactics, chess strategy, the Bolshoi Ballet's precision and the energy of boogie woogie. Brilliant.   

The Red Army dudes end up playing in the NHL for a while, and five of the top guys help the Detroit Red Wings seize the Stanley cup in the late 1990s, which is when I move to Detroit and get to see them play. 

What goes around comes around -- but I won't give away the ending here or now. Who knows? Just maybe you might check it out.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.  

Of "Tipping Points" and "Black Swan Events"

Started in on Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007, 2010+) and am thinking how it seems to dovetail in some ways with Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000) and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005). Love this stuff. I'm not the only one by a long shot. In San Francisco, for example, had a fun discussion with a shrewd Filipino taxi driver about his favorite book -- Blink.

Initial response. A couple of recent watershed moments seem like the culmination of long slogging culminating in sudden shifts: LGBT marriage rights (in the USA and globally) and the removal of the Confederate battleflag from government buildings in the USA. These are the result of tipping points -- not complete shocks, but still surprising after seeing only incremental change  over many years.

Black Swan Events seem more "out of the blue." Two examples: one, the sudden plunge in gasoline/petrol prices in late 2014 from which such prices still have yet to "recover;" two, the sudden end to a depressing five year drought in Texas just this past May (2015). 

The drop in gas prices was wild. The follow-up question is, how did various people and groups respond to this change? 

The wild spike in rain in Texas was an even bigger surprise. True, climate change models have long suggested wild fluctuations in historical climate patterns, locally and regionally. However, no one to my knowledge could or did predict with any exactness what happened in the large area in and around Texas. Indeed, it was called a "one in two thousand year event" (when in fact, due to climate change, it may become a one in two year event -- maybe). 

Late spring flooding in Texas was a disaster for many, but overall, such heavy rains suddenly providing a dramatic reprieve to drought conditions is worth noting and remembering in the future. Here, it's generally better to have too much "fresh" water than not enough. There is some general prediction that California might also be rained out because of the formation of El Niño, which if it materializes would provide a tipping point against the current drought, if not (because of fairly detailed models) exactly a Black Swan Event. 

Cool to ponder. What other kinds of tipping points and Black Swan Events have people noticed lately?

Today's Rune: The Self. 

'The Hippest Trip in America: *Soul Train* and the Evolution of Style and Culture'

I picked this up in transit and finished last night: Nelson George's The Hippest Trip in America: Soul Train and the Evolution of Style and Culture (William Morrow, 2015 paperback edition; originally published in 2014).

As its full title lays out, this nifty tome covers the history, context and impact of Soul Train, from its Chicago roots to LA, from Don Cornelius to the singers, from the bands and dancers to the business angles.

Don Cornelius and Soul Train are a trip. I still sporadically catch syndicated episodes and am especially enthralled by the 1970s performances. One of my favorites features a chubby young Al Sharpton giving James Brown some kind of improvised award -- real showmanship at work all around and all the time. This is how it's done, people. Can you dig? 

RIP, Don Cornelius (1936-2012).

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: Round Two (Clothes)

Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing translated by Cathy Hirano (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2014)  / Magic Cleaning: Wie richtiges Aufräumen Ihr Leben verändert [lit. "How real tidying changed your life"], (2013).

KonMari categorical method – clothes. All in one go. “Does it spark joy?”  “Express appreciation.”  I gathered all my clothes -- everything except what I was wearing -- and coats -- and piled them on a blanket on the floor. Then I handled every single item and decided one of three ways to go: keep, donate or discard. Everything. What I hauled away:

Sports jackets/suit tops
Donate = 3 (1 tweed)

Sweaters
Donate=1

Button shirts:

Discard = 1

Donate = 5

Sweat tops

Donate = 2

Trousers

Donate = 1

Sweat pants

Donate = 1

T-shirts

Discard = 6

Donate = 26

Gloves

Donate = 1 pair

Knit hat

Donate = 1

Pairs of socks

Discard = 14

Hangers

Mix of donate and discard (broken ones)

Total = 1 sack of discards, 3 sacks of donations

Marie Kondo's Magic Cleaning: Wie Wohnung und Seele aufgeräumt bleiben [lit. "how apartment and soul remain tidy"], (2014).

Closet reorganized -- heavy on left to light on right “like an archer’s aim.” Chest drawers reorganized and folded for optimal display and utility. Storage cabinet ditto. Room for everything, in a civilized fashion. Spare buttons, etc., donated to tailor/seamstress next to dry cleaner. Two ties to dry cleaner. One coat in for repair.

Elapsed time: three hours.

Success: total!

Next category: Books. 

Today's Rune: Gateway. 

Marie Kondo's 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up' (2014): Round One

Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing translated by Cathy Hirano (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2014) / Jinsei Ga Tokimeku Katazuke No Maho (Tokyo: Sunmark Publishing, Inc., 2011).  

This book isn't about incremental tweaking, one small space at a time.  No way. Bet your bottom dollar -- the revolution is at hand! 

Tidy by category, not location, and all in one go.

After making a great mound on the floor, tidy all of your clothes. Arrange your closets by hanging clothes from heavy on the left to light on the right, aiming high like an archer. Pile all your books together in a pyre. Handle them -- all of them. Keep only those that spark joy. Do this with all of your papers, all of your 小物 (komono: little objects, miscellany) -- pile stuff high and work with your bare hands. Yes!  

Truly an exciting and energetic book interspersed with occasional, pithy humor.

So I'm off to the races, already having completed a couple of pilot projects using the tidy "KonMari method." Will report back on methods and results in the near future. For me, it's highly effective.  Works ideally for all spaces great and small!

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Laura Poitras: 'Citizenfour' (2014)

Laura Poitras' Citizenfour (2014) is well worth seeing and thinking about. And discussing. Saw it on HBO. 

That's all for now, folks. The rest is up to you. 

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed). 

Deux jours, une nuit / Two Days, One Night (2014)

At this point in 2015, my favorite movie from 2014 is Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne's Deux jours, une nuit / Two Days, One Night (2014). It revolves around the importance of a single job -- one worker's job on the line -- and her efforts, with the help of her husband and others, to save it. Marion Cotillard is fantastic, as is the whole crew. It's rare to see such an interesting take on modern life shown in this intimate way. Powerful stuff. 

Deux jours, une nuit / Two Days, One Night (2014) takes place in Wallonia, Belgium, yet it has many of the hallmarks of multiple global markets in the second decade of the 21st century. You will see bottled water, pizza, mobile phones / cellphones, wireless computers, a small solar factory, industrial blight, sports, ice cream, jeans and t-shirts, new housing, and a few vestiges of locality -- a baked tart, pastries, older architecture. These contrasting hallmarks alone are worth checking out, a real eye-opener.  

Deux jours, une nuit / Two Days, One Night reminds me of my temporary job delivering pizzas -- quick glimpses into people's lives at the delivery point. Here, our protagonist must schlep around town to make her case with co-workers in their home environments, bringing up this deep question: how much does anyone know about their peers, really?  And just as importantly, how much do they care what happens to them? 

Deux jours, une nuit / Two Days, One Night: not incidentally, Marion Cotillard is up for an Academy Award (Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role) for her role as Sandra Bya.

Today's Rune: Signals.  Full disclosure: I'm part Walloon by way of Sweden, so extra attentive to the film's setting.

Tim Burton: Big Eyes (2014)

Starting in the late 1950s and proceeding into the 1960s in California, Tim Burton's Big Eyes delivers on two levels: specifically as a finely crafted "milieu film," and more generally as an intelligent musing about art, artists, provenance, impact -- and gender.  Off the wall, I'm reminded of Miloš Forman's 1984 adaptation of Amadeus, the 1979 Peter Shaffer play about classical musicians Mozart and Salieri. Art and promotion, ego and taste, talent and ambition: it's all there. In Big Eyes also, the ghost of Andy Warhol hovers throughout. True story. 

Kitsch, art -- either way, waifs with big eyes caught the popular imagination fifty to sixty odd years ago. Like physical height, big eyes are hard to resist. 

Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz play the leads. As Margaret Keane (aka Peggy Hawkins), Adams has the more difficult, more nuanced role, complicit in her husband's flashy showmanship; but Waltz's character (Walter Keane) has an inferiority-superiority complex, an alcohol-fueled "Jekyll and Hyde" personality, giving him some complexity to work with, too. Both are great -- as is the rest of the cast. 

My two favorite scenes may be the following: Margaret first entering "the club" to see what Walter is up to -- bathed in what looks like infrared light -- stunning on the big screen; and her shopping in a meticulously recreated supermarket, (apparently) hallucinating, seeing "big eyes" on other shoppers and workers, eerie moments right out of a surreal Jean Cocteau film or The Twilight Zone. Right on! 

Overall, Big Eyes is not too heavy, not too light. I dig!

Today's Rune: Possessions. 

Paul Thomas Anderson: 'Inherent Vice' (2014)

Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice (2014), an adaptation of the 2009 Thomas Pynchon novel of the same title, is a milieu film set in 1970 Los Angeles, California, and thereabouts. Ronald Reagan is the governor, Richard M. Nixon is the president and the US-Vietnam War is still dragging on and on.  Hippies and squares vie for shrinking karmic space on the West Coast.  

As Doc Sportello, stoner private eye, Joaquin Phoenix fits right in, as does Doc's frenemy, the other key character in this tale, flattoped LA Detective Bigfoot Bjornsen (Josh Brolin). 

Inherent Vice: it's the ouija board, man! Obvious comparison points: the Coen Brothers, The Big Lebowski (1998) and A Serious Man (2009); Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974); and so on. 

Inherent Vice: It's the fog, man!  Anderson proceeds at his usual grinding, discomfiting pace. Not as evil here as in There Will Be Blood (2007) or The Master (2012), still there are in Inherent Vice scenes both long and slow -- even unnerving. Overall, it's not as "heavy" a trip as the aforesaid flicks, not by a long shot -- which is a merciful thing. 

Inherent Vice: Can you grok this, 1-Adam-12? 

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

Twenty Fifteen of the Common Era

Into Year 2015

MMXV 

14 Nivôse CCXXIII

New Year's, a wedding of Space and Time, requires: 

Something Olde

Something New

Something Borrowed

Something Blue . . .

A Sixpence in your Shoe

All such elements are jammed into my newly vamped gym jukebox iPod mix. Before last year lurched into this one, I purposely deleted my entire playlist and began a new one. It was high time.

The new stripped down core-first-round playlist, to be expanded during this year  -- already fondly known as Twenty Fifteen -- goes like this . . . playback is in random order, and sometimes I switch earphones or headphones to highlight different aspects of each track for the benefit of both the other ear and the other side of the mind . . . a good way to keep it fresh, keeping it reel-to-reel.

Open Up Like a French 75 -- drink or artillery, take your pick:

Breaking Glass  (David Bowie)

Chinese Rock (Ramones)

Editions of You (Roxy Music)

Feeling Good (Nina Simone)

Get Up Offa That Thing (James Brown)

I'm a King Bee (Slim Harpo)

The 'In' Crowd (Bryan Ferry)

Lust for Life (Iggy Pop)

See-Line Woman (Nina Simone)

Shake Your Hips (Slim Harpo)

Sound & Vision (David Bowie)

Super Bad, Parts 1 and 2 (James Brown)

Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (Bob Dylan)

What in the World (David Bowie with Iggy Pop)

You Know I'm No Good (Amy Winehouse)

This stuff works for me. Specifically for the time blocks spent on things like the stationary bike, moon walk or regular treadmill. 

I've picked up a whole new appreciation for "Get Up Offa That Thing" (1976) -- can listen to it, the extended version, dozens of times and hear something new. For now, it's the side track electric funk guitar parts and embedded mutter-rapped words such as "Melvin Parker [on drums] . . . North Carolina . . ."   

2015: The adventure continues . . .

Today's Rune: Initiation.