SPECTRE vs. Spectre

Number One (Blofeld) and his Persian feline friend, From Russia with Love (1963) 

Before getting into the SPECTRE milieu, let me weigh in on the possibility of a black James Bond. Of course James Bond can be black -- simply tweak the backstory and bring us into the 21st century. Yes, Idris Elba, David Oyelowo or any number of other black actors could play Bond. As for Daniel Craig's run as 007, he's done a good job and seems close to Ian Fleming's conception of his character in the early novels. 

Regardless of who plays Bond, the earlier films to date are much more interesting to me. Why? Because of the writing, and the greater complexity of worldview. The first batches of James Bond films were more layered and enduring, like The Iliad. The latest, including the new Spectre (2015), are written much more like Scooby-Doo Where are You!  The main reason for this oversimplification in the newer ones, the great narrowing in number and variety and scope of characters, is undoubtedly financial: by make the SPECTRE organization a vague and fairly generic international crime syndicate that does not include real world animosities or historical backdrop, it can be sold anywhere from the USA to China and all over the globe without offense. As an investment strategy, this generic approach works -- Spectre is on track to rake in the equivalent of more than one billion dollars worldwide at the box office by the end of 2015. 

Claudine Auger -- Domino in Thunderball -- as Athena/Minerva (1960)*

As for The Iliad angle, one can imagine 007 (as played by Sean Connery, say, or George Lazenby), being plucked from lethal situations by the last-minute intervention of the goddess Athena, or encouraged to sleep with a beautiful enemy through the wiles of the goddess Aphrodite, or punished by one of the same goddesses for some arrogant slight on Bond's part (as in the loss of his wife in On Her Majesty's Secret Service). In the newer story lines, how does Bond escape sure death? Who knows? For there is no sense of wonder, or magic . . . just simple-minded writing. We are supposed to believe that Blofeld's entire animus toward Bond is due to his father's affection for the orphan boy Bond when they were kids. In the previous film, former 00 agent Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) was supposed to carry an identical hatred toward Bond because of a Freudian conflict regarding their mutual surrogate mother and boss, M (Judi Dench). Pitiful. What works in a Sergio Leone film does not work in a Bond film.

In the earlier Bond films, there is a sense of a greater, interlocking world with numerous conflicts going on, any number of which may blow up at any time. SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence,Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) exploits Cold War tensions and other historical animosities. One catches glimpses of old and new conflicts, ones involving Turks vs. Bulgarians, Greeks, Russians, Koreans, Germans, British, Americans, Chinese and various organized crime syndicates. It's a big world, complex, and nationalism is treated in a tongue in cheek way. James Bond notes as much when he quips to "Bond girls" he's sleeping with: "What I did this evening was for Queen and country" (Thunderball) and, "The things I do for England" (You Only Live Twice). Any number of seemingly patriotic nationalists are, in fact, mercenaries, willing to do anything for money, power or revenge. These are valuable lessons for living in the world. One must always be on guard as to actual intent.

Besides the international intrigue and possibility, there's technology and its impact. This is a constant theme throughout the entire series -- including the limits of technology. (I'll write more about this, the importance of theme music and the mystique of hotel rooms at some point).

In the earlier films, I like the way they typically culminate in special forces assaults on a villain's castle, or secret lair. Bond is merely the frontman for larger backup forces. Again, in the new Spectre, there's none of that -- just the little Scooby-Doo band of oddballs working in conjunction with 007. And man, where is Oddjob (Harold Sakata) when you need a truly memorable assassin to contend with?

As of this posting, the closest thing to the spirit and range of the earlier run of James Bond films may be CNN's Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (2013-present). Bourdain is like a real James Bond for the here and now, a cultural explorer who carries himself with grit, humor, curiosity, and an intrepid nature. Rather than a license to kill, he has a license to travel, drink, sample various cuisines, and engage with people of different backgrounds and histories, all the while making a serious effort to understand both historical context and future possibilities. And so the circle is complete -- Bourdain, Anthony, vs. SPECTRE-like chaos. Can you dig?

*In Jean Cocteau's Le testament d'Orphée, ou ne me demandez pas pourquoi! (1960). 

Today's Rune: Wholeness.     

Bill Morris: Motor City Burning (2014)

Bill Morris' Motor City Burning, a 320-page novel, (2014) immerses readers in the taut milieu of 1968 Detroit. Chronologically, it generally follows the contours of the Detroit Tigers' season from opening day -- delayed because of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis -- to the Tigers' final victory in the World's Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. If one looks at a 1968 calendar, that covers from April to October. The baseball season is part of the novel's structural backdrop; the effects of the Detroit Riot during the "Summer of Love" (1967) are also prominent in the unfolding of its noirish plot. Morris focuses on two dudes -- Frank Doyle, a Detroit detective, and Willie Bledsoe, a disillusioned civil rights activist from Alabama. Willie and his brother, a veteran sniper back from the US-Vietnam War (evidently suffering from PTSD), were in Detroit together during the '67 riot; they are somehow both connected to an unsolved homicide. Much drama ensues.

Interesting details peppered throughout the novel are worth the whole shebang. Along the way, one catches the '68 Detroit vibe, race-tinged interactions, class differences and structural changes in the city and suburbs. And then there's the just cracking gender code in the age of Mad Men. 

The only hokey thing about Motor City Burning: the two main female characters, one involved with detective Doyle and the other with Bledsoe. They are fantasy figures, the kind you might expect in a James Bond tale -- only not as lethal. There's a third woman who is a spitting image of Mrs. Robinson, which may be an inside joke since The Graduate was playing in American theaters in 1968. 

Motor City Burning is much better at showing male interactions within the Detroit police department and among people facing them on home turf and in business establishments (including blind pigs and other underground facilities). The "big four" police attack squads are something right out of the harrowing FX crime series, The Shield; their activities and other dodgy practices and belief systems go a long way in shedding light on racial and class tensions in Detroit and elsewhere in the USA, then and now. 

Today's Rune: Strength.          

Frederick Forsyth: The Afghan, 2006 (Part II)

The Afghan, Frederick Forsyth's 2006 novel, delivers a wild ride, filtered through the very evident scrim of the author's patriarchal, Anglocentric, conservative outlook.

It's very much a man's world that Forsyth focuses on. There are no major female characters in the book. In general terms, it's sexist, but there's no sex. It's James Bond or Clint Eastwood without their "social interests" -- certainly, there are no Bond girls on either side of this rather austere novel.

While reading, I had a strong impression that, via the near-totally omniscient narrator, Forsyth wants nothing more than a quiet return to the height of the British Empire, say between 1860 and 1900. Women seem of little importance in his grand scheme of manly things. Protesters, the general public, news outlets and international organizations are considered annoying nuisances bent on fools' errands. The most important thing to the narrator is security of country -- the United Kingdom above all -- as represented by security agencies and military and police forces.    

Back in 1997, Forsyth admitted: "These days I care only about six things. They are: belief in the Almighty, my country’s sovereignty, parliamentary democracy, the monarchy, preservation of the countryside, and protection of my family." (Saga, December 1997).

Islamic "Sword Verse" extremists, the villains of The Afghan, dream of a return to the imagined heights of Islamic empire and culture. Turn the clock back a thousand years or more. 

So in The Afghan there are two preferences pitted against each other: go back 100 years (good) or go back 1000 years (bad). In both cases, this is the nature of deep conservatism -- a nostalgia for a past that never was quite as delightful as imagined.*

Finally, the idea of universal entropy or friction: 

"Anyone who has ever been involved in what Kipling called 'the Great Game,' and what James Jesus Angleton of the CIA referred to as the 'wilderness of mirrors,' will surely agree the greatest enemy is the UCU. . . The Unforeseen Cock-Up has probably wrecked more covert missions than treachery or brilliant counterintelligence by the other side. . ." (page 223).

Today's Rune: Possessions. 

*In reverse, the nature of progressive liberalism seems more like nostalgia for an enlightened future that may never come to full fruition. How It Never Was vs. How It Never Will Be, perhaps. 

Behold a Pale Horse: Take II

I. Fred Zinnemann's Behold a Pale Horse (1964) -- continued.

There are aspects of this obliquely plotted film that remind me of the Coen Brothers (compare 2007's No Country for Old Men, for instance).

At one point in the movie, I expected the main protagonist to swoop in like James Bond or a Clint Eastwood character, having everything figured out - but no! 

At another point, I projected an easy ending like that of Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006) -- but no! 

II. Lourdes. Insert Catholicism and "magical thinking." 

Not only is this a key element in Behold a Pale Horse, but here, too, an important aspect of the Spanish Civil War is evoked. The unwieldy coalition fighting against Franco's Nationalists to preserve the Republic included anarchist elements that turned violently on people of the cloth. The number of priests and nuns murdered during the war came to about 7,000, if memory serves. A blot on the Republican side that might have been avoided through more skillful efforts at winning over priests and nuns rather than killing them.

III. Civil Wars and Memory.

The inclusion of a padre as a major character in the midst of fratricidal conflict reminds me very much of The Fratricides, a novel about the Greek Civil War (1946-1949) by Nikos Kazantzakis published in English in 1964 (translated by Athena Gianakas Dallas). Kazantzakis, better known perhaps for Zorba the  Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ, covers some of the same issues as seen in Behold a Pale Horse -- a film which is itself based on Emeric Pressburger's 1961 novel, Killing a Mouse on Sunday.

The thing about civil wars is -- every inhabited place seems to have to endure at least one of them, they are vicious, and most notably -- they never seem to come to complete resolution or reckoning in memory or history. Civil wars go on and on for decades and centuries, morphing into other outlets that oftentimes include renewed flashes of violence.

Take the American Civil War (1861-1865) -- there are people living in the USA today who say they would join the Confederacy even now. Why? Because slavery was abolished? Because they claim the right of individual states to decide whether something like slavery -- or anything else at all -- should be abolished or changed, rather than a national government? That's what they say in the 21st century.

Take the Greek Civil War. The average Greek (if there is such a person) seems to wonder now, what was it about? What was the point of all that viciousness in the late 1940s, even after WWII? "I don't know. It's confusing." 

And finally for now, take the Spanish Civil War. What if, instead of bloody violence, calmer people had worked out a compromise, helped foster the working classes and living conditions for most people in general rather than prop up mostly the rich and powerful, what if Spanish society had evolved a rational separation of Church and State, offered something hopeful to all elements of that society? What might have happened over time is what is happening over time, despite the civil war, and despite economic setbacks. And so, what was the point of all the death and destruction?  Ask Spanish people today, see what they say. 

What do you say?

Today's Rune: Harvest/Signals. 

Sam Mendes: Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road is, off the bat, two things: a novel written by Richard Yates (1961) and a movie directed by Sam Mendes (2008). 

Mendes' film adaptation of the novel presents a bleak microcosm of isolation, alienation and peer pressure set mostly in the mid-1950s, in New York City and suburban Connecticut, five years prior to the beginning, in chronological setting, of the AMC series Mad Men. Think Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955), John Updike's Rabbit, Run (1960), Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), and anticipating Sue Kaufman's Diary of a Mad Housewife (1967). 

This brightly lit (almost washed out in its brightness) film is both grim and meticulously done in Sam Mendes style -- if you've seen American Beauty, Jarhead, or the latest James Bond film, they all bear his stamp. 

Here, a marriage is pressure-cooked. Kids, nice house and stability are of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. Follow your dreams or die a little inside, day after day. Think big, not small -- and God go with you. Once you've got food, shelter and clothing, you are free to choose your arc -- don't let yourself feel trapped, isolated and hopeless. Got it? In 2014, there should be more room to maneuver than there was in 1955. Do you think there is?   

Today's Rune: Harvest.  

Alain Resnais: La guerre est finie (1966)

To artists and historians, at least, the Spanish Civil War remains endlessly fascinating and inspiring. Alain Resnais' La guerre est finie (1966), crisply shot in black and white, deals with the shadow war that continued after the Mussolini and Hitler-supported Franco forces overthrew the fragile democratically elected republic in 1939. 

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was a key testing ground and prototype for the Second World War and did not really end until after the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892-1975). Even now in Spain, the period of rule by Franco and his Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista / Spanish Phalanx of the Assemblies of the National Syndicalist Offensive remains highly controversial and socially unresolved. Then again, in the USA, the American Civil War 150 years after its height is not fully absorbed, either. Perhaps neither ever will be.

La guerre est finie stars such international luminaries as Yves Montand, Geneviève Bujold and Ingrid Thulin. Yves Montand has the same kind of laconic strength of presence as Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood in the mid-1960s, but his historically grounded character can't perform the same type of near-miraculous decisive victories that their more archetypal James Bond or Man with No Name characters can.  For him, there is no particular saving of the day. Instead, the shadow war must go on through decades of exile.

La guerre est finie makes a perfect companion film for Costa-Gavras' 1969 masterpiece film Z. Not only do both have the continuity of Yves Montand in the starring role, but they also both have the cohesive and intelligent, intense and witty screenwriting of Jorge Semprún (1923-2011) to unite them. 

 Today's Rune: Possessions. 

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone

José Quintero's The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, a 1961 movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams' 1951 novella, stars Vivien Leigh a half dozen years before her death, Warren Beatty on the upswing, Jill St. John, Coral Browne and Lotte Lenya, among others. This provides a field day for fans of Tennessee Williams, the ambience of Rome or any of the actors.   

Vivien Leigh's Karen Stone stands in for herself and also for Tennessee Williams. Not only is she (and they) trying to overcome loneliness and a sense of  mortality through "a geographic;" so, too, there's an eerie, haunted-looking stalker always just out of reach, a specter, a momento mori or reminder of limited years in which to live.  Many reading this will have at least some inkling of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).    

Other actors featured in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone have greater contexts, as well. Two of them feature prominently in James Bond films, one apiece -- think From Russia, With Love (1963) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971) to dig the connections.

This was José Quintero's only outing as a movie director -- he normally stuck with stage productions. 

Finally, there was a remake in 2003, but that's for another time and another place. 

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Orson Welles: Le Procès / The Trial (Take II)

Orson Welles: Le Procès / The Trial (1962). It feels like many things. Is it Theatre of the Absurd? Existentialism? A cousin to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot?

Is Orson Welles' Le Procès / The Trial a work of Surrealism? A horror film? 

Science fiction? Dreamscape? A parable? 

It feels like all of the above. Le Procès -- "The Process" -- gives a better grok of the story than "The Trial," i.e., the English language title for Kafka's novel and Welles' adaptation. There really is no trial in the sense of "courtroom drama." 

But: Josef K and the "process" of falling into the bizarre clutches of bureaucracy? 

Le Procès / The Trial features several memorable characters, many like "Bond girls" on the astral plane, including Orson Welles' "estranged" wife Paoli Mori as The Archivist; Jeanne Moreau, Elsa Martinelli, Suzanne Flon, Romy Schneider and Naydra Shore. 

To complete the Bond connection, Michael Lonsdale (The Priest) resurfaces as Drax in Moonraker (1979). 

Today's Rune: Joy.    

Jean-Pierre Melville: Le Samouraï (Take II)

Man, the Criterion Collection has got to be a fun place to work. What a job they do preserving films for posterity! I try to see as many Criterion DVDs as I can, while juggling a host of other things on the ceaseless agenda. Worth the effort every time. 

Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï (1967) sticks in mind for a number of reasons. It's cool as in cool jazz, hip as in hepcat, beautiful as in Paris, nifty-fifty as in Alain Delon working with Melville both in top form, and glidingly graceful as in zen. What's not to love, dreamers? I should point out that Delon's Costello character is not a superhero and is not imbued with magical powers. He's a bit more along the lines of the early Sean Connery Bond, not as unstoppable as a Sergio Leone-Clint Eastwood "Man With No Name" character. I find this interesting -- and a refreshing rejoinder to many of the more dingbatty action films of recent years.

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

The Fifty Year March

Fifty years on, the People's Republic of China and a divided Korea are still here. Vietnam reunited, Germany reunited, a post-Soviet world. Landing on the Moon, Mission to Mars. The USA is still here. France is still here. The Irish Troubles are over, more or less. Independent Armenia. Arab Spring. Middle East troubles -- still here. James Bond and the Rolling Stones -- still here. Civil Rights reforms -- still ongoing. Wars -- ongoing. Copy machines. Scanners. Wireless communications. Climate change. First African American President. First Jesuit Pope, and from Latin America. The Fifty Year March continues.

Today's Rune: Journey.  

La Ronde

 






















Four years before his infamous science fiction fantasy Barbarella, Roger Vadim's La Ronde (1964) remakes a banned play originally penned in 1897 and a classic 1950 movie adaptation of the same play. This version showcases Jane Fonda as a mischievous mother-wife (superb and well in command of her screen time, speaking in French and luminiscent), Anna Karina as a domestic-waif, Marie Dubois as "the Girl" (a prostitute), Catherine Spaak as a shop clerk (midinette) and Francine Bergé as a self-made actress, Maximilienne de Poussy. Meanwhile, the male characters are humorous hypocrites all, split between a ludicrous bourgeois façade and the underlying opposite realities of their actions.

There are revelations about class structure, history and gender presented through the scrim of a study of social manners and sex. The setting is 100 years ago, just before the the Great War of 1914-1918, in Paris. Despite cheesy moments (including goofily portrayed flashbacks), I liked it. The seduction scenes are excellent, as are the reflective post-coital musings of the main characters. 

The opening sequence -- created by Maurice Binder, the dude who also delivered the wildly choreographed openings of many a James Bond film -- made me dizzy, as befits the movie title, La Ronde -- a round dance, daisy chain, handoff or relay akin to a Surrealist "Exquisite Corpse" (where one bit ends another begins, without specifically relying on the earlier scenes for narrative coherence).

The structure involves a key pair in each scene, going from characters as follows:

AB
BC
CD
DE
and so on, back to A.

From this of 1964, I'll go back to the 1950 version and compare notes. This one ends as World War I begins, soon to be blasting away at the status quo. 

Today's Rune: Journey.
     

New York World's Fair 1964-1965: Return of the Dinosaurs

Going with my immediate family at four years old to the New York World's Fair in the mid-1960s was an early salient event.  Not only did the "Goldfinger car" stand out (James Bond's 1964 Aston Martin DB5), but so did many dinosaurs large and small. The real small ones that we got as souvenirs, made of some waxy substance, melted in the back of our car in the hot sun. The really big ones -- two of them at any rate -- were later relocated to Dinosaur Valley State Park outside of Glen Rose, Texas. I saw them today -- for the first time since I was four! 

At the "Friends of . . ." concession building inside Dinosaur Valley, Maud Gibbs, now in her mid-80s, told me how she, too, had gone to the New York World's Fair in 1965, flying up from Texas with a daughter. She had several tales to run by me -- about the history of the area, the locals who'd discovered the dinosaur tracks, the paleontologists, the location of various relics and the more recent discovery of dinosaur fossils in Glen Rose proper, "behind the Comfort Inn, accross from Sonic." Several major fossils found in the area can be examined in museums in NYC and Fort Worth, Texas.

My friend Evan also went to the New York 1964-1965 World's Fair, with his Dad. That's him standing by T. Rex.

This is the same T. Rex today, the penultimate day of 2012. Temporarily propped up by some weird T-bar rod thing, awaiting minor repairs. Note how his (or her?) mouth is slightly more agape than in Evan's snapshot at the World's Fair.

Charles and Lana Gramlich checked out this exact same area about a year and a half ago, so I knew from their web-published photographs and incisive observations pretty much what to expect, and what to look for. It was only in the past week that I came to understand the World's Fair connection, though, which finally got me moving. (Note to Charles: the nearby Creationist Museum was closed again. I'll take a gander at some point, hopefully, and report my findings).

Today's Rune: Signals.

Skyfall

Fifty years and still running, the contemporary epic myth of 007 continues. James Bond, the Achilles of the here, the now and the recent past: from JFK to Barack Obama and way on down the road.

Skyfall is the best so far of the the Daniel Craig era Bond films. Beyond a large budget, Skyfall has many assets propelling it forward. Director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road). Craig as Bond. Javier Bardem. Judi Dench. Ralph Fiennes. Naomie Harris. Bérénice Lim Marlohe. Albert Finney. Istanbul. Shanghai. Macau. London. Scotland. Title song by Adele. Traditional Bond theme saluting back to the Sean Connery era. Clone of the Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger (1964/1965), which I first saw as a little kid at the New York World's Fair. Oh, yes. What's not to dig?
    

Today's Rune: Defense.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) presents us with an anomaly in the 007 series: Bond (George Lazenby) falls in love with and marries someone -- Tracy, Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg). The film pretty closely follows the internal arc of Ian Fleming's 1963 novel of the same title. Overall take on this Peter R. Hunt directed movie? Trippy, man. I always get sucked back into it,
too -- every time.
   

Hard to beat the Sean Connery films, but this one's still up there in the Bond pantheon. On Her Majesty's Secret Service does nice work, too, documenting the socio-economic transition from the earlier 1960s into the later 60s, yet hasn't become so frayed as to become too caricaturish (as it would start to in the 1970s). Sort of like a band with a lot of albums. The first six are really good, then they tend to go up and down and all around -- same with the Bond series over the past fifty plus years.

As an aside, I like Daniel Craig as the latest incarnation of Mr. Bond. He'll be in Skyfall later this year, directed by Sam Mendes and co-starring Javier Bardem. Even in 2012, still On Her Same Majesty's Secret Service. 

Today's Rune: Flow.

Sergei Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky

Sergei Prokofiev scored Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (1938) in a way that strengthens and enhances the film. He synchronized each passage to fit a particular scene's mood and context. The Teutonic Knights and their "religious" collaborators are given a sinister theme, while the people of Rus rally to a more folksy and mystical aural backdrop. This not particularly subtle pattern has been repeated in numerous other movies ever since, to varying degrees of effectiveness. Here it works.

Off the top of my head, I can think of several scores that inextricably tie film with soundtrack as with Prokofiev's for Alexander Nevsky: in that when one thinks of a certain film, the associated music is also recalled, and when the music soundtrack is heard out of context, one immediately summons memories of its cinematic source.

For instance: David Lynch's Blue Velvet (Angelo Badalamenti, 1986); Mike Nichols' The Graduate (Dave Grusin, Simon & Garfunkel, 1967); the Sergio Leone epics (Ennio Morricone); the James Bond theme (Monty Norman) and also the title songs for most of the 007 series; Woody Allen's Manhattan (George Gershwin selections, 1979). Let me not forget several works by the Coen Brothers, plus Werner Herzog.  

Cable TV series have been underscoring the importance of music selections and soundtracks for quite a while, HBO and its rivals included. Their music archivists and editors have done impressive and sometimes quite subtle synchronization to enhance mood and meaning.

Now, dear reader, aside from musicals and music documentaries, what are some of your favorite movie soundtracks?

Today's Rune: Defense.      

The Long Art

"Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult." Hippocrates (ca. 460 B.C.-377 B.C.)

Or, as Gore Vidal has compressed it, "Life is short, but the art is long."

Some things have persisted through a lifetime, and remain there seemingly as always. Cuba. Israel-Palestine, North Korea/South Korea. James Bond. The Rolling Stones. Bob Dylan. Space shots. Civil rights, human rights, gender issues. China. 

Some things have morphed. Vietnam. Ireland/Northern Ireland. Germany. The Cold War. The Soviet Union. Eastern Europe. The Balkans.

And the ball keeps spinning. Some plots thicken, some plots thin. Cuba is changing. Korea will, either in a violent spasm or in some unexpected manner. Palestine will become a nation.

In my lifetime, though these things seem slow, they have changed, even as the population has increased, half again as big in the USA alone (though half as small in Detroit and, probably, New Orleans). South America has changed, Africa has changed, and both continents will change at a quicker pace. All of Africa, not just North Africa, perhaps following the Arab Spring, may begin throwing off dictators. Who knows? What will happen in Mexico? How will the drug wars end? How about Iran, India and Pakistan? And so on. I remain as curious as a cat about all of it, but with vegan meals added. 

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Jean-Luc Godard: Masculin féminin, Part 1

Godard's Masculin féminin: 15 faits précis (1966) observes life among Parisian youth (mostly twenty somethings) in 1965, just as some things are starting to go swinging electric. More than one actual date is shown in the movie: December 5, 1965, for instance. 

Shot in grainy black and white, Masculin féminin feels like a mix of documentary, journaling and comedy-drama of manners. I find it helpful as a window into the relatively near-past. "Times had changed. It was the age of James Bond and Vietnam." 

Pictured here: Saigon-born Chantal Goya as the mercurial chanteuse Madeleine Zimmer.

In Masculin féminin, we see people playing pinball, drinking coffee and wine, smoking, reading newspapers and magazines, listening to music, watching movies, talking and otherwise interacting. In one scene, two friends discuss Bob Dylan.

What are you reading?

An article on Bob Dylan.

Who's he?

He's a Vietnik, you know.

What's that?

It's an American word, a cross between "beatnik" and "Vietnam."

Who are you, Mr. Bob Dylan?

Madeleine never mentioned him? He sells 10,000 records a day!

Later, Madeleine pops in to tell friends, "I'm Number 6 in Japan with 'Pinball Champ.'"  Who's ahead of her in the game? The Beatles, yé-yé singer France Gall -- and Bob Dylan. 

[To be continued].   

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Tết Nguyên Đán: Feast of the New Morning

Happy Tết, y'all -- Year of the Cat, Year of the Rabbit, Year of the Common Era, 2011. How it will proceed, nobody knows, but it's been a wild start. . .

Will we remain in the United States of Amnesia?  Remember all the emotional concerns over the Horrible Truth About Burma (the so-called Republic of the Union of Myanmar)? That was 2009. People forget the year, let alone the country or the issue. Too taxing on the memory, I guess. Tibet (various uprisings; latest reported, 2008)? Katrina (2005) many do remember. The Great Tsunami (2004)? The Great Blackout (2003)?  Y2K (1999/2000)? Tet Offensive (1968)?   




















Year of Catnip? What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966)   

Kinji Fukasaku's Black Lizard / Kurotokage / 黒蜥蝪 (1968).

Today's Rune: Movement.