"a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."

i tried to read william s. burroughs' naked lunch as an undergraduate & really had next to no clue what was going on.

i have liked other (more straightforward) stories by him, like junkie. haven't really dug into his ouvre enough, to my liking. his recorded works can be really, really engaging. burroughs has this captivating, laconic midwestern delivery, so often articulating such shocking things. his voice sounds so much like the scratchy audio that i've encountered of fellow st. louisan t.s. elliot.















one personal favorite: burroughs' narration of "the junky's christmas" in a claymation short subject (excerpted here) that features a dope soundtrack by the disposable heroes of hiphoprisy.


i did really enjoy david cronenberg's naked lunch, by the way. paul weller & judy davis are pitch-perfect. cronenberg always finds so many great actors willing to work on his challenging & out-there projects. i love almost all of his films (have only missed a couple?).

his meditation on naked lunch is so well-excecuted, complex, & surreal.




"cover your eyes america! run for your lives!"



(a great trailer: i love how they got burrough's voice in the mix!)



i'm ready to reenter the interzone again... this edition.

that's the ticket...

my name is nobody

dead man (jarmusch, 1995).

neil young’s music.

words by william blake.

read by johnny depp.

images by jim jarmusch & robby muller.


i’m just about to take amtrak on a long, slow journey from sacramento to santa barbara, california. i often think about this movie, especially this time of year: a time (for me) of trains, the western frontier, thankstaking...

dead man is one of my all-time favorite films. if i were going to make a top-10 list, it would most definitely be on it.

greil marcus, the music & culture critic, once wrote an article for salon called “Dead Again: Here are 10 reasons why ‘Dead Man’ is the best movie of the end of the 20th century.” i’d have to agree with him on that matter.



the music video/montage i’ve embedded here features the title track for the movie by neil young. his is such an amazing score. this is the best song, but, appropriately enough, it’s not included on the soundtrack album for the film, which is still worth owning.

time to pack my bags...

buy nothing day

buy nothing day, conceived by the people behind adbusters, takes place today & tomorrow, internationally.

here's an example of an adbusters BND public service announcement, a psa they've had trouble buying commercial time for on american television (surprise, surprise!)...



all of this got me thinking about the powerful & adept documentary, the corporation (2003). it's from the makers of manufacturing consent: noam chomsky & the media. check this...




you might wanna add the corporation to your netflix queues or something...

turn on, tune in, drop out.

william s. burroughs' "thanksgiving prayer"

thankstaking wishes from the edge of the american frontier...

♥,
t.

on adrienne shelly, hal hartley, & 'fay grim'

the death of actor/writer/director adrienne shelly, someone born within 2 months of me, has affected me like few others in recent memory.

for one thing, it got me thinking a lot about her 1st 2 movies with writer/director hal hartley, a fellow new yorker: the unbelievable truth (1989) & trust (1990). working steadily outside of the indie film spotlight for a while, shelly had a role in the new adaptation of a charles bukowski novel, factotum (2005), with matt dillon, lili taylor, & marisa tomei, and had submitted a feature that she wrote & directed to the sundance film festival, called waitress (2006).

adrienne's death was so sudden, shocking, & unnecessary. it's senselessness has gotten under my skin & i just can't shake it yet.

i've blogged about shelly's murder elsewhere, & the tragedy of it all recently got me to dig up a vhs copy of trust & to find out more about the latest exploits of cult filmmaker hartley.


hal hartley has a new feature, fay grim (2006), starting to make the festival rounds. it stars the always terrific parker posey in the lead role & is a sequel to hartley's most accomplished film to date, henry fool (1997). it seems to combine elements of melodrama & espionage thrillers, among other things: what better ground to cover during this age of the 'homeland security' state run amuck?

i had forgotten just how tragic hartley's stories & characters can be. it's just that he leavens these tales so brilliantly. he's an under-sung force in american independent cinema that even i had taken leave of for a while (a few misfires, like no such thing [2001] or flirt [1995], sort of made me lose interest in his exploits). but, as the people behind the toronto international film festival can attest to,

Hal Hartley has had a profound and rarely acknowledged impact on American cinema. His films reclaim the wit of classical Hollywood comedy and film noir, while putting forward an American take on Jean-Luc Godard's ironic playfulness with genre. This synthesis still resonates throughout American film comedy; recent hits like Little Miss Sunshine and Thank You for Smoking owe much to his trailblazing efforts.

i recently discovered this short tribute/montage on youtube & just wanted to post it here by way of a sort of introduction to/"retrospective" of hartley's work, & in anticipation of the hoped-for wide release of fay grim.



also, i see this as an opportunity to again commemorate the life & work of hartley collaborator adrienne shelly. her passing is going to take me a long time to come to terms with, if ever.

shelly's husband, andy ostroy, has started the adrienne shelly foundation, in her memory. according to wikipedia.org, "plans [for the foundation] include a Womens’ Filmmaking Scholarship Fund, with a particular emphasis on awarding film school scholarships and helping women make the transition from acting to directing."



adrienne (levine) shelly (1966-2006), rest in peace.