the slighted return of the
In the rest of the county, Labor Day is the end of Summer, both weather and season wise.
Weather wise, it finally turned to Autumn here in LA last Wednesday night. The sky gets darker, the locals call temperatures below 60 F (or 12 C for any international readers out there) freezing. There is a smell of fall, almost a burning smell, as if there is a crisp residue of the town’s morale finishing its summer burn of excess and into the somber, reflective winter season of movies made for Oscars.
My uncle said 2006 was the best year of weather of his life. I’m inclined to agree on my terms, even if I did spend most of the year sleeping through the days. Every time I went to the beach, the weather was the kind of Southern California immaculate in the way I think of California atmospheres from Beach Boys songs.
Season wise, summer in LA ends with Halloween. It’s the last bash before the holidays, and since most of the 20’s here aren’t from LA originally, it’s the last LA party of the year, where no one has quite grown past 20, everyone’s totally horny and has a flair of the theatrical. Between the gays and the two colleges in the city, I doubt LA will ever stop being at it’s weirdest on All Hallows.
After this time of year, most of the townies and students go home, and the town turns into the international, black, Jewish, and Latin city that doesn’t seem like it would be in the USA. It’s the weather and the movie industry. The latter brings people here; the former makes it impossible for them to leave. Without one of those two, the city would be Detroit, a working class town with industries that are dying or being outsourced. Without the weather people wouldn’t stay, without the movies and the tacit “liberal lifestyle,” there wouldn’t be a youth influx every year. It’d be a Jewish burg, and I’m pretty sure most of the blacks and immigrants would head to New York if not for the weather.
After this, Finals come for the college kids, the holiday’s cause 1/3 of the city to leave, and the traffic gets a little better. The weather’s just not warm enough for the FOPS until you head to the Palm Desert.
++++
So, of course, this blog has been empty for a while.
Here’s the history:
1. I figured I’d turn this into a website more than a blog. I’d write about movies on Monday, Music Videos on Wed, and random things the rest of the time.
2. I did that for three weeks, realized I don’t want to slave over a blog when there are better things for me to be spending my time writing.
3. And took a 6 week sabbatical… to go back to my real job.
What have I done since?
Looked at a lot of porn and got back the mindset of my 17 year old self. Get ready to go to higher education, paid too much attention to politics, debated the existence of God, spent too much money on weekend life and music and movies. I hate my days, love my free time. I’ve even started playing videogames regularly again.
Instead of trying to turn this site into the bastion of free thought and discourse I always dreamed it would become, I’m going to use it for a purely solipsistic output, and it’s become a blog instead of a forum. What I post here is rough drafts. I’m not caring about readership anymore… in the sense of inviting new people to find me, but most of the stuff I will likely post are ideas or fragments or larger segments, and if you want, comment away. Call me a fag, call me a drunk who needs to figure out his life. Whatever, just give your thoughts if inclined.
++++
Short thoughts:
The Departed is a great film. Just one of the most purely engaging action films I have ever seen. And I have seen Infernal Affairs, which is one of the standard points one had to mention when talking about the film. I fell asleep the first time, the second time it was a cool film with an Eastern view on dilemmas of identity.
It’s a recklessly made film, directing wise. Scorsese has been better art wise, but he’s never been better as a renegade than in this film.
Within the first 30 seconds, the film reveals itself to be defiantly anti-PC, but not offensive if you have a spine about these things. But offensive if you have a hard on against other races.
Marty drops the title card 20 minutes into the film. And does so perfectly, making one notice the intention of it being against the grain, not showing credits at all until the end. (one of my favorite trends of modern film, as with Batman Begins. It’s one of the first changes that is pro viewer, no long runs during the scenes of words in the shots, no pretension about putting one’s name on the work… it’s a very musical way of filmmaking, you have to find out afterwards what and who did what.)
He drops, repeats, re-coda’s music on the soundtrack, and does so in moments that make sense to the movie but not to the song. The film feels like an enclosed work, this helps solidify the environment and atmosphere, making you feel part of the world more than you do a voyeur. I’ll note that not having subtitles in the Chinese handoff helped this as well.
With music, having the Dropkick Murphy’s highlight the soundtrack was great. First, Marty doesn’t seem to have listened to music since 1975, most of the time. Having the punk (as a generational shift) and Irish themes meet musically in a song that is a throughline s’wonderful, and makes me wish Marty was 27 forever. He might have used Massive Attack or Nirvana instead of using a Van Morrison cover of Comfortably Numb. To this I think, maybe it’s a point to underscore the Costello (Nicholson) scenes with an old school, 70’s motif, but… come on! Exile on Main Street is in my top 3 albums, but it’s now 2006. LIVE IN THE NOW GARTH, I mean Marty. Slide Away by Oasis would have been great in this film (Manchester to London as Boston is to New York, sort of sense, working class vs. city glitz). As would any number of other songs. And as much as this feels like a work that belongs in Scorsese’s canon, it seems like it may be the last of his in touch works, because without Going Home to Boston on the soundtrack, this sounds (but not feels) like a film that Scorsese would have made in his 70’s era.
Gotta love the Boston backdrop. The easy choices would have been LA and NY. The smart choices were Boston and Chicago. Personal note: I love Boston. I went there two years in a row for Model UN, and fell in love with the city. It feels the way I think a European city should feel like. The church is huge, the buildings are old, the design is terrible, the diving’s a logistical nightmare and attempts to fix it are insane (the big dig). It was because of these trips I fell in love with the Red Sox. And until 2004, I would have considered this a curse. Without getting into the rest, it’s nice to see a major film in a city that isn’t NY or LA. This isn’t a two city nation with a few weird cities like Seattle, San Fran, New Orleans, and/or Vegas (I’m on a first name basis with it…and all cities should be one word. No exceptions, even if I live in one) and a state shaped like a penis where old folks go to die. Chicago is the great American city. IS THE GREAT AMERICAN CITY. (I had to repeat). Boston (and many of the east cost cities above the Mason-Dixon) is the American waypoint from Europe, with the old for the new. While many films idolize the city, this one just reflects the luster of it. It’s a hard town, but it’s a place to live, and it invites you to stay on its own merits. Having the shot of the final out of the 04 Series in the background, never touched on, but there, that was key.
I fell in love with that city in 96 & 97, and followed the Sox ever since. When people care so much about one thing, and say so to strangers, well… the years go on, but there are moments when I remember what it was like when the Sox won in 2004.
This is a great movie, in a great town with a history of gray areas. I'm probably
overly influenced by the Sox in 2004, but it's fuels the fire, one builds the other in terms of memories. And I don’t have many memories better than October 2004.
++++
But I’ll try. Check the next post.
Weather wise, it finally turned to Autumn here in LA last Wednesday night. The sky gets darker, the locals call temperatures below 60 F (or 12 C for any international readers out there) freezing. There is a smell of fall, almost a burning smell, as if there is a crisp residue of the town’s morale finishing its summer burn of excess and into the somber, reflective winter season of movies made for Oscars.
My uncle said 2006 was the best year of weather of his life. I’m inclined to agree on my terms, even if I did spend most of the year sleeping through the days. Every time I went to the beach, the weather was the kind of Southern California immaculate in the way I think of California atmospheres from Beach Boys songs.
Season wise, summer in LA ends with Halloween. It’s the last bash before the holidays, and since most of the 20’s here aren’t from LA originally, it’s the last LA party of the year, where no one has quite grown past 20, everyone’s totally horny and has a flair of the theatrical. Between the gays and the two colleges in the city, I doubt LA will ever stop being at it’s weirdest on All Hallows.
After this time of year, most of the townies and students go home, and the town turns into the international, black, Jewish, and Latin city that doesn’t seem like it would be in the USA. It’s the weather and the movie industry. The latter brings people here; the former makes it impossible for them to leave. Without one of those two, the city would be Detroit, a working class town with industries that are dying or being outsourced. Without the weather people wouldn’t stay, without the movies and the tacit “liberal lifestyle,” there wouldn’t be a youth influx every year. It’d be a Jewish burg, and I’m pretty sure most of the blacks and immigrants would head to New York if not for the weather.
After this, Finals come for the college kids, the holiday’s cause 1/3 of the city to leave, and the traffic gets a little better. The weather’s just not warm enough for the FOPS until you head to the Palm Desert.
++++
So, of course, this blog has been empty for a while.
Here’s the history:
1. I figured I’d turn this into a website more than a blog. I’d write about movies on Monday, Music Videos on Wed, and random things the rest of the time.
2. I did that for three weeks, realized I don’t want to slave over a blog when there are better things for me to be spending my time writing.
3. And took a 6 week sabbatical… to go back to my real job.
What have I done since?
Looked at a lot of porn and got back the mindset of my 17 year old self. Get ready to go to higher education, paid too much attention to politics, debated the existence of God, spent too much money on weekend life and music and movies. I hate my days, love my free time. I’ve even started playing videogames regularly again.
Instead of trying to turn this site into the bastion of free thought and discourse I always dreamed it would become, I’m going to use it for a purely solipsistic output, and it’s become a blog instead of a forum. What I post here is rough drafts. I’m not caring about readership anymore… in the sense of inviting new people to find me, but most of the stuff I will likely post are ideas or fragments or larger segments, and if you want, comment away. Call me a fag, call me a drunk who needs to figure out his life. Whatever, just give your thoughts if inclined.
++++
Short thoughts:
The Departed is a great film. Just one of the most purely engaging action films I have ever seen. And I have seen Infernal Affairs, which is one of the standard points one had to mention when talking about the film. I fell asleep the first time, the second time it was a cool film with an Eastern view on dilemmas of identity.
It’s a recklessly made film, directing wise. Scorsese has been better art wise, but he’s never been better as a renegade than in this film.
Within the first 30 seconds, the film reveals itself to be defiantly anti-PC, but not offensive if you have a spine about these things. But offensive if you have a hard on against other races.
Marty drops the title card 20 minutes into the film. And does so perfectly, making one notice the intention of it being against the grain, not showing credits at all until the end. (one of my favorite trends of modern film, as with Batman Begins. It’s one of the first changes that is pro viewer, no long runs during the scenes of words in the shots, no pretension about putting one’s name on the work… it’s a very musical way of filmmaking, you have to find out afterwards what and who did what.)
He drops, repeats, re-coda’s music on the soundtrack, and does so in moments that make sense to the movie but not to the song. The film feels like an enclosed work, this helps solidify the environment and atmosphere, making you feel part of the world more than you do a voyeur. I’ll note that not having subtitles in the Chinese handoff helped this as well.
With music, having the Dropkick Murphy’s highlight the soundtrack was great. First, Marty doesn’t seem to have listened to music since 1975, most of the time. Having the punk (as a generational shift) and Irish themes meet musically in a song that is a throughline s’wonderful, and makes me wish Marty was 27 forever. He might have used Massive Attack or Nirvana instead of using a Van Morrison cover of Comfortably Numb. To this I think, maybe it’s a point to underscore the Costello (Nicholson) scenes with an old school, 70’s motif, but… come on! Exile on Main Street is in my top 3 albums, but it’s now 2006. LIVE IN THE NOW GARTH, I mean Marty. Slide Away by Oasis would have been great in this film (Manchester to London as Boston is to New York, sort of sense, working class vs. city glitz). As would any number of other songs. And as much as this feels like a work that belongs in Scorsese’s canon, it seems like it may be the last of his in touch works, because without Going Home to Boston on the soundtrack, this sounds (but not feels) like a film that Scorsese would have made in his 70’s era.
Gotta love the Boston backdrop. The easy choices would have been LA and NY. The smart choices were Boston and Chicago. Personal note: I love Boston. I went there two years in a row for Model UN, and fell in love with the city. It feels the way I think a European city should feel like. The church is huge, the buildings are old, the design is terrible, the diving’s a logistical nightmare and attempts to fix it are insane (the big dig). It was because of these trips I fell in love with the Red Sox. And until 2004, I would have considered this a curse. Without getting into the rest, it’s nice to see a major film in a city that isn’t NY or LA. This isn’t a two city nation with a few weird cities like Seattle, San Fran, New Orleans, and/or Vegas (I’m on a first name basis with it…and all cities should be one word. No exceptions, even if I live in one) and a state shaped like a penis where old folks go to die. Chicago is the great American city. IS THE GREAT AMERICAN CITY. (I had to repeat). Boston (and many of the east cost cities above the Mason-Dixon) is the American waypoint from Europe, with the old for the new. While many films idolize the city, this one just reflects the luster of it. It’s a hard town, but it’s a place to live, and it invites you to stay on its own merits. Having the shot of the final out of the 04 Series in the background, never touched on, but there, that was key.
I fell in love with that city in 96 & 97, and followed the Sox ever since. When people care so much about one thing, and say so to strangers, well… the years go on, but there are moments when I remember what it was like when the Sox won in 2004.
This is a great movie, in a great town with a history of gray areas. I'm probably
overly influenced by the Sox in 2004, but it's fuels the fire, one builds the other in terms of memories. And I don’t have many memories better than October 2004.
++++
But I’ll try. Check the next post.
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3:30 PM
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