tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52892072024-02-18T22:43:31.640-08:00Trappings (Christopher McQuain)TRAPPINGS: Defined as "outward signs," it's a word that comes to mind when I think of culture.Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.comBlogger94125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-50576741884209134342019-03-15T07:55:00.001-07:002019-03-15T07:55:36.958-07:00We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
**-1/2, more likely.I would never have heard of Lionel Shriver if this book of hers hadn't been made into a movie by filmmaker Lynne Ramsay (a markedly more sophisticated, observant, and adventurous artist than Shriver, as it turns out; the film avoids the muddledness of the book, and is much more an artistic whole); I was Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-21476578936670271142011-05-28T22:33:00.000-07:002011-05-28T22:39:29.358-07:00"AU HASARD ANNE"C’est une très courte autobiographie, mais elle est sensible, très bien écrite, et pleine d’histoires passionantes sur le tournage d’Au Hasard Balthazar, ce qui est le sujet principal du livre. Maintenant je pense regarder à nouveau les films les plus célèbres dans lesquelles Mme. Wiazemsky joue: Balthazar, bien sûr, et puis Week-end, Teorema, et Tout va bien.(En anglais: "Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-57828667101119369282011-04-22T18:47:00.000-07:002011-04-24T13:18:44.845-07:00"PARALLEL LINES"Having recently revisited, in succession, Anton Corbijn's The American (2010) and Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge (1970), I was struck by the literally profound similarities between the two. While quite disparate in terms of plot particulars, they have in common a style, an approach, a worldview--an aura--that transcends narrative specifics to render them metaphysical Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-42214109184715971822011-01-22T17:52:00.000-08:002011-03-21T20:18:45.970-07:00"EVERYBODY'S CLEVER NOWADAYS"When I ran into my former French professor while out shopping several months ago and, during the course of our brief conversation, informed her that I was in the process of reading Victor Hugo's classic 1862 novel Les Misérables in French and unabridged, she replied, "C'est une bonne idée, mais.... C'est énorme!" ("That's a good idea, but.... It's huge!") Now that Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-50646302204656337362011-01-13T22:29:00.000-08:002011-01-13T22:55:14.722-08:00"YOU WERE JUST MY IN-BETWEENER"Hardly a masterpiece, yet in no significant way a failure, the Coen brothers' latest is, in its own way, about as fascinating--and cold--an exercise as Gus Van Sant's undeservedly despised 1998 Psycho remake (from my point of view, that comparison is no insult). Despite Josh Brolin's being in it for about five minutes--leading one to wonder why the top billingChristopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-47791379090709815322010-08-26T14:12:00.000-07:002010-09-01T18:24:31.177-07:00"THE LEAST OF THESE"A few (delayed) observations on the new Todd Solondz film, Life During Wartime, in which we find most of the characters from his 1998 chef-d'œuvre, Happiness, at a later point in their lives. Each of them is trying desperately in their own way to cope with, struggle against, or erase the past (one character is even literally haunted):--It is apt to characterize the film, as Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-23351593176306522452009-12-26T16:40:00.000-08:002010-01-11T19:01:25.633-08:00"FILMS OF THE DECADE"*1. The Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, 2001) A parable about the terrifying vacuum created behind the former Iron Curtain by the fall of Communism. Also one of the single most gorgeous and moving cinematic experiences of my life, and my film of the decade.2. Le Fils (The Son) (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 20002) The spirit of Robert Bresson is alive and well in this Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-35710599240810093722009-07-30T16:55:00.000-07:002010-01-08T20:54:22.390-08:00"WE HAD FIVE YEARS LEFT TO CRY IN"I have to admit that the point of reference leading me to group together the three "recent"* albums I'll be commenting upon here--Morrissey's Years of Refusal, The Killers' Day & Age, and Franz Ferdinand's Tonight--is mostly personal and thus fairly arbitrary; in any case, a tiny explanation is in order. I remember very well the last time Morrissey, Franz Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-464847499751722982009-07-18T14:06:00.000-07:002009-07-19T11:29:59.907-07:00"AFTER THIS"The story and themes of Alice McDermott's After This are not new. This brief but very finely wrought novel takes on nothing more or less than the ups and downs of one suburban American family (this one happens to be Irish Catholic) from post-WWII optimism to Vietnam-era confusion. McDermott's grasp of the historical moment is knowledgeable and sensitive, and she sugarcoats nothing, Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-56326828221330650962009-06-18T22:37:00.000-07:002019-05-25T08:46:39.057-07:00
"DEUX OU TROIS CHOSES...."
The demands of Academe (and the shameful ease with which I can be made to feel overwhelmed) have effectively kept me from blogging for a very long while, but an all-too-short breather between spring and summer quarters affords me a window of opportunity in which to very briefly run down, in bare-bones style, a smattering of the things that have been going on in my Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-14974649058705157382008-07-05T23:59:00.000-07:002009-02-21T14:17:25.011-08:00"THE RETURN OF INSPIRATION"Bernard Butler is a living sign that the best move for a muso who bravely resists his or her “proficiency”-obsessed leanings is to find a counterbalancing collaborator who can let some air into all their musty old know-how. That Butler is a richly gifted guitarist is beyond any doubt, and that he can write a musical track and engineer a record has been proven many timesChristopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-76792059799674125582008-07-04T17:10:00.000-07:002008-07-04T17:28:56.087-07:00"THE ____ IS DEAD"Philosophically and ideologically speaking, the loss of any human life is not something to celebrate when one is speaking strictly of human rights and what should be the innate value of human life. But some political forces and ideas need and deserve to die. I had the same reaction to the mind-bogglingly rose-colored eulogizing of Reagan, and now.... Jesse Helms is dead. Let's Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-46468627462852450762008-06-12T22:26:00.000-07:002008-06-14T19:06:26.465-07:00"WE UNDERSTAND HOW MUSIC WORKS"The story is old, I know, but it goes on.... I do realize that I’m far from the first to complain about the kind of Orwellian demographics-dependence that evidently informs every business decision of those corporations responsible for bringing us our works of “art” in the age of mechanical reproduction. But, in the midst of the death of the film studios’ Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-69992791832858575862008-04-17T17:27:00.001-07:002008-04-18T18:05:01.118-07:00"LOOK AT THE WORLD THROUGH YOUR POLAROID GLASSES/THINGS'LL LOOK A WHOLE LOT BETTER FOR THE WORKING CLASSES"Why are American politics infuriating? Not because of all the disagreements and ideological clashes, made-up "culture wars," etc. No; it's because the level of discourse is so trivial and wasteful when there are way more than enough important, serious, urgent issues to tackle--issues that Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-71345825863918706692008-04-05T10:55:00.000-07:002008-04-24T16:26:27.243-07:00" 'OLDER AND WISER' NEVER APPLIES TO ME."Over the past months of academic insanity, there were a couple of releases—-an album and a film—-from two artists whom I love and whose work I always look forward to, and my thoughts on them have been steeping for a while (in one case for a VERY long while). Although these works are in different media and are by artists who obviously have very different Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-29917832908121132662008-03-24T13:54:00.001-07:002008-04-04T18:54:39.089-07:00FILMS FOR MUSICI’ve taken to keeping a little note card with a running list of anything I’ve seen/read/listened to that’s of any lasting interest to me; that way I can remind myself what I’d like to tackle when I finally get a chance to sit down at my computer and actually try to gather and articulate a few of my scattered thoughts. Yes, my life—full as it has been of work, studying, attending Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-1262688354012808962008-02-09T13:50:00.001-08:002008-02-09T14:01:57.117-08:00"DOESN'T KNOW NO HISTORY, HE THREW THE PAST AWAY"Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-44337660692905713512008-02-03T14:42:00.000-08:002008-02-16T12:53:30.861-08:00"J'AI ENVIE D'AIMER, J'AI ENVIE DE VIVRE"Of course, I fully intended to make a nice, long blog entry during my much-too-short holiday break; however, I can’t claim to feel too guilty, as any potential writing time was spent traveling to and fro for various holiday festivities with family and friends, catching as many movies as I could handle, etc. The stuff of life came first, in other words, Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-12288877257675025192007-09-23T18:13:00.000-07:002007-10-19T21:13:50.284-07:00"RESTE CHEZ TOI, SUNDAY GIRL"Sometimes my friend Jamie Rich makes me feel totally lame. Not purposely, mind you; he can’t help it if he’s moins <<lame>> que moi. He’s posted a must-read review of last night’s Imperial Teen show in Portland. Reading it is the closest I’ll get to seeing one of my favorite bands this time around; I was aware of their Seattle show, but I’ve spent my last week of Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-79415500550694588362007-09-10T17:41:00.000-07:002007-10-03T22:27:22.151-07:00"FADE AWAY AND RADIATE"It’s been ages since I’ve written about cinema here, which is not at all to say that I’ve been neglectful when it comes to actually partaking of the medium. Last year, I unexpectedly fell head over heels for the sharp, juicy Notes on a Scandal, in which Judi Dench sets herself well apart from the tiresome Ladies in Lavender clique (though her earlier collaborations with Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-86302052064354073672007-08-11T13:11:00.000-07:002007-08-26T17:43:30.479-07:00"IT'S A HELL OF A RECORD"My continuing pursuit of Comparative Literature (French minor!), in addition to my obligatory full-time employment and trying to keep a relationship afloat through it all, has necessitated a long, quasi-accidental moratorium on blog posting. It’s been a much, much longer interval than intended (but then, when isn’t it?). Every week I resolve to set aside an hour or two onChristopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-63287316392914522232007-07-30T16:38:00.000-07:002007-07-31T12:54:42.793-07:00"INGMAR BERGMAN (1918-2007)""MICHAELANGELO ANTONIONI (1912-2007)"After the death of Kubrick not so long ago (the day he died was the first day in my life that I really felt old), and of Edward Yang very recently (not to mention Sven Nykvist, Bergman's close cinematographic compatriot, almost a year ago), the world has lost another inimitably great cinematic artist. Persona, Bergman's 1966 Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-38894662641944921082006-09-21T12:42:00.000-07:002006-10-08T12:49:44.028-07:00"SVEN NYKVIST (3 DECEMBER 1922 - 20 SEPTEMBER 2006)"From top: Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972); The Sacrifice (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986); The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Philip Kaufman, 1988); Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989), all with cinematography by the incomparable Sven Nykvist.Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-1155706348429378172006-08-15T22:31:00.000-07:002006-08-16T17:53:28.063-07:00"WELL, THEY SHOULD KNOW. I DON'T READ THAT MUCH."I read this line in a review of some new Beckett volumes in the Aug. 7 & 14 New Yorker: “Since Beckett got from Schopenhauer what Schopenhauer had found in Buddhism, the connection is not far-fetched.” You’ll have to read the review yourself to know what connection is being referred to, but I mention it because, after taking my Introduction to Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289207.post-1146347157941197582006-04-29T14:44:00.000-07:002006-04-29T15:00:30.573-07:00"MY VOYAGE TO ITALY"I’m probably not the first person ever to ask this, but I find myself compelled. Is Morrissey—world-class pop star, self-described “famous international playboy,” and my perennial idol—actually Katharine Hepburn? Let me explain. In David Lean’s glorious film Summertime (1955), Hepburn is Jane Hudson of Akron, Ohio. An inhibited, externally tough but interiorly fragile Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02782245535517375964noreply@blogger.com0