le dix-neuf avril deux mille vingt-quatre

In the immortal words of Lucas from Empire Records, “What’s with today today?”

It’s April the 19th; Ms. Taylor Swift released her newest album of sixteen tracks plus an entire extra disc-worth of music because there were so many songs, which I’m not sure if I’m going to purchase (in the form of one of the Target exclusive CDs)*; I spent many hours restless on all the levels, and I nearly pancaked someone because he couldn’t be bothered to look both ways before running into the street in the burbs.

Luckily for the both of us, I was going below the speed limit as I approached that part of the road and was able to brake effectively in time so that he did NOT hip-smack the front corner of my chariot.  I was minding my own business, slowing down while looking towards the intersection ahead, and suddenly, PERSON!  He ended up continuing on his merry way behind my car.  I hope he learned a valuable lesson today.

The drivers within the immediate vicinity gave me about fifteen seconds of grace while I sat there unable to move because I had to recalibrate my mind-body connection and take in the environment to make sure nobody else was going to dash into the road.  All of the cars behind me then decided it was a good idea to speed up and get in front of me while the traffic light was red.

What else happened on this day in history that I find interesting?  Lots of violence and two weddings.

~ 1770 – Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI of France in a proxy wedding.
~ 1775 – American Revolutionary War: The war begins with an American victory in Concord during the battles of Lexington and Concord.
~ 1782 – John Adams secures Dutch recognition of the United States as an independent government. The house which he had purchased in The Hague becomes the first American embassy
~ 1927 – Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for her play Sex.
~ 1956 – Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco.
~ 1960 – Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign.
~ 1971 – Charles Manson is sentenced to death (later commuted to life imprisonment) for conspiracy in the Tate–LaBianca murders.
~ 1987 – The Simpsons first appear as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, first starting with “Good Night”.
~ 1993 – The 51-day FBI siege of the Branch Davidian building in Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Seventy-six Davidians, including 18 children under age 10, died in the fire.
~ 1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, USA, is bombed, killing 168 people including 19 children under the age of six.
~ 2013 – Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is killed in a shootout with police. His brother Dzhokhar is later captured hiding in a boat inside a backyard in the suburb of Watertown.

What about birthdays?
~ 1903 – Eliot Ness
~ 1933 – Jayne Mansfield
~ 1935 – Dudley Moore
~ 1946 – Tim Curry
~ 1968 – Ashley Judd
~ 1979 – Kate Hudson
~ 1981 – Hayden Christensen
~ 1981 – Troy Polamalu
~ 1982 – Ali Wong
~ 1989 – Simu Liu

And deaths?
~ 1989 – Daphne du Maurier
~ 2009 – J. G. Ballard

Source: wikipedia

*Upon initial listenings to the Anthology version of The Tortured Poets Department, the songs I like the most are the ones that Aaron Dessner co-composed.  In terms of melodies, instrumentation, and atmosphere, the album reminds me of “Hits Different,” “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,” and “Say Don’t Go.”  There is no urgency in wanting to listen to her new album while driving or on my mp3 player yet even with the songs I do like a lot upon first hearing.  If I were the owner of a book cafe, though, would I be playing the Anthology version from start to finish many times during the whole weekend?  Yep, I would.  Not so loud that the customers wouldn’t be able to hear themselves think, but loud enough that if you were a secret, casual, or bone-deep fan of this billionaire songstress, your jaw might drop, and you’d clap your hands like an excited marine mammal.

By the way, Taylor Swift’s song with Florence Welch is a proper collaboration.

I’m really liking “Peter”:

Yes, Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles are both in the music video for the song “Fortnight.”

PS.  Lyric videos.

Pic creds: my shirt, YouTube screengrabs

Monkey Man almost nails it

Monkey Man (Dev Patel, 2024) is two hours of terror, tenderness, intense cardio, a lot of sweating, and a little bit of comedy that gets so close to allowing me to forget about the world outside the movie theatre.  I wanted spectacle, and I got spectacle.  If Sohbita Dhulipala had more screentime, I would have been completely swept away by the scenery, the production design, and the search for vengeance hampered by sleepless nights and disguised as the pursuit for pain.

Like any story centered on a protagonist [known here as Kid (Dev Patel)] whose decisions are based on a desire to take revenge on those agents of corruption who killed his mother and destroyed his village, the path to victory necessitates an interlude with wise beings.  And as an action film, said respite promotes psychological and physical healing with societal outcasts with a leader who will remind you that you must fight to avenge those you lost rather than fight for the pain you think you deserve because you couldn’t save your mother.

Dev Patel is in nearly every sequence if not every scene in Monkey Man.  He enters just about every room with an expression of “you shouldn’t have done that” meets “is anyone here” and a dash of “I want to learn.”

As I mentioned earlier, Sohbita Dhulipala is only on screen for ten or so minutes including foreground, middle ground, and background whether or not she speaks.  Based on the differences between the trailers and the theatrical cut in the US, there were probably many scenes left on the cutting room dashboard.

It’s easy and obvious to make John Wick references — the film itself does it too via dialogue in one scene where the Kid is looking to buy a gun.  The fight choreography (by Brahim Chab) and some of the cinematography (by Sharone Meir) makes me think of Hong Kong cinema with more self-awareness that they’re making a kick-ass-Dev-Patel-kicking-ass movie.  There were a few moments in a fight scene with a yellow backdrop that took me out of the experience a little bit because the way the camera moved reminded me it was there.  That, oh yes, a camera operator is whiplashing horizontally to capture the frenetic energy of the violence.

Would I watch the film again?  Perhaps.  I will be getting it on DVD whenever it comes out so I can watch it many times again with subtitles.  Although Monkey Man did not pause the outside world to the extent I hoped it would, it did hold my attention and soak up a sufficient amount of nervous energy from just beneath the surface of my psyche.  And now I want to re-watch The Green Knight and Polite Society.

Dev Patel should keep (co)writing and directing to refine his storytelling voice so that one day we’ll all be able to say, “That is such a Dev Patel film.”

PS.  If you want to know all about the behind-the-scenes on how Monkey Man went from an idea to the theatres, the Wrap has the story.

Pic creds: IMDB, YouTube screengrabs

Prey Ferrari

A double-feature of Prey (Dan Trachtenberg, 2022) and Ferrari (Michael Mann, 2023) might impress you as odd, but that’s what I did today, and I had a great time.  Yes, they are both on home video now.

I adore Predator as a character and had so much fun watching Dan Trachtenberg’s well-envisioned prequel to the intellectual property.  The DVD comes with audio in English, Spanish, French, and Commanche.  I opted to watch it with spoken Commanche and whatever the default subtitles were such that the spoken French came with French subtitles — which was great because I could practice more French reading comprehension.  There will be a re-watch within the next forty-eight hours.

I went in to Ferrari without knowing anything about the man, Enzo Ferrari, beyond what was mentioned, depicted in James Mangold’s Ford vs. Ferrari (2019).  As a fan of Michael Mann’s artistic choices, I decided to get the DVD because I knew it would be compelling.  I was right.  Halfway through the film, I started thinking that it was my favorite biopic, but I couldn’t figure out why until the last several minutes.  Adam Driver, who plays the title character, articulates it for me in one of the making-of featurettes: Michael Mann is interested in the internal life of the subject.  That’s why it doesn’t feel like a “Great Man” mode of storytelling.  In contrast, it gives me the impression that we’re going to sit with this man, sorta be in his shadow as he experiences events unfold and remembers moments of his past.

Mann remarks in another part of that special feature, “For me the director of photography is a casting process.  I wanted a particular kind of active lighting that’s apparent in Caravaggio‘s paintings, where the light seems to enter very dramatically; and it’s almost as if accidentally, the light is hitting a part of a leg, a hand, slice of light hits a face.”

Who’s the cinematographer on Ferrari?  Erik Messerschmidt.

If you actually know a thing or two about Enzo Ferrari, enjoy biopics in general, or want to see how the film handles the Mille Miglia, and something tragic that happened, get it on home video.  There are several making-of featurettes.

~!~

In other news, I am more than half-way through House of Leaves and am liking it a lot — including Johnny Truant’s tangents.  Did I read every single word in all the footnotes and some of the secondary text?  Nope, but I skimmed.

Pic creds: Amazon

The Perfect Duology is in the Bones

Duologies and trilogies are plentiful in the fantasy genre of literature; double-features and proper trilogies are common in cinema.  Until about a week ago, I’d never thought about whether or not non-fiction books could be read in terms of a pair or a trio — even when it’s obvious.  I finished reading Sue Black’s book Written in Bone a week ago and realized it and her previous book All That Remains would be the perfect non-fiction duology.  If you’d like a trilogy, start with John Bateson’s book The Education of a Coroner.

My favorite part of the human body is the clavicle, the collar bone.   I learned in Written in Bone that “[while] all primates possess a collar bone, it is rudimentary in many mammals and absent altogether in the ungulates, which include a variety of animals from horses to pigs, and even the hippopotamus,” and the reason that cats can squeeze into spaces that appear too small for their bodies is that they have “very rudimentary clavicles” (Black, 159).

Oh, and it’s not even a mandatory part of the anatomy.  Clavicles can break easily and puncture the “subclavian artery and vein,” and they can be “taken out as long as the muscles can be stitched to each other” (Black, 160).  The collar bone “is the first bone in the human body to start to form and it does so in the fifth week of intrauterine life…” (Black, 161).

If you want to see a good example of teamwork, look no further than your own body. Everything that you do requires a lot of coordination between many different parts of you, most of which you don’t (have to) consciously think about to achieve like standing, sitting, picking up an object with one or both hands or even your toes.  It takes “at least six muscles in your forearm to activate the wrist and the joints of the index finger and thumb” to perform the action of picking up a writing utensil with said fingers (Black, 228).

Now, consider everything going on inside of you that you never have to think about unless something doesn’t feel right.  That’s the closest any person is going to get to truly multi-tasking.

~!~

What am I reading now?  Charlotte Bronte‘s Jane Eyre (Signature Classics edition) and House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.  If you’ve ever been somewhere online where discussions of “scariest book you’ve ever read” happen, someone will inevitably mention it.  I’ve had House of Leaves for a while and decided to start it after finishing Written in Bone.  The book spends about fifty or so pages setting up atmosphere, narrators, and more tangible plot points that are creepy…and then page sixty-eight hits and jaw-drop.

I was reading in bed, and it felt like i was watching a horror movie where characters are chased or exploring abandoned, dark buildings.  Obviously, the scary factor increases for a reader who can visualize what they read, making it much more intense than it would be for someone who has no mind’s eye.  I read Jane Eyre during the day and House of Leaves at night.

I also have the Poe album which is a companion piece to the book.  Poe is Mark Z. Danielewski’s sister.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia and the Page 99 Test

I’ve spent the last few months reading seven books by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

I did not read them in publishing order, but here is my ranking of them in the order in which I read them:
~ Certain Dark Things (urban fantasy): 5
~ Mexican Gothic (body/nature horror): 3.75
~ Gods of Jade and Shadow (mythological action-fantasy): 4
~ The Daughter of Dr. Moreau (sci-fi/fantasy action): 3.75
~ The Beautiful Ones (magical realism romance): 3
~ Velvet Was the Night (mystery): 3.75
~ Untamed Shore (neo-noir): 4

Mexican Gothic was everywhere I looked a few years ago; I wasn’t interested in reading it until after I’d finished Certain Dark Things.  And then I procured every SMG book I could find at area Barnes & Nobles because I was swept up in the imagination and voice of the author.  She has two other books out (Silver Nitrate and Signal to Noise) that I could have decided to acquire and read before writing this blog post, but I’m going to delve into the mind’s eye of other narrators before I think about returning to SMG.

How many of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s books pass the Page 99 Test?

Certain Dark Things: Yes, it includes the protagonist’s evaluation of her human ally.

Mexican Gothic: Yes, our protagonist’s behavioral tendencies and a couple of plot details are included.

Gods of Jade and Shadow: Yes, it references the protagonist’s self-doubt and reminds the viewer of what might happen after the heroine’s journey comes to and “end.”

The Daughter of Dr. Moreau: Not quite, there’s some tension between these characters but it doesn’t convey the crux of any matters.

The Beautiful Ones: Yes, it demonstrates the rapport that our two central characters have with each other.

Velvet Was the Night: Yes, and very well, because it starts off with the main character’s musings about fictional characters within the story world, continues with more inner thoughts, and later mentions the political climate of the story.

Untamed Shore: Yes, this 99th page happens to indicate the start of narrative friction among the characters, especially between Daisy and Viridiana.

~!~

Velvet Was the Night makes sooooo many references to popculture.  I started cataloguing them about a third of the way through:
~ Zatoichi – 6,7
~ Bonanza – 8
~ “Strangers in the Night” – 14, 278
~ Cosmopolitan magazine – 15
~ Bobby Darin – 22, 29, 31
~ Frank Sinatra – 22, 186, 188
~ Nat King Cole – 22
~ “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” – 24
~ “Beyond the Sea” – 31
~ Elvis, the King – 32, 33, 35, 37, 40, 83, 91, 123, 188, 202
~ “Jailhouse Rock” – 35
~ “Can’t Help Falling in Love” – 188, 234, 237
~ Rousseau – 35
~ 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – 36
~ The Beatles – 38, 47, 103, 266
~ Lennon – 38
~ Godzilla – 39
~ “Eleanor Rigby” – 43
~ “Japanese action film…a samuari…a one-armed foe” – 48
~ Sepan Cuantos – 48, 142
~ Carlos Gardel – 49
~ “The coyote was chasing the roadrunner.” – 65
~ “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” – 78
~ Marilyn Monroe – 83
~ “Love Me Tender” – 83, 202
~ Raquel Welch – 84
~ “Satisfaction” – 91
~ Badfinger – 92
~ James Bond – 94, 116
~ “Blue Velvet” – 101, 102, 104, 129, 206, 234, 237
~ Sean Connery – 116
~ “Besame Mucho” – 116
~ Hamlet – 123
~ Yojimbo – 128
~ James Dean – 128
~ [Tony] Bennett – 128
~ “David Janssen in The Fugitive” – 132
~ Bluebeard – 141, 161, 187, 264
~ Jack and the Beanstalk – 141
~ Caridad Bravo Adams – 142
~ Bronte, Austen – 142
~ El Quijote – 142
~ “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” – 142
~ Nancy Sinatra – 142
~ Crime and Punishment – 160
~ “White Room” – 160
~ Clapton – 162
~ Cream – 162
~ Twiggy – 168
~ “No Me Platiques Mas” – 201
~ Vincente Garrido – 201
~ “Dream A Little Dream of Me” – 204
~ Violetta Parra – 208
~ “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” – 217
~ Are You Lonesome Tonight” – 222
~ Surfin’ Bird” – 222
~ The Animals – 236
~ “At Last” – 232, 236
~ “The Girl from Ipanema” – 245
~ Godzilla versus King Kong – 252

There’s also a spotify playlist at the back of the book.

Untamed Shore has a lot of classic Hollywood references, which I also catalogued:
~ Luis Bunuel – 26, 141, 170, 171, 205
~ The Exterminating Angel – 26
~ Paul Anka – 44
~ Diana Ross – 46
~ A Place in the Sun – 47, 297
~ Guy de Maupassant – 49
~ Bel-Ami – 50, 73, 151
~ Rita Hayworth – 67
~ Glenn Ford – 67
~ Montgomery Clift – 67, 68, 79, 97, 140, 142, 184, 241, 278, 296, 298
~ Elizabeth/Liz Taylor – 67, 79, 96, 142, 238, 278, 283, 297
~ Charles Boyer – 68
~ Jorge Negrete – 68
~ Now, Voyager – 80
~ Bette Davis – 81, 149
~ Olivia Newton-John – 90
~ William S. Burroughs – 112
~ Errol Flynn – 140, 296
~ Pedro Infante – 140, 241
~ Cary Grant – 149
~ Joan Crawford – 149
~ Katharine Hepburn – 149
~ Audrey Hepburn – 198
~ Claudio Brook – 205
~ Ginger Rogers – 235
~ Dolores Del Rio – 235
~ Richard Burton – 238
~ Cleopatra – 238
~ From Here to Eternity – 240
~ Donna Reed – 240
~ Clark Gable – 241
~ Gary Cooper – 241
~ The Big Sleep – 248
~ Humphrey Bogart – 248
~ Creature from the Black Lagoon, Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy – 280
~ Butterfield 8 – 297

According to the author’s note in the back, a dream about Baja California and a period of consistently watching A Place in the Sun (George Stevens, 1951) starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, and based on Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy.  Out of all of these books, I think Untamed Shore could and should be adapted into a film or a limited series.  If, I don’t know, HBO were to produce it, Turner Classic Movies could do a companion week or month of programming of all the movie stars and films mentioned in the book.  Sure, classic film lovers would have already seen A Place in the Sun and The Big Sleep a hundred times, but what about Creature from the Black Lagoon, Bride of Frankenstein, or The Mummy?  Just an idea.

What book am I going to read now?  The Tatami Galaxy by Tomihiko Morimi and Written in the Bone by Sue Black.