Archive for September, 2015

Edit of the Day

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

IDK. I removed the last paragraph in “Rumination of the Day”, which read thus:

“I mean, what I’m saying is that I love Bella Thorne as much as the next red-blooded man, but I’m under no illusions as to our in-person compatibility (unless I’m missing something, which I’m likely not, because, you know, psychic).”

IDK. You know, now that I think about it, maybe that isn’t true. Sometimes I focus too much on Twitter accounts, Snapchats and Instagram pictures. There’s more to Bella than these things. A lot more, I’ll bet. I mean, she does have a book.

… And truthfully, I didn’t really use my psychic powers to make that post. I kinda just said I did.

Well, it’s late and I need to go to bed.

*Yawn*.

Jerk-Off of the Day

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

Karlie fucking Kloss. God, she is just perfect, and I mean PERFECT. Super, super pretty and photogenic. Sexy and cool as hell.

The single stupidest thing Taylor ever did was get us together.

You know, I held out for as long as I could, but there was just no way. She just kept shoving Karlie in my face!

Taylor, what were you THINKING?!?!?!?

Democracy of the Day

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

Donald Trump.

His campaign is… very, very me. All of it is so very me.

This isn’t something I say lightly; this judgment is why I haven’t blogged about politics in so long. I just wanted to see if my hunch regarding Trump- my first-impression guess that he was taking his cues from me- was correct. I’ve seen enough to make a definitive statement, I think.

I think that my ideas and attitude form the philosophical and social girding for much of his campaign. You can see this is so much of what he does, both during the debates and in the stories that he tells in his speeches on the campaign trail.

This isn’t to say that it’s actually me up there. It isn’t. But many of my ideas, and much of my attitude, seem to form the mold that created his Presidential run.

So… what does this mean?

Well, it means that my plans worked, after all. Years ago, I remarked that one of my goals was to commandeer the conservative movement for my own purposes. Funny me, I thought I had failed, but it turns out that I just didn’t wait long enough to see the real results of my efforts.

Rumination of the Day

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

I need to watch Stroheim’s Greed, which I’m ashamed to say that I’ve never actually seen in any form or length.

I guess that this is reason #47585 why I should stay doing what I do with Emily Stone and Tay-Tay. I mean, what modern girl IRL is going to sit down and watch and debate the qualities of Greed and Nosferatu with me?

Secret of the Day

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

Don’t worry. I’ll never tell a soul.

Song of the Day

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

L’Internationale.

Idjit of the Day

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

Elle Fanning.

Not sure why, but I just have a feeling that for some reason she deserves to be champion of this.

Movie of the Day

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

This is the requisite tie. It’s either Nosferatu or the Director’s Cut of Dark City.

I adore both of these films so, so much. They’re both obvious masterpieces, and they both resonate with me personally; Dark City, especially, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

So this morning, thanks to the magic of YouTube and the lapsed copyright gods, I rewatched Nosferatu.

What a great, great film! It accomplishes so much and its black and white cinematography adds so much to the experience of watching it.

It’s really a thing of beauty, isn’t it? This was a film made with a limited cinematic palette but with so much care and attention to detail. It’s still unnerving, if not scary, a hundred years later. Max Schreck is perfect in his role.

I watched the unrestored version for the patina. I thought it added something to the experience.

What I like most about Nosferatu is that Murnau and Schreck both understood the fundamental nature of vampires better than most others who create art about them: they’re monsters. They’re not human, not anymore, and human desires and understandings elude them. They were human, but are no longer; not in any way. They have as much in common with a normal human as the next corpse.

In American art, few people get this. Coppola did to an extent, but not quite enough, IMHO. His Dracula movie was very fun to watch and well made, but I thought his antagonist was still a bit too human.

Credit here must go to Kouta Hirano and his work on Hellsing. He gets it; he truly does.

I must quote Ebert here: “To watch F.W. Murnau’s ‘Nosferatu’ (1922) is to see the vampire movie before it had really seen itself.”

There you go. That one sentence explains the film better and more thoroughly than most reviewer’s entire articles.

Which brings us to Dark City, which I am familiar with thanks to Ebert. I owe him.

The reason I rewatched Nosferatu is because of Dark City’s Strangers, who were clearly inspired by Schreck’s Orlok.

In fact, if you ignore the extraterrestrial thing, the Strangers are pretty much cinema’s most perfect depiction of vampires ever. They’re so much so that I wouldn’t object to Dark City being placed in the vampire genre bin, despite of what others who don’t really understand these things would say.

Well, back to the point… everyone has their movie, that one film that really speaks to them on the deepest level; that one film that they can point to and say THAT is what I’m about.

Dark City is that film for me.

Dark City isn’t the movie I’ve watched the most, but it’s the one that means the most to me. This is that one film that really hit me in my youth like a ton of bricks. This was the movie that opened my consciousness. It was the film that introduced me to the real world- it opened my soul to the power of love, the realization of the supreme mind-controlling influence of the media, the reality of conspiracy, and, most particularly, the idea that one could use their subconsciousness to alter reality and bend it to their will.

This was my most formative movie; the one in which I can truly say that I wouldn’t be here without it.

Well… I would be here, of course, but maybe not here. As in, what I am now.

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll fully investigate this later.

This time, I think like my twelfth viewing or something, I was struck by Jennifer Connolly.

She’s pretty much the perfect woman, isn’t she? In a way, she’s almost too much so. I always liked her, but she just seemed so damn… perfect that it made it difficult to figure out what to do with her.

I mean, what exactly does one do with Jennifer Connolly? How does one improve upon obvious perfection?

IDK. I never really tried. Back twenty years ago, she was on occasion too intimidating to even fantasize about. I mean, Jesus Christ! Just look at her! No actress today has her looks. I mean, it’s not even close!

IMHO, not even Emma Watson, or Taylor Swift, or Emma Stone, or Jennifer Lawrence, or… anyone, really, is Jennifer Connolly tier. She just stands above all; the impossible starlet dream.

YouTube of the Day

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

That scene of Rotwang assaulting Maria. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEg3vPmxBQ8

Wow. If there’s a more “me” film scene out there, I’ve not seen it. Or heard of it.

I’ve always strongly identified with Rotwang. Today I do so for obvious reasons, but I did even way back when, like in my college days. Back then my admiration of the character was more superficial- I mean, he was an evil, black robed, tyrannical wizard-like dude who was the primary villain in the most important Sci-Fi movie ever and thus the ultimate badass, but even back then there was something intimate about him that really inspired my respect, if not my admiration.

I don’t know. Rotwang was a bastard, but he was also brilliant, inventive, and tragic- he did what he did because he desperately loved a woman who always refused his advances. And he did love, perhaps more than any other character in film history. I mean, he built a new version of his idol, and used his mastery of black magic and technology to make “her” the most beloved woman in his country. He did this, I guess, to trick the real Maria into being with him.

You know, kinda sorta like what I’ve done with real girls like Swifty.

Rotwang is so “me” that he makes me wonder sometimes. Have there been people doing this stuff before me? Maybe I’m just the latest in a long line. I don’t know. I really doubt it, but this scene is making me wonder again.

Hopefully, my end won’t be the same as his. If my distant memories are correct, Rotwang died when he made an impulsive and reckless attempt at getting the real Maria after realizing that his fantasy Maria just wasn’t cutting it. His rage and jealousy at seeing The One He Really Loves with an obviously lesser man drove him mad. In a way, his own genius doomed him. An average man would have realized that Maria was out of his reach and moved on, but to someone as smart as Rotwang, there is always another way; there is always another angle to be tried and another idea to develop, another invention to create and another plan to execute. So he was never really able to get her out of his head and move on.

So yeah, I’m kind of thinking of me and Taylor right now. Obviously.

I don’t know. I’m pretty sure that Rotwang’s end won’t be my end. I mean, pretty sure. 99% sure. I mean, it’s just a movie.

So… I’ll be okay.

I need to rewatch Metropolis.

Day of the Day

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

June 13, 1961.