I finally reckon the events of yesterday's post-labor day angst as moot. Plotting a coup isn't gonna work out anyway.
To break the monotony of last Tuesday, I decided to go shortly to this long-standing booksale in Victoria to see if they have new arrivals or books which I may have passed by previously. Luckily, there was another new bunch of 35-peso books -- a welcome development from the last weeks' one section. I was beaming with excitement when I grabbed Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, Crash - J.G. Ballard's cult classic, and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, the original German version of which was written by Patrick Susskind. David Cronenberg had a film adaptation of Crash which starred James Spader, while the film version of Perfume was released last year with Dustin Hoffman.
Because I am running low on budget these days, I hid the Willa Cather, the Margaret Atwood and Muriel Spark. Which means I cannot shell out anything for any pirated DVD as well. I saw the sophomore feature of Steven Shainberg - Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus - which stars Nicole Kidman as the famous photographer Diane Arbus who fell in love with her man-ape neighbor played by Robert Downey Jr.
I decided to give pirated DVDs a rest because Limewire and YouTube has been overwhelmingly generous. I now have 5 of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick films and a slew of other classics like Casablanca, Annie Hall, Apocalypse Now, and Blade Runner. Plus rare ones from Wong Kar-wai, Nicolas Roeg, Jean Luc Godard, and Akira Kurosawa. Plus classic silent films like Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein), Le Passion d' Jeanne D'Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer), and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiener). To think, I only read about them in the library. No such luck though with Altman and Polanski.
it is such a big deal for real film fans to watch the movies you just mentioned (apocalypse now, casablanca, et al) & i hardly qualify as a real movie fan myself but i kind of think that these movies will define the way you appreciate films in the future. and it's tough because these movies seem boring and anti-audience. sabi nga ni rachel green, 'apocalypse now is boring but it's kind of a big deal'.
ReplyDeletewhat i'm really saying is, pahiram please? hehe...
tama ka pat. maybe it's a big deal for me (even though the term film fan is very subjective to some), because then it would be weird for someone who regard film not just as a piece of entertainment but art, not to want to watch or at least consider watching the 'classics' and the 'pioneering film geniuses' as big deal. for me it's more than just that, films are kind of an escape for me. but what i'm really saying is, are u serious? hehehehe. ok lang, when I'm finished with all of it, i'll lend it to you.
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