Don't forget how your story begins
2013-04-15 ~ 11:35 p.m.
I watched Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master last night. Despite starring 3 really great actors - Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, and Amy Adams, it was all rather in the category of pretty but inconsequential. Maybe I wanted a drama about scientology. Instead I got a drama about Phoenix being unpleasant and troubled. He's an ex-navy person who after WW2 goes into an alcohol-fueled decline before getting a job with a vaguely (but only slightly) L Ron Hubbard-esque figure played by Hoffman. Then he continues to be troubled, and brews a wide range of hooch and punches some people and at one point destroys a toilet. You have to ask, what is the point, except for allowing Phoenix to do some fairly good acting.
I've never been the biggest fan of Anderson (although I think I got bored somewhere through Magnolia so I shouldn't comment too much on it). There Will Be Blood was also very silly, but did function as an overly obvious allegory of American capitalism (in fairness, the book was written as a way more overly obvious allegory - but Anderson is just stealing somebody else's outrage to try and add some kind of momentum to what is purely a character study). He's a technically brilliant filmmaker but does he have anything to say? The first 30 minutes of The Master which show Phoenix's character through his military career and out into the world, things going catastrophically wrong, are brilliant filmmaking, largely wordless, but it's just a shame the rest of the film fails to advance on them.
I also watched another apparently unconnected film the same day, but if you consider it was based on a book by an author that Philip Seymour Hoffman played in another film, it all makes sense, as I watched that bizarre cocktail of troubled alcoholism, cuteness, slapstick comedy, and racist caricature that is Blake Edwards' film of Truman Capote's Breakfast At Tiffany's. It's a film I've never seen, and a film I clearly needed to see. A lot of Divine Comedy songs I listened to 10 or 15 years ago make more sense. And while I'd heard of the Mean Reds vaguely, and knew the name Holly Golightly, I'm a little more au fait with popular culture of the past 45 years. Still doesn't seem to have anything to do with the singer Holly Golightly (whose You Can't Buy A Gun When You're Crying is the best album title EVER, but who's Billy Childish-hanging-around-with rockabilly ballads are hardly similar to anything in the film).
George Peppard as the romantic lead (who should have been gay in a just world) was certainly no Jack Lemmon, but less bad than I'd have thought based on his appearance in the A Team. Mickey Rooney on the other hand was astonishing: that sort of racist caricature would have been unthinkable even 20 years later, and now you just want to set fire to the TV every time he mispronounces Golightly or makes tea in a hilarious fashion. Otherwise, the slapstick is certainly funny, but also seems oddly out of place with the darker themes of escape, lies, and prostitution. I think absolutely anybody from Billy Wilder to Douglas Sirk could have done a better job of directing; possibly even Frank Tashlin who it closely resembles but he would have cast Jane Mansfield instead, which would have offended a lot of people. Not least Audrey Tautou's mum.
Doctor Who is slightly underwhelming me this season, although I thought the latest one was better (Liam Cunningham good, David Warner talking about Duran Duran not good, and while Jenna-Louise Coleman ordinarily looks and acts too much like a posh child, she was cute in a soaking wet dress). But who doesn't like submarines and imminent nuclear destruction?
I did almost completely fail to do studying at the weekend, and again tonight. I have 2 weeks to write about 4000-5000 words, and while half of that should be easy, I do need to think of something for the other half (in fairness it is only at the draft stage right now). But I still need to be able to reference it to actual books that other people wrote.
CNN headline: "North Korea threatens to strike South Korea without warning."
Oh no I've got to phone my mother and agree to go (on my own of course) to a family gathering in Shrewsbury which is cunningly scheduled that nothing I'm doing can get me out of going. It's a couple of weeks after Young Marble Giants are playing in London and a few days before Marky Ramone in Glasgow. Unless I want to go to Bowling For Soup as an excuse.
Yay, self-obsession, it's what diaries are all about. I'm trying to be indifferent to the Thatcher death, as I'm sure she was deliberately killed by master of death Iain Duncan Smith to distract attention from welfare reforms and attempt some kind of political renaissance for the politics of greed and war. Love your enemies, but always use a condom, or whatever.
Finally found someone I love more than the rain - 2013-09-17
Taxi driver, be my shrink for the hour, leave the meter running - 2013-08-29
Dear friend, I cannot tell the reason why we started well - 2013-08-06
I saw this movie one time called Imitation of Life. The movie was really kind of shitty but I loved the title. - 2013-07-12
Catch the bus by half past three otherwise you'll find you're walking home - 2013-07-10
mail note tunes cabbages sprouts
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