Lettres à un jeune poète, Rainer Maria Rilke (extrait)

Pour ce qui est des sentiments, purs sont tous les sentiments sur lesquels vous concentrez votre être entier et qui vous élèvent ; impur est un sentiment qui ne répond qu’à une partie de vous-même et par conséquent vous déforme. Tout ce qu’il vous advient de penser quand vous vous reportez à votre enfance est bon. Tout ce qui fait de vous plus que vous n’étiez jusqu’ici, dans vos heures les meilleures, est bon. Toute exaltation est bonne si tout votre sang y participe, à la condition qu’elle ne soit pas simple ivresse ou trouble, mais une joie claire, transparente au regard jusqu’au plus profond ! Comprenez-vous ce que je veux dire ? 

 

Anatomy of a Gag: BEING THERE (by Criterion)

Votre doute lui-même peut devenir une chose bonne si vous en faites l’éducation : il doit se transformer en instrument de connaissance et de choix. Demandez-lui, chaque fois qu’il voudrait abîmer une chose, pourquoi il trouve cette chose laide. Exigez de lui des preuves. Observez-le : vous le trouverez peut-être désemparé, et peut-être sur une piste. Surtout n’abdiquez pas devant lui. Demandez-lui ses raisons. Veillez à ne jamais y manquer. Un jour viendra où ce destructeur sera devenu l’un de vos meilleurs artisans, – le plus intelligent peut-être de ceux qui travaillent à la construction de votre vie.

Labels: appearance, film, interactive, participation, passages

Johanna: Talk to me some more.

Labels: film, passages, titles

And there is the account of the hanging of three men, and a scuba diver, and a suicide. There are stories of coincidence and chance, of intersections and strange things told, and which is which and who only knows? And we generally say, "Well, if that was in a movie, I wouldn't believe it." Someone's so-and-so met someone else's so-and-so and so on. And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."

Labels: film, passages

Not everything is evil within the Fbook world. Through my thirty something contacts there is one Richard, quite sharp and talented fellow, who posted a link to the Guru site. More precisely, a link to a speech by Charlie. 

I have been going through it, visually, vertically, in random peeks, back and forth for a few days now. I understand why Richard decided to share it: the speech is oozing with twisted ephemeral truths. After viewing the video and listening to the mp3, I printed out the PDF (all available for free download on the Guru page) to find myself covering it with Crayola orange. I now understand why Richard invited everyone to pick just one quote from the speech. Quickly I replied with "Power is a great disguise." which at the time seemed to say it all. Perhaps I could have waited a few days before choosing. Perhaps I could have gone crazy after a few days in my mission to simply pick one out of so many solid ideas.

Will just one quote suffice to convince you to take a few minutes to view, listen or read this speech? Possible.

Labels: alarming truthness, film, social

In the devastating film SHAME by Steve McQueen, the flat one-dimensional view of a man shatters when a “virus” disables his full access to his obsessive skin slapping portals. Instead of his usual release rate, the possibilities for discharge are diminished creating a bump in his clockwork behaviour and his dreadfully stiff suit.

The subject matter of this desolate, almost documentary film might hit closer to home than some of us might like to admit. This is not an exceptional behaviour. With internet connections as common and accessible as the fridge door, there are more options for more people of every circle, square and feather. The nature of your thrill is just another variable in the infinite sadness of another.

The protagonist can afford, without difficulty, so many deluxe packages of sexual diversions that he can barely afford the time or energy for enjoyment. Moments of pleasure are meagre due to his tightly wound hard drive and the high stress levels of a hide and seek lifestyle. The motions he goes through are sought out by a habit and profit-seeking mechanism. Like a robot following a string of commands, he puts his body in an almost constant state of tension. When he is not hard at work in front of the company computer, swell in a bathroom stall or sticking it to a piece of furniture in a hotel room, he’s on the prowl for his next hit.

His precious privacy and secret sex sphere are cracked open when his sister comes to town. This woman, who turns out to be a useless piece of flesh, invades his obsessive zone by simply being a spectator of his life. It becomes impossible for him to practice his shameful activities in the presence of a woman, a sister, a needy creature with an abyss he cannot satisfy… he is unable to appease her in any way. He is unavailable physically and emotionally. Like a zombie, he doesn’t follow a code of ethics, rules of engagements or honour system. He answers to impulses only. When he is cornered into confronting emotional unrest, he runs away, physically and emotionally, leaving the virus to multiply itself in the space in between.

The film is light on dialogue but it goes straight to the point and around it, you feel the weight of every silence and stare. The only way you could sit comfortably through this film is by being detached of any kind of social consciousness and its fragile raison d’etre.

Labels: film, shame

I apologize for the lack of dynamic content in my previous post about my FNC picks. Here is version 2.0 of Films De Loup :


Good looking browsing: Bullet list of titles
Make it bigger: Expand post beyond the break
Open in new window: Click movie title to view FNC page
More awesome: Look at a pretty picture before reading entire post
Spread awesome: Share this post with a click of a button (see bottom of post)


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Labels: Cinema, film, FNC, montreal

Labels: film, video

Due to recent developments such as snow storms and social commotion, I have been forced to review a short list of movies that have recently lit up my screen and mind. Here are some of the titles that should be added to the Movie Vault:

1. Moon, Duncan Jones
2. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Julian Schnabel
3. March of the Penguins, Luc Jacquet
4. Volver, Pedro Almodóvar
5. Persépolis, Marjane Satrapi
6. Incendies, Denis Villeneuve
7. The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke
8. Un prophète, Jacques Audiard
9. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Milos Forman

Alright, now it’s time to gather a new assortment to view from the blanket roll during this stinging season.

Keep warm and pop corn.

Labels: film, winter passing

An ode to the Top Ten Holloween Costumes:

Labels: costume, diy, experiment, film

After months of being surrounded by movie hype, I took the time to watch a jewel last night: A Single Man.




Now ready, after all the information I had heard about this film faded away, to take it in, mind wide open.

It greets you with a soft touch of contemplation of blurs and slowly takes you through a series of modern symbols, struggling to survive, face-to-face.

What pops up from the mundane modern magazine lifestyle as unique is filled into lungs, rendering them heavy and obsolete. We see a man choose his moments carefully. When to stop and listen in wonder to what takes place in a few seconds, within a few steps. The film succeeded in presenting how everything could look so ridiculously perfect and wrong at the same time.

What we get to see, forming before our eyes, is the stain of defining moments left on the face of someone who knows the importance of what lies between his world and how we see it. What is invisible. What is met between passion and interest. What counts between desire and disenchantment. Throughout the film, we are directed down a hall of mirrors, which are actually passages to other mirrors. All of this emphasizing the moment when a definition is smashed into quiet, sober and rational revolutions, when one door must close for another to open.

This passage, between hyper saturation and fade to black, is worth revisiting.

Labels: design, film, Tom Ford

Labels: art, film, video

Support your local(web) artists: www.sitasingstheblues.com

Labels: animation, film

Labels: film, video

From May 16th to June 12th, Cinéma du Parc will be showing 39 films that have won la Palme d’Or. You will get that chance to see UNDERGROUND, APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX and LA DOLCE VITA on the big one.


Click here for the complete schedule.

Labels: Cinéma du Parc, film, montreal

Take a look at this short animated film created by The Black Heart Gang called The Tale Of How.

Click here to watch it.
Click here to view some of prints.
Click here for the lyrics.

Labels: dodo, film, musical

MARGARET (cont'd)
I swear, it'd be fucking great for
someone to have the testicles to make
that book into a movie, man. Instead of
this bullshit all the time. Something
not about sex and violence and car chases
and love stories, people learning
profound lessons. Jesus, isn't nature
enough?

Labels: film, passages

People are walking around, feeling alone and all they do is murmur “nobody cares” and nobody can muster up the courage to scream at all the space in between. If you scream, you are thrown into a bin. Nobody wants to go in a bin. So there are pills and alcohol to bring them together. The disenchanted and the lonely. What also helps bring them together is their belief of being incomplete. There is also that darn regret. That life-sucking monster that wants to drag all hope down into the abyss. It freezes life into the background. So while drinks are being mixed, the little voices are drowned in the noise of the gathering of empty bottles and cash being registered.

If there exists important questions, I would like to have the answers to them and to have the remedies that would calm the hearts and souls around me. I wish I could save lives with my speech. When someone says “All I need is for you to come here, hold me in your arms, tell me that you love me and that you will love me like before.” that I could say “I will,” but I can’t. Instead, I have words and colors. Maybe I should try to write the script of a revolution. I will sit here at my desk, write dialogues for actors that will play disenchanted and lonely adults who, through those dialogues, will unite and recreate the world. I will do this from my desk. While I write, he will be sitting in a white room, full of strangers, asking himself where he went wrong and how he can make it right again.



Lars and the real girl

Maybe, while I write, he will plan ahead instead of feeling trapped. When you feel the wolf approaching, you don’t sit and wait for the strike, you plan.

He’s not like everyone else. Everyone else seems to think they know what normal is like. He’s the guy with the ruse. He may look like a poor little mouse, yet you can see the darkness of a lion in his eyes. They try to push him into a corner, to be a man’s man, get the girl and do the girl.

What if one day, he showed-up with a life-size doll? That would put them in their place. They would see how ridiculous it is to give in. Unless, unless they play along. Well, it could be amusing. It would be like childhood all over again. Oh, sweet tea time and dinner parties. The pretending wouldn’t last long. Unless, they all want her to be real. Unless they want the fake to be a real part of their lives. Then, he could end up dancing, alone, in the middle of a crowded room, in front of the monster he created and asking himself where he went wrong and how he can make it right again.

He could also get lost, asking himself what everybody sees in this plastic truth. Why do they desperately hang on to it? He might believe for a moment that this doll is more than what she really is. Because, again, they are making it a reality as they dress it in hope and by making him feel that he is not part of it. The ruse could overtake him: to kiss her once, to be the prince charming who wakes her from her comatose so they could both be real, together.

Well, that’s not how the story goes, Pinocchio.

Labels: echo, film, suspicious activity here, theory

When every room is dark and all I can hear is a low electrical humming of a computer, I feel it a comfortable time to write. While I sit and batteries recharge before I completely turn myself off, I think of you, Charlie. I finally opened the envelope. It took me days to pick it up for it looked quite at its place, there on the corner of my desk. If you had warned me of what you asked in your letter, I may have left it there a few weeks. I admit that if you had clued me in as to what you sealed in that envelope, I would have prepared myself.

Today was one of those days that you would have loved to feel. There were a few clouds between the leaves and the sun and a few cold winds passing through between the houses. I wore my heavy coat and two pairs of socks to stay warm. No need for more. There are so little days like this left before December. Then it will suddenly be the end of December, the time when everything changes, or the chosen time to make the changes. But waking up is a drag. The darker it gets, the heavier the air becomes.

I went to see a movie tonight. Again, a friend saved me from locking myself in. Is there anything better than seeing a movie in a theater? Sitting with friends, in the dark, staring at some light? Yes, ha, there is something better... I enjoyed the movie very much. Actually, we could all agree on that, the movie was good. There is always a smile on someone’s face when the destination becomes a speed bump.

I don’t know what else to tell you. I know that what you want from life is beautiful. I know that what you see in it can be ashen and that while you stand in the fire that you have made for yourself, as I make my own, you will reach out to the very nature that helps you burn. Will it save you? I can’t say. There will always be a few clouds, a few winds, a few suns, a few me, a few you. It’s what we keep remembering every year. I also know that this is probably not what you expected of me. If you knew what I know and knew what step I would take next, would you still be here? Would you still operate the same way you have been?

Labels: artform, Dear Charlie, film

Labels: film, jargon, notes, theory

Part one:

Sweet room temperature wind... walking around the port today, going to visit the key master, I put one foot in front of the other. Without sunglasses, I thought of this last day of summer like the beginning of a new year. A new cycle with more ideas to tend to.

I also spent some time outside on the weekend. But most of it was spent in my living room, with my keyboard, my mic and this computer. I started working on what was to be a very short film, but after four hours, my computer froze and I was left with only 33 seconds of edited footage.

I will have to archive most of my folders and remove some programs (like Myst4) in order to give it another try.

Sunday breakfast with friends was nice, as always. There were stories to tell, one that included a thief that chooses to steal some weird ikea-like deco art (a white ceramic fist) instead of a dvd-player. We talked about my trip... I don't know if I will end up going. All this "plan ahead" business is giving me stomach aches. We also talked about my ability to step into someone else's state of being and articulate their feelings with words. (Look up sweetheart. (Header) If you weren't there, I wouldn't be here.)



I saw this movie friday. I want to see it again. Here is my favourite scene. ( I actually recorded it so I could listen to it on the bus tomorrow morning...)

Labels: conversations, film, folk, video