The Believer — 2011 Film Issue

It's the first of the month—that means it's time for a new Believer! This year's film issue comes with a DVD of the 1930 German film People on Sunday (you can read Jessica Winter's great liner notes here).

And the articles! F.S.* Rebecca Taylor's terrific memoir, "Virginia Mountain Scream Queen," details her life in B-movies (or should that be C-, or D-?)—here she is at 18, negotiating:

There's no up-front pay, he tells me, but there will be points on the back end.
I don't know what "points on the back end" means, but I decide this ist he way it must be in Independent Low-Budget Horror-Westerns. I ask him—has anyone else signed on? Anyone that I might know of?
He tells me Conrad Brooks has a cameo, a veteran of the Ed Wood movies, an actor from Plan 9 From Outer Space.
I've never heard of Conrad Brooks or Ed Wood or Plan 9 From Outer Space, but I'm ready to believe that this means something.

*

David Cairns (of Shadowplay fame) looks at the varied career of William Cameron Menzies (who had a hand in everything from Gone With the Wind and King Kong to Invaders From Mars; Light Industry's Thomas Beard on the digest film; Peter Lunenfeld follows Walt Disney and Hugh Hefner to California; Michael Atkinson tracks the many moods of Robert Mitchum; Bess Lovejoy on grave goods; and more...

And the interviews! Debra Winger, David Wain, Walter Murch/David Thomson, Paul Verhoeven...plus Greil Marcus/Nick Hornby/Jack Pendarvis, the finalists of the Believer Book Awards (this year including poetry), and much more...Only $10! You already have it, maybe, if you subscribe!

__________________
* = Former Student™

Cute overload

"A wily little kitten moves in with Jessica Winter and starts making big changes." —O, the Oprah Magazine

Movie's Stop — Hyacinthe Phypps

I am so out of the movie "loop"! I haven't really been following "Top 10s" of '08! But I want to see all of the one on Dzyd Jessica's list (at Slate):

A Christmas Tale
The Class
Encounters at the End of the World
Flight of the Red Balloon
The Last Mistress
Man on Wire
Milk
My Winnipeg
Wendy and Lucy
The Wrestler

...especially the Maddin & the W&L....I thought Old Joy was PERFECT....not a second too long...

...and am I deluded somehow or was Wall-E the #1 movie for the PTSNBN????

UPDATE: More Jessica.

* * *

Uncovered Edward Gorey book...(argg, link taken down...)

(Via Comics Comics)

Stardom as subject

Dzyd Jessica is part of this year's (season's?) Slate Movie Club:

Like Dana and Lisa, I felt a certain editorial detachment from most of the Oscar season's offerings, admiring the intelligence and technical dexterity of Frost/Nixon, Doubt, and (for its first two hours or so) Benjamin Button without quite losing myself in them. Revolutionary Road hit me harder; even though Leo and Kate's combined star wattage does mean you have to squint occasionally to see the actual movie they're in, I liked the meta-ness of the Titanic couple careening toward an iceberg of the soul. Actors reach a point at which their stardom almost unavoidably becomes a subject—or the subject—of whatever movie they're in. This is not necessarily a problem, as we saw this year with Robert Downey Jr. (while Tropic Thunder allowed him to disappear, Iron Man harnessed his past and persona effortlessly into the mythos of a rogue redeemed) and The Wrestler, which is virtually a documentary about Mickey Rourke—his ravaged face, his heap-of-ashes career—as much as it is a fiction about a body-slammer reaching the end of his tether.

Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for November 12, 2008

I. Everything and nothing: In Slate, Dzyd Jessica identifies a headline habit at the NYT:

Consider: "Bigger Is Better, Except When It's Not"—a 2007 article looking at body size in sports. "Smaller Can Be Better (Except When It's Not)"—a tech piece from 2004. "A Marriage Penalty, Except When It Isn't"—on couples and the tax code, 2003. This is the Times headline as koan, inviting readers to suspend in-the-box thinking and seek enlightenment below the fold. The style presents thesis and antithesis; it embraces binary thinking yet disavows it; it builds dichotomies and collapses them. There are good uses of this technique, except when there aren't, as a sampling from the last three months attests.

II. New Triple Canopy.

III. The return of Pinakothek—vintage Sante:

"Florence" has reached our couple two decades after its release through the medium of oldies radio--a medium of chattering middle-aged men, audibly overweight, short-sleeved even in the dead of winter, who are capable of putting on the spookiest sides without seeming to notice the weirdness as they jabber on about trivia before and after.

(Thanks to Levi for the nudge)

IV. Speaking of Sante: I'll be on an LWC panel with him and some others on 11/22 (Sat.) at 11:45 a.m. The topic? "From Blogs to Books and Back." Back—to what, blogs??? Then do I get to go back again, to books?

V. Speaking of Levi: More Bolaño material at I've Been Reading Lately. And here he imagines Maud Newton's flight, via Anthony Powell.

VI. Annnnnd...one last time: Me + Heidi + Alec Baldwin + Will Eno + more = tonight.

January jones

It's Betty, not Don, who lands on the psychiatrist's couch, and who gradually realizes that her life and marriage are an elaborate lie; as she reaches a desperate clarity by season's end, she begins to evoke the tragic and resolute April Wheeler of Richard Yates's 1961 masterpiece Revolutionary Road. (And when she strolls onto her lawn one weekday afternoon with a rifle—clad in nightgown and shades, cigarette dangling from her lip—and starts shooting at her neighbor's pigeons, she looks like she's just walked out of an A.M. Homes story.) —Jessica Winter on Mad Men, at Moving Image Source

Cheek House

Dzyd Jessica:

I thought of my friend Julia, who once told me, "I love your cheeks. They're Victorian." I had no idea what that meant, but she said it with such a quintessentially Julia-esque mix of kindness and certainty that there was no need for clarification—my self-consciousness had already been bundled away in a confidence-boosting swaddle of crinolines and velvet and Charles Dickens by the fireside. —O

Table-talk of Parkus Grammaticus for May 15, 2008

I. Some diverse Dzyd writings! First off, Levi on the art of the poet's notebook, at the Poetry Foundation:

Despite the best intentions, poets cannot spend every waking moment writing poetry. Life and the stuff of the world are always conspiring against them, offering up laundry to be folded, garlic to be minced, blogs to be read, children to be dressed. But all the while, the mind races; what is one to do with its scattered, variegated fruits, what poet Gabriel Gudding calls “[m]y many many 5 minute ideas”?

II. And here's Jessica, on procrastination (part of a package at Slate)—specifically the "prolonged anticlimaxes" of Ralph Ellison and Truman Capote:

What is the difference between severe procrastination and writer's block? Are they part of one continuum, like a Möbius strip?

III. I'm still blogging at Powell's! My wrists are falling off! Sample mystifying sentence:

I'm so glad I went with what I'm going to call my "Darnielle opening," because there are so many ways I can go with it. I feel like (mandatory obscure sports reference) Joe Cribbs!

IV. The fourth installment of "The Oblivion Arms" is up at Five Chapters today—entitled, after Burton, "Act Three: The Third Partition: 'Love-Melancholy'"...It contains what might be my favorite part of the story, a sequence in which Murray Adipose watches an aerobics show on TV. Sample:

"And two. And three. And once more to the right and take it up. And down."

BONUS: It also contains an Ouroboros (I think I've pasted this here before):

Her finger, trailing across the wall, gathered a heap of dust that fell, with a dreamy slowness, to the floor. She found herself looking at a scrap of the underlying wallpaper, most of which had been painted over in a graying white. The paper was patterned with the hotel's emblem: embedded letters, an A within an O, the latter composed of three bolts of lightning, the former a serpent that looped to bite its own tail.

Table-talk of Parkus Grammaticus for March 3

I. Parkian fiction and nonfiction:

A) Another bit of the novel The Dizzies has cropped up in a new anthology, 3:AM London, New York, Paris. It's called "The Alchemists"! First line: "But first a little bit about me." (Other bits have appeared here, here, and here.)

B) Speaking of anthologies out in March, the Atkinson-edited Exile Cinema (with my pre-Host Bong Joon-ho piece) comes out this week....yes?

II. New Cinema Scope has part 2—or shall we say "Track 1b"?!—of B. Kite's Rivette epic! Also: Edward Crouse on The Darjeeling Limited, Tony Rayns's eye-opening piece on a Korean movie so alarming-sounding that I've repressed the title, Dizzyhead Jason on Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg, Dizzyhead Jessica on Lady Chatterley...I am no longer qualified to write for this excellent magazine!

III. Ten Words has a new writer—Mr. Levi Stahl! (Who is even more of a Powellite than I am—he has actually read Violet Powell's memoirs!)

Dizzies Newsfeeds for January 14–15

I. The Stubblemeister on an ancient stereo system! Proust had one!
II. Dizzyhead Jessica on a "supernatural picaresque"! Wow!
III. Team Dizzies recruit Devin on Edmund Wilson! Hello to all that!
IV. The unstoppable Levi: Donald E. Westlake—Anthony Powell fan?!
V. Dizzyhead Ben's top reads of '07...including a little curtain raiser for his Frank Stanford article (appearing soon)...yowsa!
VI. The Crude Futurist on a random wild booksore find: FUP, by Jim Dodge. Keeleresque? Sure, why not...anything to get more people "hooked on HSK"!

Dizzies Newsfeeds for November 19

Over at Slate, Dizzyhead Jessica looks at Redacted and the meta-movie-ness of recent war films...At Harriet, Steve Burt makes some interesting connections...Landis Everson has died, an apparent suicide...Scott looks for the Brautigan-Jobs connection...First song on the new Jens Lekman sounds like Scott Walker, next song sounds like Bobby Goldsboro!...Still formulating my defense of Cavemen...Arlo sends us a new Destroyer song, "Foam Hands":

Memory *can* wait

Is it Winter time? Yes and yes...

Favorite quote: "Consumers of Internet-based services do need to press for more humane uses of data retention," says Dan Visel, a fellow at the Institute for the Future of the Book in New York.

Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for September 4

1. Today's timewaster, courtesy the Poetry Foundation: Dizzyhead Jessica's roundup of "where poets go online" (including Dizzies faves Cathy Park Hong and Sampson Starkweather, and new Psychic Envelopes vocalist Sarah!)...

2. In the NYT: A delightful review (?) of the new Rolls-Royce (price: $400,000).

Should you be lucky enough to obtain one, would you like it? I found it sublime, although the glovebox is too small for most sizes of the finer mustards.

(I like this sort of wit—the joke that doesn't connect all the dots for you instantly...)

3. Dizzies Team Member R. Emmet Sweeney fondly remembers the Buffalo Drive-In, which closed over the weekend. Another paper also covered the closing—Sweeney's got some issues with it!

Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for Thursday

Mollie on stamps!...New Ghost!....At Hua's place, Dave Tompkins has some Frampton-vocoder madness....In the latest Cinema Scope, Dennis talks to Abel Ferrara! Jessica gets (so to speak) Knocked Up!.....And now it's time to get really overheated with some "Soul Raga Cookin'," circa 1969, by a group called—The Believers! (Via the invaluable Office Naps)

No olive branch in sight

This is just too much.

Dizzyheads. I realize I've been endangering your health with these "title bouts," but what can I do? I'm just a conduit. You are the ones doing this to yourselves.

Check it out: The level of play has reached dizzying heights. Here comes Dizzyhead Jessica, back for a second round, with a spinal cracker (cf. "Come Together"?) entitled "The Young and the Restless."



But wait! Idalia sends in her second-round entry—let's call it "Fight Back and Win"!

* * *

New New-York Ghost is out...

The recognitions

Today's entries have a title in common. The first, "American Purgatorio," comes to us from Dizzyhead Laird...



...and the second, "Brief Encounter," is the handiwork of Dizzyhead Jessica:


More in a bit...stay tuned!

The Joie of Guy, or To the Lighthouse

"I would love to be a poet, but it’s not in me, so I’m this other thing, whatever that is." —Guy Maddin

On the spur of the moment I caught Guy Maddin's epic Brand Upon the Brain! last night, as narrated by Joie Lee. It was great! She did an amazing job! Maddin uses as many exclamation points as Keeler!

I would write down some choice quotes but I had only two-thirds of one side of one sheet of paper and a small dull golf pencil = I can't read anything!

It's set on an island where "Guy Maddin"'s very strange parents run a mom-and-pop orphanage...in a lighthouse...and their charges have mysterious marks on the backs of their heads...and the harp-playing Wendy Hale, part of a brother-sister detective team, is investigating...all of this done with hysterical (often three exclamation points) title cards...and live sound effects: a heap of unspooled cassette tape simulated the wind through long grass, egg cartons and celery were put to creative use, the doors were done with a door...

Poetry nuts will want to hear John Ashbery's narration tomorrow at 7, though something tells me tickets will be scarce. (Last night's later show, with Crispin Glover, was sold out.) Next best thing is to read "Plenty of Sublimated Rin Tin Tin," the Jdawg's excellent interview with Guy about Ashbery, over at the Poetry Foundation site.

If we're talking Ashbery, I found the texture of much of the Brand! text sort of Nest of Ninnies/Girls on the Run–ish. And if we're talking other things, there's a dollop of Feuillade (one of the detectives always "goes formal!" when s/he's doing undercover work) and a bit of eXistenZ (weird orifice stuff). But first and foremost it's...Guy Maddin!

(For further reading/links, here's an earlier Maddining post.)

UPDATE: From the PTSNBN...back in the glory days of D. Lim's editorship...here's GM's "production diary" from The Saddest Music in the World:

For years, I've been meaning to put into practice my Anatomy of Melancholy approach to directing. And now I finally get to! Having already copied out on index cards various descriptions of depression gleaned from Burton's ancient tomes, as well as some 40 synonyms for sadness culled from a thesaurus, I now start each day by dealing out all 52 cards, face down, on the breakfast table full of actors who are to work that day. Each performer has a different, sometimes fuzzy idea of a word's meaning—for instance, lugubrious or throboxyc, which is sadder? Actors love restrictions, and why not restrict them in the only fair way possible: with a lottery windfall of commands drawn randomly from a reference book?