Tennis, everyone?

At The Rumpus, Dizzies T.M. Sweeney talks to director Lisandro Alonso:

Rumpus: You stayed in the same room as Juan?

Alonso: Yes, the lowest level. You sleep a lot, there’s not a lot to do. You eat a lot. It’s not about the legend of the sailor. What’s not normal is their life out of the water. The ship is their real world. They don’t care about cars, telephones, traffic lights. Who cares about Obama? Their worries are tied to the ship. It is sad and hard. Once they go onto the land, they stay for a couple days, just for a drink and see some family. But they live on the water. It’s not very easy.

Rumpus: But it’s their choice.

Alonso: Yes, but once you get into that life, and they are very well paid, it’s tough to run away. Maybe they can, but after five to ten years, they don’t know what to do, how to make money otherwise. It’s like everybody, once you know how to do something, you can’t change and say, “Now I want to be a tennis player.”

Idea for an Oulipian film

Jia Zhangke's 24 City opens with a decaying factory in Chengdu, ancient machines churning out red-hot pliable metals. The subtitles read, "Hand me the rifle, Commandante!" Ah...there's nothing like a projection snafu to rile loyal NYFF patrons! The subs running beneath the image were from Che, a sneak peek for us lucky few in attendance. Hackles were raised, one disgusted gentleman booed with revolutionary lust, but eventually calm prevailed, and 24 Che returned to its City. —R. Emmet Sweeney, Termite Art

Screen memories

D.T.M.* Rob's intensely personal Top 5 Theaters—no fewer than three of which are/were in Buffalo!

On the North Park on Hertel Avenue: "Try to make out the painting on the ceiling. It's a challenge, covered as it is in years 88 years of sneezes."



* = Dizzies Team Member. Two other posts today should have listed people as D.T.M.s — Hua and Izzy. BUT WHY AM I THE ONLY PERSON WHO EVER POSTS HERE?

Son of Table-Talk of P.G. for May 30, 2008

I. Oroboros [sic]—the game! (From Idalia.)

II. Baseball and poetry, sure. But hockey and poetry? At the Poetry Foundation, Dizzies Team Member Rob talks to Randall Maggs, author of Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems.

III. Check out (get it?) the librarian muxtape.

IV. At Jacket Copy, Dzyd Ben packs books for a trip.

The first picture show

Over at Termite Art, Dizzies Team Member Rob points to a Buffalo News article about the Ellicott Building. "If one was looking for a cosmopolitan night on the town, you could enter the Edisonia Phonograph Parlor, head downstairs, and walk into Vitagraph Hall—one of the earliest, and possibly THE earliest, movie theater in the U.S., having opened in October, 1896," Rob writes.

(Here's the original article.)

La Dulcinea vita

Love this quote, via Dizzyhead Rob:

What shall we do with our fantasies? Love them, believe them--to the point where we have to deface, to destroy them (that is perhaps the meaning of the films of Orson Welles). But when they prove in the end to be empty and unfulfilled, when they show the void from which they were made, then it is time to pay the price for their truth, to understand that Dulcinea—whom we saved—cannot love us."
—Giorgio Agamben, Profanations

Howard Hawks vs. the phrase "tone poem"!

Dizzies Team Member and Termite Artist Rob has submitted his list; isn't it time you sent in yours? (E-mail to thedizziesATgmailDOTcom, include your blog address if I don't know you!)

I Like:
Fart jokes, Hollywood musicals, skepticism, morning smiles, Andrea's eyes, awkward silences, Westerns, Nietzsche, genital herpes commercials, tailgating before Bills games, BBQ, Proust, ridiculously long David Bordwell blog posts, Howard Hawks, sleeping in, movies over 7 hours long, crime fiction, fantasy sports, concerts in the park, cigar smoking, joking with dad, Carl Dreyer, polemics, scotch, high-fives, falling leaves, jazz clubs, drunken arguments, the Best of Christopher Walken on SNL DVD, stand-up bass, country music, Will Ferrell, snowstorms, jukeboxes, tracking shots, cable TV, Dairy Queen Oreo blizzards.

I Don't Like:
Self-righteousness, Broadway musicals, indie rock, ’60s music nostalgia, ’70s movie nostalgia, olives, the phrase "tone poem", whining, the Miami Dolphins, loud neighbors, cults of personality, organic food stores, Noam Chomsky, humidity, rudeness, Dane Cook, rum, fake smiles, hangovers, Bluetooth headsets, idealism, iPods, cultural studies, moving out, self-pity, quick zooms, the WNBA, dictators, weak coffee, ideologues, plugged toilets.

In other news, the New-York Ghost has emerged...

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!

Sweeney awed!

Congratulations to Team Dizzies member Rob and his new bride Andrea, who tied the knot today — T.D.M. Matt has the details of this happy event up at Termite Art!

Matt's footage will put a smile on your face:

Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for Tuesday, July 24

Very funny: Over at Termite Art, Team Dizzies member Matt interviews David Wain, Paul Rudd, and Ken Marino at SXSW, talking about The Ten.



And T.D.M. Rob is reading a volume of Proust a year.

Over at the NBCC's Critical Mass, Lindsay Waters makes me blush.

Note to self: Are my library books due today?!

Brain food

Our own Tea-maker and Buffalo sports commentator Emmet has a terrific interview with Dizzies favorite Guy Maddin up at IFC News:

How did you start working with Isabella Rossellini?

I met her once in Central Park, actually—and I'm not a very forward person, especially with celebrities. But, we're both dog lovers, as it turns out, and just as she was coming towards me, she stopped to pet a Labrador Retriever, and started a conversation with its owner. And I thought, that Lab's cute enough, I'll use that as an excuse, so I started petting it too. I looked down, and she was basically ignoring me, but she had allowed the dog to hold her hand in its mouth, and I thought, aw, I'll put my hand in the dog's mouth too. And pretty soon both of our hands were in this big drooling dog tongue, in intertwinement. Very slippery. Before we knew it, the dog and its owner were gone, and we were left with our hands hanging in the air, dog spit dripping off. By that time I had worked up the confidence to tell her I knew her ex-husband a bit, or that I didn't really know him, but that he bought one of my films for his archives, "Tales from the Gimli Hospital," and that I was a filmmaker making a film, and that I had a part screaming to be played by her, an amputee beer baroness.

(For more on Maddin, read The D-Lim-inator's nifty feature on Brand Upon the Brain! in the Times.)