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2006: What the Hell Just Happened?
I was kinda muttering to Steve Carlson not that long ago via the magic of the Internet how this was undoubtedly one of the strangest years for film in recent memory. My favorite movies of the year have N.Y.'s own Marty making fun of himself, V.P. Gore going out and saying, "Hey gang, our planet's getting dicked over," Spike impersonating Melville, film critics all over the globe saying that a Melville film from the late sixties is the best film of this year (no, no, I understand ... but I don't understand), a British Jew I've admired for years making what is probably one of the funniest movies ever made (depending on your perspective), a bunch of white trash Americans making the best gonzo film ever (Tremaine and Jonze must have read the accusations of homoeroticism and decided to up the ante), Daniel Craig becoming a convincing James Bond, Sofia C. making a toned-down Jarman picture and YouTube basically delivering to my home PC the short films of Kenneth Anger, Robert Breer, Bruce Conner, Dimitri Kirsanov, Chris Marker, Daffy Duck impersonating Carmen Miranda (thanks E.H.) and this one babe Scott Black and I thought a wee bit suspicious.
Now, some of you may object to seeing some of these classic shorts on the web, but for me it's either that or nothing, and believe me, I've been waiting a long time to see them. (Yes, I'm in N.Y. a bunch - and Philly a bunch - but when I'm there I get taken up with drinking and concerts to see Regular Lovers or the newest Sokurov.) Coincidentally, I've been waiting a long time for Spike to make a truly excellent film (he's made good ones, don't get me wrong, but I remain a little troubled by his highly lauded ones, particularly Do the Right Thing). I've waited a long time to see Ernie Gehr's seizurific Serene Velocity (good call Steve E.). I've waited one year too many to see Sibel Kekilli in videos you don't show your Mother or your Wife or your Girlfriend (actually, it depends on the kind of Girlfriend you have). I've waited several years to see Aoyama's 4-hour Eureka. Right now I'm trying to download torrents of Los Angeles Plays Itself and Innocence and Takeshis but they're taking freaking forever.
Regarding two other loves, music and books, I'm also obsessively making serious head way. I believe I heard every major album of the year thanks to various net resources, and I've actually stepped up my reading considerably which never seemed possible. I took Gabriel García Márquez's strangely poignant Memories of My Melancholy Whores on my trip to Jamaica and loved it - I followed it up with Chronicle of a Death Foretold when I returned. Philip Roth's American Pastoral will probably make a terrible movie, but the book is stunning - like Hemingway, Hollywood doesn't exactly do Roth much justice. I keep hoping Kenneth Anger will put out another Hollywood Babylon book, because parts one and two are dynamite trash rags (if Anger chose to never make films, he could have been a great editor for, oh, the National Enquirer). Few cut to the quick like Michel Houellebecq: "Do you know what they call the fat stuff around the vagina?" ("No.") "The woman."
One last comment about this site: after too many years, I finally got rid of the Sontag piece about cinema decaying or some such business not just because of all the sites that linked to it, but because I read somewhere that she didn't approve that particular piece, and once I read her 'corrected' version, felt I was doing her a disservice by keeping the old one around (damn editors, always screwing your words around). You know, it really is too bad she didn't live long enough to see the cinema pumped through her DSL line or snag Volver via WiFi while drinking a Peppermint Mocha at Starbucks or watch Don Hertzfeldt's short films on a high school student's video iPod. It might have made her mad enough to raze Bosnia all over again, but it's what we got.
In other words, enjoy your technology ... and I'll try my best to enjoy the fact that it's going to take another 30 hours to get the 45-minute Wavelength. Maybe I should have caught that N.Y. screening and waited to down all that Hoegaarden. Sigh.
My Top Ten List, influenced by quote whores, cam whores, the girls of Scores and seasonal mold spores.
© Copyright 2010 Matthew Lotti.
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