reassembling

i am back by request. hasn't been that long. i am so moved cuz of a movie again. the immediacy of a movie, the immediate movement it creates. there were actually two movies today. maybe three. all connect as always in my scary mazelike funhouse head. i watch the movies in pieces often. perhaps i've said this before. cuz of the repetition of cable, cuz i have no tivo. so i won't write about the movies as wholes, in one paragraph. i'll do it as i saw it chronologically:

last night:

the year of the dog - i started watching this. got like an hour into it. got it from netflix. i've been slowing down with that lately. have two other movies i haven't watched for a month. this one is an indie by mike white who did school of rock but i love him more for chuck and buck. school of rock rocked though. i love chuck and buck cuz it's secret name is chuck and buck suck and fuck. this year of the dog stars molly shannon who i often find a little too much but she was mellow and there were plenty quirky indie characters some played up more than others. laura dern kinda overdid it but there could be someone as annoying and blonde and suburban as her character in the world. a little bit of the same with regina king but i was so happy to see her be something totally different, perky and prissy and in denial and hot, like a black white girl. she was a real-life annoying possibility too.

today:

hollywoodland - i saw this some weeks ago at my fam's house, they of the endless cable and large-screen tvs, from whence i came. i watched it for what i heard about ben affleck in it, that he is not half-bad, to see if that was true. he plays the dead george reeves, the 1950s tv superman. it's about whether he was murdered or committed suicide. adrien brody is a shady private dick who looks into the death. it's long and done in flashback and i think it got mixed reviews but it has grown on me after several viewings. i got to see it from the very beginning but had to stop cuz i was hungry and needed to go to the supermarket and get some food for this bare fridge. fuckin workin in an office makes me forget about my fuckin needs. i stay eating out and not dealing with the barrenness at home. so yeah, so i watched like an hour and a half. i do enjoy the failure tales, that's really what it is. george reeves is hella disgruntled cuz his career is going in a direction he doesn't dig and i guess that's why everyone digs ben affleck in it, cuz he's got a well to tap into with that one. he wears a fake nose too, like nicole kidman in the hours. it sometimes makes me notice that it's him more, him in a fake nose. but he sinks into it. there is a comic sadness, he stays cracking a joke when he's real down, like chandler on friends. using humor to mask the pain. don't we know about that.

star wars part 3, the one where darth vader is born - of all the recent star wars, even perhaps of all the star wars, this one is hard for me to fight watching. it is great contemplative shit. i just have it on as background while i do whatever, use the toilet, wash the dishes, read some articles on the net. there are just little lines that work for me. like yoda with some shit about fear of loss leads to the dark side, something like that. yoda my guru. i know that this particular series of star wars is hella cheesy but this last one that considers the formation of darkness is just irresistible. oh and i think this time around i changed my mind about how i felt about padme. i was calling her a chicken for the longest and she is in a way but she is the one too that says all the important shit about the war and the government's deception. but she wants love to make everything ok somehow and i would get mad at her cuz she was so fierce with the larger picture but the smaller one, she couldn't see cuz of luv. she couldn't see that not only what was going on with the senate was evil, so was her man. her man was a problem and i just kept telling her, i am so sorry your man is the devil. i also thought that obi-wan got punked by anakin too so padme wasn't alone in the chicken coop. i understand punkedness as of late since i had to deal with a friend who's way harsher than i thought and i was way softer with her than i wanted to be. but i'm soft like a punk chicken, like padme and obi-wan's love child. at least today, in the last 24, 48 hours. i definitely have some anakin days, where the chancellor is my guru and he's all, notice, young devil, how anger focuses you. i didn't see this whole thing cuz i've seen it a million times. saw like the first two hours. i know the rest. i always try to catch some of the hotness of the end, the creation of darth scenes, true terrible beauty, can't look away.

hollywoodland - the last hour. i was doing other things while the part i saw earlier recapped for me. answered some e-mails, ate a late dinner, folded laundry, drank a little wine, smoked a little bud. i saw the middle to end part i always miss. bob hoskins got to be a surprise in the end. he was a movie mogul married to diane lane who keeps ben affleck as a boy toy. bob himself has some japanese hottie as his toy. they all go to dinner together, the married couple and their side things. when ben affleck is gone, bob is real sympathetic and stands by his lady, tells her he ain't going nowhere. he does it smoothly. i have decided i do like ben in this, he is this role and he knows it and works it. i also dig this one random aspect of the character. he has a mexican friend that he sings sad spanish love songs with, excuse me, with whom he sings sad spanish love songs. ben affleck, singing, in spanish, and well. glad he learned something from jennifer, i'm sure he licked her enough to get some spanish on that tongue. perhaps he was singing a farewell song to her. i thought it was funny that a failure has a spic friend. ben even gets called beaner at some point.

the year of the dog - got me. the last hour got me. molly shannon kept it together, never went too nuts with a character that clearly was. she became a crazy dog lady which is really worse than being a crazy cat lady cuz at least most cats fit in a house. not all dogs do. not 15 of em. it was disgusting and hilarious. the mellow pace leads up to this excellent epiphany that made me just burst outta nowhere. i totally cried. it was totally what i was talking about with my friend who was way harsh and that got me in so much trouble. about finding what you love. it requires sacrifice, a willingness to leave a lot behind and she talks some game but doesn't seem willing. i have to understand that. i was happy to see a lady, an imaginary lady who was willing. crazy and willing. brave. i am kinda getting sick of cowardice, especially my own. i have dealt with so much of it. especially my own. i do and don't know what that means for me. it means i have to face more shit with the writing certainly but besides that, i don't know. even just dealing with the writing, or putting it out there, has made this last month or two different, not so routine, surprising. i've tried to meet a lot of people who do this and the more i meet, the more i meet. the more i meet, the more i want to speak and write, the less i want to secretly hate and quietly complain. people do that openly and formally, on the page, among people who get it. no need to hide. i think though i am learning something about sympathy too, about not being so harsh.

i hope i love these words and writing as much as the crazy dog lady loves her animals. right now i think i do. bolaño reminds me to love again. tonight, the requester of this blog entry wondered what will happen when i am done with the book. i am about ten pages from the end now. i think he meant what it will do to my writing. i will have to give it time. but already i see that i am not afraid of fucking with time like bolaño does, like it does to me. i always thought i didn't understand complex structure but i live in it, we all do. this world is breaking us apart into so many pieces, everyone in so many pieces. i think of all the disembodied friends i have, who are just voices on a phone line, words in thin space, cyber air. i think of the way we receive information, all that stuff that seems so accessible but really can be just so many more new ways to misunderstand. a broken existence like this little day of thoughts broken by movies broken by errands broken by voices. i got thru it. there was a second i thought i wouldn't.