Cold and darkness are very "in"
Dec. 1st, 2004 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexsarllLast night was meant to be a send-off for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
how_i_lie but after an enigmatic cancellation, I found myself watching Bertolucci's The Dreamers instead. For all its filth and revolution, it's a little reminiscent of The Wonder Years - every TV screen anyone passes is showing epochal news, never light entertainment or even an '...and finally' item. Hearteningly, in spite of being the first film to be cinematically distributed in the US with an NC-17 rating since Bent, it is (like The Simpsons) under the Fox umbrella. Often, people who fear the media conglomerates are still fighting the old wars; as long as subversion and sex sell, the behemoths are happy to profit from them.
I then finished The King in Yellow, a peculiar book which begins with a series of proto-Lovecraftian tales concerning a terrible, suppressed play which brings madness and nameless terror. It then continues with a series of mediocre melodramas about expat artists in Paris; however, since the first stories began with similar scenarios, one reads on in the hope that someone will turn out to have been reading The King in Yellow and cosmic dread will ensue. This lends the mundane resolutions a curious quality of anti-twist.
Between film and book, I was reminded that I do like Paris, just not the incarnation I visited last year. I think my experience was akin to hearing all your life about the wonder of Doctor Who, and then having the misfortune to catch a Colin Baker episode. I simply timed it wrong, that's all.
On Newsnight there was a stem cell researcher from KCL called Stephen Minger. It was a fair assessment. There was also a Palestinian delegate who complained of being "ambushed" with a question about suicide bombers. I laughed, but then I share some sense of humour with the Joker.
how_i_lie but after an enigmatic cancellation, I found myself watching Bertolucci's The Dreamers instead. For all its filth and revolution, it's a little reminiscent of The Wonder Years - every TV screen anyone passes is showing epochal news, never light entertainment or even an '...and finally' item. Hearteningly, in spite of being the first film to be cinematically distributed in the US with an NC-17 rating since Bent, it is (like The Simpsons) under the Fox umbrella. Often, people who fear the media conglomerates are still fighting the old wars; as long as subversion and sex sell, the behemoths are happy to profit from them. I then finished The King in Yellow, a peculiar book which begins with a series of proto-Lovecraftian tales concerning a terrible, suppressed play which brings madness and nameless terror. It then continues with a series of mediocre melodramas about expat artists in Paris; however, since the first stories began with similar scenarios, one reads on in the hope that someone will turn out to have been reading The King in Yellow and cosmic dread will ensue. This lends the mundane resolutions a curious quality of anti-twist.
Between film and book, I was reminded that I do like Paris, just not the incarnation I visited last year. I think my experience was akin to hearing all your life about the wonder of Doctor Who, and then having the misfortune to catch a Colin Baker episode. I simply timed it wrong, that's all.
On Newsnight there was a stem cell researcher from KCL called Stephen Minger. It was a fair assessment. There was also a Palestinian delegate who complained of being "ambushed" with a question about suicide bombers. I laughed, but then I share some sense of humour with the Joker.
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Date: 2004-12-01 02:53 am (UTC)Thanks for reminding me I'm not there.
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Date: 2004-12-01 03:01 am (UTC)I love the Sacre Coeur and Montmartre.
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Date: 2004-12-01 02:58 am (UTC)To combine Lovecraft and Paris, have you read the short story The Music OF Erich Zann? It's dead good.
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Date: 2004-12-01 03:01 am (UTC)I have indeed read of Mr Zann. One of his more accessible efforts, in many ways.
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Date: 2004-12-01 11:16 am (UTC)