dc travolage

i invented this thing called travologe. i started this with a prague travologe two years ago and now here's the second one.
travolage= travel + collage
(spelling is subject to change)

mepris

beautiful scenery + brigitte bardot. also fritz lang as the director in the story. the story was compelling too. overall a very good film, but...



but unlike antonioni, bresson or herzog, godard does not trust his images. and unlike hitchcock he does not balance the image with dialogue. he has to feed us with words, words, words.



ideas about everything. meaningful sentences. too much reliance on words.



kind of contradictory for this director who's only aim was to develop a film language as distinct from the language of other arts. his cinematic language loses its power because he is trying to write, trying to imitate literature.



i realized why i don't like godard so much. even though breathless is undoubtedly one of the greatest films anyone could ever watch.



he is simply boring.

d.c.

been to natural history, air space, hirshorn museums. experienced the planeterium.



walked around downtown, walked around georgetown. had an efes. had a great saturday.

mom

dark water was very emotional. not really horror, although i had to fast forward some scenes. i liked it very much.



lost sleep and shed tears, not because of horror but because of the last scenes of mother-daughter love. realized how much i missed mom.

dreams

piggies

have you seen the little piggies crawling in the dirt?

sweet smell of success

realized that i watched this film for the second time. i love these types of dialogue based character exploration films.



the acting of tony curtis and (especially) burt lancaster was incredible.

l'eclisse

i don't need to say anything. my favorite director. once again



makes his statement on relationships. after la notte and l'aventurra i'm starting to think



there's no one who can express better what love is and can be, what relationship is and how its end is always contained in it.

grrrrrr...

want to cheer myself up with archigram. the departmental graduate meeting about the hiring of faculty, today was a total disappointment. because of the unconscious prejudices and preconceptions of otherwise really nice friends of ours.

the turkish candidate who applied theory to turkish literature (a postcolonial study on peyami safa's novel- nationalism, language reform etc.) was found too narrow in specialization whereas the french candidate's work on vietnamese diaspora or russian candidate's work on eisenstein was thought to be really wide-ranging. incredible.



few said that department could use someone teaching an east asian literature. what about a middle eastern literature i asked? why do you weigh it as less important? could get no answer.
worst part though was that i could not support or advocate the turkish candidate for the fear of being thought of as putting my national sympathies first.



the jokes about my favoring her was ok but i guess some people had the feeling that i only favored this harvard+columbia graduate with references from spivak, damrosch and who demonstrated a clear knowledge of theory just because she was turkish. it's unfair to her, and to us who had to take up this strange position.

it was a good experience demonstrating the inner unconscious prejudices which regard a middle eastern language and literature dismissable.
but the argument also reaches into the nature of the discipline. isn't comp. lit. supposed to be comparative? what determines the importnace we give to certain literatures? is theory not the binding link of all our diverse interests and specializations?

so ends the diary entry of this tiring and tense day cheered a bit by archigram...

the french connection

what is interesting about this film, other than extensive chase scenes is the fact that it brings the nouvelle vague style into mainstream cinema (or so it is thought by the booklet authors), and became a pioneer in american new wave (one of my favorite genre/movement/whatever- not the french, mind you, the american one, grown out of the french one).
new york, especially natural portrayal of Brooklynn setting also creates a sense of "reality" as if this film is a documentary on this (in fact real) narcotics operation.
however although i really like high quality action films, and really enjoyed the stylistic aspect, this film was not really satisfactory, probably because i was expecting too much.



ps. new une passante logo is a gift from alara the fuzzy. mersi mon cher!

soluble fish

soluble fish, am I not the soluble fish,
I was born under the sign of pisces,
and man is soluble in his thoughts.

reproduce

my pharmakon

it started with a terrible hangover on friday. even had to tell the eye doctor that my vision was probably bad because of hangover (he said it wouldn't matter..)
so now i am even more nearsighted than i was, because of you. you the interface between the computer and me: the screen.
we used to be so friendly now it turns out you were my pharmakon.
i thought you bettered my vision but you were just making me lazy.
making me less than a whole human being, exteriorizing me.
making me even more dependent on tools (like lenses, eye glasses) instead of independent.



Pharmakon: both remedy and poison...