Oprah ain't got shit on me.
1) Jizz-worthy international posters-back in the day when rat-a-tat dialogue was banged out on typewriters and "Technicolor" was a buzzword, film posters were hand-drawn, in painstaking detail. Because of this, several films have stunning, unique posters created specifically for their runs in other countries. They're normally hard to find, but the good folks at dominiquebesson.com gots 'em all in one place. They're priced in the hundreds, but until I've accrued the money to fill my room with these pieces, I'm content to just look up at them in awe as they fill my computer screen-
Get ready for an orgasm, Bogie devotees-
I think I might sink a chunk of leftover Bar Mitzvah change into buying the Chinatown one. Whaddya think?
2) "Stay With Me"-One of my good friends, former fellow Jesus School attendee Trevor Garza, directs some pretty badass shorts. We've collaborated before, and we plan to again this summer on a project I'll talk about at length in a future post. "Stay with Me" is my favorite work of his. If Charlie Kaufman skimped on his Prozac, he might come up with a heady, ravishing fever dream like this one. Trevor and I share a fascination with the life of the mind, the way it can adapt to seemingly any situation. He explores that concept here with no dialogue, and its a thrill to see a film that revels so astonishingly in the purely visual capabilities of the medium. It's something his favorite director, Stanley Kubrick, liked to do. Look at Trevor's confidence with the camera, and you'll see some similarities between the two.
Stay With Me from Obsessive Imagemaking on Vimeo.
How does the mind perceive Love?
3) Raya Yarbrough (Demit, what a name!)-Jazz fans (Erin Little/Karen Hess COUGH) take note. Yarbrough is part of a school of artists-Spalding, Gardot, and Peyroux amongst her cohorts-who are reinventing the form by dispatching album after album of original, intelligent, pop-inflected soon-to-be standards. Yarbrough, an Armenian vocalist and guitarist who looks like Maya Rudolph after a few chasers, delivers sultry string-driven ballads with a striking plaintiveness that reminds me of Stevie Holland. In her own works, the lyric imagery is stunning-"Vice and Vanity" plays like a Maya Angelou poem set to music-and the melodies are memorable-the bass-driven "Sorrow's Eyes" is as slyly sexy and hummable a jazz song we've had since Norah Jones's "I've Got To See You Again". Her covers are few, but well-chosen and delivered with impeccable phrasing-one of my favorite oldies, "Early Autumn", is given a lush, laidback treatment here that recasts the bitter ballad as a sweetly melancholy depiction of post-heartbreak laziness. No genre has a past like jazz, and thanks to Yarbrough and her ilk, its got a helluva future as well.
4) Cindi's Challah french toast-Eat it before the summer ends. Challah is a Jew bread with extra egg and a little soethin' sweet that, when properly prepared makes for an orgasmic, melt-in-your mouth rendition of my favorite breakfast item. This item was once only available during Jew gatherings at the Walker house (thanks, Grandma Sally), but now the unbeatable Cindi's has it on their menu, and I'm proud to say it comes with my stamp of Yid approval.
and of course,
5) My HEAVENLY HUNDRED PICK OF THE WEEK-
Good Morning Vietnam
The 25: Williams gone wild.
I've got no pretenses here. This film purports to be about Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams), a military DJ stationed in 'Nam who riles the tight-assed officers in charge when he breaks the Lawrence Welk mold and provides a radio hour jam-packed with four-letter words and rock music. It does a reasonable job of telling this story, getting from scene to scene without choking on much sentimental sap (though, as is usual in this type of picture, the Establishment is painted in frustratingly generic colors of black and white only), but its real purpose is this; it allows our greatest living comedian to riff like a modern-day Marx Brother for nearly two hours. There was a script, yes, but its our great good luck that Williams basically refused to stick to it. He riffs on everything-fashion, bad sex, Elvis-and director Barry Levinson, luckily, was shrewd enough to leave Williams alone and just shoot what he saw. Fans of comedy in general-prepare to have your funnybone broken.
Fans of Williams himself (like me) just sit there scratching their heads every viewing-how does this man come up with jokes of such broad relevance and scathing specificity at the same time? How does he nail the articulation of every phrase while never seeming smug or pedantic? And how in God's name can one man impersonate so many others SO flawlessly?! Williams's talents are normally mishandled-in films like Patch Adams or Flubber, his motormouthed talents are toned down to fit this conceit or that plotline-his raunchy style of comedy canNOT be made accessible to all audiences, no matter how hard the suits of the screen try to fight that fact. But for this film, this one film, Levinson, for the mostpart, lets Williams off the leash, letting him revel in R-rated heaven... that is, until the script saddles him with one subplot too many, and the proceedings get a tad too maudlin for my picky tastes. But for its golden middle act, Good Morning Vietnam, picked with golden 60's rebel-rock and thrilling to its stars comic invention, is a prime exhibit of one man's dirty, delicious genius.
The Singular Scene: The first time Williams shouts out those immortal, titular words. He's dropped a bomb of a different kind-a verbal one. The intercutting of Cronauer's wild-man routine with the stunned reactions of listening soldiers gives us our first taste of the movies spicy sense of humour.
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