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Like bones from the desert sea thrown for divination ceremonies
1. Yes, I am listening to a psychedelic folk setting of Catullus 63. Some days this is an awesome planet.
2. For those of you who missed my allohistorical vignette "The Mirror of Venus" in Sirenia Digest #30, it will be reprinted by The Harrow in November. Needless to say, that leaves the entire summer to wait through, so you might as well just sign up for the digest now.
3. The Fall (2006) is a film about storytelling: motives, consequences, inspirations, means; the semiotic truth that a story belongs as much to the listener inside whose head the words take shape as to the teller who places them there; all the places that imagination overlaps with the world. The year is sometime after silent film and before World War I; Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) is the youngest in a family of migrant workers, recuperating from a broken arm—she fell out of an orange tree—in a hospital outside of Los Angeles. A fearless and inquisitive child, she writes inventively spelled letters to the nurses, collects trinkets for the cigar box of treasures she carries everywhere, and explores any ward the doctors won't shoo her out of, which is how she meets the moody, bedridden Roy (Lee Pace; Ned the piemaker, if you ever watched the odd and lovely Pushing Daisies), who is, among other things, a storyteller. For Alexandria, he spins a saga of five strange heroes, each with his own vendetta against a wicked governor, and chief among them in love and revenge is the Black Bandit, whom Alexandria begins to visualize with Roy's own dark-browed face, shadowed with memories of her father. In return, he will ask her for a small thing, no more than a favor. Only the audience knows, because we have overheard enough of the conversations that do not interest Alexandria (except insofar as she can steal visitors' faces to add to the epic panoply inside her head: all the story we see is her creation, with details supplied from her surroundings), Roy's story that he does not tell her—he's a stuntman in an early Hollywood Western, paralyzed from the waist down after a reckless stunt with a train trestle and a river; his girlfriend in his absence is being comforted by the leading man. Alexandria knows many words in English, but morphine is not one of them, or suicide. It's a reverse Scheherezade: a story told not to keep its teller alive, but in service of his death. And into this bitter frame are inset literal jewels of scenes, as richly colored and strange in their pageantry as any child's dreaming. (This is a story in simple, geometric shapes and the bold colours of a child's box of crayons . . .) When Roy speaks to Alexandria of her namesake, Alexander the Great, the screen fills instantly with her figuration of the famed conqueror, in a stiff red centurion's crest and golden plates of mail, pacing Bucephalus between the cracked pillars of a Roman forum; he dismounts and walks into a Mondrian sandscape of lion-colored dunes as Roy explains that there's no horse in this story, only Alexander and his men, on foot, lost in a desert. A map etches itself under the skin of a man who emerged from the charred trunk of a tree, his ropes of hair smoking like its blackened roots; inside a dome of brilliant mosaic dangles a chandelier of hanged men. The wicked governor's palace lies at the heart of a city whose walls (et les villes s'éclabouss'raient de bleu) are stained a thousand different shades of blue. Probably The Fall will be compared most closely to the work of Terry Gilliam and Julie Taymor, but I came out thinking somehow of Tanith Lee—the same unreserved combinatorics of language and imagery that either you find beautiful for its own sake or laughably overstyled. Guess which one I found. Now go see it in theaters.
4. There needs to be a story called "The Lost Rivers of London."
That will be all.
2. For those of you who missed my allohistorical vignette "The Mirror of Venus" in Sirenia Digest #30, it will be reprinted by The Harrow in November. Needless to say, that leaves the entire summer to wait through, so you might as well just sign up for the digest now.
3. The Fall (2006) is a film about storytelling: motives, consequences, inspirations, means; the semiotic truth that a story belongs as much to the listener inside whose head the words take shape as to the teller who places them there; all the places that imagination overlaps with the world. The year is sometime after silent film and before World War I; Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) is the youngest in a family of migrant workers, recuperating from a broken arm—she fell out of an orange tree—in a hospital outside of Los Angeles. A fearless and inquisitive child, she writes inventively spelled letters to the nurses, collects trinkets for the cigar box of treasures she carries everywhere, and explores any ward the doctors won't shoo her out of, which is how she meets the moody, bedridden Roy (Lee Pace; Ned the piemaker, if you ever watched the odd and lovely Pushing Daisies), who is, among other things, a storyteller. For Alexandria, he spins a saga of five strange heroes, each with his own vendetta against a wicked governor, and chief among them in love and revenge is the Black Bandit, whom Alexandria begins to visualize with Roy's own dark-browed face, shadowed with memories of her father. In return, he will ask her for a small thing, no more than a favor. Only the audience knows, because we have overheard enough of the conversations that do not interest Alexandria (except insofar as she can steal visitors' faces to add to the epic panoply inside her head: all the story we see is her creation, with details supplied from her surroundings), Roy's story that he does not tell her—he's a stuntman in an early Hollywood Western, paralyzed from the waist down after a reckless stunt with a train trestle and a river; his girlfriend in his absence is being comforted by the leading man. Alexandria knows many words in English, but morphine is not one of them, or suicide. It's a reverse Scheherezade: a story told not to keep its teller alive, but in service of his death. And into this bitter frame are inset literal jewels of scenes, as richly colored and strange in their pageantry as any child's dreaming. (This is a story in simple, geometric shapes and the bold colours of a child's box of crayons . . .) When Roy speaks to Alexandria of her namesake, Alexander the Great, the screen fills instantly with her figuration of the famed conqueror, in a stiff red centurion's crest and golden plates of mail, pacing Bucephalus between the cracked pillars of a Roman forum; he dismounts and walks into a Mondrian sandscape of lion-colored dunes as Roy explains that there's no horse in this story, only Alexander and his men, on foot, lost in a desert. A map etches itself under the skin of a man who emerged from the charred trunk of a tree, his ropes of hair smoking like its blackened roots; inside a dome of brilliant mosaic dangles a chandelier of hanged men. The wicked governor's palace lies at the heart of a city whose walls (et les villes s'éclabouss'raient de bleu) are stained a thousand different shades of blue. Probably The Fall will be compared most closely to the work of Terry Gilliam and Julie Taymor, but I came out thinking somehow of Tanith Lee—the same unreserved combinatorics of language and imagery that either you find beautiful for its own sake or laughably overstyled. Guess which one I found. Now go see it in theaters.
4. There needs to be a story called "The Lost Rivers of London."
That will be all.
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Oh, wow. I have to do something with that.
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A map etches itself under the skin of a man who emerged from the charred trunk of a tree, his ropes of hair smoking like its blackened roots
I can just see it.
I can't tell you how wonderful it is to read this post. My next treat will be
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Just so long as I get to read it.
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I can see them meeting somewhere secret, in flesh. Actually, I can see them as heroes banding together like the story in The Fall to fight against someone (not sure who). I was in London, once, very briefly, many years ago, though, and might not be able to do that story justice, or maybe the story, but not the setting. River heroes, though... my bones resonate with that.
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I have seen some amazing movies in theaters this year, but this was one of the best.
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Prrrr?
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A story that will have to get in line with the others. *g*
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I think that answers the question of whether I should watch his first movie now.
Maybe he should do some sort of serialized adaptation of her Flat Earth books
Honestly, some of the locations he shoots would be perfect. He has an eye for taking pieces of real cities and fusing them into landscapes where everything is heightened, otherworldly; at least within Roy's story, he frames his characters as similarly stylized. In other words, I'd see it. : P
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Yay.
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It's from Jacques Brel's L'homme de la Mancha, his translation-version of Man of La Mancha: "La quête." I recommend.
The Fall: A tale of stories, invalids, and morphine reminded me of 'The English Patient.'
Which I have never seen. What is it like?
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In other words, I'd see it. : P
Well, 'course you would! So would we all.;)
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*ksnerk*
Yeah . . .
I did not at any moment have that kind of disconnect with The Fall. Which probably does not mean it's a flawless film, but at least it had no impressively ridiculous story-gaps.
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and to see this movie.
i watched cities of the underground when they did london and there was a whole section about lost rivers... i loved it then, and i love it now. it's still mulling though...
~:)
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Heh. It's similar. I hope you like it!
i loved it then, and i love it now. it's still mulling though...
Let me know what it turns into . . .
Re: The English Patient
I was beckoned into a test screening, so had no preconceptions; and came out cordially loathing the adulterous lovers. Narcissists. And I really like Scott-Thomas as an actress.
Nine
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Interesting. Is it set in Latin, or as a translation?
3.
Sounds fascinating. I'm not much for films, really, but your reports make me want to see them. Sometimes I'm not sure I'm not worried that the actual work will fall short of your description.
4.
Indeed. If you write it, or if someone else does, would you let me know where to find it, please?
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It's in translation, unfortunately. (If it had been in Latin, that first statement would have been capslocked and italicized.) But it still counts as cool by me.
Sometimes I'm not sure I'm not worried that the actual work will fall short of your description.
I try not to rave about films I don't think deserve it . . .
If you write it, or if someone else does, would you let me know where to find it, please?
Certainly!
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It's only in English (as I just explained to
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~:)
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~;)
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There's a poem by U. A, Fanthorpe (here, as linked in the comments to that piece; probably shouldn't be, as it's well in copyright, but read it, she's terrific).
The Wandle appears in JBS Haldane's The Magic Collar Stud.
And the book about the Lost Rivers is indeed very good.
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No idea. But I'd read that collection.
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That's lovely. I need to get a collection of hers now.
Thanks!
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