sovay: (Lord Peter Wimsey)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2008-12-24 04:58 am

Them windward girls are hard to beat

Oh, sleep deprivation, how I've missed you. Is that sentence ever a lie.

I would have been surprised if Arnaud Desplechin's Un conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale, 2008) had left me cold, I loved Rois et reine (Kings and Queen, 2004) so much; I am still pleased to report I loved this one also. It is legitimately comparable with Bergman's Fanny och Alexander (1982), the original five-hour version—a family epic compressed into the few days around Christmas, but reaching back more than forty years, layered with loose-ended detail and private mythology, both the kind that accumulates around anecdotes and traditions and secrets and feuds and the kind that half-catches off names like Junon, Faunia, Paul Dédalus. The language is full of quotation, from Nietzsche to Georges Bataille to Seamus Heaney, A Midsummer Night's Dream at the opposite pole of the year. There is a ghost in the ordinary sense and an imaginary wolf that we can quite clearly see. Random bursts of Irish folk and avant-garde jazz spike into the soundtrack, the camera is not invisible. Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny, Emmanuelle Devos, Catherine Deneuve; I had never before seen Chiara Mastroianni and she is extraordinary. And while the film is of a piece with its predecessor, narratively and thematically, it is not a retread, so I may hope someday to own both of them. I wish I wrote with half the texture Desplechin films.

Meanwhile, the mail brought my contributor's copy of Mythic Delirium #19, an absolute damnfine issue with [livejournal.com profile] tithenai's Damascus and [livejournal.com profile] blue_vervain's mouse-god and [livejournal.com profile] nineweaving's shivering man in the moon just to start with—selkies, bird shamans, murdered rivers, Inanna; gas-masks and lunar ash and Marilyn Monroe at world's end. Three of the poems, "Cartomachy," "The Devourer," and "The Plague Hill," are mine. Look, pick up a copy already. [livejournal.com profile] time_shark knows his stuff.

I made barbecued ribs for dinner. Way too much of this house needs to be cleaned before my brother and his fiancée arrive tomorrow. A late evening spent with Viking Zen and her husband, drinking ginger tea and watching an episode of The Storyteller and then Unbreakable (2000), was still totally worth it.

I'll remember the other thing in the morning.

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2008-12-24 01:28 pm (UTC)(link)
I love sleep deprivation... it's my drug of choice...

[identity profile] cucumberseed.livejournal.com 2008-12-24 03:43 pm (UTC)(link)
I feel your pain. Sleep was never mine for more than a couple of hours, and most of those were filled with dreams of a Twilight video game with a lot of really bad voiceover. I got a chance to catch up on all those songs that my head plays when I cannot sleep, which seems to me to be a good jump-off for a post, or perhaps a story.

[identity profile] time-shark.livejournal.com 2008-12-24 04:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Glad you liked!

Sometimes I don't mind sleep deprivation. Now is not one of those times.

[identity profile] thomasfreund.livejournal.com 2008-12-24 07:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Email me please? I tried to ask about timing for tomorrow, but it bounced. I think my address book is no longer current.

[identity profile] ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com 2008-12-24 09:05 pm (UTC)(link)
I hopoe you sleep better tonight.

Glad you enjoyed the film, and for your new contributor's copy.

[identity profile] tithenai.livejournal.com 2008-12-24 10:28 pm (UTC)(link)
I loved "The Devourer" so much! It makes me desirous of saying something cool enough to prompt you to poeming.

[identity profile] mirandageegaw.livejournal.com 2008-12-25 05:17 am (UTC)(link)
OMG I've been lurking on this LJ for a while, but I have to say Despleschin is my favorite director and since I live in nyc I totally haunted the IFC retrospective of his work last month. "Kings and Queen" and "Leo, or Playing in the Company of Men" are two movies I try to make everyone I know see. I should've known you'd have awesome taste! What other movies do you like? \o/