Nautilus? I thought you said noodle house

[sovay]

Tampopo (1985) is a delightful movie and I thank all the gods and especially Inari that we made a full plate of sushi and a stockpot of ramen before we started watching, because otherwise we would have been very unhappy. People should recommend me food movies, because I was talking about them with rushthatspeaks afterward; I have seen Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) and Babette's Feast (1987), but that covers a very small spectrum of cuisines. Also, Tsutomu Yamazaki is awesome.

(And thus, apparently, I celebrated the fall equinox. Happy autumn!)

I have started to remember my dreams again. Last night was a sort of science fiction throwback: I didn't leave on a deep-space research project with my lover who was a doctor, because he had lied to me about being an alien; when their ships broke up in space, they rolled apart in sullen, almost maroon billows of fire, because of the atmospheric difference. I remember pushing my way off the ship, knowing there was too much bureaucracy in the passenger lists for him to find me in time. Seriously, I have no idea. The last thing I finished before bed was a completely realist novel set from 1935 to the present day.

I am not planning to watch Incubus (1965) when it screens tonight on TCM, but since it stars a pre-Trek William Shatner and it is entirely in Esperanto, I feel like people should know it's out there. I will instead be attending an oratorio about how the power of music makes you burn down Persepolis.

Comments

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

About cuisine, besides the classic scenes in Tom Jones and Chocolat: A Touch of Spice

About Alexander: Iskander, Khan Tengri

[sovay]

About cuisine, besides the classic scenes in Tom Jones and Chocolat: A Touch of Spice.

Another I've never heard of: thank you!

About Alexander: Iskander, Khan Tengri.

I like your essay about Alexander (and Alexander) far more than I liked Oliver Stone's film, which I saw back in 2006 as a double feature with Kingdom of Heaven and a group of classicist-medievalist friends. It kind of scarred me.

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

To someone who knows the (hi)story of Alexander, the Stone film is like watching a commentary of a drunken sports fan to a fabled World Cup game. Our minds fill the blanks and block out the anachronisms and painful inaccuracies.

At the same time, clunky dialog and coyness about his bisexuality aside, it helps to recall that the influence of Olympias and Philippos on their son and was very much as shown in the film. Also, most of the smaller episodes were taken blow-by-blow from Alexandrian accounts or later Roman translations of them. Finally, Stone's depiction of both Macedonians and Persians is far better than the dull, dumb garbage of 300. A bit more of this here:

Being Part of Everyone’s Furniture; Or: Appropriate Away!

[sovay]

Finally, Stone's depiction of both Macedonians and Persians is far better than the dull, dumb garbage of 300.

Oh, God, I avoided 300 like a particularly exoticizing plague. Also, Troy.

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

Reinterpretations are ok, even anachronistic ones (as with many imaginative stagings of Shakespeare, Wagner and the Greek plays; both Sellars and Boulez specialized in those). The unforgivable sin of 300, Troy and The Clash of the Titans remake is that they took truly riproaring stories with complex characters/interactions and turned them into blocks of wet cement. Clunk! Thud! Talk of turning gold into lead...

[sovay]

(as with many imaginative stagings of Shakespeare, Wagner and the Greek plays; both Sellars and Boulez specialized in those).

I have very fond memories of Peter Sellars' The Children of Herakles with a Kazakh epic singer at the ART.

The unforgivable sin of 300, Troy and The Clash of the Titans remake is that they took truly riproaring stories with complex characters/interactions and turned them into blocks of wet cement.

And stupid. The stupid is a serious impediment.

I hope someone, somewhere titled a review "Clunk of the Titans" . . .

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

Hehe! Exactly. I called it a total chariot wreck in my Furniture article.

I saw just about everything Sellars staged at the ART. The brat oozed talent!