Monday, March 28, 2011

Two Trailers for Two Great Movies


 

Spontaneous Jottings

These 2 entries are from my "city notebook"--a little notebook I take with me into the city. The second is a response to a display window at the museum of natural history.

Train

Today is a day for description—for exploring, for inquiring, for nosing down the necks of long, bell-shaped flowers. Today is a day for discovery. So I vroom along the track—its brass rails ensconced like serpents in the snow—rushing forward, sweeping forward, without out a single regret that I have decided to spend the day alone, or that I continued to the train station, even after having lost my cell along the way. It lies, entrenched somewhere in the snowy path I took to arrive at the Bronxville station. Of course, I was not silly enough to go on without spending some time scavenging for it. But as I retraced my steps quite a few times and still could not find it, I decided to go on ahead. A phone can be replaced—but a day… alas, a day cannot. Why should one fuss, then? I rush forward, sweep forward, past slate-colored pebbles, fences and birds, under bridges, past other trains. The train rocks hither and thither, up and down. This is not the lulling lisp of the canoe or the boat, but the buzzing race of the train. It buzzes, it shifts, like a steed when urged onward by the whip of a coachman. We the passengers are the steed—its organs. We are whipped onward, urged onward—pursued— (here is the bell: “Harlem”) mesmerized by the metallic serpents leading us this way and that through the snow. We stop; we gallop. Smoke trails up from the rooftops. Now, we are an earthworm in the ground. (How amusing it is to think of all these unusual things, while a spectacled man in a green sweater reads his newspaper beside me, while Japanese words flute back and forth in front of me. What do these words mean?) The train stops.

The Birds of Australia

The hills undulate—mounting, delving, dipping—swelling like the waves of a sea, up and down. And so we dip with the waves, down the ‘eucalyptus- clad’ hills, as the little placard reads. What a lovely view! Let us remove our socks and our shoes. Let us sink our feet into the mulchy earth, from which wan shrubs shoot. Let us watch the myriad birds. Indeed, as you may have already noticed, a Dusky Swallow is perched in front of your face. It is ordinary looking enough. Perhaps what makes it so interesting is the way is stays still for you, staring ahead. Other birds scavenger through the leaves, through the earth. They peek ‘down,’ as if ‘down’ were off a cliff or into a well. Yet ‘down’ is merely the veins on a leaf, a caterpillar—white, slender—creeping between the weeds, between the stalks that appear to him as giant bamboo, between the shadows that the stalks form—lined, clustered. How exquisite to crawl through, between the stalks, as if— and yet who knows?

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

ALSO...


This song makes me feel really cool, like strutting with leather jackets being a member of the Strokes cool and I'm not cool........ okay maybe I'm just a little cool but I think you get it. I think I'll go saunter off somewhere and spit or something while this song plays now. coolcoolcoolcoolcool



(whyz I so cheesy? Iz don't know)

PS. its Melissa's birthday tomorrow. If she ever would posts she'd know that I wish her a happy birthday here on this very blog. Ohya

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Angles.

This song is made of unicorns and Jesus. (yes I like it that much)
Also Julian Casablancas in Burberry can do no wrong. AmIrightladies?

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

The Murderers Are Among Us Review, by Danny de la Rocha

The Murderers Are Among Us


On October 15, 1946, the first post-World War II German film, The Murderers Are Among Us, premiered in the Admiralspalast in the Soviet sector of Germany. The film, set in the dreary, rubble-leaden streets of Berlin, tells the story of a former military surgeon, Dr. Hans Mertens, striving to make sense of his life amid the chaos of the post-war world. Like the landscape that surrounds him, Dr. Merten’s internal self is in ruins. Consumed by his depression and terrible memories of the war, he turns to alcohol. It is only through the love and compassion of Susanne Wallner—a young, beautiful concentration camp survivor—that Hans is able to reconcile his traumatic past with a recovering Germany. His desire to avenge the innocent victims of a mass shooting on their “murderer,” Captain Ferdinand Brückner, is what drives most of the plot. This desire for justice presents Dr. Mertens with a dilemma: he can either yield to his compulsion to kill Captain Brückner himself or, more fortuitously, have him put on trial for his crime. Hans’s dilemma is essentially the people’s dilemma—the people, i.e., directly affected by the Second World War. With all the fighting done, it was only expected that several “murderers” were, in fact, “among [them]”—those murderers who managed to evade being prosecuted after the war. Aside from effectively capturing the dismal atmosphere of a berubbled Berlin, The Murderers Are Among Us urges members of the film’s audience, who may be in similar predicaments to Hans’s, not to take justice into their own hands; but rather, to leave justice up the the law. Order cannot be built upon chaos. And in 1946, when the world hung precariously on its war-worn thread, it was necessary that as much order as possible was maintained—especially in issues of crime and prosecution, which were then ubiquitous.

It is not surprising, therefore, to read that “the film was [originally] supposed to be named The Man I will kill and Mertens was supposed to succeed in killing Brückner, but the script and the title were changed because the Soviets were afraid that viewers could interpret that as a call for vigilante justice.” Staudte’s original intention to have Brückner killed in the film suggests the ‘‘people’s’’ inclination to avenge innocent war victims on their unprosecuted oppressors. The Soviets’ decision to alter the film’s conclusion, on the other hand, indicates the careful measures that were taken to counter vigilante justice. Interestingly enough, Mertens’s moral dilemma is itself present in the Soviet-Staudte effort to produce The Murderers Are Among Us, in that both of Mertens’s approaches to bring about justice are represented.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Original Gangsta (i.e. nicky) breaks from studies

preeeeeaaaach


                              I want Mary Kate hair.

\
Marie??! Ah Oui

What up?!


Gatico? Gatico!


oh Karl makin jokes

mhm.

mmm

I have the same Sperrys. I know, bug the fuh out.

You better recognize