happy birthday to my sister-friend laura rokas-bérubé 🖤
i watch a lot of old movies. for the most part they’re really good! but man, one thing they just could not get right in pre-1965 movies was people convincingly acting drunk (lol). it’s always this overwrought method acting bit . . . which is quaint in its own way but c’mon
correct
everything is bleak, relationships are transactional, there is no color or flavor to this world. there isn’t a single line of dialogue spoken until the 10 min mark
Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar-wai’s IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching musical soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past decade of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career.
A disillusioned killer embarks on his last hit but first he has to overcome his affections for his cool, detached partner. Thinking it’s dangerous and improper to become involved with a colleague he sets out to find a surrogate for his affections. Against the sordid and surreal urban nightscape (set in contemporary Hong Kong), he crosses path with a strange drifter looking for her mysterious ex-boyfriend and an amusing mute trying to get the world’s attention in his own unconventional ways.
damn! what an incredible film
a thing mccune and i used to do all the time was go to rudy’s in downtown oakland (RIP) or saturn cafe in berkeley (RIP) round about midnight and get black coffee and milkshakes. man that’s a good combination. and we’d just hang out talking about THIS and THAT while drinking both a hot and cold beverage at the same time. yeah . . . i love it
or we’d go to telegraph beer garden on a tuesday night and rachel would give us free coffee. and we’d sit on the picnic tables and Develop Crushes on the goth girls there
all i wanna do is drink coffee with my friends. you know? that’s the good stuff
man! what happened to what used to happen??
Jim Jarmusch combined his love for the ice-cool crime dramas of Jean-Pierre Melville and Seijun Suzuki with the philosophical dimensions of samurai mythology for an eccentrically postmodern take on the hit-man thriller. In one of his defining roles, Forest Whitaker brings a commanding serenity to his portrayal of a Zen contract killer working for a bumbling mob outfit, a modern man who adheres steadfastly to the ideals of the Japanese warrior code even as chaos and violence spiral around him. Featuring moody cinematography by the great Robby Müller, a sublime score by the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, and a host of colorful character actors (including a memorably stone-faced Henry Silva), GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI plays like a pop-culture-sampling cinematic mixtape built around a one-of-a-kind tragic hero.
