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'Flick-werk zusammengestückelte Arbeit; stümperhafte Arbeit, Pfuscherei; Sy Flickschusterei
(Wahrig - Deutsches Wörterbuch)
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Friday, May 30, 2003
Joy of X
My new love is the compact, powerful type. Deep, resonant voice without high or metallic overtones. Smooth skin that I thought at first might be cold to touch (but is actually quite, uhm, nice). At first, too, I thought that 12" might be disappointingly small. But it's pretty well propotioned so you don't really notice. And I have an additional 15" to plug in should the need arise. More importantly, I haven't found a single dead pixel yet.
Of course, it runs OS X and I have found nothing to complain about so far. Au contraire. In my next life, I want to be a Windows user - just for the pleasure of being able to make the switch from zero.
06:30 PM
Monday, May 05, 2003
Confession
I must admit, I don't quite know what to make of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (USA 2003, dir. George Clooney). Maybe it's because I haven't read the book (but neither has Ebert - thanks Mark) and therefor fail to catch the rich US-pop-cultural references. So this TV show-inventor and -host killed for the FBI on the side, using business trips for cover. We've seen that before. And this time, it looks like George Clooney had unlimited access to the dicareded props from movies like Catch Me If You Can or Boogie Nights. Perhaps Confessions is an ironic quot-o-rama of contemporary genre- and era. Well. It was not so bad that I wished I'd rented True Lies instead. And I was suspicious of Dr. Ross as a director in the first place.
But towards the end of the film, just before he does not die, Chuck Barris says this: "All my life, I wanted to write something that a lesser person would quote. Now I find out I'm the lesser person." Here's another persona (seeing as Confessions, the book, is supposed to be an autobiography, the Chuck Barris we seen on the screen is somewhat more than a character, yet less than a person) who's too dull even to play the lead role in his own life. So he does something that makes him stand apart from all the other extras. Kill for the FBI. No. Write a novel! Quite a postmodern twist. (Though quite unnoticed by the movie, which is borrowing and quoting so seriously it's rather post-post, if at all.)
07:45 PM
Sunday, May 04, 2003
HiFi
Nick Hornby's 1995 novel High Fidelity is a lot like Benjamin von Struckrad-Barre's Soloalbum. Both novels are about the importance of compilation-tapes in the mating ritual of young(ish) urban males. Only High Fidelity is set in London. And Stuckrad-Barre's protagonist becomes famous in the end as gets laid rather more often than he'd wish. Or was that in the follow-up? Reading a couple of BvSB's novel is like watching VIVA all day and spooning Nutella from the jar.
Anyway, while Soloalbum-guy gets lucky, Hornby's Rob Flemming ends up with the woman who's left him before p.1 and who never really liked his compilations, to begin with. And he does so, not in frustration but with the good resolve to get a grip, this time. "Tonight, for the first time ever, I can sort of see how it's done." This is because from reenacting love according the the Beatles, he has grown into the awareness that there are things to life that pop-music can't cover. E.g. death. It's the death of his (ex-)lover's father that triggers a catharsis which leaves Rob the college-drop out and owner of a disfunct record-store equipped to follow the script of his blatantly meaningless life almost cheerfully. So far so dull. Esp. the catharsis-bit is a bit too soppy for my taste.
But it's not the bland end that marks the difference between High Fidelity and Soloalbum, it's the embracing of meaninglessness. Rob Flemming is so dull, he can't even be the hero of his own book. "If I do okay with women it's not because of the virtues I have, but because of the shadows I don't have." (edition Indigo, 200) And this is the quiet tragic of HiFi: the life so insignificant that a heartbreaking chorus (+ strings) only provides momentary elevation. HiFi is different not because it offers escape into the exceptional but it is just as bad as it gets.
favorite quotes:
You need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actorsm and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to and who'd believe in this character then? (67)
I can see that now. I can see everything once it's already happened - I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand. (74)
But nobody ever writes about how it is possible to eascape and rot - how escape can go off at half-cock, how you can leave the suburbs for the city but end up living a limp suburban life anyway. (114)
But I find myself worrying away at that stuff about pop music again, whether I like it because I'm unhappy, or whether I'm unhappy because I like it. (137)
I didn't say I was happy with my life. I said that I was fine, as in no colds, no recent traffic accidents, no suspended prison sentences, but never mind. (154)
"Ken didn't die for your benefit, you know. It's like everyone's a supporting actor in the film of your life story." - Of course. Isn't that how it works for everybody? (189)
You might say, banal. But that's just what I meant ...
10:25 PM
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