Happy Late Night, Sweet Baby,
I liked your photo this morning, your selfie w/ viola, and I am looking forward to your cover song. Don't tell what it is, let it be a surprise, but if you wanna give a hint go ahead, lol. Maybe an obscure hint, hard to figure out. :) I am betting you will play the viola parts just fine. The hard part has got to be the bowing, right? But you will get it down. Just record the rest of the song and then focus on the viola parts. That is a beautiful instrument you have. :)
I had a Basic Tuesday (Golden Agers), except......Grim texted me and wanted to come over for an afternoon CSUN walk. He was gonna meet me at 3pm. I got back from Pearl's a few minutes before that, so I went upstairs to my apartment, and when I came back down ten minutes later to meet Grim, there was a small crowd gathered in front of the building that had not been there when I got home. I noticed police cars, and a fire engine, and then I saw something that looked absurd on our little side street. There was an overturned car lying there in the middle of the street with it's windows broken and all it's air bags deployed.
How the heck did a car overturn on our little street, I wondered. I heard other people asking the same question. Then Grim walked up and asked the same thing. Grim being Grim - talkative and inquisitive - he sought out the driver, who was unhurt (no one was hurt, thank goodness), and the driver - a young CSUN student - gave Grim a total baloney story of going "about 30 mph, driving slightly in the middle of the road, and then swerving to avoid an oncoming car. Then the guy hit two cars that were parked at the curb, which he says caused him to overturn. He must have told the cops the same story, and because there were no eyewitnesses, no one could dispute him. But there is no way that could have happened. I live there, I drive it several times a day, and if you were going only 30 and happened to swerve into cars parked at the curb, you would hit them and come to a stop. The probable truth is that the guy was going about 50, and accellerating, and glanced down at his phone, because all these CSUN drivers do (it is of course an epidemic). In that split second, with his eyes off the road he drifted to the right, then saw he was gonna hit a parked car, and so jerked the wheel hard to the left, which - combined with his speed and the rebound from the parked car - caused him to overturn.
I should be an insurance investigator, and the guy is gonna get a surprise when the investigators do turn up a surveillance camera that has footage of his accident. Long story short : I am glad the guy was okay, but I hope they take his licence away because I am sick of the way these people drive, with the phone in one hand. Can't people take their eyes off their phones for even a minute? Well anyway, end of tirade. I love my hometown of Northridge, and I have lived next to CSUN (at a few locations) since 1968. But I hate what has become of the traffic situation, and it's almost enough to make me wanna move out to the desert or somewhere. I mean, I won't, but I feel like I want to, because it's not just the endless river of cars, which is bad enough, but it's the fact that a high percentage of the drivers are staring at their phones. This is again proved out by the amount of cars you see with their emergency flashers on, pulled over haphazardly anywhere they please. Emergency flashers used to signify a real emergency, but now they are used whenever CSUN students get a text, or whenever they feel a need to run up to a pal's apartment for a few minutes, while leaving their car in the middle of the street.
It's an Era Of Distraction. Anyway, end of tirade. I love my town but I hate what the university has done to it by admitting 42,000 students - way too many for our area - and offering them minimal parking with no traffic routing through the university itself. CSUN has ruined the traffic situation in Northridge.
Well, anyhow......
Tonight's movie was "Nocturnal Animals", an artful and weird movie about......hmmmm, I suppose you could say it was about the nature of relationships, and how they collide with ambition. I'm not sure. Anyhow, it's really two movies in one. When it began, I thought I was gonna have to turn it off in the first few minutes because it appeared to be the story of the kind of people I really can't stand : pretentious L.A. Art People (Amy Adams and Armie Hammer) from the hillsides of the Santa Monica mountains. Totally empty inside, and arrogant. But then I thought, well, maybe the director is making a comment on that lifestyle. The movie looked good, excellent photography and set design. So I kept watching, and then it totally changed and became another movie entirely. Suddenly Jake Gyllenhaal is driving his wife and daughter through the middle of nowhere in Texas, in the middle of the night, when they are suddenly being terrorised by two carloads of young psychos, who ultimately run Jake and family off the road. This story then becomes the bulk of the film, and it's really a horror story in the "Last House On The Left" tradition. However, it's a trick because the horror story really only exists as a book that Amy Adam's ex-husband - also played by Jake Gyllenhaal - has written and sent to her for her critique.
At this point everything becomes very psychological; an examination of the nature of love relationships played out against a "Texas Chainsaw" background.
The movie is well worth seeing (though violent and horrible in some aspects), and it looks fantastic because director Tom Ford has a background in design, and fashion of all things. It has an interesting premise, and is expertly edited for maximum mystery and exploration of undercurrents. Also, the acting is top notch. Gyllenhaal and Adams never turn in anything less than a great performance in all of their movies, and in particular Michael Shannon gives an Oscar caliber performance as a country sheriff's detective who is out to nail the bad guys. The "Texas" part of the movie could have been a movie all by itself.
The whole thing is really great - it has a psychological feel that you don't see often - and everything else mentioned adds up to Ten.
I'd give it a huge Two Thumbs Up, except for one thing, and unfortunately it's a biggie.
The director doesn't quite know what he is trying to say, and he therefore has been unable to connect and drive home the various subtexts he presents. And, as in so many fims of the modern age, he leaves the audience hanging at the end. Tom Ford has even said, in interviews (as per IMDB) that "it's up to the audience to figure out the ending".
Well guess what? Forget that. Screenwriters of the great films never left it "up to the audience" because they were creative enough to write an ending for themselves. That's why it's called a Story. A story has a beginning, a middle and an end. And unless you are a great, legendary Art Film director ala David Lynch or Jean-Luc Godard or somebody with that kind of talent, don't try to do The Vague Ending, because it shoots your whole movie down.
Also, if you are gonna amp up all of these psychological concepts, which he did to great effect in this film - then be prepared to tie them all up into some kind of statement.
But in "Nocturnal Animals" there was nothing. Just "Last House On The Left" as made by a highly skilled fashion and art designer, played out against a backdrop of pretentious L.A. Art People, who we already know are phony.
The bottom line is that director Ford could have had a classic here, if he perhaps had had some assistance with the writing or directing.
Nonetheless, it's still a good movie, but violent in places.
That's all I know for tonight, SB. I'm looking forward to your cover!
See you in the morn. I love you. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment