Is "ambient films" a thing? Should be.

yeah. exactly.

btw eno put out a video in the mid 80s--"thursday afternoon" it was called.

the vhs box asked you to put your cathode ray 4x3 tv monitor sideways

i watched it in the late 90s, on a computer, and i put the thing sideways

it was just the highly distorted image of an apparently sleeping woman, moving ever so little, colored blue, with some textures added. kinda fractal i guess? can't remember 100%. and then an ambient eno soundtrack.

i fell asleep of course. i slept with eno's woman. i did that. i did not regret it.

I could never bring myself to sit through 3 minutes of the Brakhage films if Lee and Text of Light were not performing at the same time. Pointless visual crap.

I agree, they can't be fully absorbed but that initial impression tells us if we want to commit more time to it. You could equally say that any good film or book only reveals its full meaning through multiple viewings and reads. But you'd have a far lesser sense of their potential worth by watching or reading them for 5 minutes, than you would looking at a painting for the same amount of time.

Equally, how many 1000+ books have you read multiple times compared with the number of paintings you've looked at over and over again?

That is true demonrail666. a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, but a good book has over a thousand words a page sometimes!

I have read stephen King's IT (980 pages) 4 times. I have read the Bible several times. I read The Stand (1100 extended eddition pages) 3 times. I have read Moby Dick (unabridged at 800+ pages) three times. I have read quite a few non-fiction books that run over 1000 pages, but not re-read them. I do not read much fiction. About 90% non-fiction to 10% fiction.



.

It's even worse with tv series. In a few years people who weren't around to watch Sopranos, Breaking Bad etc are gonna feel pressured to spend 100 hours of their life on just one series. It's gonna be interesting to see which ones last and which ones will be forgotten.

Ok, ok. whoah.... whoah.

Stephen King is one thing. His writing is so simplistic that it's pretty easy to pound through one of his longer books in a few days. I've read plenty of more thematically and linguistically dense books — longer ones, too — just in the "epic fantasy" subgenre. Simple shit though, still.

But The Bible?! Really? You've read The Bible "several times?" First of all... are you lying? If not, then... WHY have you done that?

I'll freely admit to never having read The Bible from cover to cover. And I likely never will. I've read a pretty good portion of it, but only in brief chunks at really weird/desperately boring times in my life.

Unless you're a pastor or a priest, or a professor of classics or some shit with a PhD in religious philosophy, what reason could you possibly have for reading THE BIBLE several times?

The Bible for better or for worse is a reference point for a multitude of art and culture. There are plenty of reasons for reading the Bible, or any religious text, outside of being a student or pastor. Even if one is not religious those stories can still be beautiful, relatable and wise.
I respect any study of religious texts. It is a great source of inspiration and critical thinking if read the right way. How many great paintings, novels, films or even song lyrics mirror or reference the Bible? Even speeches.

And regards to having time for Ulysses: it's a marathon not a sprint. A chapter a day or every other day. It was serialized just like any TV show and can be read that way. Plus if you arent trying to unturn every stone in the book it's actually fun as hell (in my opinion at least). I think this can apply to most of the marathon books.

As far as painting goes I would find it hard to appreciate something like a Rothko without investing enough time in it.

^^ i had to read ulysses in a hurry for a college course and found the irish tapes on the basement of georgetown university and listened to them that way as i read.

but anna karenina i read episodically like a good XIX century novel should be.

as for the bible-- it depends. the gospels were written for morons so you can read them in no time.

genesis and exodus are fun mythical shit. except for the begats. begat begat begat.

the book of numbers however--ha! i triple-dog dare you.

there is a lot of dense bureaucratic bullshit in the jewish bible. i don't think anybody except for yeshiva students has ever read those pages.

Yikes. Having a deadline for Ulysses must have sucked the fun right out of it.

And yeah I guess I overlooked shit like Numbers or Leviticus. Gross! But come on Job is gorgeous.

yeah. job is world-class shit.

the story of david and batsheba is also great. unfortunately too short. could have used more exposition and extensive dialogue ha ha ha.

Ruth is a beautiful story.

Oh, I see the appeal of reading the Bible. I've never read it straight through, but I've read passages, psalms and epistles aplenty. For me, it's a hunt and peck kind of thing. If I skim through enough pages, I'm bound to find something interesting, if not outright beautiful, as you suggest.

But I don't think I would ever pick up the freaking Bible and read it straight through like a novel. Though I might, because I have a massive appreciation for religious texts and studies myself, and I am fascinated by religion in general.

Several times though? Really? That, I just don't get. It's like ... I don't know... Watching The Godfather trilogy for months on end. Sure, it's quite a thing. But what do you gain from saying, "I'm in the mood to read/watch a movie, and even though there's an infinite number of books/movies I've never read/seen, for some reason I'd rather just read the Bible/watch the Godfathet a bunch of times. That'll be sweet.

Do not get.

The Bible is a seriously fucked up book. Iron Age nonsense. Does it have cultural significance today? Unfortunately, yes. As to your other tomes, there's a lot more Melville out there than M Dick, and Stephen King, really?

THE GRIFTERS



holy fuck was that a disturbing movie

4/5 i guess

now that we have a grifter as president one has to learn the subject

Interview With the Vampire

The main frustration is that the best characters (Armand and Lestat) are so marginal in the film, compared with Louis (a horribly miscast Brad Pitt). Not a problem in the book sequels that dedicate whole books to them - and I'm sure the intention was to do the same in a series of films, but it never happened, so this feels more like an unfulfilled teaser. Still a good watch, though.

SAVED!



this was billed as a comedy, and while it is that in the sense of "happy endings enjoyed by all" it's not a funny-ha-ha movie in the least. more like a drama really. had a couple of lolworthy moments which were seen in the trailers around 12 years ago but not much more. 2/5 did not like.

GROSSE POINTE BLANK

yeah, that's the sountrack album cover and it's fitting because it was a fun soundtrack. as a movie it's not the best, but as an action comedy it's great-- it's funny, and it has good action, and that's exactly what i wanted, plus the soundtrack was enjoyable. in that regard, 5/5, send me more in this genre for mindless weekend fun.

You should like some of the Elmore Leonard adaptations: Get Shorty; Out of Sight (and Jackie Brown, obviously). Leonard's the master of that crime/comedy thing and his novels usually translate really well to film. Avoid Be Cool, though. It's a sequel to Get Shorty but awful.

In the same genre, Guy Ritchies Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels, Rock n Rolla and Snatch

ah yeah, watched get shorty ages ago, unfortunately for me i had to write a paper about "race" and ended up obsessing about their negative portrayal of bolivians, ha ha ha. that kind of ruined it for me.

but i'll take a 2nd look.

jackie brown was great though.


i have lock stock *next in line* in my action queue actually, thanks. will look for the others as well.

--

i have kinachi okamoto's KILL! at home, which is presumably a samurai/giallo parody, and it's based on the same novel as SANJURO

also have coming soon in that similar vein: 3 kings (watched already a couple of times, always good), kill me 3 times, 7 psychopaths (wow, a lot of numbers in that little lot, what's up w/ that, adds up to 13, lucky number).