The American (2010)
George Clooney, Paolo Bonacelli and Violante Placido
Dir Anton Corbijn
Gifted photographer Anton Corbijn directed this movie about an assassin turning in one last contract before retiring. This is a well trodden trope, and is married to the assassin genre to the point of being inextricable. More attention seems to be paid to how the film looks than how the plot plays out but it does achieve a mood of languid ecstasy and regret which is not entirely unpleasant. There is some structure for the pastiche to stick to: Clooney drifts around unable to form meaningful connections to people lest they be killed, betray him, or reveal themselves to be agents set on killing him. He is a highly skilled gunsmith and the idea of craftsmanship resonates through the American beginning to end. This is something Corbijn must feel very personally as evidenced by any of his gorgeous videos for artists like Danzig, U2, Henry Rollins, and Nirvana. Some of his still photographs are iconic – as if Annie Leibovitz and Herb Ritts had a kid and the photos are of many of the same subjects as Leibovitz. He bridged the worlds of film and music videos with 2007’s Control which I have yet to see but have heard is a loving biopic about the life and death of Ian Curtis of Joy Division. I can’t image anyone could bring a better Ian Curtis to the screen, though, than Michael Winterbottom with 24 Hour Party People.
So you’ve got some shootings, orders from shady characters, meetings in train stations but mostly you have two things in this movie.
Beautiful Landscapes and
Italian hookers.
Sometimes you even get both in the same shot. There’s also a lot of gunsmithing – but little point in showing screen captures of it here when you’ve already seen the hills and the hookers. How can gunsmithing compete? All the women in the movie are beautiful, willing to share a bed with Clooney, and rarely clothed. I guess he’s George Clooney, they probably all would be but some might at least play hard to get, right?
The characters and their motivations seem a little minimally constructed, and the ending left me annoyed with its predictability but you couldn’t say it wasn’t easy on the eyes.
Posted in Movies
Tagged Assassins, Boobs, Form Over Function, George Clooney, Hookers, Italy, Photography, Weapons
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Powers SoCo Apple Crush
With all the fresh produce we bought this morning, we had a lot of things in mind to do with it. The first thing was to try out a recipe I saw yesterday on the Jameson’s facebook feed. I changed it up a little, tho. On my birthday Jamison’s stock gets a bump, and my bar is flush with what is an obvious gift for me from anyone who knows me. I have shifted to other Irish whiskeys after investigating the sectarian affiliations of the Jamison’s distillery, and reading about the horrible Jameson Cannibal affair. I don’t keep apple schnapps around. I’m more partial to cider, and Monica’s friend Evy C., an interesting and steadfast woman, gave her a juicer. It’s a real piece of machinery, and I use it quite a bit. Fresh orange juice? No problem. Carrot juice? Got it. Green Bean nectar, well you have to drink it quickly but we’re on top of that too. And, or course, cider. The remix consists of:
2 large granny smith apples
6 small red delicious apples
2 peeled lemons with a scrap of peel
1 peeled lime with a scrap of peel
2 shots Powers Irish Whiskey
1 shot Southern Comfort
lemon slices
Mix juice with booze, pour over ice, garnish with lemon slice, chill the fuck out.
the Southside Farmer’s Market
Southside Farmer’s Market
5875 Everhart Rd
Corpus Christi, TX 78413
Saturday, 9:00am – 11:30ish
This morning found my wife and I at Price’s Chef. It has kept its character through a change of ownership, and that’s no small feat. We used to eat there more often when she lived a little further South off Alameda, occasionally riding bikes there and back. Talk of politics can be overheard, like stinky cigar smoke mingling with the coffee at once disgusting you and making you want to light up.
From there headed over to the Farmer’s Market. I go out there first Saturdays and sharpen knives. It doesn’t make much money, but I like doing it. It’s a great place to talk to people you don’t know who are to a person nice and interested in the place we live.
It sits in the parking lot of, among other businesses, the Palace where we will often find pieces of costumes, beer bottles, and single stripper heels. This shoe was all the way out in the street as if she spun around so fast on the pole that it crashed through a limo-tint window and all the way out to the suicide lane. I’m a married man and I don’t go to strip clubs, but I couldn’t honestly say I’d never been to this one before. I have made significant contributions to the tuitions of numerous ‘struggling single moms.’
Next we hit the Fruit King on Morgan. We walked out with two more boxes of ripe fruit and vegetables. Inspirational music played through the stereo, and each transaction came with a blessing from the lady behind the register. I have a somewhat strained relationship with organized religion. I’ve been reading Christopher Hitchens and it doesn’t make it any easier to appreciate, but being blessed couldn’t hurt, and people being respectful of one another can’t be bad. What galls me is when religion is used to divide people. This goes back to politics. This week’s announcement of Rick Perry’s bid for President is truly chilling, with the combination of a leader who has done so much wrong in Texas and an electorate that is either informed and hopeless or ignorant and involved. It’s easy to argue against a lot of the crackpot nonsense of the fringe Right and the Tea Party, but it is hard to dispute that our government is broken; that it is being consumed by the long lived cancer of greed, and is little more now that a delivery system of money from those that work to those that don’t. But I keep my nose to the whetstone and work on what I can control, and I can keep hope, and keep a fiction of a better place in my head.
Posted in Corpus Lives
Tagged Everhart, Localvore, Pimps And Hos, Politics, Religion
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Edward, the family posessed cat, if he could have his way.
Edward strikes back
Posted in Funny Pics
Tagged Cats, Edward, Funny, Gifs
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The pending remodel
No, I’m not remodeling the house. I’ve moved this blog to a new host, and I’m still tying up some loose ends. If you see anything out of place, judge not. I acted out of frustration and abandoned the 6 months or so of hosting to move – and I’m so glad I did. My last server was, I think, moonlighting as a calculator.
I’ve spent a number of hours on this now. This is my personal blog, not tacotopia, and as such has been neglected. I installed wordpress early this year, switching from some ridiculous home-rolled abomination I’d forgotten since ’04. No worries though.
Earlier today I participated in the Bridgewalk – without a bridge. Alan Albin, from the DMD, was busy as always doing legwork to keep downtown from falling into the Gulf. I think I started using wordpress before him, but I think he’s become addicted and is producing scores of new sites.
People up early in the morning, if they’re not at work, are usually walking or running somewhere where no one else has been since the night before. You ever notice on every true crime show how the body is discovered by a jogger or a hiker? Fortunately, the only perfectly preserved body we came across was that of a survivor 57 T-Bird. Well worth the heatstroke.
Posted in Dispatches
Tagged Cars, Corpus Christi, DMD, Ford, Shoreline, Thunderbird
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Paris, Texas
Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, Nastassja Kinski
Directed by Wim Wenders, Written by Kit Carson and Sam Shepard
I watched this movie as a teen on cable, and I remember thinking it was boring artsy crap. Years later I watched Wings of Desire and liked it. More recently I watched the documentary collaboration between Wenders and Ry Cooder, the Buena Vista Social Club. It was beautiful and inspiring, with moving steadycam shots of decrepit, once lavish buldings. Each week I set up my tivo to record movies the following week, and Paris, Texas was one of the HD films that got pulled into the queue. Watching it now, it was an intensely personal experience. Everything in it worked at something buried in my subconscious, sweeping me up without me knowing it.
All the colors are pronounced, as photographed by Robby Müller, who is responsible for the looks of 24 Hour Party People, Dead Man, Barfly, =
To Live and Die in LA, and the legendary Repo Man. Nastassja Kinski is not believable as a Texan but is pretty as sin. There isn’t a sarcastic note in the whole picture.
Paris, Texas is a like a look back in time with an un-cynical and loving eye toward that most maligned decade, the 80s. In the parking lot pictured above you would see if you looked behind the building, the two dinosaurs which you also saw In Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. I’m waiting for posterity to take an objective look back at the 80s and to see it for what it really was, a beautiful period for film where some of the best movies ever were produced. You think I’m kidding, look at Raiders of the Lost Arc, Raging Bull, Silkwood, The Big Chill, Hoosiers, the Color of Money, Wall Street, Mississippi Burning, Do the Right Thing, Scarface, Full Metal Jacket, Blade Runner, The Empire Stikes Back, etc…
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