Book Shopping along Laurel Avenue

...is a Saturday afternoon...

Initially, we have Truffaut speaking of Jules et Jim (1966)

On the other hand, I am having preoccupations of my itinerary this afternoon. As soon as I finished watching the controversial Un Chant d'Amour (1950) in the order of understanding Jean Genet as a homophile, and the vehement contraption he developed on that, i wanted to have coffee at Starbucks and write on my dear old 200-page diary abouth the influence of Genet to Warhol and Warhol to LaBruce. The complication of such itenary is melancholia. I have been locked on a strange mood yesterday, coupled by my incapacity to create my long due stylistic analysis on Tokyo Story (1953). I do not seem to make a first sentence, and my outline sucks. Also, I am greatly frustrated by my resistance to reread Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov because of my lack of spirit, the lusterless boredom of nothingness.

Un Chant d'Amour (or A Song of Love)

So i went out in search for the time lost. I walked and had an idea, by 220pm, i wanted to shop for books, lots of them. I ended up at Laurel Avenue at the campus where two bookshops can be located: one, on top of Zago/Mister Doughnut Stall, where i also purchase most of my DVDs, and the other one, at the corner of Laurel Avenue and A. Roces Avenue in front of the Post office. I am in search of something from philosophy, maybe because i miss it as indicated by my previous post just this morning. I settled in at the second shop for lower book prices and i made a reservation on some books to be picked up after i have finished writing this post.

And i have made choices:



Hopefully, some truth will come, somehow, somewhere, on my existential journey, in the light of life and death and feelings of despair.

Cheer up, myself.

Ciao!
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Spinoza, Wittgenstein and Nietzsche

...i miss them...

Before I ever engaged on film studies, I was totally immersed in philosophy. I am and always have been in love with it. A field of inquiry that connects everything that we see and do not. A peak, a zenith of every human understanding, the closest to truth and furthest from mental and metaphysical blunder, the meaning of one's life, P-H-I-L-O-S-O-P-H-Y. Marvin, you know my work on this. Even though i have shifted from field to field, from theoretical physics to literature to philosophy to film studies, what remains in my sun-colored Barcelona diary from December 2006 - September 2008 are my multi-colored thoughts, scattered in all directions, here and there, up then down, reflecting on the whole expanse of the history of philosophy, and the metaphysical truth of my existence.

I miss them so much. They are such philosophers who all wanted in life is to encompass the totality of reality, and the unreality which continuously blurs it.

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Fun Facts:

This is how Spinoza proves the existence of God taken from Part I: Concerning God of his magnum opus, Ethics.

"The potentiality of non-existence is a negation of power, and contrariwise the potentiality of existence is a power, as is obvious. If, then, that which necessarily exists is nothing but finite beings, such finite beings are more powerful than a being absolutely infinite, which is obviously absurd ; therefore, either nothing exists, or else a being absolutely infinite necessarily exists also. Now we exist either in ourselves, or in something else which necessarily exists (see Axiom. i. and Prop. vii.). Therefore a being absolutely infinite-in other words, God (Def. vi.)—necessarily exists."

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Ciao!
***

Five Images for Rossellini...

...for the love of it...

From the Flowers of St. Francis (1950), a different Rossellini, the ascetic, neorealistic Rossellini, a post-Roma citta aperta feature, a film of religious hegemony, Catholic and full of life.

Ciao! Must sleep and wake up early!

***

120 Days of Sodom (1975)

... is a new frontier for cinema studies...

Warning: For Adult Readers only, or for those who have reached the edge of cinematic quintessence.


[pic from]

A shot from Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

As Roman Abramovich, Russian billionaire, ate his $47,221 (2, 251, 969.49php) lunch at Nello's up at Madison Avenue, Upper East Side, New York with six to ten people, I was standing at the port of Caticlan with the beaming sun (or Le Soleil in French) waiting for our automobile service to park. We were fifteen science clubbers half-awake on our arrival from the island of Boracay. I came to think that my itinerary is lost, and that i shouldn't be there at that time, and that I should be watching more films to meet some deadlines.

Three days later, I braced myself to watch three films in succession: Ozu's Tokyo Story(1953), Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), and Pasolini's Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Of course, the first two are regulars on my list, however, the third one is my nth attempt to watch it.

There exist films that obliterate old traditions of filmic themes. Usually, these films have a remarkable and, surprisingly, high aesthetics that they cannot be denied as an art form. This mechanistic limitation is highly controversial, and it has spurred dozens of debate about the reception of such films, and also the stylistics they involve. Such is Pier Paolo Pasolini's sad and violent Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom. Salo is controversial and it has always been. Salo has established grounds beyond the reach of my thumb, if there exists a 'thumb' that sets measurable standards on the 'viewabilty' of a film. But I am not a person to use such a thumb to elicit the importance and the unimportance of films, more so, to categorize films whether they are inherently filmic or not. Such complication is not applicable to the total elucidation of Salo.

Also, to view Salo in comparison with La Regle de Jeu (Renoir, 1939) or to Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) is insufficient. No proper relationship except, i think, a mise-en-scene comparison, can be established between 'canonical works' and Salo. Though, one can argue that Salo is itself a canon, but this may track a different set of arguments, maybe directed to the question of 'what makes a film a canon?'. If Salo is to be discussed, it requires three fundamental groundings: Ethics, at the zenith, Aesthetics, as a grounding, and Reception Theory, the link between them. Ethics, itself, is problematic as a field because of its split or multi-split perspective: Teleological and Ontological Ethics. Aesthetics, or the inquiry to art and beauty, have had developments for the past years, specifically film aesthetics with the publication of David Bordwell and Noel Caroll's book, Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Reception theory is going there.

To approach Salo, one can construct a formal analysis with an assumption that Pier Paolo Pasolini is a poet of cinema. Pasolini was a poet and always has been. Another alternative study is an auteur study of the film, to analyze Salo in relation to the body of Pasolini's work. An elucidation of the ethical grounds crossed with narratology and thematic analysis can also be established. A reception study, focusing on the cognitive effect of each piercing image is also recommendable.

These suggestions are only limited to my proposed groundings namely ethics, aesthetics, and reception theory. Other groundings can be proposed to describe, evaluate and analyze Salo. This is to say that after 30 years of neglect, with the coming of a wider distribution of Salo in DVD, film studies can benefit equally as Salo could possibly have if a series of studies can be established. That's all for now. Ciao!

Salo. Like hell.

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I am excited to watch Amarcord by Fellini, and Maurice Pialat's Loulou. . . More Bresson this November I hope.
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Plotlessness...

...or simply as it is...

Camera on a sushi-conveyor...

I got this video from Harry's Unspoken Cinema, and it is beautiful! I remember how F.W. Murnau crafted the first ever artistically important technique on camera movement in his 1924 film The Last Laugh. Dennis Wheatley and Stefan McClean have created something else, not Murnau's movement but beyond it. Absolutely fantastic!

Le Soleil de Boracay

...on a lonely planet...


I have been on a journey, a whole week, seven full days of silence, of souls and minds going around and about, a journey from a distance, bellowing, into the deep calm waters, one cannot truly explain the ecstasy of le soleil de Boracay...

Just settling in Manila right now, preparing for my second semester this year. Will get back in a couple of days. I miss you all!

Bande A Part (1964): A Godard Syndrome

...is a Godard-for-all...

Nouvelle Vague, is it?

I miss film. I have two more days to end my semester. After finishing two main requirements for my Chemical Engineering Elective, ChE 198, I had another one of those 'Godard' moments. I could not recall the exact feeling, but I could characterize it as a robust cinephiliac desire of wanting more film experiences.

It is evident that most of my recent film viewings are a recollection of my old desire from mainstream classics when, from a quick observation of a close, he said: "Wala ka na bang bagong classics?" (Do you have any new classics?) By 'classics', I mean from Classical Hollywood Cinema.


With Godard syndrome running in my head, I recorded about three instances of re-watching Bande a Part (1964) for past the few weeks, a high incidence of cinephilia. Equally relevant is Frank Capra's A Wondeful Life (1946) which merited two viewings this month. Also, a rare occurence is my attempt to rewatch David Lynch's Inland Empire (2004) three times but at the strike of the first two hours, i retaliated by watching The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) for three times also! Lynch is, what can I say, prodigious is his surreal mantra? A question of form, indeed!

Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) consumed 12 hours of my life last month, and for the love of God and his children, I have to keep it inside my closet to give way for other works for if not, i would spend the next month rewatching it until my eyes turned black.

Gladly, after the first half of my hell week, I am still alive. Two more days, and I am off to Wonderland.

Ciao guys!
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