READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
may be Stroszek which I am watching now. This movie is exactly what a movie should be -- it is the ideal form "movie" that is in my mind when I give voice to the word. I think it is going to drive me to purchase a region-free DVD player -- am I right in thinking that such a thing exists? -- right now I can only watch it on my laptop and the image is pretty distorted; the characters and images on the screen are flattened so that it seems like you are looking up at the screen at a sharp angle.
I will try and figure out how to write a meaningful review of the movie and maybe post it later on.
(I wonder if this distortion is a property of the DVD rather than of the method of playing it. It would likely be cheaper to rent the DVD from Netflix, which will have a disk I can play on my TV set, than to buy a new DVD player. So that's what I'll do... Yep, strike all that above. I am watching the Netflix copy of the movie and it is sized properly. Way better this way.)
posted evening of September 20th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about The Movies
It doesn't really make sense to title the previous post "Replacing Aguirre in my affections"... I was meaning to get across my dawning feeling as I watched it, that maybe this is the greatest movie Herzog ever made. But actually it's great in a very similar way to how Aguirre is, though they are very different movies. I think maybe the signature feature of Herzog's story-telling -- as I watch his films anyway -- is the way he can bring me to identify with his characters at the same time as I see them as totally alien, completely different from me. So I'm inside Bruno's head and I'm freaking out about how weird and inexplicable he is. Well that and of course the amazing layout of images on the screen, and the fantastic soundtrack; these are more qualities Herzog's great films have in common...
“Silver Bell” performed by Chet Atkins and Hank Snow -- not actually on the Stroszek soundtrack, a different version of “Silver Bell” was on it and some different songs by Atkins. (Including “The Last Thing on My Mind&rdquo -- just fantastic.)
posted evening of September 20th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
I found a really well-written, informative review of Stroszek at Pajiba's Twisted Masterpieces. Recommended. Also, in comments thereto, the information that Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis killed himself after watching this film.
posted morning of September 24th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Werner Herzog
I wrote a brief review of Stroszek for The Great Whatsit's Thursday Favorites column. Check it out! If you're coming from there and want to read more about Stroszek, click the link below.
