finding myself out of school and without a job, i tend to melt into unremarkable days of nothingness that seam into one another. my sleep time continuously gets later and later which causes me to stay in bed til noon, 1pm which further pushes back my bed time. whatta cycle. this is summer. my misanthropic self grows increasingly negative meanwhile, which adds to my choice to stay cooped up in my small room.
(this explains my 4 AM post, you see)
you want to know what's really annoying? being up til 5 AM and hearing the chirping of those early morning birds that tell you it's time to get up... they annoy me for the same reason- i'm trying to sleep!! except i haven't started yet...
(though my tongue may not (fortunately) taste it, my mind keeps pushing the taste of miso soup in my mouth.)
vivre sa vie, film en douze tableaux (1962), jean-luc godard
this past friday i went to go see the last showing of
vivre sa vie at the music box theatre. i had made a note a month ago to see it because i didn't want to pass up the chance to see an old film be projected in the theater, and on a nicer 35mm print too.
i missed the first 10 minutes because i circled the block a good four times because each time i'd see a parking space on the opposite side only to find that it had been taken and there was now an open space on the side i was previously on.
anyway, the film was in the smaller theater 2; the size and apparent closeness took me by surprise when i walked in to take a seat. what i noticed right away that bothered me was that about the top 10% of the image was cut off; it was projecting on the curtain and frequently resulted in odd head framing. if you're going to show a special print of an old film, why not make sure it is done right???
again, anyway, the film progressed in 12 parts which were punctuated with title cards containing brief ideas/stories/places of what was to follow: the stranger, gunshots, champs elysees, nana wonders whether she is truly happy, etc. i don't care to go too deeply into the film as there's enough said out there and, with the nature of french new wave, some things were not intended to have any meaning at all anyway. that makes me sound lazy but that's alright. i suppose i'll contradict myself and go into it a bit anyway. i did pay particular attention to the camera movement and framing. there was this one peculiar movement in the restaurant scene where nana is talking to this guy. it's a single, very long shot where the camera literally picks up and moves to frame one character at a time. the other character is framed almost completely out so there is heavy negative space. why not just have a wide enough shot to see both characters converse with one another??! who knows. i don't remember their conversation anymore but the likely explanation would be that it separated each person's dialogue and gave it more importance- forced you to look and pay attention to it.
another thing i paid particular attention to was the editing, which goes along with the shots/coverage godard wanted. there, of course, were not many cuts in a scene. like
band of outsiders (which i studied for my editing class), godard held the shot and let the characters move freely around in the frame. if nana turned around to talk to someone behind her, we looked at the back of her head until she was done. it was different, definitely. the film definitely made me think about what i would and wouldn't be able to get away with if i were to employ similar editing styles to my films now.
something else i thought about besides film aspects was the french. sometimes i'd read the title cards in french to see if i could understand them without reading the english subtitles (which is another thing i'd like to complain about: they were plain white and shown directly over the image, which rendered you unable to understand anything if the scene was bright and made it look really silly when the shot was tightly framed). sometimes i read too slowly and the scene would begin before i finished reading the rest of it. but i was very proud of myself in this one particular shot in which we see the contents of a letter nana is writing. godard chooses to show the letter from beginning to end (again, this mostly would not fly in present day), contemplations, slow writing and all. i was happy that i was able to understand the majority of the letter and only had to look to the subtitles for one part where she writes that her hair grows fast.
anyway i really liked the use of sound and image in the part of the film where the pimp explains the ins and outs of being a prostitute. it was a simple voice-over narration but it played particularly well because of the question/answer form that it was presented in. nana's naivete and his monotone instructions added something to it.
also, near the end of the film, there is a very long scene in which nana engages in a conversation with an old man ("the philosopher") about words, language, and love. there were some really great things said in there but this is the only one i found that i liked:
Nana: Shouldn't love be the only truth?
The Philosopher: For that, love would always have to be true... i have to say the ending was pretty abrupt and actually made me chuckle at its nonsense. before we are able to process what happened we are presented with a quick FIN. ahah. overall, though, i did enjoy the film and was glad i was able to experience it in the theater.
hmmm now that i've written that i've forgotten everything else i wanted to mention.
on the topic of film, i have the following arriving to me:
12 angry men
city of god
the curious case of benjamin button (2-disc criterion collection)
days of heaven
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
the fallvery happy :)
also i think i'll be seeing UP in 3D this weekend! hope it's good.
for some reason i've been sucked into the idea of netbooks. i had never intended on buying one but the other day i just started looking up one in particular (because of a tech vidcast i was watching... that i was doing a transcription for on mturk bla bla). i think i am set on buying the acer aspire somethingsomething.. 7501h? can't believe i remembered that. anyway, it's just a nice sized 11.6", full sized keyboard, LED widescreen, 1" thick, 3 pound, wifi enabled netbook... nice specs eh! and it'll be $380 since i'll be getting the battery that'll last 8 hours. not bad! i just always wanted a laptop in the back of my head for my travels and this sounds like it should work out perfectly. :] if not that one, then i'll be looking for another one...
anyway i think i should sleep soon and i've rambled enough. but i would like to share my love and admiration for the work at gelaskins.com. such nice work, want them all! i have about 30 open tabs of skins to look through... -__-
