#actually had to edit their eyes all white because I made a mistake coloring Jim's eyes in and I just rolled with it

[blimbo-buddy]

My various lumpfish of different colors. Very beautiful, very powerful

[lefilmdujour]

Another 500th movie celebration

My Tumblr just reached the 1000 movies mark, so I figured it’s time I write something about my last 2 and a half years of movie viewings and recommend 50 more movies out of the ones I’ve seen since the last 500th movie celebration.

Times have been strange in the last couple of years, and my movie habits have reflected it. There have been times when watching films was all I would do, but there have also been moments of complete disconnection from the medium. I went from watching several movies every day to spending months avoiding anything to do with sitting through a movie. 

Part of it had to do with the space I share with my demons, but mostly there has been a change of pace. My laptop died, it took me months to get another one only to also die on me. On the other hand, an enormous chunk of my viewings have been in cinemas or squats, which is a very positive change but led me to watch more recent films in detriment of classics or ancient underappreciated gems. I also got my first TV in over a decade this month, and my very first Netflix account last week, so I may be exploring streaming a bit more, although so far I am not finding the experience  at all satisfying. All pointless excuses since I went through 500+ movies in a little over two years, which is not bad at all.

It was hard to pick only 50 movies this time, and the list would have probably looked a little different if I did it tomorrow. Regardless, here are 50 movies I recommend, and why. Random order, all deserving of love and attention.

Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff) - This movie is unfairly  ignored in the best comic book adaptation lists out there on the internet. The opening scene is memorable, the soundtrack is a lesson in early Blues, and the characters are quirky and well written.

Hate (Mathieu Kassovitz) - An absolute classic about the class system in France and its tendency to end up in riots. Beautiful shot and highly quotable. Saw it a few times, the last of them with a live score from Asian Dub Foundation. One of the greats.

Audition (Takashi Miike) - Whenever I’m asked about my favorite horror movie, I tend to fall back on this one. Audition is very slow, starting out soft but with an underlying tension that builds until the absolutely gut-wrenching finale that makes us question our own sanity. Brilliant subversion of the “hear, don’t see” rule, just the though of some of the sounds used in the most graphic scenes still send shivers down my spine.

Kedi (Ceyda Torun) - A Turkish documentary about street cats, what’s there not to like?

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Park Chan-wook) - The third in the loosely-connected Vengeance trilogy by Park Chan-wook, and my favorite of the bunch, especially the Fade to Black and White edition, in which the movie very gradually loses color as the violence grows. A visual masterpiece.

Paterson (Jim Jarmusch) - The poetry of routine. Adam Driver is one hell of an actor.

Love Me If You Dare (Yann Samuell) - Two people that obviously love each other but are not mature enough to follow it through. Frustrating. Beautiful. Made me sob.

The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel) - I am realizing that a good part of this list deals with frustration. A group of people finds themselves unable to leave a party for no apparent reason. Buñuel is a genious in surrealism, I have yet to watch most of his Mexican period.

The Mutants (Teresa Villaverde) - Kids on the run from themselves. Strong visuals, very moving interactions at times. A hard but very rewarding watch. Teresa Villaverde’s entire filmography also gets a seal of approval.

Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar) - A movie about sexuality and problematic relationships, taken to unbelievable extremes.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu) - The adventures of Mr. Lazarescu as he struggles to find help for the sudden pain he feels and ends up being passed on from hospital to hospital. Felt very real. Sold as a comedy, but I found it terrifying. 

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos) - A classic greek tragedy brought to the modern age. My favorite Lanthimos film, ranking slightly below Dogtooth. The deadpan acting and the unnerving sound serves as wonderful misdirection.

It’s Such a Beautiful Day (Don Hertzfeldt) - Three shorts stitched together to create a confusing, philosophical, absurd, funny and deep masterpiece. The animation skills of Don Hertzfeldt needs more recognition.

Amores Perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu) - A movie so good it didn’t even had an English name. Three tales of love, violence and loss, all linked by a dog.

Endless Poetry (Alejandro Jodorowsky) - Jodorowsky’s romanticized auto-biography, played by his own sons.Bohemian and poetic.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer) - Show this movie to someone who refuses to watch silent movies. The acting is so impactful and emotional, and the use of close ups was highly unusual for the time. A 90-plus years old masterpiece.

Everything is Illuminated (Liev Schreiber) - Sunflowers.

Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan) - I have a soft spot for war movies, as to remind myself how brutal people can be to their fellow man and how meaningless the concept of nations truly is. This movie in particular achieves greatness due to its usage of sound, the best I’ve heard in recent memory.

Vagabond (Agnès Varda) - Be careful of what you wish for yourself, you may end up frozen and miserable in a ditch (spoilers for literally the first few seconds of the film).

Stroszek (Werner Herzog) - I know Herzog mostly through his documentaries. His voice brings me the feeling of a deranged grandpa sharing stories of a reality tainted by dementia. I have yet to explore his fiction work in-depth, and this has been my starting point. Stroszek is bleak and desperate but humor still shines through it at times. Ian Curtis allegedly hung himself after watching it. Not sure if this story is real, but it once more feeds into the Herzog myth.

HyperNormalization (Adam Curtis) - Put together through found footage and newscasts, HyperNormalization is an unforgiving study on how we got to where we currently are. Fake becomes real. Trust is an abandoned concept. “They've undermined our confidence in the news that we are reading/And they make us fight each other with our faces buried deep inside our phones”, as AJJ sings in Normalization Blues. Which you should also check out.

Chicken with Plums (Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud) - A man decides to die, so he goes to bed and waits. An apparent simple plot that uncovers a world of beauty and poetry, as life passes slowly through the man’s eyes.

The Florida Project (Sam Baker) - William Dafoe was born to play the role of a motel manager. He is so natural in his role that I think he would actually be great in that job. The rest of the movie is great too, but his performance is the highlight for me.

Lucky (John Carroll Lynch) - Speaking of great performances, Lucky is Harry Dean Stanton’s final movie and a great send off. IMDB describes it best: “The spiritual journey of a ninety-year-old atheist.“

Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders) - More Harry Dean Stanton. The desert plays a more than decorative role in this wonderful movie, representing the emptiness that comes from estrangement. A story about reunion and all that can come from it.

On Chesil Beach (Dominic Cooke) - I sometimes cry in movies, but this one shook me to the core. A play on expectations and reactions and their devastating impact on relationships. We all fuck up sometimes. Try not to fuck up like these characters did, not on that level, you will never be able to make up for it.

The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson) - An absolute classic. A movie about the concept of family.

No Country for Old Men (Coen Brothers) - Murder mysteries and bad haircuts.

Dawson City: Frozen Time (Bill Morrison) - I highly recommend this documentary for anyone who professes their love for cinema. The story of how hundreds of lost silent movies were preserved though sheer luck and human stupidity. Seeing these damaged frames coming back to life is truly magical.

Mandy (Panos Cosmatos) - Some films turn into cult experiences through the years, some selected few are already born that way. Mandy is a psychedelic freak-out and Nicholas Cage fits like a glove in its weirdness. If you didn’t catch it while in cinemas, you’re already missing out on the full experience. Mandy is filled with film grain, which adds to the hallucinogenic experience with its continuous movement, a feature that does not translate when transferred to a digital medium. 

City of God (Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund) - A masterpiece of Brazilian cinema, very meaningful and relatable if you grew up in a similar environment. One of the most quotable films in my memory, something that gets lost in translation if you don’t speak Portuguese. My Tumblr is mostly pictures because I “só sei lê só as figura”.

Loro (Paolo Sorrentino) - On the topic of languages, I watched this Italian movie with Dutch subtitles, by mistake. It is actually an interesting exercise, watching something without fully grasping every word and letting your mind patch the pieces together to make a coherent narrative. Impressive cinematography, amazing script. I learned a lot about corruption, not everyone has a price. I also learned I can speak Italian now.

Roma (Alfonso Cuarón) - Beautiful shot, every frame of it can be turned into a picture. Roma is about the meaning of family, seen from the eyes of someone who will never be part of it. A lot of people considered this movie boring and pointless. These people probably have maids at home.

Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard) - Engaging heist movie, well developed characters, amazing soundtrack.

Melancholia (Lars von Trier) - The World is coming to an end and the date and time has been announced. How would you react to these news? Would it matter?

Climax (Gaspar Noé) - A very scary experience, equal parts trippy and evil like all Gaspar Noé’s movies. A dark ballet that that shocks and confuses the senses. Dante’s Inferno.

Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold) - A strong story about ambitions, neglect and survival. Katie Jarvis is very realistic in her performance, a little too much judging by her history after the movie.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour) - An Iranian feminist movie about vampirism and records. Watched it with live score from The Black Heart Rebellion for extra cool points.

Another Day of Life (Raul de la Fuente & Damian Nenow) - Based on Ryszard Kapuściński‘s autobiography, Another Day of Life consists of rotoscopic animation sprinkled with interviews. A look at the Cold War in the African continent, and an important watch for everyone, especially Portuguese and Angolan nationals.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino) - Rich in dialogues and paced very slowly until the insane climax, this is probably the best Tarantino film after Pulp Fiction. Filled to the brim with cinematic references, it’s a delight to all film nerds. Looking forward for an Bud Spencer/Terrence Hill film adaption with Leonardo Dicaprio and Brad Pitt after this.

The Beach Bum (Harmony Korine) - Google’s top voted tags: Boring. Mindless. Cringe-Worthy. Forgettable. Slow. Illogical. Looks like this movie didn’t resonate well with the audiences, but then again Harmony Korine’s stuff is not for the masses. I personally think this is one of his best movies, a true exercise on nihilism. The main character is lovable and detestable in equal parts, and every action is pointless. Such is life, the only meaning it has is attributed by yourself.

The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky) - A man reflects on his life. Memories tend to get fuzzy, conflicting and confusing. More like a poem than a narrative. A dreamy masterpiece.

The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice) - The most charming child of this list, she couldn’t memorize the names of the characters she interacted with so they were changed to the names of the actual actors. The innocence of childhood in dark times.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Roy Andersson) - A series of absurd vignettes connected by a pair of novelty items salesmen and their struggle to bring a smile to a grey World. Slow, but humorous and delightful. An unconventional and memorable ride.

Man Bites Dog (Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel & Benoît Poelvoorde) - Fake documentary about a serial killer. Heavy, gruesome and hard to watch, despite the false sense of humor in some scenes.A glimpse at the darkness of human nature.

Tangerine (Sean Baker) - Shot with cell phones. A story about love, gender and friendship. Funny, sad, touching.

The Guilty (Gustav Möller) - Focused on a shift of an emergency dispatcher, the camera focuses only on his face and phone interactions with the callers.A very effective thriller, its setting leads us to create our own narratives just to subvert them at the most unexpected times.

Cold War (Paweł Pawlikowski) - Loosely inspired in Pawlikowski’s parents, Cold War is a beautiful love story set against impossible odds. Powerful and heartbreaking. 

Parasite (Bong Joon-ho) - Poor family scams rich family. Rich family takes advantage of poor family. Everybody feeds off of everyone. Drama/Comedy/Thriller/Horror/Romance about control, delivered in a masterclass on cinematic rhythm. Best film of its year for me.

The Straight Story (David Lynch) - More than the fact that this movie is radically different than the remaining Lynch work, The Straight Story is a wonderful exercise in pacing and storytelling. Mr. Straight’s stories allow us to fill in the blanks with our imagination, and their impact in him is also felt in us. An underappreciated gem in its apparent simplicity.

Thank you very much for reading.

[are-scared-of-revolution]

The N-Word and How To Use It

It's what blacks have always done since we hit America's shores: we take what's given us and we find a way to make it our own. By Bennie M. Currie

N-I-G-G-E-R. I'll never forget the first time I accidentally used that word in mixed company. It was 20 years ago at the University of Missouri, and I was engaged in lighthearted chitchat with Kent, my white roommate, when I casually called him a "nigger."

For a second I'd forgotten that I was not among my black friends in my old neighborhood in Saint Louis, where calling a buddy "nigger" was synonymous with calling him "brother" or "man." It was just another way to talk cool, using a word that had become a part of our vocabulary long before we were aware of all its varied meanings and usages.

I was barely conscious of my accidental utterance, but there was nothing casual about Kent's reaction. His eyes widened, and his body flinched as though he'd just absorbed a boxer's jab. Then he snapped to an upright position on the edge of his bed, narrowed his eyes, and pointed an index finger at me. "I'm not a nigger," he said, his tone implying that he thought I was a nigger. He never actually called me a nigger, but the mere suggestion was enough to put me in a fighting mood.

"Do I look like a nigger to you?" I shouted.

"But you just called me a nigger," he replied.

"Well, that's different. You can't call me that. Not ever."

Fortunately, our dorm mates stopped this exchange before I could throw a punch at Kent, who probably thought I was nuts. Actually I was simply too angry to realize that I was the one at fault.

By calling Kent a nigger, I'd exposed him to what my old neighborhood friends called a "black thing" he didn't understand. The "thing" is the love/hate relationship many black people have with "nigger," one of the most complex, perplexing, and emotionally incendiary words in the American lexicon. And to be truthful, black people are hardly unified in their understanding or usage of this piece of slang.

There have been times in my life when I've felt very comfortable using the word, but I've also struggled with its usage. And now that I'm a parent I cringe at the notion that my two children will someday have to try to understand what these six letters mean to them, their friends and foes, and the larger society. While my wife and I are readying ourselves for questions like "Where do babies come from?" I know that none will be more vexing than the first innocent query about the N-word.

I could take the easy way out and tell our kids that "nigger" is a bad word that good boys and girls should never use. Or maybe I could recite the old "sticks and stones" adage and tell them it's a name that can never hurt them. But neither tactic is likely to work, especially the second, since I don't believe it myself.

If my kids are destined to be introduced to a word born of racial hatred, then their parents should be the ones to do it. But television, the Internet, the school playground, and other competitors for our kids' attention may get to them first. Or a dictionary.

Last February Kathryn Williams, curator of the Museum of African American History in Flint, Michigan, was asked by a little boy, "Am I a nigger because I'm black?" She told the naturally curious child that a nigger was any ignorant person, then advised him to look up the word in the dictionary for reassurance. The kid paged through the venerable Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, where he found that "nigger" is a term for "a black person--usu. taken to be offensive." With only minor revisions, this definition has existed for nearly half a century.

This was a shocking revelation for Williams, who started a petition drive to pressure Merriam-Webster to revise the definition. Her campaign gained momentum last September, when Emerge magazine ran a brief article about it. Since then, scores of people have joined her, many of them contending that the current definition inaccurately explains the meaning of the word. Some of them also believe the racial epithet is undeserving of inclusion in a dictionary and want it deleted altogether.

I know why Williams and others like her are upset. Being called "nigger" by a white person or a white-run institution is a slap in the face for many blacks. It evokes thoughts of the sorry legacy of slavery and the racism that haunts the nation. And it hurts. When I checked out the definition in my own copy of the Collegiate edition I felt stung--particularly since I knew that dictionaries are almost as ubiquitous as Gideon Bibles.

I don't believe the publishers of the collegiate edition meant to offend anyone. Most likely, they were simply reflecting the confusion that stems from the paradoxical usage of the word among Americans of all hues, cultures, and generations.

Since my dorm-room experience, several whites have told me of their own struggles to understand the term--and to understand why a word that was used for centuries by white people to disparage and dehumanize their black slaves and today is a chief element of hatespeak (witness the Nigger Joke Center on the World Wide Web) is cool for blacks to use but taboo for them. They ask, How can any self-respecting black person stand to use it? Why do black kids call each other "my nigga" in such endearing tones, privately as well as publicly? Is this a "self-hatred thing"?

I say no. It's what blacks have always done since we hit America's shores 400 years ago. We take what's given to us, or thrown at us, and we find a way to make it our own. Blacks melded African rhythms and European music to create jazz, this country's only original musical art form. We took the parts of livestock whites didn't care to eat--intestines, tongues, ears, and feet--mixed them with our native African dishes and conjured up soul food.

In the same manner, blacks took the loaded term "nigger" and disarmed it by making it a household word. In fact, we went on to embrace it by using it to spice up poetry, rap lyrics, and many a comedy stand-up routine. A case in point is Paul Mooney, a comedian and writer (Saturday Night Live, Good Times, and In Living Color). He doesn't just use "nigger" to accent his stand-up act. It's often the focal point of his jokes. In one bit he complains about the flak he catches from whites who sometimes object more vociferously to his liberal use of the word than do many blacks. "Make that nigger stop saying nigger. He's giving me a nigger headache," he jokes. "Well white folks, you shouldn't have ever made up the word. You fucked up. I say nigger 100 times every morning. It makes my teeth white."

Chris Rock, who currently hosts a weekly HBO talk show, is another funny man at peace with his use of "nigger." While my grandmother has never heard of him, she and Rock assign a similar meaning to the term. The hot comic told B.E.T. Weekend magazine he uses it to describe "a certain kind of black person who wallows in ignorance and likes being ignorant." During a recent HBO special, Rock expressed this point of view with these one-liners: "Niggers react to books the way vampires react to sunlight." "Niggers always want credit for something they should be doing. 'I take care of my kids.' You're supposed to take care of your kids!" "Black people don't give a damn about welfare reform. Niggers are shaking in their boots."

Rock, who used to lampoon CBS anchor Bryant Gumbel for "talking white," recently apologized publicly for using such a label. But he doesn't plan to cut "nigger" out of his act anytime soon. "I'll stop when niggas stop," he said. "Niggas robbed my house, robbed my mother's house. Black people didn't do that." He adds, "I would love to have no reason to use the word. I'd love for it to be obsolete."

Richard Pryor, one of Rock's role models, was at the height of his legendary career in 1982, when he vowed never again to use the word to refer to another black person. He said he'd had an epiphany during a visit to Africa. He didn't see any "niggers" in the motherland and realized that blacks there had no need to use the word. Pryor shared his pledge with the audience during a stand-up routine that was later released as a feature film, Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip. The statement inspired lots of blacks to make the same vow.

I haven't made that pledge, but before I saw Pryor's film I never thought twice about why I used "nigger." I'm less comfortable using it now, but because of my lifelong cultural association with the word, I can't foresee total avoidance. Because my kids have a different culture, I've never used it around them, and I don't intend to.

Since my kids aren't going to grow up hearing "nigger" under our roof, the question still remains: How should I explain this word to them? There's only one way to do it--candidly and carefully. I'll tell them that the word is a national shame and at times a painful reminder of their ancestors' struggle for freedom. And I'll explain that the term has a history just as relevant as Jim Crow, the Revolutionary War, lynching, or Watergate, which is why forcing a dictionary to delete it would be a mistake, would be censorship.

Meanwhile the people at Merriam-Webster are busy mulling a revision of their definition of "nigger," according to spokesman Steve Perrault. He wrote me via E-mail that it's too early to pinpoint when or if a change will be made, but he assured me the issue will be resolved before the dictionary's next scheduled major update, in 2003. "The problem for us is that it's not simply a matter of changing one entry," Perrault said. "If we revise our treatment of the offensive word, we also have to revise our treatment of the many other offensive words in the dictionary. That makes it a fairly major undertaking, and our feeling is that we want to be sure we're getting it right."

Sounds like a good idea. But does this really require much deliberation? I don't think so. The third edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language already has it figured out. Its definition of "nigger" begins with the words "offensive slang...used as a disparaging term for a black person." As an illustration, a quote from James Baldwin follows: "You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a Negro."

This interpretation seems fair and accurate to me. It's even suitable for the eyes of a child. And it may even enlighten a confused college kid or two.