Why did this take so goddamn long? I mean, come on: it’s 2012! Leave it to the Dutch, I guess.

Young Prisms, “Floating in Blue”

Viggo Mortensen as Old Bull Lee: Awesome

Walter Salles: Cool, I guess

Some unknown British kid as Sal Paradise: Of course

The dude from Tron as Dean Moriarty: Of course

Amy Adams as Jane Lee: Who cares?

Kirsten Dunst: Of course

Kristen Stewart: Huh?

Terrence Howard: Come on…

Steve Buscemi: !!!

vicemag:

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!” Too fast to live, too young to die. Like a really pretty girl smoking a cigarette, and her makeup is smeared and her stockings are torn but she’s still a total babe. That’s why I stay up pretty late, go to a lot of concerts. Because I just want to live, surround myself with the living. Crackle crackle crackle. #fireworks. All I see is fireworks. Cause baby, you’re a firework.”

––Jack Kerouac

Vow of Chastity

1. Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in. If a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed, i.e., diegetic.
3. The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. The film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the action takes place.
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable (if there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action (murders, weapons, etc. must not occur).
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (that is to say that the film takes place here and now).
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10. The director must not be credited.

—Lars von Trier & Thomas Vinterberg, 1995

I have listened to this song like eight times today. This probably means that I need to get some fucking sleep.

"I Smoke, I Drink, But Mostly I Write" →

Mon cher ami (both dear, and apparently, expensive), Mike Miller.

On Cinema →

This is an excellent anti-podcast.

Dick Wolf is hiding something.

Exhibit A: Actor Delaney Williams appeared in last week’s episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, “Home Invasions,” as a defense attorney named John Buchanan.

Exhibit B: Actor Delaney Williams is perhaps best known for playing morbidly obese, assholishly sarcastic Detective Jay Landsman in HBO’s The Wire.

Exhibit C: Qtd. from the Wikipedia page, “Jay Landsman (The Wire)”:

The character is based on and named after a real homicide detective sergeant whom David Simon had met while researching the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. The character is often given dialogue that the writers recall the real Landsman using. Delaney Williams was chosen for the part because of the creators’ experience of working with him in small roles on Homicide and The Corner.^[3] The real Jay Landsman can also be seen on The Wire in the role of Dennis Mello, first in an uncredited appearance in the season 2 episode “Stray Rounds”, and later as a regular cast member. The real Landsman was the inspiration for detective John Munch, a character from Homicide: Life on the Street and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, who also made an appearance on The Wire.

Among the discrepancies between the character on The Wire and the real Jay Landsman, the most prominent is their physique: the real Landsman was the least overweight sergeant in the homicide squad,^[4] while The Wire’s version is one of the more heavyset officers on the force, often referred to as “Fat Man.”

Exhibit D: Detective John Munch (played by actor Richard Belzer)––a regular character on SVU––is suspiciously absent from last week’s episode.

Possible Conclusions: (1) Either Dick Wolf murdered Richard Belzer (or is somehow involved in a cover-up of Belzer’s death), (2) David Simon and Dick Wolf have a regular high stakes poker game in which they pay their debts to each other with fictional characters, or (3) Dick Wolf has been reading a lot of Baudrillard recently.*

*I guess that all of these could be the case, as they are by no means mutually exclusive.

If I ruled the world, all cartoons would be scored by Harry Nilsson.

Lyrics to a Misogynistic Electropop Ballad

Dorothy, you remember everything:
How I angered you that Spring
And I didn’t know at all.

I loved you, can’t you see?
Though it couldn’t ever be.
I wanted to you to see,
I know your name is Sarah.

And though I know it might seem crass,
When we were fucking in the ass,
The thought occurred to me.

God damn it, don’t you see?
It was never meant to be.
I’ve had too much whiskey
And I think I’m going to…

(Arpeggiator outro) 

Françoise Hardy, “Tous Les Garçons et Les Filles”

“On my return home, when the chain on the bathroom door proved hard to fasten, the suspicion: an experiment was being set up.”

— Walter Benjamin, “Main Features of My Second Impression of Hashish (Written January 15, 1928, at 3:30 P.M.)”

From the archives: mine & Erik Rissetto’s horribly pretentious attempt at a neorealist adaptation of Dante: Il Inferno (Canto X: Gli Eretici). This dates back to 2007, and stars myself as the poet, Signore Rissetto as Virgil, Josh Ades as Farinata, and Jonathan Huffman as Cavalcanti.

It is important to note two things:

1.  No one involved in this film had anything more than a passing knowledge of Italian at the time of production (especially in terms of pronunciation, a fact painfully obvious in Monsieur Ades’s faux-French slurs), and
2. When I conceptualized this film, I had not yet learned that Fellini was not, in fact, a neorealist, which explains the overt references to 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita throughout.

Buon divertimento!

Square Things That I Do Now, Which I Didn't Do When I Thought It Was Hip

1. Go to bed at 10.
2. Wake up early (sometimes before 7!).
3. Exercise.
4. Subscribe to The New York Review of Books.
5. Appreciate white wine.
6. Eat meals at regular times.
7. Wash dishes immediately after using them.
8. Make the bed every morning.
9. Monitor my coffee intake.
10. Have seen every episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
11. Have seen many episodes of other incarnations of The Real Housewives franchise.
12. Overuse the word “perhaps.”
13. Own more than one pair of shoes.
14. Google myself.
15. Spend a substantial amount of my time grading papers.
16. Drink Diet Coke knowingly (only sometimes).
17. Have a Gerry Rafferty album on my iPod.
18. Live in the midwest.
19. Suffer back pain/heartburn.
20. Envy rich people.