“Get a Canadian friend to Tivo it for you in reruns.”
— an ain’t-never-gonna-happen plea from Slate‘s Virginia Heffernan, who’s taken on a thankless/hopeless/utterly quixotic task: stir up American interest in The Eleventh Hour, an earnest Canadian TV drama about “conscience-stricken producers” which plays like “a treatise by Susan Sontag.”
Category: Uncategorized
From “Action Lama” to “Achtung Lama“
Mafia, Mafia, Mafia. Against my better judgment, I feel compelled to bring up Steven Seagal, aka “The Action Lama,” once again. He’s suing (again) the mafia (again) for harassment (again), only this time, it’s not the (via Staten Island) Italians, but the Germans. According to his suit, visible at The Smoking Gun, Seagal is being extorted and threatened with a “ruined reputation” for unspecificied damage he inflicted on a Berlin villa he rented while shooting Half Past Dead (that’s the title, critical appraisal, and box office performance, btw). In case the extortion charge doesn’t hold up, SS (d’oh!) added some more:
Unfortunately for Mr Seagal, he undoes his own case in the filing: “The great success of his movies attests to the quality of Plaintiff’s reputation in the movie industry and in the public.”
Maybe Take In A Show
The Architectural League, Cooper Union, and MoMA are sponsoring presentations and roundtable discussions by the WTC site architects and teams. Go ask the “Dream Team” what they’re trying to cover up. [Sample question (from The Last Emperor), while hysterically, spitting mad: “Confess your crimes!!”]
Today (Wed.) at Cooper Union starts at 4PM and goes until 10:30 (it’s sold out, but I bet it’ll thin out around, say, 7.)
Tomorrow (Thurs.) at Town Hall is a more civilized two hour program, starting at 7PM. MoMA’s Terence “I helped pick these teams” Riley is one of the moderators.
[thanks, Gawker!]
NYC vs. DC
Like Europe, it’s the little differences. One that dawned on me at the gym: Underclothes
Sorry, no pictures. [And, thankfully, Frank Rich was not involved in this comparison in any way.]
Peer Pressurized Cabin: A Recurring Look At My Neighborhood
My street may have more Gulfstreams than any other in the world; the peer pressure to get one is intense.
Alec Wildenstein has one; he flew Nobu chefs around in it for his Russian girlfriend.
Edgar Bronfman has a G-V, although it’s not clear for how much longer.
Donatella Versace refuses to fly anything else.
Ivana Trump doesn’t have one. And if Tony Mottola had one at Sony, he doesn’t have it now.
Lately, for reasons I will soon explain, Cessna, the makers of the popular Citation business jets, have been wooing me to purchase one of their planes. A stronger man might be able to do it, but I worry; if I bought a Citation, would I have to park it around the corner, so my G-Thang neighbors don’t harsh on me? What’s a simple filmmaker to do? I want to be independent, take a stand, but it seems like folly to go against the sentiment of “the Manhattan street.”
Love Thy Neighbor
Especially when you’re in DC (i.e., away from DSL) and there’s a new wireless connection pouring in through your window.
Greg Posting About Himself In The Third Person
Greg editing Souvenir (January 2003) image: Jean
I Feel Safer Already
Knowing that the imperialist ambitions, quest for cultural hegemony, and utterly misplaced sense of entitlement and infallibility exhibited by their leaders are not going unnoticed. Visit FranceWatch for the latest on this grave threat to world peace and stability. [via LockhartSteele.com]
And for reports from the front lines, or from “behind enemy lines,” to be exact, check out Merde in France (“Proud to be blocked by corporate firewalls across France!” Liberte, indeed.), a bilingual weblog from an ex-pat Mole (not the one at left) [via FranceWatch, bien sur]
Sharks sharks sharks sharks sharks. What about the Jets?
In “Living Here, But Registered There,” the Times celebrates all the “New Yorkers” with out-of-state plates. Harry is the story’s cowering Officer Krupke, on a lonely crusade against these scofflaws who clog our alternate street parking and–and don’t pay the $15 city tax and– From where I’m standing (off the curb, naturally), a New Jersey plate means you don’t know how to drive in the city; when you finally stop (in the crosswalk), I’ll still look down at your license plate before making dismissive eye contact.
2003, it seems, will not be the year that other gang gets lauded in the press: New Yorkers who register their cars here, even though they keep them somewhere else. And you better not be in my spot when I get back.
iBitchslap
Yeah, I love my Christmas Powerbook setup and our iPod (which we’re planning to jack into our 1985 Mercedes’ original stereo (which, unsurprisingly, doesn’t have a factory interface for mp3 players), and as soon as Final Cut Pro3 arrives (UPS.com: 5:03 A.M. ALEXANDRIA, VA, US OUT FOR DELIVERY), I’ll start crash editing S(J03).
In the mean time, should I interpret the use of Torx screws as anything other than kneejerk anti-duopolism (philips/flathead :: wintel)? We scoured NASA Goddard yesterday and couldn’t find a Torx screwdriver small enough. “Designed to install youself,” indeed. If your name’s Greg Torx.
On Fame. Not Fame, Fame.
If you thought the best thing in this Guardian story about Kevin Spacey’s popularity in London is the phrase “pashmina intelligentsia,” you’re too easily pleased:
On one occasion, the actress Sienna Miller was sitting next to Spacey at a bar. She had just seen The Usual Suspects and was excited to find herself close to one of the film’s stars.
Approaching him she said: ‘I just wanted to say I can’t believe I’m sitting in a bar drinking champagne next to Kevin Bacon.’ ‘Spacey,’ said Kevin. ‘Yeah, it is, isn’t it?’ said Miller.
Which reminds me, I saw a part of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil the other night on TV, and I realized its similarities to Adaptation haven’t been mentioned anywhere. [Of course, my mentioning them here isn’t going to help me get ahead at Spacey’s online film company, Triggerstreet. What the hey, here goes.]
Just Like The Ones I Used To Know
Mom’s house, those chocolate cookies with powdered sugar on them, embarassing family pictures, elaborate meals. For several fleeting moments, you’re ten years old again. You actually feel it. Why? It seems like every other year, but those visceral feelings of actually being back in time… What could be different?
Then, as you surf the news at Google [sure didn’t have that when I was a kid!], and as you read the Times and the Guardian [that, either.], it breaks on you like a dawn. Something extra this year. It’s a clock, alright, but not as in “clock, turning back the,” more like “clock, doomsday.”
What really makes you feel like you’re ten again is the Doomsday Clock, the one your uptight Viet Nam vet civics teacher told you was inching perilously close to midnight. [Uptight? He’d blink hard a few times before answering a question, trying to hold it all together.] Go figure. Hadn’t thought of that for a while.
Thank you, President Bush. And thank your friends. For a Christmas just like the ones I used to know.
Thanks For Coming. Nice To Meet You. What Are You Drinking?
Greg.org got quoted in The Juice, MSNBC entertainment polymath Jan Herman’s weblog, for my post about the Peter Eisenman & Co’s (aka the Gang of New York) “stealth deconstructivist memorial” proposal for the WTC site. Why “stealth”? Because what they pitched as the most humble building turns out to be the most massive of all monuments. So, why stealth?
Anyway, I have changed the title of my next movie to celebrate The Juice: henceforth, it will be called Souvenir (Jan 2003).
So Now I Know
Coatcheck
So you’re at the Annie Liebovitz party, where even the Christmas trees are tall and skinny, and there’s no coatcheck. The safest place to leave your things: next to the bag containing $1,000 worth of marijuana, watched nervously by its owner.
Finally, the voices in my head have a name, and that name is Gawker.
As I Lay Typing…
Scorsese’s Kundun is on, and it occurs to me that this is his most beautiful film. The opening, a sequence of details from a Tibetan sand mandala, is entrancing. Roger Deakins (cinematographer) rocks. Here’s an interview with him and 13 other great DP’s. If you’ve never watched Tibetan monks make a sand mandala, seek it out. There should be a Mandala Aggregator site, like PublicRadioFan, where you can find mandalas in process anywhere in the world. [Is this what Larry King’s column’d be like if he knew XML?]
I stayed up too late last night watching that sycophant on In The Actor’s Studio suck up to Mr. Scorsese (Oh, sorry. Marty.) for two hours. He had to mention their dinner together at Cannes three times. Anyway, I imagine a movie about the Dalai Lama’d be a little weird for a Christmas gift, but Amazon can’t ship it in time anyway.
An embarassingly bad collection of operatic shorts just ended on Sundance, including one by the late Derek Jarman. That, in turn, reminded me of Blue, his last feature. Blind from persistent chemotherapy treatments, Jarman had an unexposed reel of film printed as azure blue (apparently, there are no frames). For eighty minutes, dialogue, sounds, and music wash over you; by about half way through, you’d swear there are distortions, shadows, movement on the monochromatic screen. It’s wonderful (and available on CD). Reading it is nice, but it doesn’t do it justice.