Two more photos added to the website.

A moth, and a glass of blue water.

Click for bigger images.

This blog's been spammed: someone added 21 comments to one entry, each with a link to some unsavory site. So, I've turned the approval queue on: comments won't appear until I approve them. This is rather a lame system, so I'll have to look around and see what other options Drupal offers.

Two more films viewed from directors on this list.

La Terra Trema is an awesome, commi-tinged non-romp around a Sicilian fishing village. Great acting by a bunch of non-actors. Really excellent film. Directed by Visconti, who is the answer to a question posed on one of Monty Python's records, "What famous person is this, getting up in the morning?", followed by sounds of an alarm clock, yawning, using the toilet, etc. "An italian film director" is not sufficient.

Earth has some similarities, being about poor, working folk, but it is more commi-tinged, being set in early Soviet Russia, with discussion of farm collectivization and such. They sure do love their tractor, boy. Lots of close-ups.

So, only a few directors left:

• von Stroheim
• Marker
• Flaherty
• Rocha

Two more films from this list of directors.

I watched Stalker, by Andrei Tarkovsky. Extremely impressive visually, it looks like nothing else I've ever seen. A little like Eraserhead, kind of like a Joel Peter Witkin, but not so human. He does these long shots with the camera looking straight down into shallow water containing all kinds of interesting things. Very impressive to look at, but rather thin on content: some heavy philosophy, but philosophy we've all thought about before, and it's not as fun to think about it so slowly and quietly.

Definitely is not dated. I didn't realize it was made in 1979 - it feels very modern.

I wasn't terribly surprised to find out that the film actually was shot in a hazardous environment: several of those involved in the film (including Tarkovsky) died of the same cancer.

Two more films seen by directors on this list.

I watched A Child is Waiting by Cassavetes. It was very, very good. Curiously, it makes me feel especially the universal weakness of the human race - how fun!

Last night I watched Mamma Roma (bad, bad wikipedia article!). Quite a good film, Anna Magnani does a great job. Surprisingly abrupt ending.

Here are the directors left:

• Tarkovsky
• Visconti
• von Stroheim
• Mankiewicz
• Marker
• Dovzhenko
• Flaherty
• Rocha

I've got a Mankiewicz on Tivo, a Dovzhenko on VHS(!) from the library on the coffee table, and holds on a Tarkovsky, a Marker, and a Visconti. The list will soon be even shorter...

I visited Vancouver over the weekend for the first time, with Jenni and my parents. It was a quick trip, just got a first sense of the city. Not a bad town, it seems to me.

I often take a lot of pictures when I visit cities, and throw almost all of them away. I'm often impressed by "urban photography", and always hope that I'll get something good. This photo is the best of this trip. I like the double elbow, and the looks on the two faces are just great. (Click the image for a bigger version.)

So, comments on this blog are either from me, or from "anonymous" users: I don't see any point to requiring (or allowing) users to create user accounts and "log in" here. It's just talking.

Anyway, the default practice with drupal seems to be to append "(not verified)" to every user's name in comments. This looks crappy, especially since the user can't fix this, and, in fact, I can't fix it: there is no way to "verify" a user, whatever that means.

So I looked around on the web, and found a nice little piece of code to add to the template.php file in the blog's theme's folder. It worked immediately - no problemo.

Interestingly, I found the code here, on Matt Farina's site, which is dedicated to "tech, faith, and life". How curious.

In my continuing project to see a film by every director on
this list, I watched Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul tonight. It was fantastic. Amazing cinematography of simple settings, great acting, very human story. I loved it.

I also watched Hsiao-Hsien Hou's Cafe Lumiere, which was terribly empty. It had some nice city shots, but nothing else to recommend it.

I saw Kiarostami's A Taste of Cherry. A very simple film, good acting, but I wish it was just a little less minimal, and a touch of humor (even the slightest touch) would have helped.

I watched Max Ophul's Lola Montes, too. Just terrible, though I thought at first that the circus scenes were really going to make the movie work for me.

So, I've got 10 directors left:

• Tarkovsky
• Visconti
• Cassavetes
• Pasolini
• von Stroheim
• Mankiewicz
• Marker
• Dovzhenko
• Flaherty
• Rocha

I always enjoy the last minute or so of Beethoven symphonies, so I made this piece: it's the last minute of Beethoven's 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, and 8th symphonies, all played at the same time, ending simultaneously. I recommend headphones, or a subwoofer.

Beethoven Ends 1




More sounds here!

I watched Rome, Open City by director Roberto Rossellini tonight. I thought it was very powerful, and sad, another reminder of mankind's cruelty: hooray!

I watched it as part of a little project I've set for myself to see at least one movie by all 100 top directors at the
They Shoot Picture's Don't They? site. When I started this project, I had 25 director's films to see; with Rossellini out of the way, I've got 14 left:

• Tarkovsky
• Ophuls
• Visconti
• Cassavetes
• Kiarostami
• Fassbinder
• Pasolini
• von Stroheim
• Mankiewicz
• Marker
• Hsiao-Hsien Hou
• Dovzhenko
• Flaherty
• Rocha

I've been putting holds on DVDs at the library - it's been very effective, and a nice way to spend part of my summer.