better times

love is a losing game




pre-fame

say what you

will about the band. but this is a stunning song.

musical indulgences

the national are the band i just cannot get out of my mind. been listening to this album on and off for a year now and the one before that compulsively. just not getting tired of them. not been this obsessed since radiohead.

Miranda July -- am a lover not a hater

she has her detractors, who find her twee, cloying, annoying, contrived. you name it, they say it with a certain relish.

i disagree. All i have seen of her work (and the exposure has been limited so maybe that helps) seems effortless, spontaneous and original without trying too hard. Plus she has great style.

Regardless it's been six years since her last film and i am looking forward to her new one, since the theme touches me and my generation personally:

"It’s kind of about letting go of that feeling of my 20s, that feeling that I will do absolutely everything, I will have sex with everyone, I will go to every country,” she says. “In your 30s, it’s obvious that a finite amount of things will happen.” @NYT

cannot wait

"Melancholia è prima di tutto una pellicola dolorosa e angosciosa, quello che, per sadismo e assoluta mancanza di speranza, si potrebbe definire il film definitivo di Von Trier."

simply marvellous

and kind of in love with rob

cover thursday

caro emerald does gaga's finest hour, bad romance

love it

dismayed. horrified. outraged

oh the Horror, the horror


so seems that Spike flipping lee is remaking OLDBOY, one of the best films of the 2000s and nothing short of a staggering masterpiece (drool. gush. dribble. sigh)

blogs are alive with the same ringing question: is he right person for the job?
rather, why not ask the rather more obvious question of why they are bothering remaking it all. a classic is a classic. leave it be! don't touch! hands off! fuk off!

i am just so bloody angry at this. it's a tale as old as time of course, the butchering of foreign-language films at the hands of hollywood. about 95% of the time it's always revealed itself a terrible idea and a money-losing proposition to boot so why they keep doing it over and over is frankly baffling.

no good can come of this particularly misguided enterprise. add to that my personal antipathy for spike lee (i will grudgingly grant him kudos for the exceptional 25th Hour) and it's enough to ruin week. uff, i feel sick.

not to keep banging on, but the most disturbing aspect of all this is that OLDBOY is so steeped in Korea culture, obsessions and perversions i am not even sure how you can take it of that context and hope to salvage something.

let me relive the magic for a second before it gets tainted





ah just beautiful.

italian pool party time

last week i was caught unawares when i realized i certain small asian niblet had run off to cambodia with my swimming costume, leaving me in the somewhat difficult position of having to borrow my lovely host's wife's bikini when i rocked up to a pool party on a sunday. deciding that my shameless borrowing habits had hit new unacceptable lows, i went out with turd this morning, under the blazing washington sun, to see what the capital had to offer in terms of bathing wear. see above
so am off to the italian pool party where the men cook up feasts and i get to do handstands in the water and go a light shade of lobster red.

nough said

hottest couple ever

works for me

best actress of her generation

remembrances

well chaps, it's been more than three years. my longest relationship. and very happy years they have been. here is a splattering of them, courtesy of my shorter and better half. i miss her terribly since she has buggered off to cambodia doing lord knows what, leaving me on hound duty for a month. when she returns we're settling into NYC.