OMG

"I don't recognize myself anymore. What made me like the others has been destroyed. I was like everybody else with flaws, perhaps of my own and of my world. You've made me different, taking me out of the natural order of things. While you were near me, I did not realize it. But I understand it now that you're leaving. And the awareness of losing you has become the awareness of my being different. What will become of me from now on? The future will be like living with a self that has nothing to do with me. Will I have to reach the bottom of this difference that you've shown me, that is my real and anguished nature? But even if I don't want to? Won't all this put me against everyone and against everything?"
-Pietro in Teorema

Work Fun Work

what I've been working on lately



Actually, done with that now! Then there was the French Film Festival, and now the James River Film Festival. Then exams, then summer internship!

I was going through my composition journal, since it's going to be checked in class tomorrow and I found this:

"I've got no conscience, I just got nerves."
-from Stalker (film)

Fallen Angels

Michelle Reis is so beautiful, I just like to watch her eat noodles. I used to think it was fun to use chopsticks with my ramen, but I only eat my noodles with a fork now.

WVLNT (Wavelength For Those Who Don't Have the Time

This was one of the most disagreeable things I've ever seen. After the film ended and the screen went black, silence filled my brain like oxygen pouring into my ear canals. The struggle to watch WVLNT was worth it, the blank silence afterward had a cathartic effect. It put a stop to the fifteen minutes of nail-biting agony that left me in a state of nerves, and tense sitting on the edge of my seat, clutching my head. Once the DVD was again in my hands, I wanted only to be rid of it, I still felt nauseous and tingly.
I had to search hard to find any beauty in the film. At some points, the lineups of superimposed windows and their coloration brought to mind Rothko and his paintings and the image wasn't completely barren of beauty, but generally speaking the entire film was completely in juxtaposition to the sort of aesthetic I find pleasing. I hate to use the word "ugly," but I found most the images to be uninviting to look at.
Watching it was an experience, which is the only acquisition I rightly feel I took away from it. The film pulls nerves, forcing the viewer to be extremely uncomfortable the entire duration. Visually, it consists solely of superimposition that contain no action - simple static shots. Staring at these for extended periods of time allows the mind to wander. These static images actually look like dissolves - they twitch at the edges - like they are about to fade into the images behind it yet it never comes into lucid fulfillment. Waiting for the images to change continually was tantalizing and dissapointing - it never changed.
Then there was the accompanying soundtrack - which, as a sufferer of migraines, I would only describe as agonizing. The white noise is some buzzing mechanical noise, you sit there, already perplexed at the images wondering is it a vacuum? an eggbeater? a whirring fan? a factory background? some torture machine?
As you sit there, painfully experiencing all of this, one dominant thought strain emerges: suicide. Seriously. "When is this film going to end? Is fifteen minutes over yet? I feel I've spent my entire life watching this. Please just let it end. I am in so much pain. Please, stop all of it. Everythinggg." I found myself numbly saying repeating this, mouthing prayers, as if that would do anything. Credit to WVLNT, it effectively does something - it's just not pleasant, and my shortened experience with this is just about all I can take. I wouldn't watch the full length version of this. Not even out of curiosity.