Tag Archives: film

Useless Clouds

August is the Mojave Desert’s most challenging month.

While unavoidably sweltering, it’s generally less torrid than July. August actually starts letting residents kind of imagine autumnal respite in ways July absolutely forbids.

Until the last several summers, July counted as the “monsoon month.” Indeed, rain in quantifiable measures wetted if not outright soaked this region. Away from Las Vegas in the desert proper one might’ve believed he or she heard the parched dirt greedily gulp whatever rain had fallen. Continue reading Useless Clouds

Too Cool for This Room

Ennui. Estrangement. Existentialism? L’Avventura.

The 1960 Italian movie is populated by figures who are unmoored in the modern world. They drift maybe searching for new anchorages or are just content to keep meandering until running aground.

An ideal movie to watch again during the last languor of summer. Which is when the story reveals itself. Continue reading Too Cool for This Room

Illuminated in the Dark

America continues apace pell-mell and hellbent towards further popular cultural infantilization.

We’re increasingly surrendering the ability to discuss and debate topics which might demand those participating in them to not only hold two opposing thoughts at the same time, much less let them shunt over onto other tracks. Though never as deft with simultaneous multiple moving parts as older societies, what Americans lacked in veritas we made up for in verve.

Thanks to the make it easier for the coloring book clarity brigades to contribute and thereby muddle the point, issues have lost their shades of gray. These have hardened into blacker or whiter blocs. Now, mentioning the word “nuance” makes more and more Americans reach for their revolvers. Where the verbal or written rapier sliced artfully, we now wail and flail with rhetorical bludgeons. Continue reading Illuminated in the Dark

Our Times

Saw a job listing on a professional networking site that intrigued. Thirty/35 years ago, I would’ve been all over it. Most astonishing thing about the job description? A former high school classmate generated this possibility.

Recalling him, he never struck as being particularly dynamic. He filled backgrounds in many scenes.

Yet two reasons have throttled any enthusiasm towards pursuing his offer. One, I’m 63 and along the glidepath into retirement. Two, I’d bring experience to the job. Continue reading Our Times

Disenchantment USA

The title of the movie escapes me. Or maybe several comprise memory. The remembered scenes issue from Nazi propaganda reels.

In any case, the rudely sinuous voice of Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister of Enlightenment and Propaganda, narrates the black & white images. They were issued early during the Nazi reign. During the ascent. Continue reading Disenchantment USA