The Long Goodbye

Rating ****

Whenever I read a Raymond Chandler novel, Philipe Marlowe always whistles to the tune of the whisky-glugging, chain smoking pulp detective prototype; the type that you automatically envisage with a raised trenchcoat collar, perched against the lamp post gazing sluggishly at the smoke trail from his cigarette in the flickers of the street light.

And whilst Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep decides to play along to this image, Robert Altman decides to upturn the idea of it all by chiselling down the verbal slinging matches between the characters to a slow drawl in the piercing glaze of the Californian sun.

The character itself is rebrandished by Elliout Gould as a scruff-ball cynical detective whose words don't so much skim the surface of his tongue as stumble out in a stream of mutterings. And alienated by a city of perfectly manicured boulevards and health-conscious hedonistic yoga-frumps, he meanders through a strew of murdered wives, topless brownie-craving neighbourhood hippies, actress-impersonating attendants, cats with hyperefined taste buds and coke-bottle itchy gangsters.

All tuned to the whipsy notes of John Williams theme song played again and again a la Sam.

The Devil's Backbone Quote

What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.

L'Argent review

I was having a pseudo-intellectual moment.
The type of moment you have when you inexplicably begin to arch your eyebrows, gravitate towards corduroy attire, relate every discussion to existentialism and drink hot beverages with your pinkie extended with a constipated expression on your face just to let everyone know you're in the process of deep thought.

So after skimming the shrine that is my dvd shelf to find some appropriate viewing, I magically stumbled upon an intellectual-gem-of-a-film that is Robert Bresson's L'Argent - a foreign, subtitled adaptation of a Tolstoy story.

So I perched my behind on the sofa, slung my soul through the deepest dooms of torture and all I have to say now on the matter is that the character at the begining has one mother-effin full-blown case of the monobrow.
As to the plot of the film, I was genuinely too distracted by the fuzzball caterpillars cacooned across the characters face to pay much attention.

I have wikipedia-ed it though. And there's something about existentialism right?

Hard Boiled Opening

This is the type of film that you can bag and pack into the cool department straight from the opening titles. It's the celluloid equivalent of the new kid at school managing to score immediate martyr-level appreciation points from the fellow awe-glazed pupils. Its the type of cool that seems almost so textbook it shouldn't warrant anything but scourns of cliches...all leather coats, gnarls, hunched shoulders and anti-authoritarian motives. But then it's the type of cool that doesn't care if its.

It starts off simple. A black screen. The glug of tequila. A black screen. The crackle and cluncker of an opened can. A black screen. The fizzle of poured soda. A black screen. The grasping hand banging the glass sharply against the table. 'Hard Boiled' scrawled in blood-red lettering against a backdrop of the sizzles of the tequila slammer. A man downs the drink.

Sweat glazed and channeling the cruise ship tourist look with his unfastened shirt and dandy-man beige trousers, he wipes his mouth briskly and perches himself onto a stool. And with the tinkering Jazz Club sign in the background and the rocking of his dangling leg, he strings a fine strew of notes from on his clarinet.

Sorry

If a blog ever had corners, mine would be laced with cyber-cobwebs and smothered in an inch layer of dust.

So apologies for my shamefully long blogger absence.

But that's what a chemistry degree does to you. It can single handedly transform you into a coughing and spluttering old hag, bent double over ageing text books, getting indecently personal with the details of quantum mechanics.

And once you're gripped by its firm clunch, frollicking around with films suddenly doesn't seem like such a peachy idea, the cinema then becomes a distant memory and your blog sees as much action as a nun.

Playlist

Ladies and Gentlemen - Kasabian



God's Gonna Cut You Down - Johnny Cash



Les Comperes - Vladmir Cosma