Tuesday, July 07, 2009

JUST TESTING IMEEM: DAYTON FUNK ASIDE

I think I'd post to this blog more if embedding MP3s weren't virtually a thing of the past. Maybe iMeem could change that. For instance, if I wanted to share the results of a playlist I created from Dayton funk bands and needed to share, say, the awesome Lakeside track "Fantastic Voyage," which later provided the foundation for a Coolio hit, would that work? Let's see:

Fantastic Voyage (2006 Digital Remaster) - Lakeside

Hmm... Apparently yes.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

UNFORTUNATE JUXTAPOSITION FOUND AT USWEEKLY.COM TODAY

Saturday, January 03, 2009

TWO CORNERS
Erich Von Stroheim's 1922 films Greed can make many claims to greatness. Among them: it's the first great butchered movie masterpiece and the first great movie about dentistry. It's also a great city movie. Adapting Frank Norris' novel McTeague, Von Stroheim lets the commonplace moral themes of folk tales and murder ballads play out in a San Francisco that's still coming into full flower as a metropolis.

Von Stroheim insisted on shooting on location, one of the many reasons his movie became a money-sucking monster taken out of his control. But it was the right decision capturing, however accidentally, an American city still shedding the 19th century as it covered itself in the 20th. Some of my favorite shots, well, ever come when Gibson Gowland's sort-of dentist works on patients from his Polk Street office.





The novel places this at 309 Polk Street above a post office. Later it would serve as a real dentist office, which must have confused readers of the novel. Now it's overshadowed by city hall. I'm not sure Von Stroheim used that exact address. Maybe someone in San Francisco could tell me.

















Here's the shot that I love (and, as above, pardon the poor image quality. I'm working from YouTube since the film is, confoundingly, not on DVD.



Imagine for a moment being in that chair. If you could get past the anxiety of having dental work done by a man without a license (though you wouldn't know that) who looks a bit like a half-wit (which you undoubtedly would know), would you see a city in transition? If you were older, would you take a moment to note the Model Ts and cable cars that have nudged the carriages off the street? Could you imagine for a moment the San Franciscos to come from the neurotic, obsessive streets of Vertigo through the Vietnam-era anxieties of Dirty Harry and beyond? Could you see the present for what it was and imagine the future?

I think about that corner every time I pass by a bank here in my Chicago neighborhood. It was my first bank when I moved here, chosen as much for aesthetic qualities as any other reason. It has a classic look, complete with an old-fashioned giant vault in the back. (What it didn't have at the time was online banking, thus necessitating an eventual switch.)



A few years ago it added a tacky-looking LCD screen as a concession to modernity, which disappointed me, although I'm guessing others were just as bothered when they added the classic-looking stainless steel clock however many decades past. Around the same time they added something else: A neon sign in the second floor office. Squint and you can just make it out in the photo below.


It says "Dentist." Now I find myself wondering what the patients getting work done up there see looking out on our corner of the world. And what they can't possibly know to look for.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

THE FACEBOOK AD-BOT KNOWS ME SO WELL
Yes! So very tired of waxing. That's me.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

NOT ON DVD, NOT IN THEATERS, NOT ON TELEVISION
Assembling next week's Inventory feature made wish, once again, I could see Thom Andersen's documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself, especially when I found an excerpt from this reputedly excellent, three-hour look at depictions of L.A. as created by L.A.'s most famous industry on YouTube.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

I KNOW THIS ISN'T NEW BUT IT'S NEW TO ME AND I LOVE IT

Thursday, August 28, 2008

IF YOU NEED TO KILL TIME AT WORK TOMORROW
Hulu now has episodes of Elvira's Move Macabre in their entirety. I did this movie, Monstroid for Films That Time Forgot a while back. It's wretched. But kind of entertainingly wretched.