Tuesday Photo Challenge
Month: November 2019
HARD ROCK HOTEL
Dateline: New Orleans
On a recent trip to New Orleans I came upon this scene.
This is a shot of the Hard Rock Hotel building which collapsed while under construction in New Orleans on October 12, 2019. Three dead and dozens injured. We stayed just two blocks away but the streets were blocked off for three blocks north and south which required a walk around making a five block walk to Bourbon Street an eight block walk.
Canal Street, a major thoroughfare in New Orleans, was blocked off creating a transportation nightmare. The streetcars were not running for fear of vibrating loose the already unstable building. Authorities sill haven’t recovered the bodies of the dead.
The Lighthouse (2019)
Movie Blurb
The Lighthouse, directed by Robert Eggers, starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson is a richly unique film taking place on a desolate landscape. Shot in 1.91:1 aspect ratio in black and white it is really more like 50 shades of grey, so to speak. To say it is bleak would be to understate the barrenness of the rock on which the Lighthouse is situated. Shooting inside the cramped cottage below the lighthouse where the men live and drink together creates a tense and claustrophobic atmosphere.
The brothers Robert Eggers and Max Eggers, who cowrote the screenplay, seem to channel their inner Herman Melville as they spin out their whale of a tale of two “wickies” spending a four week shift together tending a lighthouse on a desolate rock. “Let’s see if we can make this even more strange,” they seem to be saying to each other as each turn of the screw in the movie gets weirder and weirder as each new scene unfolds. But, as Hunter S. Thompson once said, “As weird as things have been, they still haven’t been weird enough for me.” So, I didn’t mind. I just sat there transfixed. There was mermaid sex, masturbation, a calling up from the deep demons and depraved spirits and a variety of mythological creatures not to mention an angry seagull. It’s bad luck to kill a sea bird, we are warned. Poseidon makes and appearance and at the end (spoiler) we are treated to a Prometheus like figure lying on a rock as seagulls eat out his liver. What does it all mean? Who knows, but it was one helluva ride!
Dream of Fair to Middling Women
A Novel by Samuel Beckett
Book Blurb
Dream of Fair to Middling Women is Samuel Beckett’s first novel which he wrote in a fever pitch at age 26 and could not get published in Ireland due to it’s salacious content. He kept it under wraps his whole life and it was published posthumously a little while after his death per his wishes. He referred to it as “The chest into which I threw my wild thoughts.” It is a tour-de-force in rhetorical bombast and a great deal fun to read, small on plot, strong on wordplay.
Le Samourai (1967)
Movie Blurb
“There is no solitude greater than that of a Samourai.”
Le Samourai is a brilliant evocation of minimalist movie making in the neo-noir tradition. The first ten minutes there is no dialogue. When there is dialogue it is spare. Even with the subtitles there is never a time when you don’t know the score. The picture is told almost entirely in visuals.
Le Samourai, directed by Jean-Pierre Mellville, is one of the most influential films in movie history. I immediately recognized the similarities in one of my other favorite films, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) directed by Jim Jarmusch, also about a hired killer working for the mob who lived by the strict code of the Samurai. Similarities included hot wiring of cars to drive to the hits to keen attention to detail of technical aspects of the job. In the final scenes (spoiler alert) of both movies after the showdown after both killers were gunned down it was revealed that their guns were empty. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and this film has been imitated many times before.
Ghost Dog 