yesterday after work i went to manassas to shoot car rims for two hours for nemos company. it was actually a good challenge, since the rims were 20″ and completely chrome. catching the shot without getting a lot of reflections on the metal was the most difficult part. i have the images in my camera next to me here at work, i’ll take a look at them shortly and see how they turned out.
at midnight i went to andalu which was basically dead. i took a handful of photos and had 3 drinks, then left.
then sleep; glorious sleep. i was woken up by my sister at 8:30.
over the weekend i had the chance to watch a few movies. namely Easy Rider, Happiness, and wong kar-wai’s Chunking Express.
actually, i felt that all three were fantastic. i especially liked Chunking Express, though.
i’d been meaning to watch Easy Rider for at least a year or two, maybe more. i knew that it was a counter culture film taking place in the 60’s about a cross country motorcycle tour. it stars peter fonda and dennis hopper (who also directed). jack nicholson also co-stars as an alcoholic fraternity member who represents conformity while nearly everyone else in the film comprise the free will ‘live off the land’ hippy majority. peter fonda really does an incredible job at playing the ultimate cool dude set in the 60’s. hopper plays the slightly schizo sidekick, a character he’s well acclimated to. easy rider was the independent film to have major film studio distribution, and as such was an enormous hit. the editing is really interesting; it’s very harsh and abrupt, as opposed to seamless and natural.
Happiness was fucked up like not many other movies that i’ve ever seen before. it stars some lesser known b-movie actors and actresses, but also includes john lovitz who shortly after being introduced commits suicide. i had previously heard that this film laid a significant portion of the foundation for American Beauty, and after seeing it i’d really have to agree. it’s about a seemingly-normal, completely disfunctional family. what it doesn’t have from american beauty are the well known actors and terrific soundtrack, but it has a low budget art house feel in the writing and editing which is enjoyable to watch. halfway through it it ocurred to me that i should recommend this to my father because he’d like it, but after that too many completely fucked up scenes were revealed to me to make it a safe candidate for recommendation.
Chunking Express. kat recommended me this movie a year ago, and i’ve had it for at least 9 months without ever seeing it. i’m glad i finally did. the dvd release of this is the first of Tarantino’s “Rolling Thunder” dvd series which brings tarantino’s foreign films of exceptional quality state side. it includes an introduction and closing commentary from tarantino which was hugely fantastic. the movie is essentially a hong kong film drawing heavily from 60’s and 70’s new wave french film influences. the acting is spectacular and features faye wong, the celebrated madonna- like hong kong singer and song writer in her acting debut. i think i’ll have to watch it again to catch everything that i missed. i’m also interested in checking out some other wong kar-wai films like Ashes of Time and Fallen Angels. although this is the only kar-wai film i’ve seen, it seems that he has a style very different from other well known hong kong directors. there’s a notable lack of slow motion action with which others like john woo have brought cinematic notariety to hong kong.
also checked out a motoGP documentary called faster. it wasn’t really that catching so i skipped through a lot of it. it seemed like a lot of it was bigging up valentino rossi who’s one of the most celebrated riders today, i think of spanish decent. maybe one day when i have some more time i’ll watch it in it’s entirety.
currently listening to: Paul Simon – Graceland
currently listening to: server white noise.