The Black Isle

Eden Spring RIP February 2008 

Be back in the New Year.

From Octave Mirbeau’s Torture Garden, pp. 78-79:

“So?” she said in a malicious voice. “It’s not a joke? You really have eaten human flesh?”

“Certainly I have,” he replied proudly in a tone which established an undeniable superiority over us. “We had to… You eat whatever you can.”

“What does it taste like?” she asked, a little disgusted.

He thought for a moment … then, with a vague gesture:
“Heavens!” he said. “How can I explain? Imagine, adorable young lady, imagine pork, slightly marinated in nut oil…”

In a complacently resigned tone he added: “It’s not very good … At any rate you wouldn’t eat it for pleasure. I’d prefer a leg of lamb or a steak.”

“Clearly,” Clara accepted. And, as though she wanted, through politeness, to minimize the horror of such anthropophagy, she added: “Doubtless because you only consumed negro flesh!”

“Negro?” he cried with a start. “Ugh! Fortunately, dear lady, I was not reduced to such harsh necessity. We never lacked whites, the Lord be thanked! Our escort was large and mainly composed of Europeans — from Marseilles, Germany, Italy, a bit of everywhere. When we were hungry, we slaughtered one of the escort, preferably a German. The German, divine lady, is fatter than other races and provides more meat. And again, as far as we French are concerned, it’s one German less! The Italian is dry and hard, full of nerves…”

“And the Marseillais?” I intervened.

“Well,” the traveller declared, shaking his head. “He’s pretty over-rated. He smells of garlic and also, for some reason, sheep grease. He’s not exactly appetizing. Edible, but no more than that…”

EVERYONE needs to see Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan “biopic” I’m Not There, which takes the most insightful and original (and effective) approach to identity and biography I’ve ever seen in a movie.

Six actors, each representing a different aspect of Dylan’s personality (both real and mythical) with the sections intercutting with one another so that it’s as if we’re watching an intimate self-interrogation — each side arguing with, commenting on, explaining the other sides of himself. It’s him, it’s us, it’s everyone; each of us is a vast chaotic thing, unknowable even to ourselves, unpinnable-down, made up of different messy parts, including myth, including reality. (Well, OK, perhaps the culture-murderers who worship at the tabernacle of reality TV and think that Juno’s the Second Coming of Sliced Bread may disagree with me.)

One of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen on the web: 
Professor Jess

Also, this related site:
Horton’s Folly

That wowed/thrilled me most, ie. truly the best:
There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Zodiac (David Fincher)
No Country For Old Men (The Brothers Coen)
Deathproof (Q. Tarantino)
Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days (Cristian Mungiu)
My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin)
I’m a Cyborg but That’s OK (Park Chan-Wook)

That I really liked:
The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat)
Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach)
Into The Wild (Sean Penn)
Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona)
Lust, Caustion (Ang Lee)
Paprika (Satoshi Kon)
The Brave One (Neil Jordan)
Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong)
Into Great Silence (Philip Groning)

That I enjoyed but found far too sweet:
Knocked Up (Judd Apatow)
Juno (Jason Reitman)
Ratatouille (Brad Bird)

That I haven’t yet seen:
I’m Not There (Todd Haynes)
Joe Strummer (Julien Temple)
Control (Anton Corbijn)
Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

What a list! What a year!

A 10-minute instructional:

Time.com:

Abstraction and theory have long been prized in France’s intellectual life and emphasized in its schools. Nowhere is that tendency more apparent than in French fiction, which still suffers from the introspective 1950s nouveau roman (new novel) movement. Many of today’s most critically revered French novelists write spare, elegant fiction that doesn’t travel well. Others practice what the French call autofiction — thinly veiled memoirs that make no bones about being conceived in deep self-absorption. Christine Angot received the 2006 Prix de Flore for her latest work, Rendez-vous, an exhaustively introspective dissection of her love affairs. One of the few contemporary French writers widely published abroad, Michel Houellebecq, is known chiefly for misogyny, misanthropy and an obsession with sex. “In America, a writer wants to work hard and be successful,” says François Busnel, editorial director of Lire, a popular magazine about books (only in France!). “French writers think they have to be intellectuals.” 

More here.