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Heart Review -- Art Review
Nov. 14th, 2003 12:50 pmIt's snowing. It's beautiful from the 10th floor where our offices are. We're moving in 3 to 6 months but even if we didn't, they're putting a 60 story building up between us and everything else next year, so things change one way or t'other.
Just got back from the heart specialist. The jury is still out on whether I ever experience atrial fibrillation. The holter monitor recorded numerous APBs (or premature beats) but no fibrillation. This is good. In fibrillation, the atrial walls quiver instead of contracting properly, allowing blood to pool and potentially clot, and then shooting stroke-inducing clots to the brain. Premature beats, on the other, hand, are full contractions, if erratic ones. The question remains, when I get into multiple hours of arhythmia, is it fibrillation or just lots of APBs. I'm walking around with an ECG requistion, waiting for a good sustained period of wackiness at which point I'll run to the lab and get it recorded.
Though it must be said, if I never have patches shaved off my chest again it will be too soon. I have been itching and breaking out in ingrown hair bumps for almost two weeks. Fuck it. The cat, who is recovering from the removal of a cyst, shares bald patches with me. We are both indignant.
And enough about health and inner states and all that inward looking shit. It's time for QUICK REVIEWS!!
MOVIES:
28 Days Later - What the fuck? Perhaps they should have spent more than 10 minutes working out the "plot". How long can Danny Boyle go on cashing in on the rep of his first two movies? Well, since this pile of shit was a hit, I guess for a while longer. Even The Beach didn't bring him down. Rather than rent this movie, rent his first: Shallow Grave -- a hilarious and scary meditation on greed. Early Ewan McGregor. Extra warning: the "Shocking!!!!!" alternate endings are minor rejigs and not in the least scary. The most interesting thing on the DVD is a reworking of the whole second half of the movie with storyboards and dialogue being read over it. This was conceived well into cutting when, I suppose, they realized their movie sucked. The reworking wasn't any better, by the way.
Charlotte Sometimes -- Beautiful, mature, understated, satisfying indie flick. Love quadrangle where no one ever says what they're thinking and you always get it anyway. Painful. Sexy, too. The main guy character looks like my hot massage therapist.
Both of the above were shot on digital video and both looked excellent, especially the infinitely cheaper Charlotte Sometimes. Fuck Dogme films and fuck them now.
COMICS:
Caper (DC) -- Jewish Gangsters in turn of the 20th Century San Francisco. Violent, fascinating. The milieu is belieable and the gorgeous art is by New York's reluctant son, Farrel Dalrymple. Somewhat unconvincing dialogue by Judd Winick. Yiddish lives, and in the strangest places.
Black and White (Viz Communications) -- by Taiyo Matsumoto. A European flavoured manga about two street kids, corrupt police and Yakuza that draws connections between all kinds of violence in society. The art is tight as a drum and loose as a freefall. Hypnotic.
BOOKS:
Choke -- Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) continues to explore a lost generation (Look ma! I'm writing ad copy!). This man can really write. He's funny and smart and can juggle a lot of balls in the air. In the end, he doesn't quite pull it off. You have to believe his world could really happen for it to really hit you and, by the end, his fantasy construct has become to baroque. But it's short and worth it and his images are unparalleled: he describes a stripper who's been plucked and buffed to the point where she is not so much a human as a place where you can swipe a credit card.
Just got back from the heart specialist. The jury is still out on whether I ever experience atrial fibrillation. The holter monitor recorded numerous APBs (or premature beats) but no fibrillation. This is good. In fibrillation, the atrial walls quiver instead of contracting properly, allowing blood to pool and potentially clot, and then shooting stroke-inducing clots to the brain. Premature beats, on the other, hand, are full contractions, if erratic ones. The question remains, when I get into multiple hours of arhythmia, is it fibrillation or just lots of APBs. I'm walking around with an ECG requistion, waiting for a good sustained period of wackiness at which point I'll run to the lab and get it recorded.
Though it must be said, if I never have patches shaved off my chest again it will be too soon. I have been itching and breaking out in ingrown hair bumps for almost two weeks. Fuck it. The cat, who is recovering from the removal of a cyst, shares bald patches with me. We are both indignant.
And enough about health and inner states and all that inward looking shit. It's time for QUICK REVIEWS!!
MOVIES:
28 Days Later - What the fuck? Perhaps they should have spent more than 10 minutes working out the "plot". How long can Danny Boyle go on cashing in on the rep of his first two movies? Well, since this pile of shit was a hit, I guess for a while longer. Even The Beach didn't bring him down. Rather than rent this movie, rent his first: Shallow Grave -- a hilarious and scary meditation on greed. Early Ewan McGregor. Extra warning: the "Shocking!!!!!" alternate endings are minor rejigs and not in the least scary. The most interesting thing on the DVD is a reworking of the whole second half of the movie with storyboards and dialogue being read over it. This was conceived well into cutting when, I suppose, they realized their movie sucked. The reworking wasn't any better, by the way.
Charlotte Sometimes -- Beautiful, mature, understated, satisfying indie flick. Love quadrangle where no one ever says what they're thinking and you always get it anyway. Painful. Sexy, too. The main guy character looks like my hot massage therapist.
Both of the above were shot on digital video and both looked excellent, especially the infinitely cheaper Charlotte Sometimes. Fuck Dogme films and fuck them now.
COMICS:
Caper (DC) -- Jewish Gangsters in turn of the 20th Century San Francisco. Violent, fascinating. The milieu is belieable and the gorgeous art is by New York's reluctant son, Farrel Dalrymple. Somewhat unconvincing dialogue by Judd Winick. Yiddish lives, and in the strangest places.
Black and White (Viz Communications) -- by Taiyo Matsumoto. A European flavoured manga about two street kids, corrupt police and Yakuza that draws connections between all kinds of violence in society. The art is tight as a drum and loose as a freefall. Hypnotic.
BOOKS:
Choke -- Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) continues to explore a lost generation (Look ma! I'm writing ad copy!). This man can really write. He's funny and smart and can juggle a lot of balls in the air. In the end, he doesn't quite pull it off. You have to believe his world could really happen for it to really hit you and, by the end, his fantasy construct has become to baroque. But it's short and worth it and his images are unparalleled: he describes a stripper who's been plucked and buffed to the point where she is not so much a human as a place where you can swipe a credit card.
