All you will see is a girl you once knew/Although she's dressed up to the nines, at sixes and sevens with you.-- Andrew Lloyd Webber's occult on history.
Juan Peron's rise and decline is not mentioned in Assassination Tango, yet I can't help but wonder if due to Coppola's influence in the production, we have an attempted unspoken allegory on the dynamic energy and tragedy of 20th century South America. Ebert's appreciation of Duvall's vehicle (a swan song?) echoes my own attraction to the aesthetic of the film.
Professional critics voice discontent by claiming this is an indulgence for Duvall's ego? Name me a film with an A list celebrity which is not an indulgence for its star? It was not shot at an action thriller's pace, and I'm glad it was not. The hitman Duvall plays was run of the mill? Fuck that. Anderson is an old man who has his heart wrapped up in his little girl. He wants to retire. His capo, who I think was Frankie, talks him in to this foreign target.
The scenes Duvall plays with his wife are dynamic with an undercurrent. Warning: hard and dangerous sex ahead. They are also evocative of the glamour which Juan and Evita utilized to create a smokescreen around their dictatorship. There is also another dynamic, a paranoia of conspiracies which wrap around themselves, the ambiguity over who knows what, whether Frankie was trying to kill Anderson off, who might have wanted the general eliminated or panicked and changed their minds, whose strings the federal police were pulling, or who was pulling theirs. Does it truly say anything about the reign of the generals after Isabel Peron made a bid to reclaim power when I was an adolescent?
She was news then, just like a dowager empress. Should she be held accountable? Or are we supposed to be distracted by the absurdity of Pedraza filming Fellini like commercials? Does it spice up conjugal activity if you cast your wife as the threatening and subversive female against your pretend middle brow nuclear family unit? Are we being offered suggestions about despotism?
If social networking is just a complex communicating tool, why is it so much more disconcerting when we connect with those out of our past? I thought my immediate boss from Matrix would want nothing to do with me. I left Matrix in an emotional state, and critiqued, publicly, how my directors handled their project, not that they treated me badly, or discussed their erections. Dan wasn't a bad guy, as I've written. He solidified my cynicism (or skepticism) about the effectiveness of clinical psychology, but always played the decent man, perhaps due to the fact that he is a decent man. I'm tempted to IM him with an impertinence because though I've suspected Irv Rutman has been dead for a number of years, I have not found an obituary. Even if I had the gall to query that, in the sense of why it matters, or to ask for a reference so old, what good would it do me? Nevertheless, I reached out, reclaimed him. Odd, I suppose, less obtrusive than the telephone.
Showing posts with label francis ford coppola. Show all posts
Showing posts with label francis ford coppola. Show all posts
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Hegel in Vancouver
"Married men and married women can only be close friends in large crowds."-- Ted Danson, has been heart candy.
Aunt Marie fell earlier in the week, broke her wrist. I did not tell her ancient cunning "I told you so," but I told her over the summer to begin the process of case managing her decline. She claimed she wasn't ready. Now that she is in pain with a joint fracture which will not heal properly, she is "ready to throw everything to PCA," and mildly incensed me by saying she doesn't know how I do it with one hand. She is old and in excruciating pain, but Jesus H Fucking Christ I need a new set of colorful expletives. I considered poon in the sense Ellroy uses it, but as slang it is more rancid and degenerative than I care to be. Barriers need not be built so thick.
I spent the early years of my childhood shuttled from row home to row home to row home, yellowed with cellophane lamp shades and plastic upholstery, Marie's included, on my knees on her kitchen linoleum as a monkey child screaming at her Rottweiler, thinking it was going to eat me, which led Uncle Richie to yell at me for frightening the damn dog, the tumors in his chest floating into place with T-1 switches, then I lived with her prior to my entry into the steaming dung of North Philadelphia, but the bigotry rolls like kidney stones from colon polyps.
Any time blacks start something between Temple University and Drexel, it becomes an international incident, but drive byes in Kensington, robberies in West Philly, these are slasher lede segments for the local broadcasts (Fox still sleeps with Coppola's opera; as a local network they believe traditional mafia is still relevant). I have been dealing with the guilt terror in that street thief's face, even if the kid has a defense to play, for 27 years now. It is the face of every black man who cannot matriculate into a professional niche within the business class. It is the face that destroyed whatever liberal creed I had twisted in my vaginal mucous when I migrated back, the face that angrily moved me rightward, the face that allows me to lose intimidation if I set out to teach Spike Lee something about humility.
Of the 600k minorities who legally reside in this large but dilapidated urban grid, two thirds of their children are texting me in face time audio urging me to "get mommy out of the toilet." My restraint has been admirable; it shall not last. In studio when I feel the need I toss the 5c in my canvas and hook it where I can access it. That alone helps me relax, but having matured from a vigorous 30 something into a bitter hag sow on Internet screens, sexting Jobs rib cage is beyond my day dreams.
Aunt Marie fell earlier in the week, broke her wrist. I did not tell her ancient cunning "I told you so," but I told her over the summer to begin the process of case managing her decline. She claimed she wasn't ready. Now that she is in pain with a joint fracture which will not heal properly, she is "ready to throw everything to PCA," and mildly incensed me by saying she doesn't know how I do it with one hand. She is old and in excruciating pain, but Jesus H Fucking Christ I need a new set of colorful expletives. I considered poon in the sense Ellroy uses it, but as slang it is more rancid and degenerative than I care to be. Barriers need not be built so thick.
I spent the early years of my childhood shuttled from row home to row home to row home, yellowed with cellophane lamp shades and plastic upholstery, Marie's included, on my knees on her kitchen linoleum as a monkey child screaming at her Rottweiler, thinking it was going to eat me, which led Uncle Richie to yell at me for frightening the damn dog, the tumors in his chest floating into place with T-1 switches, then I lived with her prior to my entry into the steaming dung of North Philadelphia, but the bigotry rolls like kidney stones from colon polyps.
Any time blacks start something between Temple University and Drexel, it becomes an international incident, but drive byes in Kensington, robberies in West Philly, these are slasher lede segments for the local broadcasts (Fox still sleeps with Coppola's opera; as a local network they believe traditional mafia is still relevant). I have been dealing with the guilt terror in that street thief's face, even if the kid has a defense to play, for 27 years now. It is the face of every black man who cannot matriculate into a professional niche within the business class. It is the face that destroyed whatever liberal creed I had twisted in my vaginal mucous when I migrated back, the face that angrily moved me rightward, the face that allows me to lose intimidation if I set out to teach Spike Lee something about humility.
Of the 600k minorities who legally reside in this large but dilapidated urban grid, two thirds of their children are texting me in face time audio urging me to "get mommy out of the toilet." My restraint has been admirable; it shall not last. In studio when I feel the need I toss the 5c in my canvas and hook it where I can access it. That alone helps me relax, but having matured from a vigorous 30 something into a bitter hag sow on Internet screens, sexting Jobs rib cage is beyond my day dreams.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)