Give Me Take You

A girlfriend of mine asked me to go see “the new Parker Posey” movie with her yesterday, and being in the right mood I agreed. I figured that her defining the movie by the lead actress, whom she kind of described as unpredictable and quirky, would mean that the movie was kind of drivel and a perverse form of self-empowerment. Anyway, I went.

What a great movie. As soon as I saw the name Hal Hartley arrive on the credits, I began to settle in. I saw Amateur recently and thought it was Great. Fay Grim is, too, and is actually better – so funny, so dry yet so sexy, and so smartly diverse, and mildly off-kilter. I highly recommend it. It’s a sequel to Henry Fool, which I haven’t seen, but I didn’t need to to enjoy it. Perhaps it worked to its advantage that I wasn’t already familiar with the characters?

Another odd bit about this film is that when we were going in I noticed it was on DVD at the counter. Then projection looked like a DVD and the production company had HD in it’s title. Very futuristic and indeterminate times we live in.

I stole away by myself to see Spiderman 3 earlier in the day, too, and had a great time there, as well. What a life-affirming day for the arts!

I've been waiting a long time for these to become available: Les Yeux Fermes and Lifespan, two 1970's soundtracks by Terry Riley on Riley's new label, Elision Fields, which seems to be run by his management. These soundtracks are among the best of Riley's work. They contain deep space music, sensitive timbres, and extraordinarily lush melodic sensitivity that sometimes even carries a ragtime like buoyancy. Just enough of personality sticks out in these recordings, too, so that you can't really place them in any one genre for it's importance. It's Terry Riley's music. I can't recommend picking up this CD highly enough. Reissue of the year thus far for me.