It's weekend!

Damn it's over already.

Almost done with Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy. So far it reads like a postmodern homage to Poe (and probably Stevenson as well). But a certain Poe in particular - not the Poe of the House of Usher or any number of stories about longing and a beautiful woman who dies. Not that Poe - rather the Poe in Man of the Crowd and William Wilson, and the theme of playing detective in Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter - a genre Poe singlehandedly invented ("stories of ratiocination" as they were known then).

The detective style is totally different - none of the embellished utterances of C. Auguste Dupin type investigations - but the theme is there. It seems to be about narrative and its relation to identity - literary identity in particular. A detective in search of a character, characters in search of an author, authors in search of purpose - perspectival recursion and narrative self-reference as each detective starts doubting his detective task and the purpose behind it as he discovers someone who could almost have been his double. The discontinuity of identity and the elusiveness of self.

It's all very clever of course.

S and I went to the ICA yesterday and saw 4 - a Russian movie described by one New York Times reviewer as "as close to the experience of an actual nightmare as anything I've seen on the screen". Quotes aside, I was surprised to find very little information on it anywhere on the web. That's a shame really. It is terribly bleak and without any glimmer of hope in its ceaseless sequences of dehumanised individuals and meaningless human encounters, enhanced by ominous and relentless sounds accompanying characters' seemingly simple actions. But that is all the more reason I expect reviewers to exclaim that, surely, modern Russia does not look like this!!

Who knows - the people sitting slightly behind us sounded Russian, and generally laughed or reacted as characters spoke rather than when they would have finished reading the subtitles like us other schmucks, but unfortunately they left so quickly that I never got to ask their take on it.

In the movie everything unravels. No human interaction retains anything but the most basic bond and no one offers redemption. Even suicide is offered as a meaningless way out - something pathetic and without consequence.

It's as depressing as it sounds. It's a carefully constructed movie works. Perhaps the last hour could have been reduced to 45 minutes. I saw one too many scenes with old ladies eating greasy food as if they are celebrating the success of a hunt. They are not - someone died, and they ate a lot, and then a pig died and they stuffed themselves again until they fell over from drowsiness.

Today the tedious ordeal of buses to central London as weekend engineering works continue to make rail services unavailable in this neck of the woods. Ongoing installments of this story until Crhistmas. I'm sure there is a rant left in me, if only I could find the will ::sigh::

Magic at the movies

Haha, this girl stands in front of Empire movie theatre with a questionnaire in her hand, obviously targeting passersby but it would seem she's keeping too much of a low profile to catch many. Regardless.

Me: Hey what notes did you take about me? I saw you! Are you a spy?
She (looking a bit bewildered): No! It's a survey
Me: I am supposed to believe you? You look a bit suspicious you know.
She: No really ... it's about movies. haha, yea I am spy, I was watching you.
Me: Hmmm, are you sure ... where is your special spy gear?
She: It's invisible!

Oi.

Me: Well that's lucky 'cause I am a spy as well. But how come you don't know the special spy word?
She: Uhmm - it's oyster.
Me: No, that's wrong! You are probably waiting for another spy.

Her fellow footworker arrived. A pretty one, but boy what a slow talker. She claimed it was from a hangover but somehow I wasn't convinced ... It's a travesty sometimes.

Land of the Dead turns out to be quite good. If you ask me it's a satire :-o Yes. The faceless masses will rise up and squash the privileged pale faces. Now where have I seen that before? Oh, Metropolis. And then there are the suckers getting disemboweled for their flesh. Satire for us horror lovers who don't really get out to see Oscar material. Whatever. Rock on Romero.

If this isn't funny then it sure is sad

Today I walk down the street and see two girls approaching from afar on the other side of the street. I decide to switch sides so I can cross paths with them. They look sternly ahead but as we are about to pass one another one of them ventures to glance up, looking me in the eyes. The surprised look on her face when I give her a broad smile! She half-smiles and raises her eye-brows, but she seems rather bewlidered and soon swings her focus in front of her with a look as if thinking: "Oh god, did he really smile at me?" Hey sweetie, it happens, but I'll be honest I wasn't just being friendly.

Gosh, I guess it's sad when you need validation.

On a lighter note, What a Carve Up! is proving to be a pretty funny and a pretty good book. Its faults are also its strengths - it was becoming too very English to take seriously, almost a parody of itself. But I've been vamped by a Kubrickian gothic pathos (crunch that) suddenly showing its pale, suffering face here in the last 100 pages.