Category Archives: Foreign Films

Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend… Motivation?

19 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by in Exercise/ Fitness, Existential Despair, Foreign Films, Uncategorized

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That is today’s tune.  I am at an ebb.  Given that alcohol and drugs are a suicide run for me and sexual infidelity is not my style either, my two principal diversions are exercise and eating. Add the beginnings of a cold to the mix. So exercise is a complete turn-off. That leaves eating. Or maybe, I will blog.

Yeah, I’ll blog. And drink coffee.  The coffee tastes good. The chair is comfy. I will go back to Rainer Werner Fassbender’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, starring some great German actors, like Günter Lamprecht, Hannah Schygulla, Gottfried John, and Barbara Sukowa. This was a miniseries on German Television (Deutsche Fernsehen. sounds classier, doesn’t it?) but it was released in theatres in the USA.  Fassbinder was a bad boy’s bad boy, i.e. a homosexual drug addict and rather indiscrete about his proclivities. He never got much of a following beyond the art house crowd, here in the America of Ronald Reagan and the 1980’s. 

The story follows the life of a petty thief, Franz Bieberkopf (Lamprecht), who served time for the murder of his lover. It begins with his release from prison for this crime.  There isn’t a lot of moralizing but there is some fantastic cinematic storytelling. 

I have to bear in mind that stories are meant to be experienced in the mind in some fashion. I need not have written a thesis on Fassbinder in order to enjoy this. And I don’t need to mythologize about his angst as a gay artist either.  He wanted me to enjoy this story, I’ll betcha.

So I will blog and watch. And not obsess too much about food. Maybe I will do some ironing and shoe shining, and sublimate my service bottom energy into something productive.

Too Much Coffee = Rant

17 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Foreign Films, Uncategorized

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It is almost Midnight in Richmond, Virginia. I have YouTube on. There is a performance of Les Indes Galante 1, by Jean Phillippe Rameau. If you like baroque opera/ballet combined with total nudity, this performance is for you. This is a French production. We have lean and lithe dancers’ bodies, uh, dancing about.  

It’s OK, I suppose. The music is more engaging than the nekkid people. This choreography is just down right silly.

What does this have to with too much coffee? I ran out of decaf, you see. And I slept entirely too much today. So I am awake. I’m thinking I should read, but no. Now in the “performance” there is a procession of clothed people, led by a man dressed as the Pope. I know this is supposed to symbolize something but quite frankly, I don’t care.  The innocent nekkid people, corrupted by (boo, hiss) CIVILIZATION, perhaps?   Next we have  rube tourists wanting to get to this Eden where the naked people cavort. I know the 18th Century gave this idea of the Noble Savage., Merci, Monsieur Rousseau. Maybe this stupid ballet is what we need to bury the Noble Savage idea once and for all eternity.

About twenty years ago, I saw a classic French film, Les Enfants du Paradise, for the first time. It was an homage to classical French Theatre. How tragic that the French no longer take their art seriously.  Western Culture is engaged in an orgy of self-hatred, as evidenced by this performance.

Maybe, we in the West will summon the collective courage, intellect and will to challenge the intellectual foundation of modernism, specifically the works of Freud, Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin.  Intellectual counterrevolutions take time.  

Rant over.

 

Up, Again. Too Early?

22 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by in Foreign Films, Sexuality, sleep

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This morning I woke around 3:45, and decide I shall be up for awhile. I turn on YouTube and resume watching Phillippe Noiret in Coup De Torchon. I remember seeing this film when it was released. Over time, I became a huge Phillipe Noiret fan. Cinema Paradiso is my favorite Noiret film.  So yeah, I’m guilty of being a sentimental slob.The YouTube version of Coup De Torchon is chopped up and hard to follow. I lose interest, but can’t get back to bed. 

 Eventually I end up watching an infomercial for the Abdoer360, a product that promises incredible results!  This device features a seat that rotates on a chair platform and promises to give you a great abdominal workout.  Given that Infomercial World is a magic place where amazing things happen, I suppose that’s possible. 

Finally I go back to bed.  When I wake up, I have the “I didn’t sleep enough” feeling. Mrs CorC? is heading to work. I have a day where a swim isn’t mandatory and the chores can wait. Bedtime can be whenever I want it. 

I made decaf. And my eyeballs want to know what my eyelids are doing open.  A fantasy creeps into my head about what kind of lover I would be today, after my sexuality has been bottled up for 10+ years. A follow-up fantasy follows of a woman I’ve never met, but who has an aura of passion about her. Need, longing, lust escape the little prison we call today.