Cinema – Page 5 – the coffee philosopher

This review will be necessarily vague and brief because, honestly, I don’t remember a lot of this book. A while back, I saw a list of the best books of critical theory published in 2014. The Thing not only seemed interesting, but it also referenced my second favorite Kurt Russell movie (after the awesome super classic, Big Trouble in Little China), as well having a lot of references to the equally enjoyable and problematic works of H.P. Lovecraft.

So, while on a plane ride to Chicago, I started burrowing into the slim volume, which I had downloaded onto my nook.

Exhausting. Unfulfilling. Confused. Meandering. Lacking a coherent point.

Those were some of my initial opinions. Honestly, if it weren’t so short, I wouldn’t have kept reading it on the plane at all. But I didn’t finish it on the plane and I finally got around to finishing it a couple of months later, with too little memory of the first half of the book to attempt to understand it and too little patience with what I did remember to consider starting over.

But, here’s my summary: Husserl, mumble, mumble, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, mumble, we are descended from aliens, Husserl, mumble, Levinas, Earth is kind of unfeeling so therefore Husserl, mumble, mumble, Merleau-Ponty, mumble, spider legs head.

Posted on May 15, 2015May 11, 2015 by the coffee philosopher · 1 Comment

Growing Up On Anime

As a teenager, we spoke a lot about anime (which, in those ancient days, we sometimes also called ‘japanimation’) and also (though less) about it’s printed sibling, manga (though we usually just called them graphic novels; at that time, we usually just used the term ‘manga’ to refer to either the anime or graphic novels with nudity). I can’t speak for my friends, but I’m pretty sure that, I, at least, pretended to know and have read and seen more than I actually had. But that’s normal for a teenager, I think.

But certainly, seeing Akira on the big screen at the Tampa Theatre was an awe inspiring couple of hours for me and was probably most responsible for my love (though the foundation had been laid by badly edited and dubbed shows on Saturday morning, cobbled together from various animes, given English language names like Star Blazers and G-Force).

I’m forty now and I still watch this stuff. And I get excited when my favorite ones get name checked (this one here points out some similarities between my favorite anime, Outlaw Star, and the glory that is Firefly).

While my better half was gone for several weeks, I watched a particularly embarrassing series aimed at teenagers (though I still maintain the right to make fun of grown ups who read Twilight and/or watch the movies because there is no good god viable excuse for that if you are over 18). I also read the manga (which came first) on my Nook and now it’s done and there probably won’t be anymore (thought there are whole internet sites devoted to desperately praying that there will be a third series of either the manga or the anime) and I’m unaccountably sad.

When you finish a series that has touched for some reason and you know that there won’t be anymore and, possibly even worse, you can’t go back and read it again for the first time, it’s like having your heartbroken in early adolescence because your pain is almost worse for being insensate, because you lack the age and experience to arrange in your brain into something meaningful and more fully comprehensible. I tried to go back to the beginning and even read the first volume again, but Tom Wolfe was right, wasn’t he, because I couldn’t really do it. My mind was too full of the sadness of the fact of the ending (the ending itself was sad, but not unbearably so; it was more sadness that it had ended at all) to be able begin again.

Posted on May 7, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Posted on April 2, 2015March 30, 2015 by the coffee philosopher · 4 Comments

William Shatner!!!!

in Toronto, they have stars, just like in Hollywood (and also Palm Springs). Now, if we’re honest, the Hollywood sidewalk stars are much, much cooler… but Shatner, baby!!!!!

Posted on March 30, 2015March 30, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

‘Whiplash,’ Jazz, & Good Luck

We went to see Whiplash at the next last day before closing forever West End Cinema. Firstly, awesome film. Really awesome. Made jazz drumming incredibly visceral and also, J K Simmons is as awesome as you’ve heard. Awesomer. Awesomererest. Also, the lighting was very good and evocative. Great use of a sort of cinematic chiaroscuro, but without drawing attention to itself.

We were lucky because the three of us (Rockus, one of my oldest friends, and my better half) got the last three tickets to the showing.

Afterwards, I just had to see some jazz. So Rockus and I went to eat at Sala Thai before visiting Twins Jazz (my favorite jazz club in the city). Sala Thai had a decent, but not great jazz trio (guitar, bass, and drums). Then, we got the last two seats at Twins Jazz. The last two. After getting the last three at Whiplash. Karma, dudes. Coming through.

The band have an excellent trumpeter and a very impressive pianist. The sax man was, sadly, uninspiring. You kept waiting for him to really bust out… but he never did.

Anyway. A fine night.

Posted on March 29, 2015March 28, 2015 by the coffee philosopher · 1 Comment

I Had This Toy! It Was Awesome!

Posted on March 4, 2015March 2, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Nimoy

Someone once said to me that she would break down and cry when (and if – modern medicine can do miracles, I hear) Patrick Stewart were to pass away. Of course, she wasn’t thinking of his masterful performances on stage as Lear and Prospero, but rather as Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

I love Patrick Stewart, but she was obviously younger than me, because my Star Trek memories are of the original series in syndication and the original movies (especially Wrath of Khan). As good at Stewart was, the others are only pretenders to the throne. Of the original duo, Kirk and Spock… Spock, aka Leonard Nimoy, has shuffled off his mortal coil.

He did more than Spock, of course (remember In Search Of?), but it is because he was Spock that I am reminded of a certain cultural mortality.

If I have children, they will never really know who Spock was and if I try to show them, they will merely mock an old man for watching something with such shoddy production values.

And one day, Kirk will be gone, too. And after that, there will soon be little memory of my Star Trek. Which, I suppose, is really just saying that one day, I will be dead and there will be a day, some time after – maybe years, maybe decades, maybe more, but there will be a day – when there will no longer be any memory of me or my world.

Happy hump day, folks.