Gun Talk

Jun
2nd

Tue

Neurosis in film: part one

Charlie’s (Charles Aznavour) thoughts as he walks Lena (Marie Dubois) home are conveyed to the viewer through voice-over…

…She’s laughs…

…He reacts…

… and she states the obvious…

The preceding series of frames is only a part, albeit a sizable chunk, of what is one of my favourite sequences in a film in (my) recent memory. The sequence comes from François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, which is actually the follow-up to his seminal film The 400 Blows. Anyway, even though I cut off the beginning and end of the sequence, I’m pretty sure I captured enough frames from the film to demonstrate what I enjoyed about it.

Okay so here’s where I’m supposed to eloquently explain just what is so memorable about this sequence but once I started to do so, I realized the Herculean effort it would require of myself to do it with any measure of clarity or succinctness, and so I quit.

What I will say is that the sequence is a perfect example of the “movie magic” which Truffaut was able create -something that I can’t really explain, that you’ll have to see for yourself - and is present in surfeit in Shoot the Piano Player.

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May
30th

Sat

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Jake One ft. Elzhi and Royce da 5’9” - Glow

“The cool thing about Jake’s album is that it IS backpacker rap sometimes. It’s everything though. It makes shit like Slug rapping alongside Posdnous, Buck atop “Triggerman” and Keak rasping on boom bap all seem like it comes from the same place. Which it does.

You know, this little thing called hip hop.”

- Noz, from the comments section of a post on his blog featuring a video for the song Home which is included alongside Glow on Jake One’s very good 2008 release White Van Music.

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May
13th

Wed

The trailer for the film Revanche, a Janus films release. Armond White reviews it here.

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Apr
26th

Sun

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The El Michaels Affair - Can it all be so simple

…’Member back in the days when, shit, everything was all smooth and calm… like back in like ‘79, nah, nah, ‘87 that was my favourite…

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Apr
8th

Wed

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The Alchemist ft. C-N-N - Follow the dollar

From Alchemist’s CookBook EP. If I was going to do a full write-up I would have mentioned something like “gurgling synths”. ~~Also I was going to make a poor joke about this being loosely inspired by Robert Bresson’s L’Argent but thankfully better judgement prevailed~~. At any rate, this knocks and I need at least one rap song on each page of the blog.

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An interview with Film critic Glenn Kenny, who was David Foster Wallace's editor at Premiere Magazine

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Apr
6th

Mon

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Mayer Hawthorne - I wish it would rain

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Mar
23rd

Mon

Dinah Washington - This bitter Earth:

featured in Killer of Sheep, a film by Charles Burnett.

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Mar
19th

Thu

Marley Marl talks shop with Funky Drummer Clyde Stubblefield. This video is significant for me as someone who was concerned with drum sounds - they were very important to my beat-making endeavours and yet I knew nothing about actually playing the drums - in that I never knew some drummers actually hit both the rim and the skin of the snare drum simultaneously.

via Cocaine Blunts and Hip Hop Tapes

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Mar
16th

Mon

After just having watched Godard’s Made in U.S.A., I think I may safely say that watching said film need only be reserved for the most die-hard Godard fans (and/or Anna Karina fans), film studies majors and individuals with one, two or several liberal arts degrees - they would probably have a better chance of making any sense of the film (obviously these three groups are not mutually exclusive). Which is to say that there are much more enjoyable, entertaining Godard films, such as Masculin Feminin. However, this particular sequence from the film with Marianne Faithfull singing acappella is pretty damn great.

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