“... poison in your ear ...”

There's A Difference Between Lonliness

And Being Alone

I'm not anti-social as much as I'm contra-social. Even maintaining a strong sense of non-approachability with sunglasses and an unmarked dark gray baseball cap over Jeffrey Dahmer inspired facial hair, invariably some stupid brave soul feels compelled to interact with me and thus prove what a loathsome excuse for breathing they happen to be. I am rarely surprised by their stupidity, cupidity, arrogance or ignorance. Par for the fricken course. Certainly I have "anger issues," but I have them firmly in control, so let's (myself and I) go get a drink, eh? Groovy...

Apocalypse When?

Detroiters often react testily to this kind of attention (as I do), even when it is done skillfully and with good intentions, as much of it is. Some of the criticism of negative publicity is just boosterism, as when the City Council denounced the producers of the ABC crime drama Detroit 187 for peddling the idea that there are criminals in Detroit. Others, weary of condescending criticism from outsiders, will defend Detroit’s reputation, or at least their privileged right to defame it, something like defending a bad parent: I can say anything I want about the old man, but don’t you dare. Ruin photography, in particular, has been criticized for its “pornographic” sensationalism, and my bookseller friend won’t sell much of it for that reason. And others roll their eyes at all the positive attention heaped on the young, mostly white “creatives,” which glosses over the city’s deep structural problems and the diversity of ideas to help fix them. So much ruin photography and ruin film aestheticizes poverty without inquiring of its origins, dramatizes spaces but never seeks out the people that inhabit and transform them, and romanticizes isolated acts of resistance without acknowledging the massive political and social forces aligned against the real transformation, and not just stubborn survival, of the city. And to see oneself portrayed in this way, as a curiosity to be lamented or studied, is jarring for any Detroiter, who is of course also an American, with all the sense of self-confidence and native-born privilege that we’re taught to associate with the United States.

Detroitism by John Patrick Leary @ Guernica

h/t Erik Loomis @ Lawyers, Guns & Money

Election Coverage

Friday Noir

Wikipedia & IMDB

Чорна п'ятниця

Незнайомці в поїзді

модернізація 2012.02.06 [Проект:WIP]

The original slideshow to this post is still available, but the new ones linked to these two thumbnails provide more control over review.

You can run them with the play button or single step to and fro to better appreciate each frame's composition.


Will have more to say later today... or whenever ... todo lo que

Vendredi Noir

filmsite.org

*

Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Every frame in this movie is brilliant. From the credit's opening moment, overlaid on a misty anonymous riverfront paved with cobblestones, to the brightly lit pastoral finale, the audience is treated to some of the finest cinematography ever recorded. Truly stunning.

The first series of cuts takes you from the low contrast open through increasingly stark portraits of a city's fringes. There is no mistaking the journey being taken to the edges of society's comfort zone; and from a short presentation by the director John Huston, included on the DVD, we learn that this is a story about "human relationships ... told from the inside out." He quickly adds that while "melodramatic in form, it is NOT melodramatic in content."