PAINTED PAVEMENTS

EDWARD HOPPER & PAVEMENT

Good colours and shit.

More good colours and shit.

Aight so yo. My friend who likes art and shit told me about Edward Hopper and I've been looking at a few of his paintings this evening. They're pretty tight. I like the colours and the shading and shit. 

Good shading and shit

Now while you recover from that statement that just turned the whole world of art criticism on its head, i can tell you about the song I've grown to love this evening. 

A few months ago i was playing the song 'Here' by pavement in my car wherever I went (24-hour Mcdonalds, Corner shop, 24-hour KFC, middle-of-the-road-shop, seventh circle of hell, library, 24-hour petrol shop). Its really good. "HERE" it is below (jokes for days.)

So I've dabbled in some pavement before (if that sentence gave you an image of someone looking really shady and periodically scratching and sniffing real world pavements then congratulations! GreAt MiNds ThInK Alike). 

Moving on, I came across a new pavement song i really dig, so maybe you should listen to it too. It's called Blue Hawaiian- Blue like the colour and Hawaiian like someone that comes from Hawaii- the U.S State that's basically a bunch giant volcanoes. 

Getting back to the song, I like the kind of sporadic melody that changes up, and the catchy chorus where he changes pitch. Here is my best written impression of said catchy bit. ("youknowyourcheekshavelostheir LUSTer" and "the notesaregroupedin CLUSters.."). Because that has probably not gotten you, avid 4 readers, any closer to knowing how this song sounds, I'll just post it below.

Scarlett Johansson.

BOOK - BOOK OF LONGING

BOOK - BOOK OF LONGING 

Aight so yo. My introduction to Leonard Cohen came from that real good song Hallelujah- a song that Jeff Buckley, in my humble opinion, made better, and then Alexandra Burke in what should be everyones opinion, made worse. Then my friend dropped this book through my window one day (not as weird as it sounds I promise) and i started to read it (because that is what you do with books). Its a collection of Cohen's poetry, some short prose, and his crazy but cool drawings. 

(crazy but cool drawing)

There's no general plot to outline here- Well there might be but i didn't read the book cover to cover, i kinda dipped in here and there until i read the whole thing (there goes my internship at any and every newspaper reviewing shit). But the important thing is that its pretty sick. If I took this blog seriously I'd try to find my own way to describe this book properly, but the 'Independent' (Newspaper, magazine, secret society?) pretty much sums it up perfectly - "Cohen maps the wasteland of the heart with humour, and sometimes anger". In my defence, I could add something- go for the rule of three and say humour, hostility, and sometimes anger (i'll make editor one day Mum).

There is a pretty awesome combination of short but emotionally charged poems (notably 'Sweet Time' and 'The Sweetest Little Song'), with longer and more expressive pieces where he says cool shit like 'I am the voice of suffering and I cannot be comforted' ('Something From The Early Seventies). Speaking pretty simply, it just makes it kinda fun to turn the page (remember, I'm a barrel of fun) or dive it at random, because you never know what type of poem or entry you're going to read, or how Cohen's going to leave you feeling. Content with a beautiful simplicity, inspired by a moment in his life, or (for me at lest, pleasantly)  saddened by one of the darker entries.

He says some real cool shit in there, with a mixture of simplicity and complexity that lead to equally profound and poignant realisations. 

Plus there are drawings of titties and vaginas and butts. 

5 JEAN-CLAUDE VAN DAMME'S OUTTA 5!

FILM - FAR FROM HEAVEN

Film - Far From Heaven

Aight so yo. I was sitting around doing nothing like the studious student I am, eating my petrol station chicken and bacon sandwich (that tasted nothing like chicken or bacon) looking up suggestions for films similar to revolutionary road. I was doing this because revolutionary road is really good. So I came across 'Far From Heaven' - a film set in the same depressingly perfect American suburbs where everyone hates everything but has to pretend not to (sort of). 

Oppression, repression, suppression, and loads of other tragically interesting -sions pop up in this film. The focus is on Cathy and Frank Whitaker (Dennis Quaid, and Scarlett Johansson Julianne Moore) a seemingly perfect couple raising two kids in a 'charming' little neighbourhood. Frank has a great job as an executive at advertising company 'Magnatech', while Cathy sits around at home, cleans, and chats shit with the other mothers in the community (they like to talk about how many times a week their husbands give them the D). Everything goes tits up though (i still to this day do not understand how 'tits up' can be considered to be anything other than amazing) when Cathy goes to take her late-working husband some din dins. She catches him passionately kissing some other dude in his office instead of doing his Home-o-work (jokes for days). But seriously now, this obviously takes her by surprise and though you get this immediate feeling that their relationship has been fucked up beyond repair, they both agree that Frank will go to Conversion therapy. That's where psychologists psychiatrists psychics and psyborgs (jokes for days) try to turn homosexual people into heterosexual people. 

Meanwhile, Cathy strikes up a relationship of her own that's frowned upon by the community she lives in. Raymond, Cathy's large black gardener provides her with relief and intellectual stimulation in a tumultuous period of her life (Although it seems to me that he puts the moves on her from day, but perhaps to more educated movie-goers and watchers their relationship is one that blossoms from platonic to something that is  tantalisingly close to erotic). Anyway, without spoiling the ending (Cathy's racist homophobic psychopathic brother kills everyone) the film follows Frank and Cathy's dance into the depths of 1950's America, its prejudices and stereotypes, and its suffocating way of life; you get to see how elusive happiness can be, and the part society plays in always keeping this happiness just out of arms reach.

Raymond, here to trim your hedges, save you from marriages
that are being torn apart by secret homosexual desires, go
to art exhibitions with you, change the way you think
about abstract art, AND lay the pipe down.
Top that cracker.

I liked it. Its a morbid downward spiral that keeps your attention and has interesting developments and some  really believable emotional moments. When I first started watching it though, it all felt really surreal- twin peaks surreal. Kinda like the actors knew they were acting, maybe that's intentional and something to do with how living that life is an act anyway, or maybe it was me just being a little drunk. These surreal vibes never really went away though, and a lot of the lighting in tense scenes is reminiscent of 'Dick Tracy, private eye, Noir type flicks. This isn't bad though, in fact it actually makes the film look pretty cool. 

My general interest in the myth of the hollow american dream really drove me to this film, and kept me watching. If you're like me and you like depressing films about unfulfilled potential, mid-life crises, and broken homes and lives ( what a barrel of fun i am) then I think you'll like Far From Heaven.

3 MARK ALTHAVEAN 'SISQO' ANDREWS OUTTA 5