Books and Movies.

Our main page appears to be empty, so let me take a brief break from my work to put something here.

I've read several books this month, but I don't have the time to write about any of them in much detail. I recommend The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, which was my first encounter with his work. A couple of quotes:

"He looked at me with eyes narrowed as if to apologize for being unable to speak because of the nervous black panther sleeping by his side. Which is not to say that there was a black panther sleeping by his side: he just looked as if there were."

"Snow floated down every once in a while, but it was frail snow, like a memory fading into the distance."

I'm currently reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, about which perhaps more later.

I also started a Netflix subscription and I've been watching various things I've been told to see by people who are more film-literate than I. Despite the inherent appeal of its being mentioned in a Dan Bejar lyric, I'm afraid I didn't like Fitzcarraldo all that much. Maybe proper appreciation of it depends on having seen other Herzog films? On the other hand, I really enjoyed The Seventh Seal. The scene in which Death is cutting down a tree into which an actor has fled felt very familiar. Has it been mimicked or parodied in something with which I would be familiar? Maybe it was just the actor's plea "My performance?," and Death's reply, "Canceled. By death," which calls to mind the line "Death cancels all engagements" in Zuleika Dobson.

I also watched Kubrick's Lolita, which I thought was done well. Of course, the novel is much better, but the movie is in many ways true to the spirit of the book, and Peter Sellers as Quilty is entertaining. Nabokov wrote the screenplay, although much of what he wrote was cut. Given that the film had to satisfy censors, I think it turned out rather well.

Anyhow, Netflix is pretty nice, and recommendations of movies I should see are welcome, although my list is already terribly long.

Apologies for the rambling in this post, but I wanted to get something up on the page. We're rapidly approaching the one-year mark here at Gnostical Turpitude, so maybe I'll get around to finishing my take on the best albums (and assorted other things) of 2004, depending on how much free time I have this week.