Art

Art, San Francisco

Silent Winter @ The Castro 2013

Shhhhh… Silent Winter

I volunteered at the Castro Theater last weekend for a free ticket to “Silent Winter” the one day silent film festival. While I was there I met a number of silent film geeks who were not lacking in enthusiasm. When I asked “Which film are you seeing?” a few of them answered “ALL OF THEM.” Whaaaaa? It turns out that they were volunteering for the entire day, and watching all 5 movies! If I had known, I would have signed up too! 🙂

Since I’d only committed to working one shift, I chose tickets to “My Best Girl” which was Mary Pickford’s last silent film. I didn’t know much about Mary Pickford,but she was apparently THE silent film IT girl. She had control over her productions and image, which was pretty wild for a woman back then. To have money, power and beauty? Sheesh.

The movie was your basic poor girl meets rich boy who is pretending to not be rich movie (wait, isn’t that the storyline for Coming to America?), but it was so well done. I was really taken with the film’s charm. There were a few transcendent and very clever scenes in the movie (my favorite being the dizzying walk through traffic in the rain). My Best Girl isn’t on Netflix, but you can watch it on YouTube! The music is a little different than what I remember from the Castro, but that’s part of the fun of seeing movies live.

Other movies at the festival looked promising, and I’m kicking myself for not checking them out. Thankfully, a few of them are on Netflix.

The photos and film descriptions are from SF’s Silent Film Fest website. If you click on the movie name it will take you to the Netflix streaming page.

Faust 

faust

F.W. Murnau’s Faust is the most expressive telling of the old European legend, immortalized by Goethe, of the learned man who sells his soul to the devil. Magnificent in its surreal depictions of heaven and hell and a nightmarishly otherworldly world, Faust is masterpiece of German Expressionism, as boldly distinctive as Murnau’s other horror masterpiece, Nosferatu. When Emil Jannings’s wily Mephisto shows up to tempt Faust (Gösta Ekmann), a man of books and learning, with the ability to cure the plague and a 24-hour return to his youthful body, it seems God may have lost his wager with the devil over pious Faust’s immortal soul. Or has he? Murnau’s use of chiaroscuro effect beautifully contrasts light and dark, life and death; and evil is chillingly limned by Jannings’s brilliantly nuanced, subtly comic performance.

Kind of nervous about watching this one. The organist was practicing the music for Faust while I was volunteering, and it gave me the heebie jeebies.

The Thief of Bagdad

TOB

Douglas Fairbanks’s personal favorite, The Thief of Bagdad shows him at the top of his charming, acrobatic game. Directed by Raoul Walsh and adapted from One Thousand and One Nights, the story revolves around a thief (Fairbanks) who falls in love with the daughter (Julanne Johnston) of the Caliph of Bagdad. So overcome with love that he refuses to be deceptive about his true identity, Fairbanks’s thief still has the chance to win the fair maiden by bringing back the world’s rarest treasures. Thus begins a rousing fantasy replete with flying carpets, winged horses, and underwater sea monsters. Exquisite camerawork and lavish sets support early special effects to make Thief a wildly entertaining spectacle.

I’m watching Thief of Bagdad right now and it is epic. Watch this movie!

Art

The new Nick Cave album Push the Sky is coming out in a mere three days. I only found out about it via an email that they were coming to town in April (with Sharon van Etten, NO LESS) !!! I am SO EXCITED.

Found this teaser video of work on the album on their YouTube channel. I love finding stories, video, etc. that remind me that the creative process is indeed hard work. I forget this whenever I try to write, or draw or knit or whatever the hell it is that I claim to do. You don’t just sit down and suddenly strum out something like “Midnight Man” on a sunny Tuesday morning  in a beautiful London loft. You sit in your office writing from 9-6 for months, years. You read, you write bad poetry, you watch movies. You binge on five hours of Frasier (wait that’s just me). You play around with chords, dick around, and argue with your collaborators about the “wa wa sound.”

Back to work, artists. Back to work.

Art

750 Words

I know, I’m two years late to the game, but I’ve started using 750words.com. I’ve finally heard about “Morning pages” and 750words enough times in the last few weeks that I went ahead and started an account. Funny how that works, hunh? It really does take a critical mass to get things going, even for one person. Now Vine on the other hand… I’m going to hold off on that.

Morning Pages is a daily writing practice from the Artist’s Way. Basically you write out about three pages of stream of consciousness longhand  first thing in the morning. Think of it as an early morning brain dump, something to get you focused and ready for your day. Or not. Maybe it’s just a mass of incoherent garbling, a long list, or maybe it’s just the word Why? 750 times. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

750words takes the Morning Pages practice and puts it up online in a thankfully default private setting. What other online application’s settings are default? This is fantastic. 750 words = about three pages, give or take. It’s long enough for you to really go in depth into an issue that’s bothering you, yet it’s also short enough that you don’t want to give up.

The thing that I’m enjoying most about the site so far is that there are STATS. YES. Analytics on my writing. BEHOLD MY SUBCONSCIOUS (which is not nodding coyly while my inner goddess does somersaults):

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Anyways, you get the idea. It’s a pretty interesting way to recognize patterns, or to get a handle on things that are bothering you. Apparently I’m more affectionate and extroverted online than in real life. Just kidding!

Here’s a screengrab from the “linguistic analysis” of a rambling account of a strange dream I had a few nights ago. I’m thinking about  my own mortality, apparently. If I recall, the dream was about the abandoned Sutro Baths, and marriage. >:)

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