proximoception | (no subject)

Haven't finished it yet, but the Inherent Vice movie seems actually great.

Don't entirely trust myself though. I'm just now able to enjoy anything at all after being stomped by illness. Still have bronchitis and laryngitis and can't do much, but got enough appetite back that I had some frozen potstickers and they were amazing. There should be a restaurant where they only sell that, I feel. So maybe I feel wrong about Inherent Vice. Been quite a while since I've seen a movie could be what it is.

Don't I usually hate this director? Didn't make much headway with the book, either.

Feels a bit like Pynchon's decided that the influence of Crying on Chinatown means he owns Chinatown. Maybe ditto with Big Lebowski. Definitely a feeling of something ... prior ... stirred up. His basic myth is a strong one (I'm the guy who liked Vineland), and somehow this presentation is making him entirely naturalistic, or proving he had been all along. Kind of an amazing feat. PT Anderson must only ever adapt. And these actors are so fun!

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It's so much better than the book, which I asked in my first reaction why does this book exist when Big Leboeski exists. I buy your answer here.

Interesting to think about which works of literature are strong enough to punch through into deeply influencing filmmakers and vice versa. Noir and westerns seem to be genres where the boundaries are unusually permeable, maybe because images/locations are so important in written versions of them and dialogue in filmed ones. Both approach the condition of the comic book. (Which maybe also explains how Kurosawa could gracefully convert Hammett and Chandler tropes into (basically) western ones.)

Though the fight with censorship also drew the two media unusually close together, making Williams very important in film where he ought not normally have been. Even Roth, a bit, though he was more toward the tail end of that. But the noir/western thing persists where that one's pretty much over.

Had a better sense of the family tree involved once. Maybe some of that will come back to me.

I told you my student worked on that movie, right? Hung out with Jackson.

That sounds amazing! I wonder how one'd even cope with being his son. Must be a lot of fans out there who'd view him as a walking FAQ.

Pynchon himself show up? Felt like some of the many "name" cast members might have signed up largely for the chance to meet him.

one critic - discussing book, movie, or both - suggested Inherent Vice, with its bewildering plot, was Noir satire / but really? if so, then The Big Sleep is as well ..

B) the book's funniest scene doesn't turn up on film and it's just as well (i.e., the Stoners staring at this huge package of heroin, thinking it's some new kinda teevee set ..).

C) things the film brings: SOUNDTRACK a-and

somehow this presentation is making him entirely naturalistic, or proving he had been all along

indeed !

I can only judge the film, but yes, the noir engine was intact even of it drove somewhere Chandler did not. Noir's so close to satire that I wonder if it even could be satirized, as opposed to parodied. I guess The Big Lebowski comes close, by pointing out that few people end up getting murdered by domestic rich people hijinx, and Vice follows it in the conceit of a too-high-to-do-more-than-react detective. But even there the genre's still being used to compare different sorts of people and favor one - high and passive is the higher ground, considering.