Bande A Part

I wrote a little of Irregular Joe #3 tonight--very little, but it was nice to get back into it. No jumping around to a specific scene; rather, I just started right on page 1, set in Chasen's restaurant in 1948. There are a few stars visible, and Jimmy and Gloria Stewart will actually have a line or two if I can find reference of her at that time. Actually, is it okay to use their likenesses? It's not inflammatory at all; they just stop by someone's table and say hello.

Two Netflix films came, Jean-Luc Godard's BANDE A PART and, for the kids, TWO BROTHERS, that thing about the tiger cubs. I think it would have been better with a more descriptive title, and I feel the same about that BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE as well. BANDE A PART (BAND OF OUTSIDERS) is great, a vigorous, light but deep film of love, violence, thievery and innocence lost. This was in 1964, when Godard was making films that borrowed heavily from and paid homage to U.S. genre films of the 30s-50s, and he was loose enough in his approach to make several nods to other contemporary French films, such as having one of the characters whistle the theme from Jacques Demy's THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG or having that same character, Franz (named because the actor resembled Kafka), describe the ingenue, Odile, as having "soft skin", a reference to the Truffaut film, THE SOFT SKIN. A "Visual Glossary" feature on the Criterion edition explains all the references, many coming from the novel ODILE by Robert Queneau. Anna Karina, then Godard's wife, is luminous as the innocent girl swept off her feet by the rough but seemingly romantic thief, and the famous scene where the three dance the Madison is probably something of an inspiration of Tarantino's use of dancing in PULP FICTION, I would guess; Godard establishes that within a crime film there are moments of dancing and joy and it needn't diminish the masculinity of the male criminals at all. The Karina interview is very good as well; she's pretty kind about Godard, considering how he treated her. I read some stuff online about his career, and it's amazing the number of films or segments of anthology films he did that were never shown, many just refused by those who commissioned them. I wonder what the stories are on those, and if we'll ever see them.

Chugged through quite a bit of BUDDY DOES SEATTLE at lunch and on the bike tonight. Last night I read BPRD: PLAGUE OF FROGS and enjoyed it more for the Guy Davis art than the story, which seemed pretty by-the-numbers Mignola to me. Not that that's bad; it just wasn't surprising at all. Will get to the next one, THE DEAD, soon, though I'll need to spend some time tomorrow night on my NCAA basketball picks. Downloaded the new DAFT PUNK and KAISER CHIEFS discs on Sean T. Collins' recs, as well as Ben Folds' version of "Bitches Ain't Shit". It's funny, the sensitive piano treatment of an irredeemable N.W.A. song, but I do wish the guy would get out of this kitsch rut (yeah, the Shatner disc is good, but still...) and roll out some amazing songs of his own.