PARASITE (Bong, 2019)

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(Directed by Bong Joon Ho from a screenplay by Bong and Han Jin-wan; starring Song Kant-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-sik, Park So-dam, Lee Jeong-sun, and Jang Hye-jin. Released 21 May 2019; watched fri/20230123 via Hulu)

a still from Bong Joon Ho's PARASITE: assembling pizza boxes

Has the distinction of being the only film I purchased on Blu midway through watching it: a tour-de-force that demolishes expectations of genre and character from one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. Hilarious, terrifying, poignant, brutal, suspenseful, gut-wrenching – all within a single scene. Everything I want in a film and then some: the finest con/fallout pitch-black comedy since FARGO. Never have peaches been so terrifying.

stuck stuck stuck stuck stuck

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OK that didn't last long: now it's irritating. But now I know I can, if necessary, move over to something else for a couple of days or a week. Not sure it will help, though – this thing's been like this for awhile now. Last time I let this happen, it took me seven years to realize it wasn't a novella but a paragraph. Won't let it subsume me that much again.

(Unlike then, not afraid of running out of ideas if I give up on one: those things are a dime a dozen. What takes doing is finding the rhythm that both satisfies the present moment (got that part) and provides a means of continuance to the next (that's the tricky part).)

At the point of using Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies (which are very cool and helpful in getting me to think outside my normal thought patterns)

Might be doing two daily text things here (depending on the number of workblocks in the day), just to give me something to jump to if I get stuck like I am now. PARASITE post-script in afternoon, probably. Already on my favorite films list. So good.

Also: POKER FACE is brilliant.

clear opacity / opaque clarity

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For the first time in awhile, I've found myself genuinely enjoying the process of being lost and possessed of no idea of where to take The Work (this as opposed to hating myself for same).

Perhaps it's the clarity I brain-stumbled upon earlier today regarding the form of Press (A) 02: clarity, even a small bit (and in something totally removed from the main) I've found, begets pleasure, creatively - or at least an increased capacity to deal with the opacity inherent in any creative toil.

All this subject to change, tomorrow or in the next hour or minute, of course – but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

project / process / anvil

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Each project requires its own process: how does it need me to toil – beyond the universal dayin/dayout ass-to-chair / feet to floor in front of standing desk – to bring it to life? Hurl passages and broken rhythms at the screen until something sticks? Draw it? Hurl drawings and broken rhythms until something throws passages back at me?

All I know is that the actual process won't resemble anything I had envisioned amid the non-working hours of accumulation and subconscious processing. Sometimes it changes midway.

Frustrating, to be certain – especially when the project won't budge and stares back at me, arms crossed, from across the chasm between notion and reality as I stare at it, from the other side, waiting, like Wile E. Coyote, for the anvil to appear.

Worth noting: my week tends to go better if I shift between different projects and different processes – which would make that part of the process of each, I suppose. Exercise each part and give the other some space to work itself out.

(Meep meep)