Archive for the ‘Film’ Category
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with the George Washington Bridge. Today I read a disturbing post on the NYT’s City Room blog about a pair of teenagers who broke into a vacant apartment in Brooklyn, doused a cat with lighter fluid and then set it on fire. According to the article, “[t]he […]
Filed under: Brooklyn, Disease, Dream, Film, Gay, GWB Project, Memory, Philosophers, Sickness | 3 Comments
Tags: A Short Film about Killing, Cats, Crimes, Cruelty, Death, Judith Shklar, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Punishments, Richard Rorty, Teenagers
In which The Gay Recluse wins an Oscar. Recently we learned from US Magazine that “[a] few weeks after signing the lease on a $60 million Long Island mansion, [Angelina Jolie], 33, was spotted checking out a nice building in Manhattan’s uptown Washington Heights neighborhood Tuesday afternoon.” It makes us wonder how it came about […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Conspiracy, Decay, Film, Gentrification, Resignation, Ruins, Search, Washington Heights | 25 Comments
Tags: Anjelina Jolie, Ghosts, Real Estate, Shopping, US Magazine
In which The Chaos Detective goes to Munich. Click through for “hi-quality” on YouTube or watch on Facebook. Stay tuned for the fifth and final installment of “City of Dreams.” THE CHAOS DETECTIVE City of Dreams (Part 1) City of Dreams (Part 2) City of Dreams (Part 3)
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Conspiracy, Film, Government, History, Landscape, Search, Sickness, Technology, The Chaos Detective, Travel | 1 Comment
Tags: City of Dreams, Hofgarten, Kempinski Hotel, Ludwig II, Munich
On Ludwig
In which The Gay Recluse loves Luchino Visconti best. In Ludwig, Luchino Visconti’s four-hour treatment of the 19th-century King of Bavaria, we are introduced to the king as a young man, but learn almost immediately — in what feels like a flash-forward — that he will eventually be dethroned by the state legislature for maybe being insane. […]
Filed under: Architecture, Decay, Dissonance, Film, Gay, Obsession, Opera, Resignation, Ruins | 3 Comments
Tags: Bavaria, Kings, Luchino Visconti, Ludwig, Richard Wagner
On Senso
In which The Gay Recluse loves Luchino Visconti. After scouring the globe, we were finally able to obtain — from South Korea! — a copy of Senso, Luchino Visconti’s 1954 film about the Austrian occupation of Venice during the war for Italian independence. In what is arguably the most operatic of Visconti’s films, we follow a […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Film, Gay, Longing, Obsession, Pessimism, Resignation, Ruins, Writers-German | Leave a Comment
Tags: Communism, Gay Film Directors, Luchino Visconti, Senso, Walter Benjamin
On Seduced and Abandoned
In which The Gay Recluse watches movies. Tonight we watched Seduced and Abandoned, the 1964 film by Italian director Pietro Germi. Set in a small town in Sicily, it follows a family with a 15-year-old girl who in a moment of passion sort of consents (but sort of not) to have sex with her older […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Film, Obsession, Ruins, Search, Sickness | 2 Comments
Tags: Italian Directors, Marriage, Pietro Germi, Seduced and Abandoned, Sicily, Stefania Sandrelli
In which The Gay Recluse remembers Sergio Leone. Recently we watched the director’s cut of Once Upon a Time in America, Sergio Lione’s epic Jewish/New York City gangster movie from 1984. When originally released in the United States, the producers imposed a chronological sequence onto the movie to shorten it, whereas Lione intended it to […]
Filed under: Dream, Film, Gay, History, Memory, Writers-French | 1 Comment
Tags: Bad Film Scores, Death in Venice, James Woods, Jewish Stereotypes, Luchino Visconti, Once Upon a Time in America, Robert De Niro, Sergio Leone
In which The Gay Recluse loves Robert Bresson. In Diary of a Country Priest (1951), Robert Bresson offers us a portrait of a beautiful and painfully sensitive young priest who has just arrived to his new parish. For reasons that are never quite explained, the priest is mocked and detested by the local citizens; those […]
Filed under: Conspiracy, Film, Gay, Search, Sickness, Stereotypes, Writers-French | 2 Comments
Tags: Counts, Diary of a Country Priest, Farm Girls, Grief, Priests, Robert Bresson, The Dark Ages
In which The Gay Recluse watches French film. In Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, the young (and kinda hot, in an aloof, cerebral way) lead is given to wandering the streets of Paris, looking into the eyes of men with whom he has the briefest and most exhilarating (but ultimately soulless) encounters. Surprise: at least superficially, this […]
Filed under: Addiction, Film, Longing, Obsession, Writers-French | 4 Comments
Tags: Dark Ages, Gay Film, Pickpocket, Robert Bresson
On Day for Night
In which The Gay Recluse loves Truffaut. So tonight we watched Day for Night, Francois Truffaut’s 1973 movie about movie-making. Although “day for night” apparently (because what do we know?) refers to a film technique by which a day shot is made to look like the night, it also — at least in the English […]
Filed under: Animals, Film, Gay, Pessimism, Philosophers | 2 Comments
Tags: 1973, Day for Night, Francois Truffaut, Great hair, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Léaud, La Nuit Americaine, Lolcats
On Au Hasard Balthazar
In which The Gay Recluse is disturbed, but not unpleasantly so. A few nights ago we saw Au hasard Balthazar, the 1966 film by Robert Bresson.* It’s about a donkey born on a farm in a small village in France, and a young girl who — at least for a little while — loves the […]
Filed under: Film, Gay | 3 Comments
Tags: Au Hasard Balthazar, Donkeys, Robert Bresson
On a Story of Floating Weeds
In which The Gay Recluse is entranced. Tonight we watched A Story of Floating Weeds, the 1934 film by Yasujiro Ozu. It’s a silent movie, which takes some getting used to (and we say this with regret, not about the movie, but the state of our frenzied existence). Like the other Ozu films we’ve seen […]
Filed under: Drag Queens, Dream, Film, Gay, Language, Longing, Pleasure | 2 Comments
Tags: A Story of Floating Weeds, Gay Directors, Japan, Silent Movies, Yasujiro Ozu
In which The Gay Recluse provides a postscript to our gay alternative to this week’s Modern Love piece in the Times by Kayla Rachlin Small. (For those looking for our informal-but-telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, click here.) Dear TGR, I loved your riff on “The Steep Price of Your Forbidden Kiss” (a title which, […]
Filed under: Drag Queens, Film, Graffiti, Letters, Longing, Obsession, Photography, Pleasure, Ruins, Search, Sickness, The Gay Recluse | 1 Comment
Tags: Cystic Fibrosis, Gay Modern Love, Kayla Rachlin Small, Lesbian, Modern Love, Other, The New York Times
In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times. David Brooks/Remembering the Mentor The Short Version: Even though he was a Nazi, I loved William F. Buckley. In her words: “Buckley was not only a giant celebrity, he lived in a manner of the haut monde.” Score: F (Foolish) In this column […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Dissonance, Drivel, Film, Gay, History, Obsession, The Gay Recluse, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: David Brooks, Luchino Visconti, Nazi Germany, The Damned, The New York Times, William F. Buckley
In which The Gay Recluse live-blogs the Super Bowl. 5:58. Our friend T___ arrives to give us haircuts. He tells us that his mother, who is only 64 years old, has just been diagnosed with an inoperable form of brain cancer. She has just begun chemotherapy, and to give him encouragement, we tell him about […]
Filed under: Addiction, Dissonance, Dream, Film, History, Landscape, Photography, Technology, Television, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Contempt, Giants, Haircuts, Hong Kong, In the Mood for Love, Jean-Luc Godard, Le Mepris, Maggie Cheung, Netflix, Patriots, Super Bowl, Tawaa, Tony Leung, Wong Kar-wei
On Gay Sex in the Seventies
First, it’s a great title for a documentary; just to say Gay Sex in the Seventies makes us a little more forgiving than is perhaps our natural tendency. Plus you get to see some great shots of vintage Big Apple; the west-side piers, the notorious truck bays across the highway, the Upper West Side when […]
Filed under: Film, Gay, Gentrification, Health, History, New York City, Nostalgia, Sickness, Stereotypes | Leave a Comment
Tags: Disco, Gay Sex, Gay Sex in the 70s, Gay Sex in the Seventies, Poppers, St. Mark's Bathhouse, Studio 54, The Saint, Vintage New York, West Side Piers
On The Rainmaker
As we watch the first few minutes of The Rainmaker (some fifty years after its release, in 1956), we are impatient and judgmental; the set is generic Hollywood Western, while the men in the family — a father and his two sons — come off as caricatures (stern older brother, mischievous younger, wise dad). Even […]
Filed under: Film, Gay, Landscape, Longing, Technology | Leave a Comment
Tags: 1956, Burt Lancaster, Con Artist, Drought, Katherine Hepburn, Old Maid, Spinster, The Rainmaker, Western
In which The Gay Recluse contemplates an uncommissioned masterpiece from the walls of an uptown subway station.
Filed under: Film, Gay, Infrastructure, Subway, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: C-train, Dumb Movies, Emotions, Funerals, Graffiti, MTA, Rambo, Sylvester Stallone, Tears
The Gay Recluse 
On Some Thoughts on Milk (Reader Comments)
In which The Gay Recluse turns to the mail bag. Chances are if you’re geigh, you’ve heard about this movie called MILK! You might even feel guilty if, like us, you haven’t gone to see it yet because you’re gay and it’s about someone who’s gay and you should be eternally grateful that Hollywood would deign […]
Filed under: Film, Gay, Letters, Politicians, Washington Heights | 3 Comments
Tags: Comments, Dark Ages, David Letterman, Ghettos, Homophobia, Milk, Polvo, Rage