Meltin' Mind

It's so humid out there that my brain is melting.

I sometimes feel as if I am a character in a Bruno Dumont movie. Since FLANDRES is at Cannes, that is pretty contemporary... Life around me is bleak. People are chatty. I am silent and waiting. Waiting for them to shut up.



Can you remember Tomas Milian at his peak ? During the 80's he fell from grace while shooting the Nico Giraldi series with Bruno Corbucci, but from '76 to '79, he was the biggest male star in Italy, able to compete with studs such as Franco Nero, Maurizio Merli, Fabio Testi & Luc Merenda. He was labelled the "Cuban Chameleon". He could play any role, any type of guy, and he did. He even played twins in Umberto Lenzi's LA BANDA DEL GOBO, shot in '76. One was a criminal huntchback, with a look similar enough to the one Milian sported in ALMOST HUMAN, and the other one an afro'd mechanic simpleton called Trash, or "Poubelle" in the french dubbed version I watched.



Milian also appeared as a very serious young man in Lucio Fulci's DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING and in Alberto de Martino's COUNSELOR AT CRIME. He was plagued with cocaine problems during his Nico Giraldi days, and pretty much disappeared from Italy's genre movies industry while it slowly died at the beginning of the 90's. He appeared in a Miami Vice episode during season 2, and in an italian UFO drama, DISTANT LIGHTS, in '88.



He resurfaced playing small roles in Hollywood productions, something that was very odd. To me at least. Seeing him play General Salazar in Steven Soderbergh's TRAFIC wasn't something I would have expected. But still, you recognise him the moment he appears, filling the frame with his typical jaw, chewing on his bubble gum in a very Tomas-like manner. He also played a small part in THE YARDS.



We can most commonly see him in the extras of COMPANEROS, a Sergio Corbucci western he appeared in during the 70's alongside Franco Nero and Jack Palance. His interventions are always hilarious.

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I once saw a Rod Stewart lookalike working on D'Auteuil, a tourist-infested Québec street. He was wearing the traditional helmet and a brightly colored vest, directing trafic as his worker friends filled a nid-de-poule with maestria.

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I won tickets to see the première of THE OMEN, tomorrow at the Paramount. Oddly enough, this is a remake of a movie I recently saw, a few weeks before Miss Bijoux moved from Villeray to my place. Her neighbor owned the DVD, and before giving it back to him, she wanted to see it - and so did I, because frankly, this is considered a classic and I felt that not having seen it yet was procrastination.



We didn't regret it, and it was actually quite funny / creepy. We are very, truly looking forward to seeing this "new interpretation". When Hollywood has nothing to say anymore, dig out the classics !

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Other activities planned for the upcoming days include seeing Gatineau tonight, at Diable Vert. You gotta love the way MC Brutalll wears his brown underwear in public and shakes his belly. And now that Montreal is a smoke-free city, the atmosphere will be greatly improved. No more nasty fumes on our clothes, and no more itchy eyes.

On Saturday, we might go to Mutek's first Piknic, but chances are we'll rather take it easy and save our energy & money to go on Sunday, where Troy Pierce, Magda, Marc Houle & Richie Hawtin will kick your ass the minimal way alongside some guy called "La Villa des Loups". Let me guess... would that be Riccardo Villalobos, chilean extraordinaire, who was already set up to play here and failed to come TWICE ? He was (partly) the reason I paid to go to this damn Fonderie Darling in 2005 for the Nuit Électronik. Since he never showed up & Matthew Herbert's set was pretty poche, I was dumbfounded.

So yeah, Villalobos is set to unofficially play Piknic. If that happens, great. Piknic hit their all-time attendance record last Sunday, with 2800 people showing up. With Hawtin & Villalobos playing for cheap (7$) in an outdoor setting where you can bring your own booze, dog & children, a sunny Sunday in sight, during a world-renowned minimal festival taking place in a very minimal city ?



Bam ! There will be so many stompin' feet on this man-made island that it will probably sink.

But let's just wish, for the moment, that we'll dance our asses off.