Fast paced volte-face

As this once famous band once sang, "Life is life". But life can be pretty hectic for a speed freak that doesn't need the pill to have his life go through in front of his eyes at full speed. When your cherished mornings in bed are shortened every day, when every single second of your week is tightly planned, and when you feel that exterior sources are controling your every move, I think it's safe to say that being "busy" is an understatement.

I moved on Tuesday night, after my shift at the office, and on Wednesday morning I had a presentation in one of my courses. The only problem being that one of our "teammates" never cared to show up. And there's so much stuff I have to set up in our new place that I feel like a puppet in a minefield. While throwing stuff out I stumbled upon some long-forgotten boxes filled to the brim with what I call "grosses pochettes" - gigantic old VHS boxes - and I was startled with how good the sleeves looked back then. You'd give your soul to see one of those movies on a day like this, but magically, shortly after inserting the tape in your VCR, the interest would probably die off. Back in the good old days, marketing was the shit, bro.



Emptying my enormous Ikea bookshelf has allowed me to realise how much crap I have accumulated over the years. Magazines of all kinds, books I am never going to read, vinyl I'll never, ever play in a set. The time has come to clean, my friends. If any of you is interested in getting a hand on some of my magazines (namely lots of issues of Le Monde 2 and Le Nouvel Observateur), just drop me a line and we'll try to arrange a pick up or delivery meeting.

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I feel you'll like this confession. Once upon a time, I saw a Sokourov movie I absolutely enjoyed, at Ex-Centris : MOLOCH. So naturally, when TAURUS was screened during a New Cinema & New Media festival, a few years ago, I went. And when I saw that THE SUN would play at the Cinémathèque, I went. While I didn't enjoy THE SUN as much as the two previous entries of Sokourov's trilogy about power, I have to admit I was impressed every time with the cinematography, the atmosphere, the dialogues and the liberties he took with these true, larger-than-life tales. When I rented his "classic" MOTHER & SON, though, after learning that it was the first movie that got him noticed by the general public, I quickly started yawning. It maybe was the context or how I felt that day, but I fast-forwarded through most of it. How ironic, given that I have suffered countless american and european b-craps ! Bad mouths will find it highly unrealistic, since I am a big fan of Jess Franco's oeuvre, that I would have trouble going through a Sokourov.



And I must admit that it was pretty much the first time the "fast-forward fever" ever happened to me - not considering the disastrous INN OF THE DAMNED. But it would not be the last. Because I recently attempted to watch something called THE NAILGUN MASSACRE, and after spotting a few patterns in the 10 first minutes, fast-forward it was.

The story is simplistic - and exploitative : a girl gets raped by a few construction workers, and a few weeks afterwards they are "nailed" by somebody wearing a ski suit and a motorcycle helmet, carrying a nailgun, and pitiful one-liners. It gets pretty repetitive, and since the movie was shot in 1985, the only thing keeping me from stopping it was the hairstyles and the clothes that the characters had on. Texas fashion kills.

There are a couple of scenes that are pretty erotic, until the nailgun killer disrupts the action and puts an end to the fun. He shoots a hitchhiker in the shoulder and that makes him die. It's also the type of movie that seems to have been shot in the course of a day, because the characters are pretty much wearing the same clothes all the time even if the action is supposed to be spread over the course of a few days.



The flick was directed by Bill Leslie and Terry Lofton, and it seems to be the only movie they ever completed. It recently has been released on DVD, and unless you wanna waste your time laughing at bad performances and being bored by long, useless conversations, I would give you a friendly warning : stay away !

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Have you ever thought you were losing your mind ? A couple of months ago, I was going through my movie shelves and I noticed a "grosse pochette" of Reginald Le Borg's PSYCHO SISTERS (also known as "So Evil, my Sister"), from 1974. I left it where it layed, and I continued my "researches". Then I saw it again, a few rows underneath. Turns out I had TWO original copies of the flick !

Don't ask me how it happened. Upon finding this out, I told myself that I would be well advised to watch it.

It's a rather interesting, and very hitchcock-ian thriller, about the relationship between two sisters. Things are never what they seem and we follow with interest as the story punches us in the stomach with incredible revelations. It's the story of two sisters, one who has recently lost her husband in a car crash, and the other one consoling her in her lovely beach house. The widow has visions of her dead husband and suffers from wild nightmares, and in the daytime she flirts with a surfer stud who happens to be a cop in disguise.



The pacing is fast, the actresses keep things interesting - mostly Susan Strasberg, who's extremely easy on the eyes - and the action shifts from serious to unvoluntary funny in a few places. Add to this a rather short running time, and some kind of nostalgia for the seventies, and you get what you didn't pay for : a worthy flick that you'll enjoy if you can find it.

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I hear architectural news coming from St. Petersburg with a mix of excitement and amusement. Excitement because, well, after China opening to revolutionary design ideas, it's about time that another (ex) bastion of communism, namely Russia, lets dissidents in to fuck around with the cityscapes.

Rem Koolhaas has moved swiftly enough, last year, to get the chance to design and supervise a new addition to the legendary Hermitage museum. His methods & strong personality were layed out in a New Yorker article I read some months ago.

Now, always in St. Petersburg, there is an ongoing "controversy" about a new landmark project. Gazprom is sponsoring what's called "Gazprom City", a gigantic skyscraper that will be at least three times higher than the highest building sitting in town. Some laws on the maximal height of buildings are in place, but it's Russia, after all, so one can easily picture that those with the most money will simply have these laws changed. The city currently restricts, in that part of town anyway, anything over 157 feet from being built.

Some designs were proposed by six architecture firms, among them Paris' Jean Nouvel, and of course Rotterdam's OMA, Rem Koolhaas' everpresent lovechild. Those who won are London's RMJM, also known to have built the Scottish parliement :



Koolhaas' design is rather intriguing :



The protester's main concern is that a skyscraper would deface St. Petersburg's "horizontal" cityscape, who has never changed in 200 years. Sounds pretty retrograde to me, no ? If reserves like that would have been brought upfront during the construction boom of New York in the sixties, let's say, would we live in the same world today ? Is this a valid argument ? Insisting on preserving the past is not a very progressive attitude, to say the least.

Officials from the Russian government and close friends of Putin have spoken in favour of the project, specifying that its height might be reviewed. At 1299 feet high, the winning design could very well clash with the other structures in town, but what the hell, isn't that the point ?

Here are the RMJM design, the one designed by Daniel Liebkind, and the one proposed by Herzog & de Meuron :