Movies and music are a form of meditation for me when I'm anxious, and the hellish political present has made me extraordinarily anxious. To return to the dead horse I've beaten on all three of my blogs, I'm not a lyrics guy or a plot/story guy. Doesn't mean I don't appreciate a good lyric or a good story. It just means that I think of music as sound and film as image and all art as the aesthetic organization of space. One thing I don't know how to talk about much is film acting, even though I love the possibilities and varieties of it. Film acting that connects with me is not just about embodying a character in an emotionally and/or aesthetically honest way or being vulnerable or real. It's also about movement and presence and how that movement clicks (or doesn't) with what the film is doing visually. Some people are just inherently cinematic in the way they move, and I love watching those people. I don't know how to explain this clearly, and these still images only give you a hint of what I mean, but I love how the following actors move, walk, sit, stand, and inhabit the physical space of their bodies in the following movies and miniseries I have been watching and/or rewatching this summer in between fighting off the constant panic and soul death of life in these United States:
Rainer Werner Fassbinder in
Love Is Colder than Death (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Lakeith Stanfield in
Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley)
Jean-Pierre Leaud and Juliet Berto in
Out 1 (Jacques Rivette)
Naomi Watts and Kyle MacLachlan in
Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch & Mark Frost)
Isabelle Huppert in
Mrs. Hyde (Serge Bozon)
