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Feb. 8th, 2006 07:13 pmLast night I was watching a film I recorded from television called "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant", a 1972 film from the master of melodramatic misery Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It told the story of a famous fashion designer and her intense relationship with her younger, female model. It was based on Fassbinder's own stage play and the two hour film never moves out of a single room. It's good enough but very depressing and very melodramatic, almost so much so that it actually became quite comical in bits. The performances were very good and it was well made and well written, but I really think it would have been much more enjoyable watching it on the stage. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, despite a notoriously wild private life, made forty three films between 1966 and his death in 1982 (he died of a heroin overdose and his body was found slumped over his editing machine). He was one of the leading lights of German cinema in the 1970s (along with his friend Werner Herzog, whose films personally I've always preferred). Fassbinder was famously brutal towards his actors and crew, which apparently was quite common in German theatre directors at the time who believed that treating the actors as cruelly as possiblke made for more honest and emotionally fraught performances.
Today everything has been fairly quiet and dull. I just got back from work a couple of hours ago, and there is really nothing to write about it because nothing ever really happens at that place, where the most crucial conversations seem to revolve around what soup is available in the canteen.
Over the past couple of evenings I've been experimenting with my video camera. Mostly recording myself talking to the camera. I was planning to try more experiments with overlaying various sounds and images to see if I can create any interesting effects. The trouble is that it's so difficult finding anyone who ever wants to be in any of my films. I heard that Jean-Luc Godard, at one time during the sixties, used to make a film a day almost. By all accounts they are unwatchable but he made them any way.
Valentine's Day is next week, which is always a depressing thought. The whole kind of romantic and sexual world, for want of a better phrase, is a complete mystery to me. It does really bother me that my last date was in 2002. I have asked people out but I have always been turned down, until I stopped completely. To be honest, I can't say I blame them. If I was a woman I wouldn't want to date me either.
Sorry, this entry is probably really dull. I just couldn't think of anything interesting to write. By the way, it's my Alfred Hitchcock class tomorrow, so I won't be on again until Friday, probably.
Today everything has been fairly quiet and dull. I just got back from work a couple of hours ago, and there is really nothing to write about it because nothing ever really happens at that place, where the most crucial conversations seem to revolve around what soup is available in the canteen.
Over the past couple of evenings I've been experimenting with my video camera. Mostly recording myself talking to the camera. I was planning to try more experiments with overlaying various sounds and images to see if I can create any interesting effects. The trouble is that it's so difficult finding anyone who ever wants to be in any of my films. I heard that Jean-Luc Godard, at one time during the sixties, used to make a film a day almost. By all accounts they are unwatchable but he made them any way.
Valentine's Day is next week, which is always a depressing thought. The whole kind of romantic and sexual world, for want of a better phrase, is a complete mystery to me. It does really bother me that my last date was in 2002. I have asked people out but I have always been turned down, until I stopped completely. To be honest, I can't say I blame them. If I was a woman I wouldn't want to date me either.
Sorry, this entry is probably really dull. I just couldn't think of anything interesting to write. By the way, it's my Alfred Hitchcock class tomorrow, so I won't be on again until Friday, probably.
