Setsuled's Journal

I'm feeling a little melancholy right now for just having watched the Siskel and Ebert episode of The Critic.

I miss Siskel so much. He was the only movie critic I liked.

I was pleased that the special edition of Blue Velvet I purchased a copy of recently included the original Siskel and Ebert review of the film. Siskel liked it, Ebert didn't.

Gene Siskel, you're still a hero.

I've so far only watched the first half of my new copy of Blue Velvet (I'm vaguely ashamed of this as for some reason I get the feeling that David Lynch is the sort of director who prefers his movies to be seen in their entirety in just one go. I'm not sure what gives me that impression--maybe it's that there're no chapter selections on the Mulholland Drive DVD).

It was the first time in a while I've really been able to enjoy Blue Velvet. Having watched it 300 billion times since high school, I've gotten to the point where I will watch the movie only under very specific circumstances--that is, when there is little or (preferably) no noise coming from anywhere but the TV. I will watch it only when there are absolutely no distractions.

This is why I only watched half the film, even though I was really very into it.

My sensitivity to extraneous noise whilst I'm trying to watch a movie is nothing short of fanatical. I'm of the belief that the entire experience of certain movies can be altered just by the sound of a door closing somewhere else in the house.

Aren't you glad you don't live with me?

...

There're about . . . fifty things I planned to do this evening. But I'm feeling so tired that I'm wondering what, if any of it, I'll end up doing.

I only wrote three pages so far to-day so maybe I'll just concentrate on bringing myself up to my requisite ten.

Then I'll decide what book to read next, having just finished Caitlín R Kiernan's Silk--which was, by the way, an incredible book.

It puts you right in the midst of a bunch of interesting people you fall in love with. The wonderful sort of emersion in a group of captivating creatures that puts me in the mind of Jack Kerouac (although I see most reviews of the book tend to describe this feeling as being more Ernest Hemmingway-ish). And it's also a horror novel of the supernatural. The best sort of supernatural horror, where the horrible thing isn't horrible because it's got claws and slime, but because it's something having to do with us at disturbingly intimate levels. Manifestations of how we can be hurt.

Brilliant stuff.