I've Known More Than a Few Emilys...

I've been watching Clean obsessively of late; Olivier Assayas' film strikes me as being bracingly, rigorously unsentimental. Maggie Cheung... No words.



(The title shot, featuring second unit location tableaux of Hamilton, Ontario!)

The scene with her onscreen son in the Parisian zoo - their discussion of drugs, particularly - is astounding.



Nick Nolte's performance is equally arresting. Such presence...



And yes, Béatrice Dalle. She's insanely gorgeous in the film. I remember queueing up to see Betty Blue/37.2 le matin a number of times on its American release (1986), but I much prefer her in middle-age. She inhabits herself with such aggressive aplomb. (And that face...)



Clean builds, builds... A brilliant denouement.



After this, I intend to dig into Assayas' Demonlover. I ignored it utterly on its release; my mistake.

TS

Freaked and Tweaked...

(Revised 28 Sept 06.)

I'm still here, still cowering, but gradually regaining bipedal bearing and the old mangled savior-faire. Took a week off to crawl, muttering, through the muck, but with Shavian obligations looming ever larger I was forced to shear pubes and twist life into a reverse cowboy. Gotta walk before you can slither...

Updated the TLASILA domain earlier; look out for Noon and Eternity/Horoscopo-related pieces in the forthcoming weeks in Skyscraper, Dusted, and the online edition of Spin. (Chris Grier created a rad Noon mashup for the latter.) In late October I'll be touring with Black Meat on their mini-trek through the NE; the next To Live and Shave in L.A. tour begins after Thanksgiving. A precise itinerary is currently being lashed together... Coordinates will be posted.

Doing a remix for Xiu Xiu, and working against the clock to complete plumbing and exterior molding for Savage Land's release of Les Tricoteuses. A helluva lot of material in the offing.

No longer on life support: according to the ever-brilliant, perpetually sick-ass Gerard Klauder, Smack Shire will soon be gearing up again. About bloody time! Several perplexing releases in queue.

There's more, but I'm forgetting it at the moment.

Haven't yet heard from Evan (my son). Reckon he's either in Kuwait or on the Iraq/Syrian border. Such an incalculable bummer... Cruel ironies are stacked to the ceiling.

Tom

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(Below, a mordant swath of toilet stall collage from the men's room of the Underground, Hamilton, Ontario. Photo by TS, September 3, 2006.)