Heart Beat

The classic romantic examination of wild alternative domestic scenarios, as an impulsive inspiring non-traditionalist car thief and a hopeful writer fall in love. 

Competing post-War visions of America are materialistically and spiritually emerging, one carefree and lighthearted and bold the other calm and strategic and disciplined.

The tupperware/Maytag/Jetset had to responsibly deal with latent extemporaneity, the opposing star-crossed antithetical ontologies awkwardly mingling ad infinitum.

Heart Beat's music harnesses this momentum with explosive untamed incredible jazz, musicians exploring improvisational tempos and sly unique tonic upbeat blends. 

Simultaneously, the ambient sounds accompanying transitions and less amusing anecdotes, are reminiscent of 80's James Bond themes with inherent schmaltz and maudlin synergies. 

Gallant attempts to embrace a lifestyle are often fraught with bland disparagements, and tried and true sincere beaming methods at times lose their shimmering shine. 

If two men love the same woman why not live together in the 'burbs?, the dynamic unorthodox affable grouping flexibly raising an engaged family. 

At times they get along remarkably well since they ambitiously love the same freestyle life, the boys satisfying each other's need for friendship, the girl abounding with play and reasonability. 

Is this anything new?, was it aesthetically shocking at the time?, is it just as startling today as it was then?, will it always be cynically rebuked? 

Hedonists and stoics and cynics were also around in the ancient world, no doubt contending with as much pith as impassioned contemporaries are today.

Stoicism always seemed like the wisest choice not too wild and crazy but still experimental, also not so sarcastically disagreeable and full of lethal sociocultural venom.

Experiment endeavour enjoy without giving into temptation.

If that makes any sense.

In uncertain times I guess it does. 

Mirror

Linear lexicon austere diagonal summative symmetry dreamlike dactylling, chatterboxspringboard indolent bygone somnolent vigil indisposed surplus.

Mercantile mosey infinitesimal obsessed meticulous decadent detail, insatiable artistry florid severity feverish function exacting calculi.

Narrative nutshells mutating tangents dashing trajectory cerebral psyche, baroque pastoral quizzical quagmire enticing stammer novel conception.

Delinquent twilight delirious dawn exuberant basking critical fortitude, garrulous botswanchimichungun variety homely holischticks Aragorn antics.

Petulant snide non-descript undulation incrementality boreal wavelength, icy thermometer candycanesugar domicile dojo sandcastle slush.

Opulent obscure byzantine impoverished wild ostentation clandestine swerve, communicado cobrahmbasheering catalyst Centigrade blockading simper.

Vervent dispute vehement orchestrations epochal whimcycle trailblazing bllama, alpacadaisical blithe intermittence Florentine fibrous enflummoxing folio.

Tomeo tantamountain'earinglattitude impacting magna cartisane arcadence, chrysanthemum quadrille incurious nascence beep-beep-beep-beep-beep electrode clavé.

Saffron servility chandelier shimmer kelvintenetic ardent waffling temper, popsicle pyjama primrose piñata bellwether wiggle-me sizzle-chun-chai.

Phonetic dictation Olivander vanguardian vinous cohesion recalcitrant rhythm, Pokemangaga google gastronome Q-Bergson daffadillweed chromosoma. 

La Bamba billowcase cellophane solo regurgitate piping incentive stampede, versatile friendship collective goodwill interconnecting switchboard sonority.

Cerveza sustenance nutritious narcolept secret ingredient tasty admixture, infinite patience modest expenditure tranquil experiment agile invention.

Faulknerian fables rustic romantics acoustic quantum calcified reverb, wandering innocence diligent thrush laidback discretion fluid ambience.

Solemn censorship Kafkaesque grid inherent displacement carousel quip, undaunted tenacity intricate vision puzzling inception theoretical flux.

I like puzzle stories.

Trying to make sense of things.

Better when you have more time.

To go over them again and again. 

The Five-Year Engagement

A couple is in love.

Their first meeting is adorable. They are living in San Francisco. One of them finds a job in small-town Michigan. They move. The other's career is resultantly set back but this is sacrificially taken in stride.  Attempts to acclimatize to small-town life are heroically made but an undeniable despondency cannot be persuasively concealed.

A break-up is imminent, the couple goes their separate ways, and new partners are found. But a kernel of love remains which new arrangements cannot disintegrate and it's possible that the two lovers will restructure their efficient and profitable means of production. With the future and age pressing in and standards of compatibility becoming less and less idealistic, a decision must be definitively made.

According to what I know about romantic comedies anyways.

The Five-Year Engagement has some funny scenes and introduces a broad range of distracting characters. Bill's (Chris Parnell) sweaters and Vaneetha's (Mindy Kaling) toast stand out and I enjoyed listening to the ideas of both Ming (Randall Park) and Tarquin (Brian Posehn).    

Individuals working in intellectual and culinary markets are juxtaposed and members from both groups are made to appear ridiculously profound.

Rather than consistently sentimentalizing the romantic love that often results in marriage, the film introduces argumentative points of combative relational diversification during the engagement, thereby instructively applying quasi-conjugal conflicts to prenuptial amicable operations while installing a degree of collaborative critical conditionals as well.

Sweet but trashy, mildly melodramatic, and pretentiously inclusive, The Five-Year Engagement offered more insightful observations and humorous interjections than I was expecting (after the film shifts to Michigan), which helped me get over the snickering directed in my direction as I entered the theatre on my own.

And if donuts have yet to be eaten, why purchase new ones? That's wasteful.       

2 frogs dans l'ouest

Leaving behind her structured life in Montréal, Marie Deschamps (Mirianne Brulé) travels to Whistler in pursuit of adventure and the acquisition of the English language. Things don't progress smoothly in the beginning until the angelic Jean-François Laforest (Dany Papineau) steps in to save the day. With a job and a place to stay, Marie's transition steadfastly accelerates and good previously unimagined times present themselves. But the predetermined all encompassing capitalist master narrative is still seductively ready to pounce, just as bohemian alternatives become all the more tantalizing.

Dany Papineau's 2 frogs dans l'ouest salutes the pursuit of non-traditional lifestyles while highlighting corresponding difficulties as well as those associated with learning a new language. The scene where Marie attempts to order something to eat in English near the beginning of her journey reminded me of similar personal outings in Québec, where you can't help but feel prostrate due to the fact that you can't communicate or don't understand the simple linguistic distinctions that you need to be able to comprehend in order to function, although the percentage of Québecors who speak English is much higher than that of English Canadians who speak French, a fact that many English Canadians should take into consideration. Sport is central to 2 frogs dans l'ouest's vision and the cathartic affects of activities such as snowboarding play a central metaphoric role. Is living in a beautiful place like Whistler or Canmore in order to pursue the artistic life while consistently engaging in exhilarating activities amidst the continuous inspirational presence of breathtaking scenery a good decision?

Yes, yes it is, although I suppose everyone can't live in such places, only the committed few.

Some of the coming of age reflections in 2 frogs dans l'ouest are a little tough to take at times. Papineau develops a lot of sympathy for Marie's father (Germain Houde) who made many sacrifices so that she could go to school as well. But he also didn't make those sacrifices so that she would give up her dreams.

And she doesn't.

Made in U.S.A

It's occasionally important to treat fiction as if it's realistic and truth as if it's fabricated I think. At least that's what they taught me in school. Definitive strikes create signs to which meaning is attached for popularized agendas composed of particular events whose governing narrative forms a general conception. In this way we arrive at the truth and make executive decisions in relation to one of its specific interpretations and its collaborative polemic. Reason is a critical tool for such undertakings as it uses logic to evaluate hypotheses. The metaphorical dimension of collaborative interpretive polemics creates a layer of anti-truth from which the next generation of theories receives their political currency. Thinking about things in generational terms is somewhat of a mistake. Generations within generations germinate contradictory classifications assuming your economy is robust and permissive enough to absorb the fallout.

Jean-Luc Godard's Made in U.S.A terminates the truth with extreme flattery. A long list of manufactured expectations is subverted and traditional associations are disengaged from their cultural nuances apart from the idyllic feminine caricature represented by Paula Nelson (Anna Karina) in love. The Rolling Stones's "As Tear Goes By" reappears like Vinteuil's sonata interrogating the infantilization of the left by taking control of its means of production. An arrow flies throughout attaching itself to various established particularities which it accumulates and flattens through means of the continuous ironical disintegration of black and white agendas (like a long never ending line of aggregated kites establishing an evocative intellectual continuum). Suddenly there's a character, a motivation, a detective, murder. To the left to the right, there's no escape. Could it have been phrased differently? Seemingly random ideas and observations are more intriguing than structural designs when rationally designed according to the rhythms of a coordinated fluctuating poetic cinematic sensibility. Love that dress. May have mixed up the decades a bit in this review.