The Dead Don't Die

The traditional zombie film finds itself lackadaisically reanimated, as the ravenous undead seek out mortal sustenance, with organic flavouring, in Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die.

Much less lively than Zombieland or Planet Terror, it cultivates bewildered slow motion, without letting loose moribund haze, or struggling to refine grassroots bemusement.

It's funny.

It's aware of its chillaxed impersonal lounging, the ways in which it would rather present laidback ingenuous cheek than novel paramedic frenzy, and consistently dispassionately suggests that it could have offered more if it had only simply bothered to do so.

Efficiently.

Thus its form harmoniously complements its genre, its dislocated frostbitten content, a zombie film conjuring primordial zombie, like a tasty craft brew considering mass production.

There's no doubt it emits rebellious angst and bedridden drool, like mad productive insomnia regenerating meaningless gumption, as if it sculpted what it means to turn 40, while leaving out cursive progress and ambition.

While viewing I asked myself if the film would still be cool without the star-studded cast, if it would have still lured me in with decadent charm had it been stacked with unknowns.

There are several unknown actors in the film who add curious depth and unsung integrity, but several big names still intermingle, and seem somewhat out of place in hindsight even if they revel in agile somnambulism.

I think it would have succeeded either way.

It likely would have been stronger without the stars in fact, inasmuch as determined unknowns often make nimble impacts in the genres.

The world has been tipped off its axis after fracking in the arctic disrupts polar reckoning.

And as the sun no longer sets with reliability, governments insist there's no cause for alarm.

Shortly thereafter, the undead descend on unsuspecting towns, arising on different days, to illustrate cannibalistic bedlam.

Had alternative energy sources been globally adopted, and cuts to education vilified with legislative resolve, the world would have likely embraced a much less disturbing future, as if working toward planetary goals was expressly paramount.

What will hopefully seem like absurd cool creative storytelling one day doesn't even seem far fetched at the moment.

Isn't it actually easier and less costly to start transitioning to a greener economy than it is to frack the arctic?

Doesn't going green make more sense than that?

You know it does.

And don't tell me there aren't huge profits to be made.

If it costs more to buy a burger made from plants than it does to buy one made from animals that you have to feed and take care of, there are obviously huge profits in green.

Versatile verdure.

Biodiverse trestle.

Paterson

Keep your ears open.

Your eyes.

That cat, that pick up, that vroom, that bud.

I didn't see trees covered in ice this winter.

I rhyme too much.

Rhyme provides focus.

Focus indents fusions.

Sometimes it doesn't.

I rhyme too much.

I love rhyming.

I also love poems that don't rhyme.

Proust mentioned that he liked rhyming.

I don't know if he changed his mind.

There's an old thought, an old idea, about auras of authenticity. Rich people used to use this idea to claim that works written by other rich people were authentic because they possessed a sacred aura that legitimized their being. Things were too religious at the time. Poor people realized that they could also make art yet were denied the sacred aura because they didn't know the right things to say or discuss when questioned. Pop culture developed to challenge the lofty realm of the fussy elitist and continues to frustrate purists to this day. Yet people still obsess about auras and the sacred like they're postmodern divinities acculturating themselves to materialistic throes.

It's confusing.

I really don't care.

I like rhyming.

Sometimes I don't like rhyming.

I didn't used to rhyme so much.

But Paterson reminded me of how impacting, how chill cool distant yet immediate poems that don't rhyme can be.

Or poems that kind of rhyme, sort of rhyme here, don't really rhyme there, aren't concerned with rhyming, are just expressing something like upholstery or glades.

Or they are concerned with something that it seems as if they aren't concerned with, like girls.

What a partner. What a character.  Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) is one of Jarmusch's best, imagine coming home to someone like that, it's like you'd be living with receptive discursivity, a poem, a book, Paterson (Adam Driver) is also chill, a lot of chill in this film, not too cool, elitist cool, but chill cool, livin' it cool, with a disruptive jealous dog.

Tons of sweet bus shots too, bus moments, cinematography by Frederick Elmes (Eraserhead).

It's hard to write in my favourite spots in Winter.

I tried to see every Abbott and Costello movie in my youth.

They have quite a few.

I didn't see all of them.

I used to have a bus license.

I thought it would have been cool to just show Lou Costello park and not talk about it later.

I'm making a sandwich later.

I bought vegetarian ham this week.

It's not bad.

Only Lovers Left Alive

Utilizing a peculiar rhetorical strategy, Jim Jarmusch romanticizes cynicism and satisfaction through naturalistic, artistic, appetitive, and historical entanglements, engendered and coded by the discussions of an aged vampire couple, a perennially rebellious scamp, and a literary legend, the men weary and woeful, the women full of life, united in their unyielding craving, for fresh, universal, blood.

Living in Tangiers, L.A., and Detroit.

Exploring the depths of sundry melodic intersections for centuries while observing disenchanting impacted awakenings have led Adam (Tom Hiddleston) to orchestrate various funeral arrangements, thereby expressing his enduring distaste, intravenously harmonizing his scrutiny.

Partner Eve (Tilda Swinton) remains more upbeat, still observing the world with an urbane reconnaissance, versatile and prim, eruditely beaming.

One's resounding disaffection materializes the novel, while the other's fascination with the unexpected, the appearance of a skunk for instance, impresses it more literally.

More could have been done with Ava's (Mia Wasikowska) character.

The script interrogates pretension by calling into question time's passing to the point where ego and redirection become facets of a limitlessly cloyed perpetuity.

Brothering a thrust.

With recourse to the enviable.