Monday, December 27, 2010

The Blood of a Poet

Last night I watched Inception on DVD. I had seen it before when it was first released. It is a really good movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page about a group of criminals who enter people's dreams to steal information.

I also finished reading the graphic novel Local by Brian Wood and illustrated by Ryan Kelly. It's a series of twelve stories set in twelve locations throughout North America and linked by the recurring character of Megan, a young woman who drifts around from place to place and job to job. It is really good. It's kind of a coming of age story and is really quite powerful. Each location is integral to the story, becoming like another character. The locations featured are: Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Richmond, Virginia; Missoula, Montana; Halifax, Nova Scotia; Brooklyn, New York; Tempe, Arizona; Wicker Park, Chicago; Norman, Oklahoma; Austin, Texas; Toronto, Ontario and Vermont.

Today I stayed in. This afternoon I saw The Blood of a Poet, directed by Jean Cocteau. It is a really surreal film in which a painter is startled when the mouth of a painting comes to life and erases it, only to find the mouth appearing on the palm of his hand. On the advice of a talking statue, he enters a mirror and finds himself in the "Hotel of Lunatic Desire", a bizarre dreamlike corridor where gravity doesn't apply. It gets stranger from there. It's reviewed at Permanently Weird.

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