Destiny

DESTINYged

Coen, Ethan (in “Gates of Eden”; Harper Perennial; Reprint edition, 2008, ISBN 9780061684883)

Ethan Coen’s Destiny makes a glorious spectacle of the modern male. It holds him up, with all his incertitude and humanity, against the older notion of manful men who have stood in battle, consume bourbon with their steaks and know how to throw a punch. In Coen’s protagonist Joey Carmody, like “The Dude” Jeffery Lebowski before him, the reader observes a modern man like himself (or some man she knows) trapped in an older story, fumbling around in Phil Marlow’s footsteps with his modern enlightenment and uncertainty. Continue reading

Tour Scenic Cesta Punta

werner_herzog_eats_his_shoeWERNER HERZOG EATS HIS SHOE 

Dir. Les Blank. Perf. Werner Herzog, Alice Waters, Tom Luddy, Michael Goodwin, Chris Strachwitz and Phil Harberts. Flower Films, 1980. Film.

After cooking and eating his shoe in Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, Herzog explains that he ranks a lack of adequate images as one of the gravest threats to civilisation. He puts it on par with overpopulation and ecological devastation.

For the man who fixes his focus well into the future, it cuts to the marrow of his fear that human progress in his society may’ve ground to a standstill. Without adequate images to knit its dreams from, can his society dream dreams of significance? Or will it spend its time perfecting the Slurpee and finding Australia’s Next Top Model, as its citizens grow more and more isolated from each another? Continue reading

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