In trying to piece together Charlie Kaufman’s wild, visionary new film Synecdoche, New York, I’ve decided to gather some random thoughts about the film here in the hopes that others will drop by and help flesh them out into actual answers.
Major spoilers follow… do not read on if you ever plan to see this film.
I’ve had a few debates in the comment section recently about what some (read: this ‘Dana’ character) believe is a tendency of mine to celebrate the work of new artists over established ones. Specifically, the claim is that I will consistently rank a new work by an old favorite lower than a new work by somebody “fresh.”
I have a theory about this that I’ll get to in a bit.
I saw a poster in Target the other day that listed the top 100 movie quotes of all-time (not sure how the list was compiled).
Number one was “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” You had your “I coulda been a contender” and “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.” “May the force be with you,” “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” All the usual suspects (including “Round up the usual suspects”).
Nestled in there in the middle of the pack was “I’ll have what she’s having” from When Harry Met Sally. Reading that, I got angry about something that’s always made me angry when it comes to that classic Rob Reiner film.
Commenter ‘Amy’ posed an interesting question in the Peter Gabriel thread: Should we constantly seek new music or be content with the music we already love? After all, there aren’t enough hours in the day, week or year to listen to all the music we’ve accumulated over our lifetimes, so why make it even harder by adding more to the pile?
It’s an interesting question… should we be faithful to our first loves? I say hell no!
In the comments of my Randy Newman post, the question came up of whether it still makes sense in this day and age to buy music on compact discs as opposed to downloading it from iTunes.
I say it’s a no-brainer… CDs all the way.
Meet Me In Montauk 