In Robert Altman's seminal film, Nashville, a third-party candidate named Hal Philip Walker is running for president on a ticket known as The Replacement Party. "I'm for doing some replacing," he says of the bureaucracy in Washington.

Movietelling, also known as neo-benshi, is the art of (mis)narrating a film. I encountered it for the first time in January of 2007, when I saw David Larsen's "Paris of Troy." The setting was Philadelphia's Powel House, named after the city’s first mayor, Samuel Powel, who bought it in 1769, four years after it was built. George and Martha Washington dined there. So did John Adams. Projecting 11 minutes of the film Troy (2004) onto a dining room wall, including its windows and yellow velvet curtains, David Larsen narrated this Hollywood version of the Iliad, book 3:

It is the clitoral tip of Asia.
You don’t believe me?
that’s a Hittite word, Assuwa
for the windy NW corner of Anatolia
where stood gleaming Tarawissa
the Hittite word for Troy

[…]

She stands there for 60 seconds exactly
which you would know if you were
sitting there with me
watching and re-watching this scene from Troy
wearing out the remote control

That’s Paris on the right, the
dreamy abductor
his brother’s trying to tell him something
Yeah whatever

[…]

oh wow
what a bad scene
I just realized I’m going to die learning
about myself in the hardest way
this is no pony party
actually it kind of is, is
what makes it all so horribly real
as if the sound were cutting back in

how much more time is this
going to take
my heart is in my ears
its every report a separate agony
the fight is in my heart
my heart is upside-down

[…]

So (as Seamus Heaney might begin this). My husband and I actually went to a concert last night, which we have not done in an age. He had managed to swing tickets to a sold-out Alfred Brendel concert at the Megaron Mousikis, an evening of Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and Mozart. But we almost didn’t go, because it meant leaving our toddler at home with a raging fever. In the end, his grandmother came over and looked after him, and we guiltily fled for the concert.

Greek audiences are not quiet audiences. They are lively and engaged, even the rather aged, mink-clad dripping-in-Chanel set that is likely to attend a pricey classical concert. Greeks aren't quiet even in church on the holiest night of the year—there is fidgeting, whispering, the inevitable chirping of cell phones. Still, at a classical concert people know better. Nonetheless, during the first movement of the Haydn, I was actually thinking to myself, you know, this is a pretty fidgety audience (everyone in there seemed to be muffling emphysemic coughs) when Alfred Brendel abruptly stopped playing and announced to the audience that if there was not complete silence, he would not continue.

Simon Morris at Information as Material has just released a DVD entitled "Sucking on Words"—a documentary film that introduces viewers to the career of Kenneth Goldsmith (a provocative contributor to discussions here at Harriet). Goldsmith has gone on to make the entire film freely available for viewing online at UbuWeb….

A is for apple.

H is for harvest.

H is for House, Peter Greenaway's 1973 short, may be my ideal movie: under ten minutes; an organizing principle that distracts you from the highly personal motivation; orchestrated like a piece of music rather than a prose narrative. Has anybody else seen this? It's so obscure it's not even on YouTube.

There’s a scene in Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim where one of the characters (who eats every night at the same Village restaurant, The Dante) is a poet on the trail of a Missing Person. This poet, Jason, goes to the New York Public Library and flirts with the librarian so that she’ll give him access to the index cards listing the titles each patron has checked out.* He realizes that two characters from different worlds have checked out the same books. What do a perfume manufacturer and a psychiatrist have in common? the poet wonders.

Well, as it turns out, they are linked to the same secret society, a diabolist cult.** The perfumier’s product is called La Sagesse (wisdom), and its corporate logo is the cult’s sigil. The psychiatrist (epitome of a different kind of sagesse) is helping one of its members escape. The poet Jason serves an alternative sagesse in his detective work, and it’s no accident that it begins at The Dante and pivots on the library.

Could it be that there is a profound cultural connection between the poet and the detective?***

Ingmar Bergman directed Smiles of a Summer Night and Fanny and Alexander, among other films. (“You must see The Virgin Spring!” a friend pleads.) But so purely do these two films vouch for the magical influence of art, dreams and dressing rooms: without which no eros, no childhood, and no intuition of justice.

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL (YAB) is my favorite public art collective based in Chicago.

We've just posted Jessica Fisher's Q&A with filmmaker Guy Maddin. His latest, Brand Upon the Brain! started a limited run in New York on Wednesday (John Ashbery performs live as the narrator this Sunday); catch it in Chicago the following weekend (Crispin Glover narrates); and Los Angeles after that (celeb narrators TBA). A few stills from the film follow the jump.

I found this conversation on line:

orangecounty888: Hey I was just wondering if anybody out there has any pictures of Mark Wahlbergs dick or package. :D Hes always been a hunk and I have noticed that he's done Calven Klein ads and such. So please post some pictures if you have any!
Thanks.

dfox7x3.5: Mark's huge cock in Boogie Nights was a prosthesis. When the movie came out he even called a news conference to explain that it wasn't him. That was very cool of him. He's a cool guy.

mattness: Mark also said in another interview, when asked about the prosthesis (paraphrasing), "At first when I heard about it, I was offended, because...I'm not so bad, you know what I mean? But then I saw it and said, "ohhhhh, ok...I get why you want it now...it's HUGE!""

jonb:AFAICT, there are no real nude images of Mark Wahlberg. I've seen several fake ones; a few were stupid enough to claim Mark Wahlberg was uncircumcised.

DerSchwanz: I don't think Mark Wahlberg is Jewish. He's one of nine kids (We don't usually have families that big), and according to his bio on www.us.imdb.com, he "Is of Swedish, Irish, German and French Canadian descent."

Jonb: Anything with berg in it's Jewish. Ditto for gold, stein, and fein.

DoubleMeatWhopper: Frankenstein was Jewish? :blink:

Proudly_Italian: Ever heard about Golem, dublemeat?

Lapdog2001: I went to school with a bunch of Wahlbergs in the Boston area (not Mark or Donny), none of whom were Jewish.

jonb:Donny's Jewish. I'm pretty sure Mark is too. Just it'd be strange if he broke the rule.
As for Frankenstein, the doctor was. In fact, the whole story's based on the Golem of Prague.

(For more excellent literary and cinematic criticism like this—can your students make connections between Mark Wahlberg and Mary Shelley this artfully?—you can visit the Large Penis Suport Group website.)