SOUNDTRACK: SAFURA-“Drip Drop” (2010)
Azerbaijan came in 5th in this year’s Eurovision contest. And they did it with this monstrosity of a song by Safura. She sounds like so many pop chanteuses, pulling out all the stops on high notes, vibrato and even a fascinatingly accented English.
But just as I’m about to dismiss this song out of hand, she throws in this weird chorus of pizzicato “drip drops.” Even they are not very compelling, but the juxtaposition of these two parts of the song are surprising enough to make the song interesting.
But I think that’s enough Eurovision for me. And I didn’t even make it to the song by Latvia with the lines: “I’ve asked my Uncle Joe/But he can’t speak/Why does the wind still blow?/And blood still leaks?/So many questions now/With no reply/What for do people live until they die?/ Only Mr God knows why/But his phone today is out of range”
[READ: July 19, 2010] “Cinema Crudité”
This article is about cult films, although it focuses a lot on a film that I’ll never watch called The Room. I had heard about the film in Entertainment Weekly a month or so ago. They joked about its status as a midnight film that all manner of celebrities swear by: David Cross, Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill etc.
This article goes into much greater depth than the EW piece did about what the film is actually like. The author really points out all of its flaws and incongruities and everything else about the film that is awful. And then he says that he’s watched it at least 20 times and couldn’t wait to interview the auteur behind it.
The article is great, by the way, Bissell did an excellent job. But I still don’t want to watch the film.
Okay, I admit that his article does make me want to watch it, sort of. I mean, the things that he talks about sound so dreadful, and yet the auteur (who seems like a total loon) believes that he is making the best drama out there.
Back in grad school I discovered Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I spent so much of my time watching their episodes (and circulating the tapes) that you’d think this sort of so-bad-it’s-good film would really appeal to me. But I think the appeal of MST3K was that the jokes that they made were really funny. It wasn’t just mocking badness, it was using badness to create something genuinely smart and clever.
I couldn’t have made it through most of those films without the MST3K guys showing me the way. So I don’t think I could make it through The Room, unless maybe I was in a theater with David Cross, Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill, and they were guiding me through the difficulty of this mess.
Although I would like to see clips of it, especially all of the football scenes.
But just look at the poster (and the billboard with this poster had been up in LA for over 5 years (at approximately $500/mo). This is your auteur… a handsome all American boy, no?
I Just Read About That... 
One word: Rifftrax.
Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett watch movies , record an audio track of their antics, and offer it to you for a small fee. You listen to the audio track while watching the DVD. It’s just like MST3K without the silhouettes at the bottom of the screen. And they can give the treatment to all sorts of movies that MST3K never could have gotten the rights to.
It’s how I discovered The Room.
Thanks Aurora. I had heard of Rifftrax but never investigated it further. It sounds awesome. And, I still have my “theatre seat” cling that you stick on the bottom of the TV, so I can use that too!
[…] Crudité” is about the cult film The Room. I loved this article when it appeared in Harper’s, and I loved it more this time. It looks at how […]