Watched and read

Watched: La Belle Noiseuse (1991). One of the longest films I’ve ever seen (236 minutes), and I loved every moment of it. As one reviewer put it, “it actually feels liberating to watch a film that doesn’t limit itself to a predetermined time constraint.” The tempo here is that of real life, not the urgency of storytelling. The film is an extraordinary investigation of the relationship between artist and model, between subject and object. If a great painter were to capture your essence on canvas, could you handle it?
This is the perfect Netflix film: Few DVD rental places will carry it, I doubt it will ever be shown on cable TV, and having seen it once I don’t want to do so again.
Read: Hugh Laurie’s The Gun Seller. Not quite sure how I missed this when it came out in 1998, but I’m glad I got around to it. Imagine Ian Fleming’s 007 as interpreted by a tag-team of P.G.Wodehouse and Douglas Adams.
I hadn’t realized until I’d finished (at 2am – it’s the kind of book that you can’t put down) that it was published before 9/11. These days, satire has a hard time keeping up with reality, but Laurie’s still ahead. I see that he has a new novel out next month…