Lejazznik

My name is Liz. As a writer of short fiction, novels, and poetry, I am influenced by hard-boiled American detective novels, film noir, Greek/Roman mythology, and the musical prose of bebop. I have a B.A. in English and a B.A. in Cinema and Cultural Studies. My idols are Raymond Chandler, Jean-Pierre Melville, Frank Sinatra, and James Bond. I love painting, photography, 1950s-1970s TV shows, gangster films, Italian neorealism, French and Japanese New Wave, surrealism, poetic realism, and pulp taglines. I am based in NY. Feel free to follow me on twitter, pinterest and instagram: lejazznik. hit counter

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• Quote 5
  Notes
  "Where, if not from the Impressionists, do we get those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas-lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows? To whom, if not to them and their master, do we owe the lovely silver mists that brood over our river?"

  Oscar Wilde

  #wilde #impressionism 
• Quote 2
  Notes
  "Being mellow is okay if you wanna be a piece of cheese. The trouble with being a piece of cheese is that someone’s gonna spread you on a cracker and eat you."

  James Ellroy

  #james ellroy 
• Text 1
  Notes Sylvia Plath, “The Hanging Man”

  By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
  I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.

  The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eyelid: 

  A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.

  A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
  If he were I, he would do what I did.

• Quote
  "The secrets of the universe continue to transcend the quotidian. All philosophers must, therefore, doff their hats to the poets when they discover that the path of reason takes them only so far. The universe that lies beyond common sense and logic— the universe that is known intuitively to the poet— belongs to the metaphysical."

  Sakutarō Hagiwara

  #Sakutarō Hagiwara #metaphyiscal 
• Quote
  "Experience has taught me that travel presents nothing more than ‘identical objects moving in identical spaces.’…Now the thought of travel projects onto my weary heart an infinitely tedious landscape like that of a paulownia tree growing in a vacant lot, and I feel a dull loathing for human life in which this sameness repeats itself everywhere. Travel no longer holds any interest or romance for me."

  Sakutarō Hagiwara

  #Sakutarō Hagiwara #travel 
• Text 4
  Notes My Thoughts on Stoker (Sans Spoilers)

  I think this film had a lot of potential but ultimately, it was an uneven effort with many flaws. That’s not to say I didn’t like it; on the contrary, I enjoyed it even with its shortcomings. It is very hard to not give away key information/twists in an analysis so this “review” will be very short— more casual commentary than an actual review. To start off: the problems. The first half was incredibly slow and awkwardly quiet. I usually love films that lack dialogue but to me, the quietness in this film bordered on parody. When the characters use dialogue sparingly in a film, you remember every line that they do say. Although the film had incredible lines, some lines felt forced and made you think, “Would anyone in real life actually say something like that?” Additionally, some of the creepy imagery felt superfluous or at least awkwardly executed: whenever India ventures into the sinister-looking, cobweb-blanketed basement to put ice cream away in the freezer, she has a ritual of pushing the overhanging light so that it swings, its light illuminating the darkness; it’s also a very loud creaky light. She literally forces the light to look/sound creepy…they could have done this in a less forced manner. (Maybe the door could have been right next to the light fixture so that this happened naturally?)

  This image, I think, is a visual echo of Psycho, when Marion Crane’s sister accidentally bumps into an overhanging light fixture after seeing Norman Bates’s very dead mother sitting in her chair. Another visual echo from Psycho is near the end of Stoker, when a cop peers at India while she is in her car. We see his face, wearing aviator glasses, in an extreme close-up. There is a similar shot in Psycho when a cop pulls his face in very close to Marion as she sits in her car. A pair of scissors is also important in Stoker (I won’t give away how)— the function of these scissors is reminiscent of the ones in Dial M for Murder. And lastly, as it has been noted many times, there are many similarities between Stoker and yet another Hitchcock film— Shadow of a Doubt. Although Wentworth Miller, who wrote the screenplay, takes the basic premise of the film and turns it into a psychosexual thriller. That is something I really enjoyed about the film: how it meshes the psychosexual thriller, Gothic fairy tale, coming of age story, and Hitchcock homage.

  Good things:

  The film was incredibly stylized: you remember everything the characters wore, the sets, the colors, the montages, the many dissolves and superimpositions linking images, the music. There’s an especially beautiful scene in which India combs her mother’s hair and we see an extreme close-up of Nicole Kidman’s apricot-hued strands; the camera pans down and the image slowly dissolves and another image takes its place: the tall strands of grass India and her father used to hide in as they waited to hunt their prey (animals). What a striking analogy.

  The clothes were remarkable. India Stoker’s style is eclectic undertaker: non-revealing buttoned-up shirts tucked into pleated skirts, saddle shoes (which are very important in the story; when these shoes get replaced by another pair at the end of the film, this marks a major change in India), and a particularly memorable black collared dress with leather panels she wears at her father’s funeral. She parts her brown hair in the middle and with her deadpan expression and voice, this only adds to the severity of her appearance.

  Matthew Goode as Uncle Charlie. The most devilishly handsome homme fatale I have seen…in a while. He reminded me of Alain Delon in Plein Soleil: another beautiful, demented, murderous seducer.

  The Piano Scene. Let me just say that some serious bonding goes down between India and her Uncle Charlie on that tiny piano seat as they perform an impromptu duet that starts off as uncomfortable…and, well, becomes titillating. (I, for one, felt whatever India was feeling…)

  Overall, I’d rate this film a 6 1/2 out of 10. But I would watch it again and again because while it was flawed, it had plenty of memorable images and I’d love to mull over in my head what they could’ve done differently to the film to make it outstanding— which it could very well have been. I have a feeling this will become a cult film in no time.

  Can we please make this become a thing? Psychosexual thrillers with anti-hero protagonists and homme fatales? Although this type of thriller would definitely be a limited release type of film…when I saw how Stoker ends, I realized why this wasn’t a wide release. Just watch and find out.

  #stoker #matthew goode #nicole kidman #mia wasikowska #wentworth miller #hitchcock #park chan-wook #filmreviews 
• Photos

  Frontispiece of Flaubert’s The Temptation of St. Anthony illustrated by American cartoonist Clare Victor Dwiggins. 1904 edition. I borrowed it from the library!

  #flaubert #frontispiece #Clare Victor Dwiggins 
• Photo 6
  Notes

  “From time to time he catches tremendous glimpses of Kenny, arrowing down some toppling foam-precipice. Then, intent upon his own rites of purification, George staggers out once more, wide-open-armed, to receive the stunning baptism of the surf. Giving himself to it utterly, he washes away thought, speech, mood, desire, whole selves, entire lifetimes; again and again he returns, becoming always cleaner, freer, less. He is perfectly happy by himself; it’s enough to know that Kenny and he are the sole sharers of the element. The waves and the night and the noise exist only for their play. Meanwhile, no more than two hundred yards distant, the lights shine from the shore and the cars flick past up and down the highway, flashing their long beams. On the dark hillsides you can see lamps in the windows of dry homes, where the dry are going dryly to their dry beds. But George and Kenny are refugees from dryness; they have escaped across the border into the water-world, leaving their clothes behind them for a customs fee.” - Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man

  #a single man #Christopher Isherwood #colin firth #bookshelf 
• Quote 5
  Notes
  "My initial thoughts about what a [title sequence in a film] can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film’s story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it."

  Saul Bass

  #saul bass 
• Quote 4
  Notes
  "Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face— the face of a child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young man— all present still, preserved like fossils on superimposed layers, and, like fossils, dead."

  Christopher Isherwood

  #a single man #Christopher Isherwood 
• Photos 1
  Notes

  New pulps!

  #pulp #bookshelf 
• Text 6
  Notes My Top 45 Films

  1. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)

  2. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

  3. Le Cercle Rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970)

  4. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

  5. Scarface (Howard Hughes, 1932)

  6. Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)

  7. Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)

  8. Blast of Silence (Allen Baron, 1960)

  9. Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959)

  10. Purple Noon (René Clément, 1960)

  11.The Godfather II (Coppola, 1974)

  12. The American Friend (Wim Wenders, 1977)

  13. Fists in the Pocket/I pugni in tasca (Marco Bellocchio, 1965)

  14. Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1957)

  15.The Easy Life/Il Sorpasso (Dino Risi, 1962)

  16. This Gun For Hire (Frank Tuttle, 1942)

  17. Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen, 1952)

  18. Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)

  19. The Spy Who Loved Me (Lewis Gilbert, 1977)

  20. Angels With Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz, 1938)

  21. The Informer (John Ford, 1935)

  22. Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961)

  23. The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967)

  24. Charade (Donen, 1963)

  25. The Street With No Name (William Keighley, 1948)

  26. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964)

  27. Who’s that Knocking at My Door (Scorsese, 1967)

  28. Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné, 1938)

  29. Le Trou (Jacques Becker, 1960)

  30. White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949)

  31. T-Men (Anthony Mann, 1947)

  32. The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)

  33. Pal Joey (George Sidney, 1957)

  34. In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

  35. Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)

  36. Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966)

  37. Samaritan Girl (Kim Ki-duk, 2004)

  38. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (Kim Ki-duk, 2003)

  39. The Lovers (Louis Malle, 1958)

  40. The Fire Within (Malle, 1963)

  41. Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 1951)

  42. Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)

  43. The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963)

  44. Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)

  45. Dial M for Murder (Hitchcock, 1954)

  #film noir #classic film #french new wave #filmreviews 
• Text 1
  Notes

  2or3thingsiknowaboutfilm asked: Thanks for following! Great blog. Do you have a favorite quote from a Chandler novel?

  No problem, I love your blog :) I have many favorites, too many to list. But I’ll try. From Farewell, My Lovely: “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”

  Another favorite is: “I put the duster away folded with the dust in it, leaned back and just sat, not smoking, not even thinking. I was a blank man. I had no face, no meaning, no personality, hardly a name. I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t even want a drink. I was the page from yesterday’s calendar crumpled at the bottom of the waste basket.” from The Little Sister. 

  And yet another favorite (haha, I can’t stop) from “The King in Yellow”: “I’m an occational drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.” What about you?

• Photo 9
  Notes

  I took a screenshot of Magritte’s Le thérapeute painting juxtaposed with the final image of the robotic woman in one of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone, “The Lonely.” It’s chilling to think how we live our lives believing in illusions and when the curtain is pushed aside and we see the true inner workings of something, this is what we may find.
  

  #Le thérapeute #magritte #surrealism #the twilight zone 
• Link 4
  Notes The 85 Films Scorsese Says You Should See. And When Scorsese Says Something, You Listen

  I’ve seen 41 of these movies. And you bet I will watch the ones I haven’t seen yet because Mr. Scorsese said so.

  #Martin Scorsese 

quotes Elizabeth likes