I'm amazed at the way subway passengers will not only try hard to get a seat, but once they have one, will keep moving every time a 'better' seat nearby opens up ('better' meaning as far from other people as possible). Sometimes this is justified, as when there's a big passenger who really takes up a seat and a half, and it gets a bit uncomfortable. But I see it more and more when there's no such circumstance. In these cases I guess people are just really antisocial, or perhaps they're trying to assert their primacy over the people getting on at the next stop, since they usually have a better shot at the newly available seats.

The other night we were on the A train and there were no seats when we got on, but things started to clear up as we headed uptown. At one stop, a bank of three seats next to a door was emptied. On the other side of that door, a man was sitting in the seat nearest the door, with no one next to him, and an inoffensive-looking person two seats away in the third seat. We started to move toward the empty bank. This guy apparently could not stand having someone two seats away from him, so he quickly got up and darted over to sit in the other bank, again nearest the door. We got there after him, but I think if he had looked around he would have seen us heading for those seats. We still sat down, so now thanks to his over-optimization, he had two people right next to him, worse off than before. Boy, he must've felt pretty dumb right about then! Yes...

Later in the ride, the pair of forward-facing seats next to our bank of three opened up. Normally I would've considered taking this opportunity for optimization, because for some reason I really like those seats. But this time I decided to stay put, just to teach him a lesson. Jerk.

* * *

The next morning I had a much more pleasant transportation experience. An old guy with white hair, a straw hat, a checkered shirt and a banjo got on the bus at the same stop I did. He noticed a pair of little girls looking at it inquisitively, and asked if they knew what it was. A minute later he was leading a little singalong. Another child joined in a few stops later. He played and sang softly, and no one seemed disturbed by it. The bus driver took no notice. They got off at 231 ST, and he said maybe he'd see them again the next day.

Two big Japanese film events in New York this fall, as I found out from the Criterion Collection's news page. First at Lincoln Center there's Shochiku at 110, at which I'm most looking forward to The Loyal 47 Ronin (Chushingura), three and a half hours long and the closest thing to Japan's national movie, I'm told; Ozu's Late Spring; and perhaps Kinji Fukasaku's Fall Guy, about a washed up samurai film star trying to preserve his image. I'm mostly aiming for directors I'm familiar with, and films of theirs that aren't available on DVD. There are so many other films playing, but it's hard to know what's going to be good based mostly on skeletal plot outlines. I am curious about "The Lights of Asakusa," partly because I think it's really cool to get to see what a neighborhood of Tokyo was like in 1937, and partly because, for maybe the first time ever, I can't find this movie on IMDb. They have 22 movies by the director, including one made in the same year, but nothing resembling the English title or the Japanese, Asakusa no hi.

Sometimes I have to step back and wonder if I'm disappearing down a rabbit-hole in trying to find and appreciate increasingly obscure Japanese movies. First I got into Kurosawa, then Yasujiro Ozu, Seijun Suzuki, Nagisa Oshima, Shohei Imamura. Takashi Miike probably belongs in a separate list. "The Loyal 47 Ronin" would be the first I've seen by Kenji Mizoguchi. I have a tendency to put a lot of stock in the words of respected film lovers and critics, and let my opinions be almost pre-formed for me before I even see the movies. Surely there's an end to the supply of lost masterpieces and gems, and eventually I'm just watching movies that were forgotten for a reason, but that someone loves because of some context or memory that I just don't have. I do want to make sure that I'm still enjoying the movies and not just appreciating them.

I also think a lot about how older movies and oeuvres would be perceived if they were made today. For example, in Donald Richie's Japan Journals, I read that all of Ozu's films are about the destruction of the family. I figured he was talking about deep themes and interpretations that I would never get on my own. But now that I've seen a few of his films, I realize they really are, on the surface, all about families subtly falling apart. There are variations--in "Good Morning" it's a new generation that only cares about television, and in "Tokyo Story" it's the older generation that is no longer welcome. But it's pretty remarkable how similar they are. It's usually the same group of actors, often playing characters with the same names. Setsuko Hara often plays "Noriko", later on "Akiko." In what I've seen so far her character usually rebels against her parents by not wanting to get married despite being of an appropriate age. Then there are the titles: "Late Spring," "Early Summer," "Early Spring," "Early Autumn" (aka The End of Summer). He did direct 54 movies, including "Tokyo Story" and "Good Morning" and "A Story of Floating Weeds" (twice), and I've only seen a few of them, but still it's a rather fugue-like body of work. It makes me think of Wes Anderson and the common criticism that he's too insular and absorbed in his own quirky style. This never held much weight for me--he's making his contribution to cinema, in his voice, and that's a separate issue from the quality of each movie.

The other event coming up is at MoMA, and titled, appropriately enough, Early Autumn: Masterworks of Japanese Cinema. The only one from their list that I'm sure about seeing so far is the titular film, Early Autumn. But several others look intriguing: "Shonen" by Nagisa Oshima, Kurosawa's directorial debut "Judo Saga," Mizoguchi's "Sisters of the Gion", and "Monday Girl" by Ko Nakahira, whose "Crazed Fruit" was just released by Criterion. There's also one called "Attack of the Mushroom People" by the director of the original Godzilla, Ishiro Honda. But, eh.

You're killin' me, CMJ. I really wanted to see at least a couple of shows. Brian Jonestown Massacre, and the Polyvinyl showcase with Saturday Looks Good To Me and Of Montreal. And hey, Aloha as well, not my favorite but they used to play at the Halfass back in college.

But then, aw crap...Jonestown is playing at 1am. And I'm going to feel guilty that I became a fan of their music only after seeing DiG!. And there's 4 other bands playing before them, probably all psychedelic bands with long drawn-out songs that will melt my brain before Jonestown even gets onstage. And...oh, great. Aloha at 7pm, SLGTM at 10pm, and Of Montreal at 1am. Could you spread that out a little more? I want to spend as many hours at this show as I do at work just beforehand. Thanks a lot CMJ...just forget it. At least I got to see Arcade Fire at the Mercury Lounge last year.

* * *

I have to say, I'm really excited about this. Every issue of the New Yorker ever, from February 1925 to February 2005, in scanned page form, on a set of 8 DVD's. To me the New Yorker is like a continuously created encyclopaedia, only it's written far more interestingly than any encyclopaedia, because of the way it tells the stories behind people, places, and events. My only complaints about this are two disadvantages that seem to arise from the decision to put this great reference on DVD rather than online: one, there most likely won't be any seamless update for recent issues, and two, full text search is not possible. But then again, I'd be much less likely to pay an online subscription fee for this than I am to pay a one-time ownership fee. It's $63 at Amazon.

Speaking of the New Yorker, I have a word of the day that came from a recent issue: synecdoche, pronounced sin-EK-duh-kee. It's a literary term meaning a type of metaphor that refers to a thing by a part, or to a part by a whole (or to something by the kind of thing it is, or what it is made of). My favorite examples from the wikipedia entry are: referring to "one's wheels" to mean one's car (first type), or referring to "plastic" to mean a credit card (last type). I love this word because until now I didn't even realize I was using these metaphors every day, let alone that they were a specific type of metaphor that had a name. I did however learn in a college class that we use metaphors much more than we are aware, and that they probably inform our very thinking as much as they appear in our writing or speech. This book lays it all out.

I was inspired recently, reading Harry Knowles' reports of QT6, the latest installment of Quentin Tarantino's personal film festival. Tarantino collects prints and, at uneven intervals like every couple of years, brings some to Austin, Texas to show to devoted cinephiles. He emcees and gives energetic introductions to every movie, often including rambling trips through the encyclopaedia of film inside his brain, and always punctuated by tossing the microphone and letting it crash onto the stage. Each night of the festival has a theme, like Italian WWII or 80's horror or Sexploitation. A lot of what fascinated me is that very few of the films he shows are available on DVD, but there's always the possibility that one might become available because of Tarantino's influence, as seemed to happen with movies like Lady Snowblood that he name-checked as influences on Kill Bill. The chosen movies tend to run toward grindhouse rather than arthouse, and there's a fair amount of backlash (as usual) on the AICN posts to what seem like intentionally contrarian attitudes, like saying that the little-known Psycho II is better than the first one, or saying that Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho was better than the original, or championing obscure directors over canonized ones. But in reading Harry's reports it's hard not to be convinced that at least some of the movies being shown are true lost gems. The documentary Blue Water, White Death (described in the 'reports' link above) seems a likely candidate. Its casual treatment of sharks as man-eating monsters seems almost comically politically incorrect these days, but considering the footage served as a model for JAWS, it's gotta be pretty good. On second thought, I don't know why I said 'but' there. Comically politically incorrect stuff is awesome.

I immediately started thinking about how cool it would be to do something like this on my own, inviting friends over once a month or so for a movie night picked out from my collection. Of course I won't be coming up with such crazy films as Tarzoon, Shame of the Jungle--an obscene animated parody of Tarzan shown at QT6. All but a few of the titles I have are readily available, though there are plenty of web sites that sell more obscure stuff. Then again, in my friends I also probably have a less demanding audience, and one that would probably rather see a great movie that they've likely never seen, than one of questionable quality that they won't see anywhere else.

I'd already been thinking about buying a digital projector for audiovisual elements in my band's shows. This seemed like a perfect auxiliary justification. There's no doubt in my mind that creating a more immersive atmosphere, as is possible with a 6-foot wide image, makes for a better experience than one has with a TV. I tend to be a bit of a control freak when showing music or anything that I love to others, and I don't want them to miss a moment of what makes it great because of some distraction. It's quite possible to build a projector from parts, using an LCD screen, a set of lenses, and a very bright light bulb, and help from places like Lumenlab and the DIY Projector Company. After much deliberation I decided not to do that, for the following reasons. It only costs about 30% less than buying a commercial projector. A DIY projector is usually housed in a big MDF box, taking up a whole lot more space than a commercial one and not looking nearly as nice. And chances are my first-time DIY result would not be nearly as good or as reliable as a commercial one. I don't really want to still be tweaking it and affixing duct tape in various places when I'm trying to have a movie night. There are good reasons to go DIY that you'll find endlessly debated on the forums of those sites, but I think this time it'll be commercial for me. After much further deliberation I decided the model for me is the Infocus Screenplay 4805. There's no need to go into the myriad variables affecting that choice, but you can find plenty of discussion of them at another site, AVS Forums. The screen is another big question that I haven't entirely resolved yet. But I hope to have my first movie night within a month and a half or so.

[BTW - For other Netflix people--Not long after discovering QT Fest I went through the archives of the programs of all the previous festivals to see if any of the titles were available on Netflix. Naturally, it turned out other Netflix users had already created custom lists of the QT Fest movies available: here's one. I queued up Bullet Train, a Japanese precursor to Speed, and Hickey & Boggs, a gritty detective flick with Bill Cosby. By the way, if anyone is on Netflix and isn't my Netflix friend, let me know, and let's bee friends. I only have 2 friends right now, which makes their little quizzes about which friend likes which movie just a bit dull.]