Recs, review and poetry

Two X-Men recs, both Mystique/Raven-centric (which makes me happy indeed), set post First Class, with excellent ensemble use:

Puzzle Pieces: Magneto's team realises that Darwin might still be alive and attempts to find him. When they are caught in an ambush and half the team is captured, Mystique has to lead the rescue effort. Darwin calls in the kind of help that Mystique doesn't want, but does need. Great Raven-becoming-Mystique arc, Angel is fleshed out more and given plausible motivations, and the eventual joining of teams for the rescue has just the right amount of tension and effectiveness you'd hope for.

Faceless in our dreaming state: this one also presents a different yet also plausible version of how Raven and the rest of the newly formed team around Magneto might adjust to each other (excellent characterisation of Emma!), and of how they might interact with Charles, Hank & Co. post film.


Recently watched on dvd:


Howl: an oddity which defies definition and might be a genre of its own, though Cronenberg's Naked Lunch goes a bit (but only a bit) in the same direction, taking as it did a basically unfilmable classic by a Beat poet and interspersing it with the author's life. However, Cronenberg's film is still fiction with a plot (of sorts) and alternate names, whereas Howl, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (whose most famous film so far was the documentary The Celluloid Closet), mixes animated sequences to the sound of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl with sequences of a young Ginsberg (played by James Franco) reciting, sequences of slightly older Ginsberg (still James Franco) being interviewed about his life, and scenes from the obscenity trial against Lawrence Ferlinghetti (who published Howl) (showcase of spot-that-famous-actor, for example Jon "Don Draper" Hamn as Ferlinghetti's and Ginsberg's lawyer). Not a biopic, because the acted interview and trial scenes are a) more in the style of reenactment, as sometimes now is the custom in documentaries , and b) just about one third of the film; the other two thirds are really the poem recitation and animation. So basically this is a film both of and about a poem. Which I haven't seen done before.

Now, I actually met Allen Ginsberg once. In the usual way one meets a world famous poet, i.e. I went to a reading/recitation evening of his in Munich and had one of his books signed for me. It was a great experience (he was an old man by then of course, but it was amazing how vibrant and alert he came across). It did make seeing Franco as Ginsberg a bit disconcerting because they don't look much alike, and for the first few minutes of the film, don't much sound alike, either. Then Franco gets into Ginsberg's very distinctive way of reciting (and the animated sequence capture the jazz rhythms of it all very wellL), shows the body language and mannerisms, and once he acquires a beard for the interview sequences it's a dead-on impersonation, so that at the very end of the film when you see brief footage of old Allen G. reciting (just as I've seen him) it's not a jolting experience but transitions very well. The animation didn't go for a literal 1-to-1 translation of Ginsberg's imagery but for the most part was really well done and inventive. When I watched the Making of documentary on the dvd I found out this was originally inspired by Ginsberg's publisher wanting something to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Howl (as it turned out the film was released on the 55th anniversary instead), and I suspect Ginsberg would have enjoyed this war more than an actual biopic.


Unconnected to the film: my favourite Ginsberg anecdote is probably the one about him visiting Ezra Pound in 1967 and playing Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for him. Supposedly the line "no one was saved" in Eleanor Rigby made Pound smile a little, which is Ezra Pound for you. The whole encounter is one of those bizarre-wouldn't-dare-to-invent-it things because Pound did some truly awful things during the war, including antisemtic propaganda broadcasts, and Allen Ginsberg knew this but also regarded Pound as one of the poets whose poetry most shaped him as a writer, so he literally reached out a hand, and Pound responded with the only bit of remorse he ver expressed on the subject to the Jewish-American poet who came armed with Beatles, Dylan and Donovan records and the declaration that "Your cantos were very important to me": “My worst mistake was that stupid suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism – spoiled everything.”

Ginsberg had met the Beatles in person in 1965 and then re-met Paul McCartney via mutual friend Barry Miles in 1967, which led to a long term transatlantic friendship and Paul backing him up on guitar when Ginsberg recited his Ballad of the Skeletons at the Royal Albert Hall on October 16th, 1995. (Conversely, Electric Arguments, the title of the third Fireman album, is taken from an Allen Ginsberg poem.) Behold:

Thirty Days of Fanfiction: Day Twenty-Seven

27 – Where is your favorite place to write, and do you write by hand or on the computer?

I used to write by hand all through my teenage years (what with graduating just before the computer age arrived at school, so to speak - the only computers in our school belonged to the secretaries of the headmaster, there were none for the students), though I learned to typewrite with 16, figuring I'd need it later in life, but computers were new and somewhat intimidating, so I kept on writing the longer texts first by hand until I was 20, at which point I made the switch to typing first and foremost and writing by hand only if there is no computer at hand (see reply to day 19).

Favorite place: don't have one. I have three, in my flat in Munich, in the room that used to belong to my brother and is now my mini office at my parents' house in Bamberg, and the living room in Bad Wiessee. But provided it's not noisy, I can write everywhere, including hotel rooms. I just need, not to go all Virginia Woolf on you, a room or some space of my own and the possibility to ignore interruptions.


( The rest of the questions )