Monday, October 09, 2006

Old Custer

"The crickets and the rust-beetles scuttled among the nettles of the sage thicket. "VĂ¡monos, amigos," he whispered, and threw the busted leather flintcraw over the loose weave of the saddlecock. And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight."
—Eli Cash, reading from his novel Old Custer (the book which, though we all know Custer died at Little Big Horn, presupposes "What if he didn't?") in The Royal Tenenbaums

I was reading on Wikipedia earlier, and apparently Eli Cash was modeled on Cormac McCarthy and Jay McInerney, which is great.

I watched The Grudge on HBO On Demand last night. I could have watched something more substantial, but I didn't want to. It wasn't scary, per se, but it was freaky; it made me jump several times, and feel that weird exhilaration one sometimes gets when watching "scary" movies.

The feeling was unlike the feeling I got when watching, for the umpteenth time the other night, Wes Anderson's breakout movie Rushmore, which is a feeling of chest-swelling cheer and good will toward men. Bill Murray's face and changing expression when he realizes the source of the bees in his hotel room—from grudging, fey respect to revulsion and grim determination—is alone worth the price of admission (in this case, $3 from Vec's Video).

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Dammit Kumar...maybe you never had the touch.