Author: Eric

Pivot point for this idea

Top Work

Graft stubsNo, I didn’t get hair plugs…

Just before it started to rain on Monday afternoon, I climbed into my unproductive MacIntosh apple tree (which regularly blooms with scab — a fungus infection — in late July, whereupon all the young apples fall off the tree) and started grafting scions of other apple varieties onto some of the limbs. Last year an orchardist suggested top-working the tree instead of cutting it down because it rarely produced edible fruit.

We inherited this particular tree along with five other semi-dwarf varieties (two Rome Beauty, Northern Spy, Macoun, and Cortland) with the property, all about twenty years old at the time we moved in. Besides the MacIntosh the other trees, despite our utter inexperience and ineptitude tending an orchard, regularly bear prolific quantities of beautiful fruit. We managed to press fifty gallons of cider last year, and we still left bushels of apples on the trees because we just couldn’t fit all of them onto the truck to take them to our local press (our sheep, cows, and the wild deer were very happy to help with the rest).
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SFiFF x: Romance and Cigarettes

ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES (2005)
USA, 115 minutes
Written and Directed by John Turturro

Cast: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Kumar Pallana, Christopher Walken, Mandy Moore, Aida Turturro, Mary-Louise Parker, Eddie Izzard, Elaine Stritch and more.
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John Turturro’s exuberant new film is many things: a warm, affectionate portrait of a working-class American family; an homage to the musical; a scatological celebration of outrageous behavior; an exploration of love and a vehicle for some of the world’s finest actors to let it rip in a deliriously over-the-top, no-holds-barred melodrama of the age-old love triangle. [SFiFF Program Guide]

The plot and moral doesn”t matter, just sit back and enjoy these wonderful actors doing wonderful things, it”ll come to you.

I laughed ‘til I cried.

Do yourself a favor and see this as soon as it comes around.
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Stick A Fork In It, It’s Done

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Last Sunday the the weather (overcast and cool, but not raining) and my schedule (no planned activity) allowed me to dig my main garden in preparation for spring planting. This is a critical beginning to the gardening year because digging fluffs the soil, gets those microbes converting the generous amounts of organic matter (read: cow poop) into available nitrogen, and removes the weeds that got established in the long autumn demise into winter last year.
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SFiFF viii: Scribble Scrapple I.C.You

SCRIBBLE SCRAPPLE I.C.YOU (2006)
U.S.A. 90 minutes
Five short live performances with movie screen.

Golin Levin from Pittsburgh, presenting THE MANUAL INPUT WORKSTATION started off with an overhead projector, doing hand shadows, when he would make a hole, it would fill up with light and he”d open his hand and drop it—thunk! or ping!—and stuff would roll around making its noise and pretty soon there were lots of thingys rolling around and making a cocophany of digital light and sound. Weird and cool at the same time.


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SFiFF vii: Bashing

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BASHING (2005)
Japan 82 minutes

Written and Directed by Masahiro Kovayashi
Cast: Fusako Urabe, Ryuzo Tanaka, Takayuki Hato

With an initial disclaimer that the film is fiction “loosely based on real events,” Kobayashi plunges into the desolate daily existence of Yuko, an aid worker whose recent kidnapping and release in the Middle East has made her the town pariah once back at home. As the narrative begins, the situation has reached a tipping point and, in quick succession, Yuko is shunned by coworkers, fired from her job, harassed by strangers and dumped by her boyfriend. The message to Yuko, finally stated in blunt terms by a taunting voice on her answering machine is thus: “If you”d been killed, you would have been a heroine. Now you are nothing but an embarrassment to us all.” [SFiFF Program Guide]

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SFiFF v: The Wayward Cloud

Perpetual_Motion.jpgTHE WAYWARD CLOUD (2005)
Taiwan/France 112 minutes
Directed by Tsai Ming-Liang

“The most audacious film to date from the visionary director Tsai Ming-Liang.” [SFiFF Program Guide]

I won”t say that there was a story to The Wayward Cloud; there were scenes. Often the scenes were shot with a fixed camera, people moving within the frame—or moving in and out of the frame—and sometimes no people at all for minutes at a time, causing a palpable anticipation. We”re usually in a tall apartment building in Taipei, Taiwan, in an apartment, in the hallways, in the elevator, in the stairwell. A few scenes are outside the building; and the musical scenes are in fantasyland.

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