May 18, 2008
Youth Without Youth Without Life
Consider this scene with Tim Roth, the formerly old man given back his youth (by way of a bolt of lightning!) only to continue down the same path of academic study he wanted to give up (through suicide) on his first chance at life: He stares dumbfound at a book and it glows before his barely surprised face, voiceover says ‘I only need to look at a book’s cover to gain its knowledge’ [paraphrased from memory]. So goes the implausibility and utter lack of character development in Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth, which might very well be the worst movie I’ve seen since a few movies that made no pretense at being good or serious and might be the Ishtar of its time.
Coming from the man who brought Michael Corleone and Harry Caul to life, Youth Without Youth is a terrible disappointment. It’s full of obvious contrivances like glowing nazi insignias on women’s garter belts or the aforementioned glowing books, an unnecessarily convoluted story and plot, and lifeless caricatures.
There are lots of reviews out there (80, according to MRQE) so I won’t even bother to go into all that, just think of this as a public service announcement: don’t waste your time. It seems to me that Youth Without Youth should be a film about a filmmaker who tries to recapture his youth by forgetting everything he learned by making some of the greatest films ever made. He discovers there is, or there should be, no youth without youth.
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– L. Lee Lowe
on “Would He Do it Again?”
Last year Derrick Brown did living room readings. I don’t think anyone there had ever read his poetry; I had barely been introduced a few days before. http://vimeo.com/6013960
Compared to any staged, stacked or emceed poetry reading, well, it was kind of like learning you hadn’t ever had good sex.
Granted, he’s a more engaging poet than many, and he reads poems that should be read aloud, like they should sound. I still think that a lot of the intimacy would have been lost in any a more austere setting.
As a listener, it had a profound and searing impact; if I could speak for the non-poetry-reading kind, I’d say they could not help but connect with this living poetry that was funny and sad and sweet and took you somewhere.
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on “Would He Do it Again?”
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