Just under two weeks and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (70) finally bites the dust.

I sold my first piece of furniture today. A huge bookshelf that in the past has held my disgusting collection of books I haven't read was pawned off to the good Ross ... something or other. And it is both satisfying and just another sign of how completely different my life is about to become.

I'm at just under two weeks before I pack up all of my belongings and hit the road and let me tell you I am a ball of conflicting emotions. Excitement, happiness, sadness, nervousness - nearly every emotion I could have crackling through my body right now is pretty much gut punching me on a daily basis. My room is a cluttered mess of books and clothes all needing to be taken somewhere for sale or donation. My social calender has to the potential to be fuller than it has, well, ever as my friends and foes from across the Seattle spectrum are checking in one last time before I hit the open road. My computer, my sweet sweet desktop computer that has treated me so well in the years past has been sold to my equally transitory brother. And most exciting of all Alex, sweet Alex, just purchased an avocado colored desk to fill the space of a sea-faring chest and to give me a bit of room to write and collect my thoughts. I could not be more excited.

I'm sure this will be the main source of all my blathering as the week(s) proceed, so please bear with me, I'm a little nervous and I tend to ramble when so.

As much nervous energy might be coursing through me right now, I was finally, FINALLY able to power through the last hour and ten minutes of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (70) last night. It's a strange film, way too long, and paced in a way you might call glacial and my biggest fault came with where Scorsese chose to focus his attentions. The title of the film, The Last Temptation of Christ (70) describes the final forty minutes of the movie and Jesus' choice not to stay on the cross, but instead to succumb to Satan's offer of living the life of a normal man. Thus, you see Jesus having a child, you see Jesus getting old and raising a family, and of course you see poor Jesus' sweet little world falling prey to Satanic forces. My question is why did Scorsese feel the need to spend two hours prior to this showcasing the life and times of Jesus? I wanted more of this final temptation business, what Jesus' life as a man was like, but instead I got treated to a humanistic portrayal of the Son of God ... that took me almost two weeks to finally get through. Nonetheless, I'm grateful that I made it through this film and even more grateful that I can mark another Scorsese film seen.

I'm still in the midst of a long haul here folk, but after Bergman's opera, it starts to look up a bit.

Tomorrow: The Magic Flute (71)

There's a force trying to stop me and CHOKE.

I was almost positive that I was going to power through the final forty five minutes of The Last Temptation of Christ (70) yesterday afternoon. Came home from my job at the record label, tense and ready to power through these final, synthy, boring, religious moments. Ready to just keep my eyes completely open and let Scorsese's vision of Jesus Christ wash over me and than completely out of my system. I was ready I tell you, ready as anything ...

But I left the disc at work. I can't even imagine what would've prompted me to take the disc out of the computer and put it anywhere, but something, someone, somehow dug in to my wee little brain and planted the idea. Thus when I went to view the movie at a later time, I was shocked to find that it was absent, a fond memory sitting atop my co-worker's desk.

So, no final discourse on The Last Temptation of Christ (70), sadly, that'll have to wait until Monday. Sigh.

Instead I spent a solid portion of my night slogging through the recent adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke, a movie I really thought I would like. It features Sam Rockwell, one of my favorite actors and I'd heard fairly positive reviews about it. I'm not a Palahniuk fan, but Fight Club stands as a favorite of mine, and hell, maybe this film would take the twisted words of the writer and do with them what's been done before. And to a certain degree actor-turned-director Clark Gregg does that. He manages to adequately bring what I know of the story to screen, sex-addict tries to cope with his issues through love (or something) while graphically screwing every woman he meets along the way. I just don't know if Palahniuk's story is that interesting or that complete. This film just sort of rambles along through a series of disconnected sub-plots that idly pick at the main character's flaws and his attempts to find solace from them. By the third ending of the film I was so tired and bored and distracted by text messaging that I just called it a night - a rare action for me when it comes to movies.

My other beef with the film was the sentimental cord that ran through it. I can't imagine that the original piece of writing had the sort of mushy shmuck piled up in it like the film does. As if Gregg wanted to soften the blow of the sheer graphic nature of the piece by adding in a sappy storyline about love and the search for family.

The best parts of the film are the ones just mired in filth. The flashes of sexuality that plague Sam Rockwell's Victor Manicini everywhere he goes. His chronically masturbating best friend. The entire scene where Victor gets a hand job from his co-worker in the barn of his place of employment. There's dark, disgusting humor here, I just wanted more of it.

There's something to recommend here, it's just sparse. Sam Rockwell is always a pleasure to watch, but this just isn't the greatest of films.

Monday: I swear to god, The Last Temptation of Christ (70) finished

Tucker Max, asshole and still, not quite finished with THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (70)

Does anyone else know who Tucker Max is? He's a blogger-turned-author who released a book last year entitled I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell.

Read a bit of his bile here.

And he's also a complete and total asshole. I don't know the man-child personally, but I picked up a copy of said book at the airport the other day (I'll be honest, the cover mentioned sex, I was intrigued) and was absolutely disgusted by what lay within. This is East Coast frat-boy shit taken to a new level, a series of missives detailing the truly vile sexual encounters this douchebag has had with a shocking number of women. I'm not one to poo-poo anyone for what they're writing, but the sheer presence, and popularity of Tucker Max and his craptastic brand of blogging.

It angers me first because this sort of hyper-chauvinistic bullshit in this day and age makes me nauseous. As if women in this world need another reason to doubt themselves or their looks or their brilliant minds, but seemingly the good folk at the Hudson Booksellers at Seattle-Tacoma airport believe that the stories of anal sex gone wrong should be up for grabs for any bored idiot perusing their aisles. I've bandied about my fair share of sex-encounters gone wrong in my life, but somehow Tucker Max, even in the short amount of reading I did, dips too deep in to degrading the women he's screwed. It's disrespectful and at least to my very-unsensitive viewpoint, disgusting. Are woman just up in arms about this shit? Does Taylor Max get loogies hocked at him everywhere he goes? I certainly fucking hope so.

On top of that, it pisses me of that this shit ends up in the bookseller of a major airport. The Christian Right spends their whole stupid year trying to get Harry Potter pulled off the shelves, but doesn't seem to mind that their fourteen year old children can read about the time Taylor Max shoved coins in to his sex partner (I totally made that up, but I'm sure there is something similar in this book). Come on! Are we serious here? This is the kind of shit that needs to be pulled from shelves. I'm not advocating censorship, but if the Christian Right is going to be assholes, as they surely will, and they're going to want to fight some ill-intented battled, can it at least be against someone who everyone hates? I wish.

Jesus Christ.

The Last Temptation of Christ (70) is probably going to kill me. I might need to take a full break from Criterion after this film. I can only sit in my crappy leather office chair for so long, drool hanging from my mouth, listening to Willem Dafoe spout off against the moneychangers, the Romans, the old religions, the devil, himself before my head starts to pound. I barely made it through twenty minutes last night before drifting in to a fitful slumber rife with flaming archangels and big-toothed Jesus.

Last night, Jesus was chit-chatting with Neurotic Judas (Harvey Keitel) about dying in Jerusalem and I just assumed that I was nearing the end. Checked the amount of time left on the old film and was shocked to see there was still an hour and a half remaining. The tufts of hair I pulled out in disbelief still litter the floor of my room.

I am going to somehow make it through this movie by the end of the week. I have to. It needs to be ejected from my system. But until then, expect more of this lurching criticism.

Friday: Still, The Last Temptation of Christ (70)

Virgin Air Pt. 2 and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (70)

More musings from my ride on the supposed "Sexiest Flight On Earth":

1. I wonder if more people have joined the Mile High Club as a passenger on Virgin Air? When you step on the plane it's not just lit, it's "blue-lit". The boring lights of airline pasts are no longer with us, this is like the coke-den at your favorite L.A. night spot. And to compound the effect even further, there's a low level of pleasant, mind-numbing electronica pumping through the speakers. You feel relaxed, everyone's face is washed clean by the lights, there's gentle, almost romantic music spinning ... and the place offers a fucking chat option. I'm surprised that instead of vomit bags they don't offer condoms and lube. Or that the bathrooms don't feature padded sinks and bars to prop your self up against. I want stats.

2. Also, across the board almost, I found the flight attendants (both male and female) to be far more attractive than before. Gone are the saggy faced holdovers from generations past, these are good looking ladies and lads, sporting hip outfits, cooly monotone voices and the swagger of youth. Sure, I mean with the blue-lit coke room effect fully blasting my visuals, these ladies and fellas could've been 45 year old ex-sex workers and I wouldn't have noticed for a minute.

3. Virgin Air keeps proferring this "state-of-the-art" entertainment center where you can watch television and movies and "chat" with your new "friends" on the airline and people have told me about in the past and I was at least somewhat excited. Turns out the thing's a sham. Not only did I have to embarass myself to the maybe-attractive flight attendant by asking her for a soda and inquiring about the "video game thing" but when I tried to watch sports on my departure flight all I get was fuzz and threatening messages from the Dish Network. If I wanted fuzz, threatening messages, and coddling about video games I could just stay at home in the warmth of 6818 Linden.

This small problem aside though, Virgin Air was if still entirely a cheap-o airline, a refreshingly different flight. I recommend it, especially if you're feeling frisky.

I thought after two beers and a long day in SF that I'd be able to power through the last hour and forty minutes of The Last Temptation of Christ (70) no problem on a sexily lit airplane hovering above the world. That was a poorly thought out plan. I got twenty-five, thirty more minutes in to this slightly snooze-worthy tale of Jesus Christ and his apostles and nodded off, but did muster a few thoughts about the film in the process:

- I don't really know the point of making this film. Sure, it's sort of a human telling of the Jesus myth, but I don't understand how I'm supposed to view it. I don't turn to Scorsese's films for religious enlightenment, but this film is chock full of biblical platitudes about Jesus love and God's warm hands and all that shit I gave up on long long ago. How exactly am I supposed to take this film though? I thought, because of the massive controversy that followed this film to the theatres that I'd be watching a movie that showed a different side of Jesus. For the moment, and I still have, sigh, an hour and twenty minutes of the film left, it's just a pretty telling of Jesus's life. Does this change? Does any body have an answers?

- Scorsese and Willem Dafoe sort of portray Jesus as a new-agey huckster in this film. There's a scene where Jesus is trying to convince the Nazarenes to be his people where I felt like I was just watching Trinity television. It made my stomach roil, hell I wanted to throw a rock at him. He's all big teeth and shiny eyes, trying to draw me in to the embrace of the lord. I almost had my cell phone out so I could call Willem Dafoe and donate some money to the Lord, but pulled back just in time.

- I don't believe I've ever seen a more entertaining portrayal of Jesus changing water to wine. All shit-eating grin and cockiness, Gabriel's synth beats pounding in the background - this film is ridiculous.

Alright, hopefully, lord help me, I can finish this film tonight.

Thursday: The Last Temptation of Christ (70)

Every two weeks.

...

I'm in SF. I watched Bottle Rocket (450) last night but due to the structure of this blog I'm not going to say anything about it until I'm fifty years old. I might have to work something out in terms of watching these all in order.

Nonetheless, the time spent on Bottle Rocket (450) ate up the time I didn't want to spend getting all religious with The Last Temptation of Christ (70), thus, all you get today is two brief paragraphs and a insincere "sorry."

So ... sorry.

Virgin Air pt. 1 and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (70)

I'm in San Francisco right now. Flew in last night on a Virgin Airlines flight and couldn't have been more surprised/baffled/confused at the sheer, well, sexiness of the flight. If you've grown up over the last twenty years, flying has become more and more an exercise in aggravation. Small seats, unfriendly and unattractive ticket ladies and stewardesses, bad to no food, and a stale sort 80s corporate aesthetic that does nothing to capture the former glamor of the skies. Virgin Airlines, seemingly realizing this, has taken bull by the horns and transformed their flights in to little airborne pockets of modernized youthfulness.

Alex had recommended, as she refers to them, "sexy flights" and in the interim between putting down a ten dollar double whiskey and boarding the plane, I sketched down a few observations about this bizarro world airline:

1. Sexiness is on display from moment one. The ticket counter is a maroon red and it's staffed by relatively youthful people. One guy has corn rows, another is smoothly dressed and coyly giggles as he helps me with my credit card transaction, the third smiles at me and it actually, gulp, feels genuine. Where does Virgin find these folk? I didn't know Sea-Tac had this kind of population.

2. They're playing music at the counter. Not even tinny, four-note renditions of classical favorites, or Muszaked renditions of your favorite Beatles songs - no this is actual, top-40 music blasting from unseen speakers in the walls. Even stranger? It's rap music. Big, bass heavy rap music, rife with curse words and rhymes. It drowns out the shrill protestations of a small, old, angry woman. I'm shocked - attractive people and better than average music? What exactly have I gotten myself in to?

3. Virgin Air doesn't divide their boarding line in to elitist sub-sections dedicated to
'First Class" and "Middle Class" and "Steerage Class", oh no. The good folk at Virgin Air have decided that each and every person, regardless of the amount of money you forked over for your flight actually get to walk across a cheaply thrown down red carpet. Makes me feel like a less attractive Brad Pitt. I'm already excited for the prospect of free Cristal, chunky lines of blow, and beautiful people showering me with compliments.

4. I wonder: when they announce that along with old people, first class and babies, that anyone who "needs a little more time getting on the plane" can I just saunter up and get on the plane claiming that I'm slow? Do I need a disability or a wheel chair or can I just offer that my way of doing things moves at a more retarded tempo and that I might slow up the rest of the plane? I'm trying it ... one of these times.

Alright, I'm going to leave you hanging on the edge of your seat, 'cause this metal bird gets even sexier once I board. Stay tune, "Virgin Air pt. 2" next time.

First off, The Last Temptation of Christ (70) is not the best movie to be watching in small, steel cylinder 30,000 feet off the ground, surrounded by other human beings. There's a lot of nudity and blood shed and screeching noises that found me watching most of the film with my hands wrapped around the screen.

I've seen this film before and it was difficult for me to slog through it the first time, so I thought that forcing it in front of me for two hours on a plane and I might be able to enjoy it. And, to some degree, I have been. It's a passion piece by Martin Scorsese, his look at the life and times of Jesus Christ not as a savior but as a man. Scorsese wanted to make this film for years and years and years but couldn't find a studio edgy or trusting enough for him to make it. In the mean time he put together what's considered to be his worst film (After Hours) and one of my favorites of his, The Color of Money. And like all passion pieces it has some truly strange choices. The music for this epic sword and sandal piece is created by none other than 80s electronica god ... Peter Gabriel. It's a strange sound, stark landscapes matched by slappy funk bass and synth. Can't say it would've been my choice for music but somehow it works.

This is a decidedly arch, decidedly 80s take on the Jesus story and if you're not feeling dour 1980s religious tales I'd turn away from this. I'm not quite done with flick yet and I think it needs to be seen as a whole, so I'll get out my thoughts on it on Monday.

Have a good weekend.

Monday: The Last Temptation of Christ (70)