My favorite Brooklyn bookstore, BookCourt, is doing a buy two, get one free promo with the New York Review of Books. I've seen this happen at other bookstores in the past, and it's really quite evil: NYRB Classics are beeeaauuutiful and it's hard to pass up such an opportunity, even if you're broke.

I picked up copies of The New York Stories of Edith Wharton, The Pure and the Impure by Collette, and Turgenev's Virgin Soil.

NYRB Classics has a neat blog, too, called A Different Stripe, which is usually updated every couple of days.

Sigalit Landau

Also worth checking out at MoMA: video and sculptural installation by Sigalit Landau, through July 28.

Take Your Time at MoMA

I finally made it to the extension of the Eliasson show at the Modern, which ends on Monday, the 30th. If you live in the city and haven't checked out the work at either MoMA, or PS1 in Queens, I highly urge you to do so, if at all possible.

The most interesting, and also the most fun, room for me was the piece called "I Only See Things When They Move." It was a bit of a circus: you don't have to be intellectually engaged to appreciate the bright, moving multi-colored lights and the spectacle of human shadows on the walls. Everybody loved it. I could have stayed in there taking photographs all day. What I particularly enjoyed was the way people would square up to their own shadows, or find themselves in a group of ever-moving amorphous figures and shout, "That's me!" It's a different kind of self-appraisal, or reckoning. Another highlight was "Your strange certainty still kept," a dark room with strobe lights delicately illuminating a fall of tiny water drops.

The Face of Another

I saw this movie on Monday, but I've been sick and therefore lazy all week. The Face of Another was directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara, from a screenplay adapted from the novel by Kobo Abe.

I enjoyed this movie for all sorts of reasons: namely, it's got me thinking a lot about identity. Whether or not we're willing to admit that looks matter, this movie shows through various means that they do. An exploration of the way our looks alter and manifest our self-perception, as well as the way others perceive us. The doors that are opened by beauty and the barriers created by perceived differences and scars.

Nakadai's adhesive beard is pretty awesome, too.

I'm trying not to go broke during this festival, so I missed Sword of Doom, which I love but have already seen, and was lucky enough to catch another favorite, Kill!, on the IFC channel a couple of nights ago. Next up at Film Forum, on Tuesday July first: Age of Assassins.

More photos from the first night of the Nakadai festival

Tatsuya Nakadai at Film Forum

I saw Harakiri for the first time, just about three years ago during Film Forum's Summer Samurai festival. 2005 was the year I became obsessed with the classic Japanese samurai flicks from the 50's and 60's, so the timing of this festival was auspicious, to say the least. I went to a majority of the films being screened, save the ones I'd already seen, like Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and Seven Samurai; it was a great opportunity to see films that were more obscure than the Kurosawa stand-bys and a nice education for me, with my burgeoning obsession. I remember a lovely matinee of Throne of Blood, in a mostly empty theatre, contentedly eating a yummy homemade sandwich and a seventy-five cent soda from the bodega, watching Toshiro Mifune as he was blown through with a million arrows. The headlining film, Samurai Rebellion, directed by Masaki Kobayashi, was also great; so were Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, and Okamoto's Sword of Doom, and Kill!. The highlight, though, was Kobayashi's Seppuku (Harakiri). I barely noticed the time as the story unfolded over two plus hours; I remember moments when my fingers clenched the armrests of my chair and looking around to see my rapt, open-mouth expression mirrored on faces throughout the audience. At the end of the movie, no one moved for a palpable length of time; we all just sort of sat there, dumbfounded, before someone broke the silence and declared, "That was the best movie EVER." We all laughed and started to move around, still floored by the experience.

Before that show, I was a big fan of Mifune's, and I still am. He's a giant of an actor, funny, moving, engrossing, handsome, an undeniably commanding screen presence with great charm and skill. But once I'd seen Tatsuya Nakadai in Harakiri, it was all over: my side was firmly chosen in the eternal debate over which legendary actor is the more distinguished of the two: Nakadai is the man. He's simply the actor I'd choose to watch perform over any actor, in any movie, Japanese or not. From his huge, expressive eyes, to his ability to convey a multitude of meanings within a tiny "Oho!", or a sardonic glare, to his resonating laugh, and his very choices for roles, he's just incredibly interesting and enlightening to watch. His character in Harakiri is alternately heartbreaking, bristling with a carefully contained anger and bitter remorse, powerfully subdued as he commands one of the most tense and masterfully shot sword fight scenes ever, near the end of the film. His peace-loving ronin in Kill! is adorable and thoughtfully rendered, while his psychopathic Ryonusuke in Sword of Doom, really quite loathsome, also manages to spark strains of curious tenderness, or sympathy. Rather than simply hating him, we ponder the effects of a martial upbringing on a young man's soul; we consider that he is a product of violence: an effect, rather than merely a cause; and these are, of course, thoughts we can apply to our own society as well.

So tonight, I saw my very favorite movie Harakiri for the third time in the theatre, as part of Film Forum's seven-week Nakadai festival (!), and was afterward lucky enough to be in the audience for abrief Q&A with Nakadai himself. Still spry and alert at 75, and looking no older than 50, really, he was a gracious interview subject, attentive to all the questions he was asked. Even when the questions were silly, his answers were witty and interesting, as they related to Harakiri and his very long career. I've never really been one to get star struck, and I wouldn't say that I was starstruck tonight, but I was quite awed, and felt really lucky, just to have had been there to see him speak. I don't think acting, per se, is an occupation that thrills me, or overly interests me; actors in this city are a dime a dozen. But there's something about someone who's just really effing fantastic at what he or she does, and intelligent about it, innovative, and Nakadai's performances betray a personal sensibility that I can relate to. His characters are subversive and educative, as heros and as villains. Also, it has to be said, the man is still devastatingly handsome, even at 75. Holy moly.

I'll be going to quite a few of the films in the upcoming festival, and shall indeed be updating as I go along. Here's some local press from the past few weeks, about the festival.

• The Actor with Stardom in His Eyes - from the New York Times
• Not with a Sword, With a Stare - from The New York Press
• from the New York Sun

Rituals

I have been thinking a lot about rituals lately, and why they become important to us: to have rituals of writing or meditation means that you have attached value to these activities, that you are getting the work done, plowing the way toward something (though not an end--sometimes it seems enough to know you are on the way, with no endpoint, or termination). My habits have been very erratic in New York and I am trying, now that it's summer and I have more time, to be more deliberate and thoughtful in my activities. To wake up in the morning and go through my six chi kung postures; to meditate; to eat my breakfast slowly and thoughtfully, not in front of the computer or the television.

I like this website, The Daily Tao, because it has a feature that randomly generates one of the chapters from Lao Tzu's book. Whenever I flip through the pages of the physical book, I often end up in the same places I've already been and it's nice to be presented with something new. Usually, I refer to Ursula K. Le Guin's rendition of the Tao Te Ching, because I prefer her lyricism and accompanying insights, but today I liked Jane English's translation of Chapter 16, which seemed an auspicious selection, despite its random generation. Although Le Guin's treatment is always more beautifully written and spare, I appreciate English's use of words like "stillness" and "constancy" here, which Le Guin almost skims over by using the generic "peace" and a vague allusion to "what endures." What endures could be anything, a tree, a stone; the notion of constancy can also refer to a tree or a stone, but it may also be more personal, referring to the self, to self-responsibility, to actions, to being deliberate, following the tao and also discovering it within yourself.

16.

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest at peace.
The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature.
The way of nature is unchanging.
Knowing constancy is insight.
Not knowing constancy leads to disaster.
Knowing constancy, the mind is open.
With an open mind, you will be openhearted.
Being openhearted, you will act royally.
Being royal, you will attain the divine.
Being divine, you will be at one with the Tao.
Being at one with the Tao is eternal.
And though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away.