The Quantum Metropolis is Everything You Imagine it To Be: Stalking Tigers, Mythic Record Collections & Metaphysical Ceramics in Lethem's Chronic City

Finished the re-read of the newest by Jonathan Lethem! Who's work spans just about everything in the McSweeney's genre-lexicon of fiction forms, from "Motherless Booklyn" (Modern Noir), "Fortress of Solitude" (Hip Hop/Superhero Pulp), "Amnesia Moon" (Surrealist Road Story), to "Girl in Landscape" (Sc-Fi/Not Sci-Fi) and has again and again been labeled a 'genre bender' of a assimilationist due to his aggressively inventive blending of literary, pulp and popular (read; pop-culture) writing. His newest is an exploration of an alternate reality not unlike that of Michael Chabon's "Yiddish Policeman's Union" in which it's not quite america as we know it, it's not quite Manhattan, New York City as we know it, it's not quite a city that has 'Tigers' running loose, underground tunnel-drilling robots as we know how they work, alternate histories of cinema as we know them, the Criterion Collection offices (again, as we know it - I wish!), the possible lapses into ellipsis depicted may, just may, be visions unto/into another world... possibly our own? Or is "Chronic City" simply the expression of the Quantum Metropolis? From Doubleday: "Chase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan’s social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a beloved sitcom called Martyr & Pesty, Chase is adrift, in a vague routine punctuated by Upper East Side dinner parties. Into Chase’s cloistered city enters Perkus Tooth, a wall-eyed free-range pop critic whose soaring conspiratorial riffs are fueled by high-grade marijuana, mammoth cheeseburgers, and a desperate ache for meaning. Perkus’ countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and who is complicit take on a life-shattering urgency. Along with Oona Laszlo, a self-loathing ghostwriter, and Richard Abneg, a hero of the Tompkins Square Park riot now working as a fixer for the billionaire mayor"

Seattle International Film Festival : May 20 - June 13

First off to address grievance/concern with the curatorial direction SIFF seems
to be taking as a trend since 2009; this year, rather than the usual post expressing
my ebullient enthusiasm in an exclamatory tone, this post is to begin with criticism.
As a paragon of International World Cinema in the United States, even on occasion
eclipsing San Francisco, Chicago and New York in scale, depth and dictionary-definition
diversity, the Seattle International Film Festival has established itself over the
course of the past decade+ (I can really speak for previous decades, having only
seen them in print and not attended in-person) as a focal-point of visionary cinema
curatorialship. Admittedly, last year was a bit thin, but even then I found some 22
films of gravitas or curiosity worthy of attending, by both directors of note and
new developing artists. Overall not a bad year, but not on par with the stellar run
we'd seen spanning 2004-2008. Figuring it was a one-off lapse and the recession and
funding issues with SIFF having opened their new theatre and home to their film
archive and offices, I assumed it was a product of the times and singular qualitative
dip on their part. Even then, not a significant one, as I saw much, much great cinema
that year in the festival (also see the posts here from SIFF '07 or '08 for reference).

This year, immediately when the schedule was posted on Thursday May 6, there was
a visible void of progressive, inventive, notable, names, titles and works in the New
Global Cinema category (customarily SIFF's largest and richest) that one would expect
(and have become accustomed to) in seeing self-evidently there when doing that quickly
browsed shortlist. Off the top of my head, doing a run-down of the films I've known
have been out there in international fests awaiting arrival in the states and looking
to SIFF to hopefully bring them to our city; New Tsai Ming-Liang? No. New Gaspar Noe?
No. New Brillante Mendoza? No. New Nicolas Winding Refn? No. Pen-Ek Ratanaruang?
No. New Lou Ye? No. New Alain Resnais? No. New Jia Zhang-Ke docu? No. New
Apichatpong Weerasethakul shorts? No. New Lav Diaz? No. Things like the second
Neon Genesis Evangelion film since they played the first one last year or the new
Mamoru Oshii? No and No. You get the idea here. My usual 15-25 films annually in SIFF
reduced to this in 2010. Grateful as I am to have an ongoing annual International Film
Festival in my town, as far as the sum totality of everything I'm going to/am curious
to see, this is a sorry sight:

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Saturday, May 22
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7:00 PM - Luca Guadagnino "I Am Love"
Egyptian Theatre
IAML2210A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?fid=166&id=7334

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Sunday, May 23
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11:00 AM - Anocha Suwichakornpong "Mundane History"
Pacific Place Cinema
MUND2310M

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?fid=166&id=7355

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Monday, May 24
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9:30 PM - Hirokazu Kore-eda "Air Doll"
Neptune Theatre
Ticket Code: AIRD2410A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?fid=166&id=7393

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Tuesday, May 25
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6:30 PM - Lu Chuan "City of Life and Death"
Neptune Theatre
Ticket Code: CITY2510A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?fid=166&id=7399

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Tuesday, May 25
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9:30 PM - Hong Sang-Soo "Like You Know it All"
Pacific Place Cinema
LIKE2510A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?fid=166&id=7413

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Wednesday, May 26
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7:00 PM - Peter Strickland "Katalin Varga"
Uptown Cinemas
KATA2610A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?fid=166&id=7424

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Wednesday, May 26
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9:30 PM - "Alternate Waves" / Guy Maddin "Night Mayor"
SIFF Cinema
ALTE2610A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?fid=Guy Maddin166&id=7432

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Friday, May 28
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12:00 AM - Noboru Iguchi "RoboGeisha"
Egyptian Theatre
ROBO2810A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?fid=166&id=7454

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Sunday, May 30
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9:30 PM - Bruno Forzani & Hélène Cattet "Amer"
Egyptian Theatre
AMER3010A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?fid=166&id=7567

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Wednesday, June 02
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9:15 PM - Jessica Oreck "Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo"
Harvard Exit
BEET0210A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?fid=166&id=7709

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Saturday, June 12
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6:00 PM - Lixin Fan "Last Train Home"
Pacific Place Cinema
LAST1210A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?fid=166&id=7652

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Saturday, June 12
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9:00 PM - Johnny To "Vengeance"
Harvard Exit
VENG1216A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?&FID=166&id=43961