Day: February 1, 2021

Monthly Mixtape – January 2021

~ Liam ~ Leave a comment

New year? New music!  Here are seven new songs that are music to my ears.

Vagabon – “Reason to Believe” (feat. Courtney Barnett) 

Dominique Fils-Aimé :: “While We Wait”

Frances Forever :: “Space Girl”

I Self Devine :: “The Disruptor Suite”

alyona alyona – “Дикі танці” (Wild Dances)

Pom Poko :: “Like A Lady”

Femi Kuti :: “Pà Pá Pà”

Previous Mixtapes:

Classic Movie Review: Pickpocket (1959)

~ Liam ~ Leave a comment

Title: Pickpocket
Release Date: 16 December 1959
Director: Robert Bresson
Production Company: Compagnie Cinématographique de France
Summary/Review:

In Paris, a young man named Michel (nonprofessional actor Martin LaSalle) decides to take up thievery.  He is not in desperate need for money, but he has a theory that certain people are more elite than others and can benefit society by robbing the lesser people. Having the protagonist be a sociopath makes him extremely unsympathetic, and made the movie hard to watch for me (and not surprisingly it also inspired Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver).

The Chief Inspector of the police (Jean Pélégri) has his eye on Michel from the start and they have some cagey conversations, but it’s not exactly a thriller or interpersonal drama like Les Miserables. Michel also forms a relationship with the young woman who lives next to his mother, Jeanne (Marika Green), although I don’t know what’s in it for her since he literally pays no attention to her until the end of the film.

Pickpocket is expertly filmed, and the best parts of the movie are the scenes when Michel and his accomplices balletically remove wallets from their marks at train stations and aboard trains. But the rest of the movie doesn’t do much for me.

Rating: ***