I recently asked some people in my circle if they’d contribute a little something in the spirit of a unifying idea—SUMMER—and I did this for a couple of reasons. Those of us in the northern hemisphere are living with the heat, to greater and lesser degrees, and reflections on the season are easy at hand. Additionally, I was curious to do something collaborative and curatorial, but which would not feel like work for the contributors. We’re all tired, over-extended, taxed for attention. This little potluck is meant in the spirit of brevity and ease; some contributions are serious in tone, and others, less so. A lot of these are film-related, but not all of them. I’ve credited each contributor below their section, and I thank them for their submitted material. Enjoy!
Summers used to be a single moment in time stretched out for months. They would pulsate in place like the static of a paused tape. Now it’s the fastest season. Every summer goes by faster and faster. Is it my current circumstances or does this come with aging? I catch myself longing for the lazy summers of my youth. When dusk lingered. Too hot to sleep, I stayed up watching languidly paced movies like Ho Chi-mo’s father in Fallen Angels. Chain smoking at night. I don’t have much time for movies these days. I recall them like memories and grow suspicious of the creeping nostalgia. I’m trying to slow it down. On walks. In my backyard watching the birds at the feeder. Appreciating the fleeting summer visitors: Starlings, Goldfinch, a couple Bluejays. They move too swiftly to snap a picture. Polaroid is not the medium for birds. Great for trees, though. I take a deep breath and try to feel my place in the ceaseless transformation of everything. But I still wish to pause it. Just a little.
(Aster Gilbert)
(Uncas Blythe)
(Nirav Soni)
“Zodiac Road Trip” (2024)
Zodiac (2007) is a summer movie for me. Director David Fincher’s choice to open his film with the horrific murder of Darlene Ferrin and shooting of Michael Mageau on the Fourth of July in 1969 created an indelible association between firecrackers, pistol pops, and images of cars ominously cruising on hot summer nights that successfully fused a correlate between this haunting, meticulously made film and the July 4th holiday in my mind.
This artistic meditation on Zodiac in association with the theme of “summer” is a PechaKucha video essay; an exercise that sets “rules” for composing a one minute video essay comprised of approximately ten six-second clips from a single film (joined by direct cuts) and paired with a one minute continuous audio clip from that same film. I learned this technique from Catherine Grant in a video essay workshop focused on the theme of exploring creativity within particular “rule-based games.” Fincher, a great lover of cinematic “rules” as well as games, serves as a prime subject for such an artistic experiment, particularly in connection to Zodiac, a film in which Fincher’s directorial preoccupation with obsession, repetition, and fastidious attention to detail is so amply and deliberately on display.
In addition to the rules of the PechaKucha practice itself, I added an additional rule around my audio and image selection that required my choices to reflect some association with “summer.” An initial focus on light-filled shots soon revealed the repeated presence of cars (people driving them, riding in them, Fincher’s camera positioned in them and alongside them) that could serve as a visual motif of its own. Thus, “Zodiac Road Trip” began to take form. Road trips share an association with Americana and summer leisure in the United States, and Zodiac – with its detailing of crimes and a sprawling investigation spread over northern and southern California – is in some ways just as much a “road movie” as it is a serial killer thriller or a police procedural. The “Zodiac Road Trip” awaits you. Are you coming, or not?
(Ashley R. Smith)
(Benjamin Kole Aspray)
On the surface, and to those thus inclined, the Zalman King produced Lake Consequence, with its story of a Los Angeles housewife swept up in a brief getaway with a local landscaper, may seem like just another of his patented soft core narratives and therefore be easy to dismiss. Leaving aside for now the inappropriateness of such a dismissal of master stylist King, this film has some features which distinguish it. For one, and perhaps not insignificantly, it is actually directed by his collaborator Rafael Eisenman. This is a far more distilled variation on the standard King form which is generally much more elaborate and that is perhaps what makes possible the remarkable blend of romantic melodrama and mythic phantasia. Because from its first frames this is pitched on a heightened, almost even alarmingly iconographic, plane of representation. Under such a light the familiar trappings of soft core melodrama transform into an altogether different mode of expression. What helps the film accomplish this is the fully aligned and utterly committed contributions of all participants, from the actors to George S. Clinton, composer of the lush score, and cinematographer Harris Savides, already extraordinary in his first feature film effort. This requires an extreme from everyone involved and they take it there collectively. When the door first opens on the titular lake (a mythic figuration with its significance also its literal name) it ironically but appropriately recalls a similar such opening upon the Land of Oz. All is shifted and revealed, becomes radically new or renewed. The lake though is barely glimpsed, only the doorway to the film's climactic conceptualization of its premise at a nearby, presumably small mountain town with an incongruously large Asian population. This provides an explicit exoticism in which everyone else becomes background extras for the erotic exploits of the three non-Asian lead characters. Indeed, all else falls away in almost audacious reverence to the perversely hieratic display of flesh and sexuality at a Chinese bathhouse. All of this is sure to be risible for many but there is implicitly here a recognition of the necessity of allowing for that and the film therefore does not just risk that reaction but indulges in what may provoke it. In the midst of this revealing details present themselves: Joan Severance's troubled housewife Irene may be indulging a fantasy of erotic escape but May Karasun’s libertine Grace, at the other end of the spectrum of symbolic representation, has her own kind of fantasy, briefly wearing Irene's wedding ring, albeit not on her ring finger. This points to the film’s subtext of alternate fantasy lives indicative of the different lifestyles they are sourced in and the perhaps inevitable gulf between them. This may be its most daring provocation. While the final sequence suggests the melancholy of a return to comparative normalcy, with a less intensively iconographic and slightly more naturalistic style (e.g. the Billy Zane character goes from the strong silent type to suddenly loquacious), the style really does not change that dramatically; there is a consistency to it and that continuity also suggests that the fantasy and the reality are or at least can be of a piece if the way toward that reconciliation can be found; Irene's final ambivalent expression leaves that possibility open and unresolved. It should be noted that while this film with its patina of escapist fantasy is redolent of a slightly more modulated summertime vacation mindset it is actually not set in the summer but ironically at the beginning of the year, as per its fetishistically fixated upon Chinese New Year celebration set piece; on one hand that speaks to the eternal summer of its California location but, just as much, that it takes the fantasy state seriously, representing it as both renewal and resolution.
(Nathaniel Drake Carlson)
Lavender Lime Margarita
Makes 2 cocktails:
3oz Patron Silver (or other top shelf blanco) tequila
2oz Fresh squeezed lime juice
1.5oz lavender simple syrup*
0.5oz Agave syrup
Tajin or Kosher Salt (garnish)
*Lavender Simple Syrup
1 C water
3 TBS fresh/dried lavender flowers
2 cups sugar
Begin by making the lavender simple syrup:
Bring the water and lavender to a boil in a saucepan
Reduce the heat and stir in the sugar until fully dissolved. Simmer for about 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool and steep for at least 1 hour or longer, until the flavor is to your liking.
Strain out the lavender & set aside the specified amount for margaritas (may modify for serving size
Pour the remaining syrup into a container to keep in the refrigerator and store
Now for the margaritas!!
Squeeze limes to extract juice and set aside
Prep your glasses (I prefer tumblers/scotch glasses):
Put 1TBS of Tajin or salt or sugar or a combo mix in a thin layer on a small plate.
When you’ve extracted your juice, use a slice of leftover, pulpy lime rind and run it along the rim of the glass.
Turn the glass upside down onto your garnish plate and evenly coat the edge.
Turn glass upright and fill w/ lime wedge and/or ice of your desired consistency (cubed, crushed, etc). Omit if you prefer your margarita straight up
Now for the grand finale!!
In a cocktail shaker, combine tequila, lime juice, lavender simple syrup, and Agave. THEN, add ice to fill to top of shaker. Shake it VERY well, for about a minute (do not shortchange as to ensure complete magical incorporation of ingredients!!)
Pour into your glass and imbibe completely.
(Iwalani Crush)
Gravity Undoes You (2024)
(Yusef Sayed)