Tonights movie has been "Blow Up" by Antonioni. Quite how this has become a touchstone for the Schwinging Schtixies I have no clue. It's a barren, brutally stage-managed, parade of manipulation and blank-eyed ciphers. Completely brilliant of course, but nothing to do with any kind of retro Carnaby porno. Just occasionally a phrase will echo through the hall-of-mirrors: "Nothing like a little disaster for sorting things out". As always, I'm a sucker for films that won't let ontology lie. The scenes in the park ("Fantastic! They're fantastic! In a park!", as if he is describing some barely-believable skin-flick confection) are almost choreographed, a dreadful danse macabre into scenes that only become... more real. It's the most cynical and unforgiving movie I've seen in ages. Was this London there at the time? Or is this film an aggregation of many people's dreams of London, reality seeming ever as far away, the more snaps are taken, the more fantasies are added. Awful. Awe-ful.
