I had sometime to kill, before watching the late show of the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men at the Regal Fox Tower Stadium 10 theater in Portland last night. So I walked over to Powell’s on Burnside, at 9:15 at night. What a joy. A few million books laid out in a cavernous multi-roomed warehouse, filled with hundreds of bibliophiles thumbing through the wares. I checked out the film section–as I had a couple years ago during my first visit to PDX, when I picked up Christine Vachon’s Shooting To Kill here.
What’s cool about Powell’s: new and used books (including rare out-of-print books) are stacked up together by subject. The selection is immense, but carefully chosen. Little schlock. All the important titles are there. It’s as if you’re in one of the best university libraries, but everything is for sale. And the stacks are “open” to everyone, for research and browsing. I love Amazon, but there’s something very 3-D about being able to wander through a giant room with five rows of books on film–15 meters long by 4 meters tall. Two meters of shelf space (single copies each) on Hitchkock, 1.5 meters on Godard: just like a tag cloud, you instantly understand the relative “importance” of topics. And, unlike Amazon, you’re brushing shoulders with other human beings who share your passion. Who knows what indie films the older African American guy seated reading and tapping his foot, or the young woman with pierced nose and camouflage jacket might make? Or dream of making?
Here’s a good quote on Powell’s from Michael Powell, the son of the founder:
“With the wooden shelves, the cement floors, the tall aisles, we have a sense of space. People don’t feel that the only function of the place is to sell them something. A place where the lights are a little too dim, a place that’s a little dusty, doesn’t exude the feeling of buy and get out.”
The Coen Brother’s latest was a great thriller–excellent genre piece. Beautiful cinematography and editing. I was most struck by: the pauses and the pacing. Less is more. Your intestines tighten into a ball collectively with the rest of the audience–but all we’re watching is a curtain rustling in the wind…
It’s pretty depressing and nihilistic. A movie for our times…
[Update: Coen Brother's edit their own movies, in Final Cut. Here's a good article on the editing of NCFOM in FC6.]
