Yuku free message boards

[thanks, g.!]

... contd. ...

Gooseman said the film was made in the mid 90s and was a fantasy or sci-fi film, but he couldn't remember the title. Something about aliens. The house, which we had rented furnished, happened to have a copy of Halliwell's. We searched in vain for any Japanese film starring Natalie. I suspected the film was a fiction devised by gooseman. I questioned whether he had in mind the picture of Natalie in a kimono promoting Leon in Japan or the many ads she had done for Japanese TV.



The following day, gooseman called me from Hyderabad. He said he had in front of him a 1997 edition of Halliwell's, which listed a film from 1995 starring Natalie Portman called Aiko Tanaka: Junior High School Alien Hunter. I told him in all truthfulness that I should like to see the book. He brought it a few days later.

... [to be contd.]

Daanish, I should explain. I was trying to write a parody of a story I love of J. L. Borges', called Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.

As the Wikipedia article says,

"Tlön, Uqbar..." has the structure of a detective fiction set in a world going mad. Although the story is quite short, it makes allusions to many leading intellectual figures both in Argentina and in the world at large, and takes up a number of themes more typical of a novel of ideas. Most of the ideas engaged are in the areas of language, epistemology, and literary criticism.

It's worth reading if you want to tie your brain in knots and question what's real and what's fantasy (and which is preferable!):
Jorge Luis Borges: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940) (Spanish and English). My feelings toward Borges are similar to my feelings toward Nabokov: part of me wants to shout "you pretentious, self-indulgent wanker!" but it's overcome by another part of me that is staring in openmouthed admiration. If I had to bet I'd say Nat could be a Borges fan. But then maybe she's been turned off all things Latin American after being jilted by that Mexican guy.

I also once had a dream that Natalie starred in a Japanese movie wearing that kimono in that picture. So I've been wanting to tie the two together into a story for a couple of years now. Your post gave me the chance to be self-indulgent and try. But I'm going to have to leave off writing it because of time pressure. The story would have continued with me finding a DVD of Natalie in a (different) Japanese film and experiencing...

an astonished and airy feeling of vertigo which I shall not describe... On one of the nights of Islam called the Night of Nights, the secret doors of heaven open wide and the water in the jars becomes sweeter; if those doors opened, I would not feel what I felt that afternoon.

And there would have been the gradual revelation of a whole world of Japanese Natalie films and film scholarship -- but would they be real or only the product of a conspiracy of a secret society of Natalie fans, begun sometime in the mid 90s?

Anyhoo...

I've been trying to find my fave NP pic of recent times. It would probably be one from the red carpet at the Berlin V for V premiere -- for sheer sexiness. The dress looks a bit silly ... but those legs!



Happy and Safe New Year to you and anyone else reading this.