There are black and white checked tables wherever you go...

I went with my friend C. to see "Coffee and Cigarettes" tonight. It snapped me partway out of my funk. It is black and white, a series of short scenes, each with different actors, playing themselves or at least everyday people having coffee and cigarettes and just talking. The scenes get longer as the movie progresses, they start circling back to ideas, themes, and scraps of dialogue from earlier vignettes, and the movie's themes build. A brilliant layered approach... the movie is, I think, talking about people's need to fit in, the way we hide ourselves to be cool and the way we make ourselves vulnerable in order to be loved. We can all be socially awkward, at times, and we can all be the ones making someone else feel uncomfortable. And there's some stuff about Nikola Tesla, of the coil, first brought up in a scene with Jack & Meg White of the White Stripes (many of the actors are actually more musicians; Tom Waits & Iggy Pop do a funny yet excruciating scene together). Tesla apparently "perceived the Earth as a conductor of acoustical resonance" - an idea to which the film returns. Anyway... it's a great movie. I would go back and see it again.