Taos, NM
We decided to make today a rest day in Taos, New Mexico, a small artist community just outside of Santa Fe. It was a time to recharge our batteries - both figuratively and literally - before some seriously long driving days. As a result, there's not too much to report from Taos.
We are staying in a cute little bed & breakfast called the American Artist's Gallery House, in their Gallery Pinon casita. The B&B is home to a peacock and there are some beautiful views of the surrounding mountains. Today we treated our car to a wash, following a week in the desert, and we bummed around the Taos Plaza during the day.
In the evening we went to see The Black Dahlia, a true crime thriller about a famous unsolved murder case in Los Angeles in the 1940s. It's a movie that most people will hate, but I found much to admire in it. It's definitely a movie that lends credence to the auteur theory: watching it in the context of director Brian de Palma's body of work, I could see a lot of his recurring preoccupations being fused in complex ways with the Black Dahlia source material. A lot of people were probably expecting a more straight up adaptation of James Ellroy's novel (i.e. something like L.A. Confidential), but what we get is a de Palma movie, through-and-through, filled with psycho-sexual melodrama and dark black comedy. Given that the real-life Black Dahlia case was never solved, both Ellroy's novel and de Palma's film are purely speculative works of fiction. What made the movie work for me was that it was very self-critical about how Hollywood exploits its subjects: e.g. in an homage to Peeping Tom, de Palma's own voice can be heard during the Elizabeth Short screentests, as a nod to his own sadism and voyeurism in the exploitation of the Black Dahlia case, as well as the industry's exploitation of people (especially young actresses) as a whole. I think Lisa found the movie a little too creepy, but that didn't last long: when we returned to our car, we discovered that Segui had climbed over a mound of luggage to devour an entire bag of hard candies that had been tucked away at the front of the car. He had a frantic sugar high and he must have drank a gallon of water when we got back to our casita!
We're still working on our itinerary for the next few days. We know we need to get to Austin, Texas, but still haven't decided on which route to take. For all you cartography buffs out there, I've added another link to the sidebar: click on the thumbnail image to see a visual representation of our route so far. This will be updated as we progress through our trip.
We are staying in a cute little bed & breakfast called the American Artist's Gallery House, in their Gallery Pinon casita. The B&B is home to a peacock and there are some beautiful views of the surrounding mountains. Today we treated our car to a wash, following a week in the desert, and we bummed around the Taos Plaza during the day.
In the evening we went to see The Black Dahlia, a true crime thriller about a famous unsolved murder case in Los Angeles in the 1940s. It's a movie that most people will hate, but I found much to admire in it. It's definitely a movie that lends credence to the auteur theory: watching it in the context of director Brian de Palma's body of work, I could see a lot of his recurring preoccupations being fused in complex ways with the Black Dahlia source material. A lot of people were probably expecting a more straight up adaptation of James Ellroy's novel (i.e. something like L.A. Confidential), but what we get is a de Palma movie, through-and-through, filled with psycho-sexual melodrama and dark black comedy. Given that the real-life Black Dahlia case was never solved, both Ellroy's novel and de Palma's film are purely speculative works of fiction. What made the movie work for me was that it was very self-critical about how Hollywood exploits its subjects: e.g. in an homage to Peeping Tom, de Palma's own voice can be heard during the Elizabeth Short screentests, as a nod to his own sadism and voyeurism in the exploitation of the Black Dahlia case, as well as the industry's exploitation of people (especially young actresses) as a whole. I think Lisa found the movie a little too creepy, but that didn't last long: when we returned to our car, we discovered that Segui had climbed over a mound of luggage to devour an entire bag of hard candies that had been tucked away at the front of the car. He had a frantic sugar high and he must have drank a gallon of water when we got back to our casita!
We're still working on our itinerary for the next few days. We know we need to get to Austin, Texas, but still haven't decided on which route to take. For all you cartography buffs out there, I've added another link to the sidebar: click on the thumbnail image to see a visual representation of our route so far. This will be updated as we progress through our trip.