Find stickers or mementos about birthdays to decorate.
In a surprise, Newmarket Films ("Memento") paid about $1 million for "Hesher," described as the story of "a 20-something, long-haired, tattooed metal-head".
I'm not thinking of backwards narratives such as Memento, nor about Roman Polanski's vicious circles or Moebius-strip stories such as Dead of Night or La Jetée.
It took more than 20 stitches to close the incision, and the thick scar — a racing stripe of a memento — measures about a foot.
Alas, little of that passion informs the filmmaking in this documentary dirge, a memento mori about "the other Sept. 11" that's drenched in revolutionary tears but lacking much in the way of historical and political insight.
The still-life tradition has always had an element of memento mori about it, an often understated reminder of our ever-present mortality conveyed through the objects that outlive us, and the fact that nobody can take any material possessions with them when they pass on.
To go back to the remark I made apropos Chekhov's little memento mori about aristocrats and market women: we see that the ideas, the inspiration, that will drive a novel, however succinctly expressed, have to be capable of endless augmentation and elaboration.
During a road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles, his brother Jonathan pitched the idea for "Memento Mori", about a man with anterograde amnesia who uses notes and tattoos to hunt for his wife's murderer.
He seemed a little nervous about Memento's reception, and most relaxed when talking about the technicalities of its backwards-running time scheme.
The canniest thing about "Memento" isn't its narration-in-reverse technique, but its re-evocation of the guilt-soaked psychological ambience of postwar noir.
To learn more about Memento Mori, click here. .
