Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Ashley Anderson. Cf. Hokusai. I knew I wanted this print the second I saw a sample at Artlantis a couple months ago. Got a big print. Finally got it framed. My walls are killing it right now.
Category: uncategorized
KNOWLEDGE + TASTE = MEANINGFUL JUDGMENT.
Daniel Mendelsohn. More Mendelsohn.
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and the history of the hillbilly in America. – Slate Magazine
The hillbilly figure allows middle-class white people to offload the venality and sin of the nation onto some other constituency, people who live somewhere—anywhere—else. The hillbilly’s backwardness highlights the progress more upstanding Americans in the cities or the suburbs have made. These fools haven’t crawled out of the muck, the story goes, because they don’t want to.
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and the history of the hillbilly in America. – Slate Magazine
Millsin’ About: Jiro Dreams of Errol Morris
I know too little about film or production to say much about this, either, but: the film used a lot of shot-techniques or whatever that I recognize from promos for films and reality TV shows. Here is the staff of the restaurant, arranged just so, staring into the camera; it is slightly slow-mo, the camera slightly pans to give dimensionality, but nothing is really happening. This is how you make ads and music videos, not documentaries, which ought to have something to impart beyond “tune in!” or “this! this! this!”
Yep. Jiro is fun to watch and makes you hungry and it’s also a complete letdown if you’re hoping to *learn* anything. Like Mills says furthermore:
A documentary about an artist which fails to even discuss what is unique about him or his work, how he works, what he is good an bad at, with what he struggles, what the nature of his excellence is: such a documentary must be a failure.
Kubrick // One-Point Perspective. See also Wes Anderson From Above and Tarantino From Below.
(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)
Miami Vice
Miami Vice. It’s not nearly as good as his best, but it’s good corny fun. I mean, it’s Miami Vice. Visually, it’s also the most Michael Mann-ish thing I’ve seen (see Pinnland Empire on Mann’s motifs). It’s also got the typical cop/criminal dynamic he loves. Best analogy I read somewhere was this movie would happen if Malick decided to make a cop film (from the general reverie to the looser, drifty handycam shooting). Sadly, the score is merely functional, but Mann knows when to turn the music down and let it ride. I feel like if I watched it again, I’d like it even more. I really, really like this dude’s movies. Updated Michael Mann rankings:
- Heat
- Thief
- The Last of the Mohicans
- Manhunter
- Miami Vice
- Collateral
Campbell Soup Company is tapping Andy Warhol for another 15 minutes of fame. I’m not surprised that Target is involved in this.
Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
Ta-Nehisi Coates. Cf. Anil Dash.
The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Greg McKeown – Harvard Business Review
Instead of asking, “How much do I value this item?” we should ask “If I did not own this item, how much would I pay to obtain it?”
The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Greg McKeown – Harvard Business Review
The Sad Secular Monks | First Things
Just like the driven twenty-somethings of Rosin’s article, monks and nuns have made a commitment so total that it precludes marriage. But in the case of vowed religious, the form of their service is meant to be elevating, not just useful.
The King of 78s: Joe Bussard. This guy has 15,000 records and hilariously cantankerous taste in music. Although maybe that passion and nerdery foments and requires this kind of dismissive focus:
Q: Is there a music genre that you avoid?
A: Rock-n- roll. Period. Any of it. Hate it. Worse thing that happened to music. Hurt all types of music. They took blues and ruined it. It’s the cancer of music….ate into everything. Killed Country music, that’s for sure.
Q: A lot of people would claim the complete opposite. that Rock-n-Roll re invented and recharged music. What is it about rock-n-roll that annoys you so much?
A: Don’t like. Just my personal taste. Don’t like the sound of it, the meaning of it…doesn’t promote anything beautiful or meaningful. Idiotic noise, in my opinion.
Q: So artist like Miles Davis, John Coltrane don’t deserve your time?
A: Oh my god, you gotta be kidding me. None of that music moves me.
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Jiro Dreams of Sushi. 80 minutes of rapturous fawning and food porn! I liked it.
It really comes down to making an effort and repeating the same thing every day.
Punctuation Marks by Theodor Adorno [pdf]
Only a person who can perceive the different weights of strong and weak phrasings in musical form can really feel the distinction between the comma and the semicolon.
The Original Kings of Comedy
The Original Kings of Comedy. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes awful. I gotta find some more Bernie Mac.
Solaris (2002)
Solaris (2002). I really liked the Tarkovsky version of the novel, and Soderbergh’s is very good, too. It’s more trim and spare. What I really loved was the sound throughout. Footsteps, rustle of clothing, breath. And that soundtrack! Cliff Martinez to the rescue again (see: Drive; Contagion). So perfect. That said, the script is a little painful here and there. What are you gonna do? At least the ideas about memory, empathy, regret, etc. are evergreen.
There’s not a single dud in any of the Soderbergh films I’ve seen lately. Looking forward to more. My current rankings:
- Haywire
- Out of Sight
- Solaris
- Contagion
- Ocean’s Trilogy, which I don’t remember all that well, honestly.
What Does It Mean When Smartphones Replace Travel Guides? | The New Republic
The danger with a digital guidebook, used in isolation, is the same as the problem with all electronic media: You might find exactly what you’re looking for, and not much else.
What Does It Mean When Smartphones Replace Travel Guides? | The New Republic
The Five Obstructions
The Five Obstructions. A documentary in which Lars von Trier puts his hero/mentor Jørgen Leth to the test. Leth has to recreate his own surrealist film, The Perfect Human, five times with five different sets of constraints, dreamed up off-the-cuff by Von Trier, who’s really just trying to get Leth to make something that sucks. Interesting to see the back-and-forth here. Rumor has it that Von Trier and Scorsese are going to do a similar project. My Lars Von Trier rankings:
- Melancholia
- Dancer in the Dark
- The Five Obstructions
- Antichrist
Why does the return journey feel quicker? – The Irish Times
Childhood holidays seem to last forever, but as you grow older time seems to accelerate. “Time” is related to how much information you are taking in – information stretches time. A child’s day from 9am to 3.30pm is like a 20-hour day for an adult. Children experience many new things every day and time passes slowly, but as people get older they have fewer new experiences and time is less stretched by information.
Hyperbole and a Half: Adventures in Depression. Glad to stumble on this post again.
Observations on film art : Unsteadicam chronicles
Run-and-gun technique doesn’t demand that you develop an ongoing sense of the figures within a spatial whole. The bodies, fragmented and smeared across the frame, don’t dwell within these locales. They exist in an architectural vacuum. In United 93, the technique could work because we’re all minimally familiar with the geography of a passenger jet. But in The Bourne Ultimatum, could anybody reconstruct any of these stations, streets, or apartment blocks on the strength of what we see?
Reminds me once again of Die Hard as an architectural film. I don’t think this kind of spatial understanding is an absolute requirement for a good action movie or any movie, really, but it’s interesting to think about. I recently mentioned The Thin Red Line did a great job during the hilltop battle. Rear Window, too, but that’s maybe an easier task, given the confinement. Which others?
Mark Larson 