~ Mark

What you want to do is build the people up. You start ‘em off and you give them this first half, and their feet, and next thing they got their heads goin’, and the next thing they got their mouths open and they’re yellin’ and they’re screamin’. It’s a great feeling when you can have your audience get involved with you […] where everyone can jump in and have a real good time. “What’d I Say” is my last song onstage. When I do “What’d I Say,” you don’t have to worry about it — that’s the end of me. There ain’t no encore, no nothin’. I’m finished!

Ray Charles in an awesome interview with NPR, via the Mix Magazine Classic Track essay on “What I’d Say”.

Force of Evil

~ Mark

Force of Evil. Very, very good. Everyone tries to justify their minor (and major) wrongdoings, but living in the gray areas rarely turns out well. Touches on ideas of business, family, loyalty, with some biblical overtones. “What do you mean ‘gangsters’? It’s business.”

Wine descriptors tell us more about a bottle’s price than its flavor. – By Coco Krumme – Slate Magazine

~ Mark

“Graphite. Black currant. Incense. And camphor?” This is a great read. You’ve probably read something similar about wine bullshit before, but this is probably better. Interesting that more expensive wines are described with more specific words.

When it comes to invoking elegance, foreign and complex words have a natural advantage. Cigars and truffle conjure up prestige and luxury. Meanwhile, a little-known berry or spice conveys the worldly sophistication of the critic, which the drinker can share. For a price.

Wine descriptors tell us more about a bottle’s price than its flavor. – By Coco Krumme – Slate Magazine

~ Mark

Via mhsteger, a few of Sydney Smith’s prescriptions for low spirits, from a February, 1820 letter to Lady Georgiana Morpeth:

6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.

7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.

11th. Don’t expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.

14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.

15th. Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant.

17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.

18th. Keep good blazing fires.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

~ Mark

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. Rivers is awesome. This movie is not. Two things I would have especially liked: 1) longer scenes from her stand-up acts and 2) more of a plot or wrapper. It’s a “scenes from a year in the life of”-type documentary–hey let’s film famous people and see if anything interesting happens! It doesn’t always work. This one ends up more like reality TV. Which is fine, I guess, but I expect more from a feature-length. What I need is mysterious brilliance on a deadline, a story of redemption, a look into a specialized world, an insane challenge, or old-fashioned good vs evil. All that said, I am super-impressed with Rivers as a person, still going, still feisty in an absolutely brutal industry.

How to Behave in an Art Museum – Paper Monument

~ Mark

Intellectual conversations, as a woman I briefly dated once admonished me, are like public displays of affection—fun to be in, but mortifying to observe, and in a museum you know you’re being observed. But refusing to answer your friend’s questions is no solution either. You’re paralyzed. And you’re not even sure what you’re afraid of. You’re not sure whether your replies will make you look like a philistine or a snob. Which would be worse? Which are you more qualified to be?

How to Behave in an Art Museum – Paper Monument

~ Mark

The Baroque is that style which deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its possibilities and borders on its own caricature.

Jorge Luis Borges.

Brazil

~ Mark

Brazil. A daydreaming bureaucrat muddles through a dysfunctional future that seems crippled more by pervasive triplicate than any central evil. It’s not perfect, but it is absurd and entertaining. Jonathan Pryce is excellent.

Micmacs

~ Mark

Micmacs. This one falls victim to excess. It’s a goofy, goofy French film with some laughs and lots of spy-movie-type fun. But if it were my choice, I’d cut a bunch of shots here and there. Not many entire scenes, mostly the small asides that make the already improbable plot a little manic and over-stuffed. Good intentions, though. Bonus points for camerawork, sets, and working The Big Sleep into the opening scenes.

~ Mark

http://www.youtube.com/e/zLuo9r3tv5w
Gone With the Wind Atlanta Premiere – Atlanta History Center. (via)

Home video footage by Russell Bellman of the “Gone With the Wind” Atlanta Premiere (December 15, 1939). Video features the Georgian Terrace Hotel, Atlanta Municipal Auditorium, Gone With the Wind Ball, and the Loew’s Grand Theatre in Atlanta.

I know I’ve said it before, but man, I really, really wish I’d been alive when Loew’s Grand Theatre was still around.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)