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.
February 18, 2011
Micmacs
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.
February 17, 2011
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/)
February 17, 2011
Tests for Husbands and Wives. Rate yourself on the 1930s Marital Scale. I scored… umm… 17.
Tech in Lyrics: James Brown the Anti-Technoutopian - Alexis Madrigal - The Atlantic
All of Mix Magazine's "Classic Tracks" in one place
How did I not know about this? Essential reading for recording geeks.
Dang. Time to fire up the Instapaper.
February 17, 2011
Dust-to-Digital: “Goodbye” to Obscurity - PURGE. Good interview with the Dust-to-Digital folks.
Neil Young was on Weekend Edition saying that Bob Dylan gave him a copy [of Goodbye, Babylon]. That actually freaked me out more than the Grammys. I almost fell on the floor.
The Virgin Suicides
The Virgin Suicides. I liked this one. Quite a debut. Themes include boys obsessing over girls on their way to womanhood, the fascination with death, the penumbra of loss that affects a community, etc. I like the tie-in with the dying elms, leaving mute, immovable stumps in the yards. And while I often cringe at moments when films use popular song, I thought the inclusions of Heart’s Magic Man and Crazy On You were inspired. If there’s any complaint, some parts were too overt. You don’t need a narrator intoning, “And so we started to learn about their lives, coming to hold collective memories of times we hadn’t experienced” when that’s clearly suggested on the screen. Small quibble though. Worth watching. I wonder how the book compares.
February 16, 2011
The Great Gatsby - for NES. I fully support this. (via)
NBA’s Greatest Shots – Court Location & Video
The Moral Crusade Against Foodies - The Atlantic
“Is any other subculture reported on so exclusively by its own members?”
Phonestheme - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The word refers to the “systematic pairing of form and meaning in a language” where “a word with a phonestheme in it has other material in it that is not itself a morpheme.”
For example, the English phonestheme “gl-” occurs in a large number of words relating to light or vision, like “glitter”, “glisten”, “glow”, “gleam”, “glare”, “glint”, and so on
I love this stuff. Here’s a list of English phonesthemes.
- /st/ is stable, stalwart, staunch, steadfast, steady, stolid, stout, and sturdy
- /sk/ scuffles, skips, scuttles, scoots, scampers, scurries, and skedaddles
- /dr/ drips, dribbles, drools, dredges, drizzles, drops, droops, and drags with the dross, dregs and the dreck
February 14, 2011
February 14, 2011
My strategy can be reduced to two rules: 1) Find a way to make it fun and 2) If that fails, find a way to do something else.
Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor - Magazine - The Atlantic
Certainly, I understood why students who had worked so hard and done so well would want to go to schools like Harvard and Princeton, but many places seem to be prestigious simply because student fads and crazes have made them hard to get into. Brazenly capitalizing on the whims and passions of teenagers seems a questionable practice for institutions dedicated, in part, to the well-being of young people.
Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor - Magazine - The Atlantic
February 14, 2011
February 11, 2011
Pablo Picasso with Brigitte Bardot in his studio in Vallauris during the 1956 International Cannes Film Festival. Photo by Jerome Brierre.
February 11, 2011
Self-control is really just the art of making the future bigger.
