Micmacs

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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.

Gone with the Wind Atlanta Premiere

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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/)

The Virgin Suicides

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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.

Phonestheme - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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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

Phonestheme - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor - Magazine - The Atlantic

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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

I think painters and sculptors react to music, more naively, in a sense…

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I think painters and sculptors react to music, more naively, in a sense, because their politics are a lot different from our politics. It’s very hard for one composer to listen to another composer without somehow bringing his own mind-set to the music he’s listening to. It’s not that it’s impossible. And that’s only natural, whereas someone in another art field is going to listen to it very naively, in a sense (you hope), and that’s a worthwhile, unbiased opinion. Ultimately, it’s a naive opinion that rules the roost.

Steve Reich.