Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould. Coming to Atlanta in November. What a character. I loved this one book about him, A Romance on Three Legs, and a buddy at work told me that Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould is also very good.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Researchers with a variety of academic and theological interests are proposing controversial theories about the Koran and Islamic history, and are striving to reinterpret Islam for the modern world. This is, as one scholar puts it, a “sensitive business”
The redemptive power of music!
T.I. helped save Midtown Atlanta jumper's life — really | Fresh Loaf | Creative Loafing Atlanta
Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat - Charanjit Singh.
Performed on the synths that would later define Acid House, the Roland TB-303 and TR-808, the album sounds light years ahead of its time with its repetitive beats and hypnotic electronic melodies. Its maker, Bollywood session musician Charanjit Singh, set out to translate ancient Indian classical Ragas to the modern synthesizer and in doing so seems to have invented House music along the way.
More on the album and the culture of ‘80s Indian synthesizer stuff here and here.
http://www.eonline.com/videos/swf/CEGDynamicPlayer.swf
Eric Stoltz was the first Marty McFly. So weird to see the wrong actor in those scenes.
Here’s a movie idea: two 45-minute films, as identical as possible in setting, costume, lighting, framing, tone, etc. but with a different set of lead actors. Not too many, maybe 1-5 switched out. Film them as contemporaneously as possible. Screen'em back-to-back. Anyone ever done this?
(Source: http://www.eonline.com/)
Men who are very interested in their clothes are part geeky, petty academic and part creative, artistic aesthete. Everyone needs the former to drive them into reading and investigation, to be interested by the history and traditions of men’s attire. But everyone also needs the latter, to have the kind of mind that created these traditions in the first place.
Of course, this applies to more than just fashion.
Amazing. See also Chicago on the Yangtze.
Robert Mitchum in county jail. Photo ©Bettmann/CORBIS.
It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defenses and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart. It did not last very long, a quarter of an hour perhaps; but it returned to me in a dream at night, and since, through all the barren days, I caught a glimpse of it now and then.
Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf on musical ecstasy.
Metropolis. Amazing. I was pumped-up to see this latest restoration and it did not disappoint. Fritz Lang went big with this one. So good. So many themes. Solid, archetypal characters (tycoon/forbidding father, sketchy henchman, mad scientist, romantic hero, maiden/whore/messiah, trusty sidekick, etc.) all with their own clear relationships to each other. A pretty amazing soundtrack (with cameos of the Dies Irae and La Marseillaise). Many of the sets would still look incredible today. It’s old enough to bring out some unintended laughter here and there, but I thought it was pretty gripping most of the way.
Vertigo. The first hour was really fun, there’s emotional anguish in the conclusion that I wasn’t expecting from Hitchcock, and several twists along the way that I totally didn’t see coming. James Stewart rules. The soundtrack was very good and the audio in general–engines, footsteps, city life–seemed really, really sharp. I’d rank it among the better Hitchcock films I’ve seen, but I think I’d put it in third place behind Rear Window and To Catch a Thief.
George Packer argues that “in vast, impoverished cities like Bombay, Cairo, Jakarta, Rio, or Lagos, the plot lines of the nineteenth century proliferate.” And thus, the readers of the developing world can more easily relate.
The concerns of that literature [late 19th-century novels]—the individual caught in an encompassing social web, the sensitive young mind trapped inside an indifferent world, the beguiling journey from countryside to metropolis, the dismal inventiveness with which people survive, the permanent gap between imagination and opportunity, the big families whose problems are lived out in the street, the tragic pregnancies, the ubiquity of corruption, the earnest efforts at self-education, the preciousness of books, the squalid factories and debtor’s prisons, the valuable garbage, the complex rules of patronage and extortion, the sudden turns of fortune, the sidewalk con men and legless beggars, the slum as theater of the grotesque: long after these things dropped out of Western literature, they became the stuff of ordinary life elsewhere, in places where modernity is arriving but hasn’t begun to solve the problems of people thrown together in the urban cauldron.
When I was young, I read The Richest Man in Babylon, which said to under-spend your income and invest the difference. Lo and behold, I did this and it worked. I got the idea to add a mental compound interest too, so I decided I would sell myself the best hour of the day to improving my own mind, and the world could buy the rest of the time. It sounds selfish, but it worked.
Charlie Munger on investing in your brain. The Richest Man in Babylon looks pretty sensible.
Afghan. Written, directed, and produced by Pardis Parker. This was my favorite film shown at last night’s Atlanta Philosophy Film Festival.
There is perhaps no psychic phenomenon which has been so unconditionally reserved to the metropolis as has the blasé attitude.
The tall, sleek, curving Vdara Hotel at CityCenter on the Strip is a thing of beauty. But the south-facing tower is also a collector and bouncer of sun rays, which – if you’re at the hotel’s swimming pool at the wrong time of day and season – can singe your hair and melt your plastic drink cups and shopping bags.
I work next to a building like this, except the death rays shine right on the sidewalk. (via)
Mirrored Las Vegas hotel turns into parabolic solar cooker
A treasure trove for Warren Buffett (and Charlie Munger) fans. (via)
Goal - To compile and order the teachings of Mr. Buffett to maximise their benefit and usefulness to others. All material below is from question and answer (Q&A) sessions with Mr. Buffett.
Her bottom is so beautiful that once as she crossed the room to the cooler I felt my eyes smart with tears of gratitude.
A selection from The Moviegoer by Walker Percy, which so far has been very enjoyable.
A depressing October poem for you: Jeff Buckley reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Ulalume. The text.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Atlanta claims spots #5, 7, 17, and 22: the areas near Vine City/GA Dome, Techwood/Centennial Hill, Mechanicsville/Summerhill, and Adair Park. (via)