Psychoanalysis is about what two people can say to each other if they agree not to have sex.
Adam Phillips quoted in My Life in Therapy - NYTimes.com.
August 10, 2010
Ennio Morricone - Once Upon a Time in the West (via Once Upon a Time in the West: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (vocals by Edda D’ell Orso)
“For me the music is fundamental, especially in a Western where the dialogue is purely aphoristic. The films could just as well be silent; one would understand all the same. The music serves to emphasize states of mind, facts and situations more than the dialogue itself does. In short, for me the music functions as dialogue.”
-Sergio Leone
August 6, 2010
A wonderful blooper reel featuring footage of Chaplin flubbing his “lines”, pranking his co-stars, & cracking up mid-scene during the making of his late 1910’s-early 1920’s films (most of this footage via the excellent documentary The Unknown Chaplin)
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Jonathan Haidt | FiveBooks
Recommendations from the guy who wrote my favorite book so far this year (okay, maybe it’s a tie). Gotta get my hands on these. (via wehr)
August 6, 2010
Untitled by Lukasz Wierzbowski
Can two pretty girls ever blend in to he background? The ugliness of their surroundings makes the two pretty ladies look out of place, while their strange outfits that match the sofa they are sitting on anchor them in the scene. Their bare legs stand out in particular in this shot. I love all the patterns, in their outfits, the floor, and on the sofas they are sitting on.
I need to stop neglecting this site.
Yes. Yes, you do. Filmspool is one of my favorite tumblrs.
The Last Psychiatrist: The Ultimate Explanation Of Inception
“What matters isn’t whether the top stopped spinning; what matters is that Cobb didn’t bother to find out.” This was pretty thoughtful. Also, I hate that a merely okay-ish movie still has me thinking about it. The ideas were far better than their vehicle.
The Last Psychiatrist: The Ultimate Explanation Of Inception
August 6, 2010
Dr. Dre To Release Instrumental Hip-Hop Album About The Solar System | Gigwise
Oh hell yeah. (via). À la Holst:
It’s just my interpretation of what each planet sounds like… I’m gonna go off on that. Just all instrumental. I’ve been studying the planets and learning the personalities of each planet.
Dr. Dre To Release Instrumental Hip-Hop Album About The Solar System | Gigwise
American Drink: Purist Intentions
Not everyone agrees with my No Rules Rule. Siiiiiiigh. Naturally. After all, this is America, where the only art more popular than the art itself is the art of being a dick about the art. Same as baseball, jazz, porn, and every other invented-for-fun pastime, drinking is rife with fundamentalist nutjobs (see “purists”) who have one way of doing things–by the book. And not that book either. This book, with the leather binding and 6pt Century Gothic. The old one.
August 5, 2010
Helen DeWitt, Chart 2008
The things that drive us crazy don’t do so once a month, or once a week, or even once a day: we have to fight them minute by minute, hour by hour.
In a fascinating piece over at Incongruous Quarterly, DeWitt recalls charting her year. The red blocks signify days she didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, or went to the gym. Very Lodwickian.
Painkiller Deathstreak: Adventures in video games
I like this kind of essay. The dude had never played video games before! I wish he’d chosen a broader variety of games, but it’s nice to have a fresh perspective. You take a lot of this for granted when you grow up with it:
The second thing I learned about video games is that they are long. So, so long. Playing one game is not like watching one ninety-minute movie; it’s like watching one whole season of a TV show—and watching it in a state of staring, jaw-clenched concentration. If you’re good, it might take you fifteen hours to play through a typical game. If you’re not good, like me, and you do a fair amount of bumping into walls and jumping place when you’re under attack, it will take more than twice that.
August 5, 2010
If you aren’t having no fun, die, because you’re running a worthless program, far as I’m concerned.
August 5, 2010
15th Anniversary: The Brian Eno Evolution
What do people want from Art? I don’t know the full answer, but one thing I’m increasingly sure of is that they want life. They want the sense that there is something going on, that something real and exciting and of its moment has been captured […]
In an age of digital perfectibility, it takes quite a lot of courage to say, “Leave it alone” and, if you do decide to make changes, quite a lot of judgment to know at which point you stop. A lot of technology offers you the chance to make everything completely, wonderfully perfect, and thus to take out whatever residue of human life there was in the work to start with. […] It’s a misunderstanding to think that the traces of human activity — brushstrokes, tuning drift, arrhythmia — are not part of the work. They are the fundamental texture of the work, the fine grain of it.
The Summoned Self - David Brooks - NYTimes.com
The person leading the Well-Planned Life emphasizes individual agency, and asks, “What should I do?” The person leading the Summoned Life emphasizes the context, and asks, “What are my circumstances asking me to do?”
(via)
Up From Darkness - Book Review: "Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light" by Jane Brox - NYTimes.com
Who had light and who did not? What did different types of people do with their newfound hours? How did street lighting change public behavior? (Once drinkers could move safely between taverns, instead of perching on a single tavern stool all night … the streets became far rowdier; prostitutes previously confined to brothels could now sell their wares al fresco.) With increased mobility and safety, those who could afford lighting stayed up later. Sleeping in became a mark of prestige. Meanwhile, those who lived near the gasworks — never located in a city’s high-rent district — endured foul-smelling and dangerous emissions.
(via)
August 4, 2010
Red Eye - Abstract City Blog - NYTimes.com. “A visual diary documenting a flight from New York to Berlin (with a layover in London).” I, too, ♥ my seat back monitor.
August 4, 2010
When you think about it, rules for drinking are not so different from rules for writing. Many of these are so familiar they’ve become truisms: Write what you know. Write every day. Never use a strange, fancy word when a simple one will do. Always finish the day’s writing when you could still do more. With a little adaptation these rules apply just as well for drinking. Drink what you know, drink regularly rather than in binges, avoid needlessly exotic booze, and leave the table while you can still stand.
Geoff Nicholson, “Drink What You Know” (via austinkleon)
August 3, 2010
“Jazzcats Crossing the Hudson is an 1851 oil-on-canvas painting by German American artist Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. It pre-emptively commemorates the arrival in New York City of jazz greats Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Steve Kuhn and others. The painting is remarkable for the fact that it was created decades before the birth of any of these jazz artists.”
via mastertone
August 3, 2010
Kanye West’s tweets meet The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest. The results are hilarious!
Thanks Josh A. Cagan (@joshacagan on Twitter) for these amazing mash-ups - you made our morning!