Lawrence of Arabia. Ridiculously spectacular, most especially the visuals and the acting. Lots of good laugh lines, too. I’m very grateful I got to see this on a big theater screen. I didn’t realize the new 4K restoration was showing in Atlanta until a few hours beforehand. Totally lucked out. What a great experience.
Also, David Lean? This, Doctor Zhivago, and Brief Encounter? There’s a resume for you. I need see some more of his work.
Part of our challenge is that the tech sector has to acknowledge and accept that a broad swath of jobs in the middle of our industry require skills but need not be predicated on a full liberal arts education at a high-end university. The Stanford CS grads are always going to be fine; It’s the people who can’t go into the same trade as their dad, or who are smart but not interested in the eating-ramen-and-working-100-hours-a-week startup orthodoxy who we need to bring along with us into tech.
Grizzly Man. What some call crazy, others call really living. Herzog and I disagree, but that’s totally fine. Too long, but interesting, outside most everyone’s experience, and I can’t think of any comparable nature films.
That which I don’t eat makes me better than you.
Great interview. I’ve been slowly working my way through The Histories lately, and this attitude reminded me of Herodotus:
If I were simply to present these people talking about the deep past at face value, an historian would almost immediately say, “Gourevitch was taken in by these guys and their spin on history.” But to me what’s interesting—and the way I’ll present it—is that this is how they are invoking and recounting their inheritance, which may or may not be historically accurate. […] It’s an identity story as much as an accurate history.
On memory and moving on:
There’s a kind of fetishization of memory in our culture. Some of it comes from the experience and the memorial culture of the Holocaust—the injunction to remember. And it also comes from the strange collision of Freud and human rights thinking—the belief that anything that is not exposed and addressed and dealt with is festering and going to come back to destroy you. This is obviously not true. Memory is not such a cure-all. On the contrary, many of the great political crimes of recent history were committed in large part in the name of memory. The difference between memory and grudge is not always clean. Memories can hold you back, they can be a terrible burden, even an illness. Yes, memory—hallowed memory—can be a kind of disease. That’s one of the reasons that in every culture we have memorial structures and memorial days, whether for personal grief or for collective historical traumas. Because you need to get on with life the rest of the time and not feel the past too badly. I’m not talking about letting memory go. The thing is to contain memory, and then, on those days, or in those places, you can turn on the tap and really touch and feel it. The idea is not oblivion or even denial of memory. It’s about not poisoning ourselves with memory.
And there’s this:
There’s no such thing as a story all by itself. Stories don’t exist in solitude—they exist in relation to other stories.
The Girlfriend Experience. Gotta admit, I loved this one. It’s a people film, not a plot film. Specific people, not symbols. How they manage their own fictions. I read a lot of negative reviews after watching, and it seems that many folks were 1) hoping/expecting this movie to be about something else or 2) didn’t like the way it was about what it was about. Watch it and draw your own conclusions. Definitely thought-provoking for me.
Time for updated Steven Soderbergh rankings:
Photo by Jonas Bendiksen. “RUSSIA. Altai Territory. 2000. Villagers collecting scrap from a crashed spacecraft, surrounded by thousands of white butterflies.” (via @robinsloan)
Talking about Portland, Colin slides in a few interviewing tips he’s picked up:
One mentioned starting off with explicit follow-up questions to those asked by previous interviewers. Another described how, given his interest in architecture, he thinks about conversation as a means of discovering the structures — intellectual, aesthetic, social, commercial — his interlocutors see themselves operating within. (Yeah, I totally get off on ideas like that.) Another praised Jon Stewart’s technique of setting down his hand on the table before him to subtly signal that he has a question about what his guest’s saying at that moment. I’ve been trying these out here in Portland. They work!
That’s what the present is. It’s a little unsatisfying because life is unsatisfying.
I really liked this one. Fun exploration of nostalgia, heroes, joie de vivre, being true to yourself, etc. And I love our hero’s giddy, can’t-believe-his-luck enthusiasm. This might be my favorite Owen Wilson performance ever. There’s a few characters who are only light caricatures for purposes of contrast, but that’s Woody Allen for you. I do love how the elements of scifi/fantasy here are a given, accepted, no explanation required.
It’s been a while since my last Woody Allen film. My updated rankings, though maybe it’s been too long a time for this to be definitive:
If you missed “Shinobi Marilyn” at Emily Amy Gallery, here’s a walkthrough video I made!
How cool. If you missed this show, or you don’t happen to own a sweet Hokusai/Anderson “Great Wave” print, this seems like a good way to figure out what you missed. Have any other artists done walkthroughs of their gallery shows? Postcards and catalogs are nice keepsakes and all, but it’s not like being there. Maybe if there were an easy way to set up your own Google Street View gallery walkthrough…
The Night of the Hunter. So strange and so cool. This is the most German Expressionist film made by an American I’ve ever seen. I love the shifting between naturalistic location shoots and the strange, surreal sets in dramatically lit interiors and highly staged outdoors scenes later. Strange biblical dialogue and a few main characters you never quite become easy with. Some things aren’t right in this neighborhood. Perfect horror.
It seems to me that the ears that are listening make more difference than the way the music sounds.
I didn’t realize that Jessa Crispin had an advice column! @CosimaWagner is one of my favorite Twitter accounts.
YouTube HOF: Musical Interludes – Grantland.
Annotated lyrics:
Amado mio, OK.
love me forever. DONE.
And let forever … YES, RITA HAYWORTH?
begin tonight. OH FANTASTIC.
If you haven’t seen Gilda, it’s hard to describe how absolutely captivating Rita Hayworth is. That introduction.
Cellphones Are Eating the Family Budget – WSJ.com. Among other things.
When people bypass simple solutions to write to someone like me, that tends to mean there’s an ulterior motive on board.
The part that matters most to me:
I am writing a book called “Wagnerism: Art in the Shadow of Music”
Yesssssssssssssss!
The Case for Allowing Richard Wagner’s Music to be Performed in Israel : The New Yorker
It’s about expectations and consistency. Whatever I expect from a four-star restaurant has become unachievable. […] If the food isn’t delicious, everything else will just seem annoying, and that happens quite a lot.
Sometimes Formica Is Better Than White Cloth — How to Cook Everything – NYTimes.com
The fact that it’s not simple doesn’t mean it’s a paradox: it means it’s not simple.
Also:
Focused, competent evil is a very hard force to legislate against.
Los Angeles Review of Books – Happiness Is A Warm Glock: Paul Barrett On America’s Gun
A trend I had noticed in nearly every book I’d seen in the last year: They never say what they’re about. Almost as a rule, hardcover books (and increasingly e-books) favor laudatory “blurbs” over descriptions–opting for short quotes from important authors, CEOs, celebrities, or media outlets to make their case.
Mark Larson 