Media: Film
Title: Babel
Oh no, another of this year’s critically acclaimed films turns out to be a disappointment.
OK, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu lost me when Gael Garcia Bernal’s character runs from the boarder patrol officers and drops his aunt and the children out in the desert in the middle of the night. There was nothing in Santiago’s character development to justify these drastic, insane actions. Plus, as the children now wander near death in a desert their mother, who has been accidentally shot from a mountain top, is near dieing in Morocco. Talk about a bad day for a family! It is enough to make you roll your eyes and say “come on!” and “give me a break!” Which I did, and no drama can fully recover from the eye roll.
Despite this terrible, disappointing turn in the storytelling, in all other film making aspects Babel may be the best made movie I’ve seen this year. The stories wove beautifully together to create a complex mediation comparing the ever closer interconnectedness of our globe with people's growing alienation and inability to form meaningful relationships. Also, the editing masterfully allowed for an exhale by cutting from one story to the next just when you could not bare the dramatic tension any longer; and Inarritu skillfully captured the distinct mise-en-scene of each distinct setting. You walk away thinking, that was fantastic film-making.
Ahh, too bad for that eye roll. I could have loved this film.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Pan's Labyrinth
Media: Film
Title: Pan’s Labyrinth
Pan’s Labyrinth is half fairy tale and half military movie. I loved the fairy tale, told in the pre-Disney understanding that fairy tales are about a child’s psyche confronting death, parental abandonment and impending sexuality. Guillermo del Toro’s visual effects creating the fairy tale world are fascinating, spectacular and a compelling reason in themselves to see this film. This imagined world was so wonderful I kept hoping to get back to it each time our little girl heroine had to step back into the film’s reality. I did not care for the film’s reality, a military story set in fascist Spain. Here del Toro uses his abundant visual talents to makes us squirm anticipating torture and looking at gore (from which I chose to look away).
If del Toro had decide to make the fairy tale alone I may have loved this film. But sadly, it is yet another disappointment in this year of disappointing films. As you may imagine, loving only half a film is ultimately unsatisfying.
Title: Pan’s Labyrinth
Pan’s Labyrinth is half fairy tale and half military movie. I loved the fairy tale, told in the pre-Disney understanding that fairy tales are about a child’s psyche confronting death, parental abandonment and impending sexuality. Guillermo del Toro’s visual effects creating the fairy tale world are fascinating, spectacular and a compelling reason in themselves to see this film. This imagined world was so wonderful I kept hoping to get back to it each time our little girl heroine had to step back into the film’s reality. I did not care for the film’s reality, a military story set in fascist Spain. Here del Toro uses his abundant visual talents to makes us squirm anticipating torture and looking at gore (from which I chose to look away).
If del Toro had decide to make the fairy tale alone I may have loved this film. But sadly, it is yet another disappointment in this year of disappointing films. As you may imagine, loving only half a film is ultimately unsatisfying.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Where the Reading Takes You
Media: Books
Title: Where the Reading Takes You
This past autumn I began a reading project I first heard on KUOW public radio. You start with one book. The second book you read will be inspired by some idea, theme, character, etc. in the first. Qualities in this second book inspire a third title, and so on until the project ends or you start again from a new book. I am now beginning book seven of the project: Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Here is the run down of where the reading has taken me.
1. American Movie Critics: this is an anthology of film criticism.
2. The Immediate Experience by Robert Warshaw: I chose this book because Warshaw’s essays on Chaplin and on gangster films were two favorites in American Movie Critics.
3. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller: Warshaw had a surprisingly negative essay of Death of a Salesman in The Immediate Experience.
4. Rabbit, Run by John Updike. I chose this novel because Rabbit is a character like Biff Loman, a middle class man living in quiet desperation whose best days were in high school on a sports team.
5. Rabbit, Redux by John Updike: I was taken with Rabbit and wanted to know what happened next.
6. W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography of Race: I chose this biography of Du Bois because race relations played a major role in Rabbit, Redux set in the summer of 1969.
7. Now I begin Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. – since there is a direct line from Du Bois as leader of black America to King.
Title: Where the Reading Takes You
This past autumn I began a reading project I first heard on KUOW public radio. You start with one book. The second book you read will be inspired by some idea, theme, character, etc. in the first. Qualities in this second book inspire a third title, and so on until the project ends or you start again from a new book. I am now beginning book seven of the project: Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Here is the run down of where the reading has taken me.
1. American Movie Critics: this is an anthology of film criticism.
2. The Immediate Experience by Robert Warshaw: I chose this book because Warshaw’s essays on Chaplin and on gangster films were two favorites in American Movie Critics.
3. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller: Warshaw had a surprisingly negative essay of Death of a Salesman in The Immediate Experience.
4. Rabbit, Run by John Updike. I chose this novel because Rabbit is a character like Biff Loman, a middle class man living in quiet desperation whose best days were in high school on a sports team.
5. Rabbit, Redux by John Updike: I was taken with Rabbit and wanted to know what happened next.
6. W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography of Race: I chose this biography of Du Bois because race relations played a major role in Rabbit, Redux set in the summer of 1969.
7. Now I begin Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. – since there is a direct line from Du Bois as leader of black America to King.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Charlie Chaplin
Media: Lecture
Title: The Fool in the Frame: Film Comedy and 20th Century America
Professor Bean is teaching this 5 session course and she began this week with a quick history of the beginning of film and then focused on its first big star Charlie Chaplin. I’ve done a good deal of my own reading on the subject but this class is helping cement my understanding of early film. A few facts I enjoyed:
The first exhibition of film for an audience was in France 1895. (Edison had motion picture machines first but they were one person arcades.)
The first fictionalized film was slap stick comedy (most early documented real events like a train arriving). Its subject, a kid tricking a man to look into a hose and getting a face filled with water.
Chaplin entered film via Max Sennett at Keystone studios, the gold standard of early film comedy, just as film was about to explode in popularity. Chaplin rode atop that explosion for a good 15 years becoming the first international film star, and the richest. There is no real comparison for his fame until Mickey Mouse.
Chaplin started with Sennett 1914-15, worked with Mutual 1916-17, worked with First National 1918, and started United Artists in 1919 which he was involved with until his death.
I'm anxious to get to the next class, I wish I didn't have to wait two weeks.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Silent Movie Mondays
Media: Film
Title: Diary of a Lost Girl
Yesterday was a Silent Movie Monday at the Paramount theater, perhaps my favorite on-going Seattle film event. Now, Diary of a Lost Girl was one of my least favorite of the many silent films I have seen. The story was tedious melodrama, and it seemed to end three different times and each time you wished it would. Nevertheless the experience is wonderful. Silent Movie Mondays are time travel. You enter a fully restored silent movie palace (The Paramount’s original function); you listen to archival music played on the theater's original organ; and you watch film prints restored to look as good as they would have 80 years ago. Give all the men hats, put all the women in skirts and you have the 1920s. I urge everyone who will listen, when given the opportunity to experience the magic of time travel it is always worth taking it, even when the film is as lackluster as Diary of a Lost Girl. (By the way, Lousie Brooks is adorable.)
Title: Diary of a Lost Girl
Yesterday was a Silent Movie Monday at the Paramount theater, perhaps my favorite on-going Seattle film event. Now, Diary of a Lost Girl was one of my least favorite of the many silent films I have seen. The story was tedious melodrama, and it seemed to end three different times and each time you wished it would. Nevertheless the experience is wonderful. Silent Movie Mondays are time travel. You enter a fully restored silent movie palace (The Paramount’s original function); you listen to archival music played on the theater's original organ; and you watch film prints restored to look as good as they would have 80 years ago. Give all the men hats, put all the women in skirts and you have the 1920s. I urge everyone who will listen, when given the opportunity to experience the magic of time travel it is always worth taking it, even when the film is as lackluster as Diary of a Lost Girl. (By the way, Lousie Brooks is adorable.)
Monday, January 15, 2007
The Immigrant (1917)
Media: VHS tape
Title: The Immigrant
I am taking a film study class which starts in two days and one of my preparatory assignments is to watch a number of Charlie Chaplin shorts. The Immigrant is the one that most struck me (even as One O’clock was probably the laugh-out-loud funniest.) I guess I passively knew that Chaplin mixed social commentary with his pratfalls, and in The Immigrant I finally experienced this mixture first hand. The scene that best encapsulates Chaplin’s commentary in this film occurs in a startling juxtaposition of two images. Image one, immigrants aboard ship see the Statue of Liberty in the harbor. Chaplin captures the initial moment of pure hope and pride in the immigrants’ faces. Image two, cut to the immigration workers literally cutting off the immigrants from their dream with a rope, roughly herding them like cattle. (In 2007 we also bring to the film the knowledge of the dehumanizing inspections to come.) The paradox for us to consider is powerfully set in these images. Hopes of liberty, wealthy and freedom juxtaposed with the immigrants’ current reality of poverty, bigotry and cold indifference. Throughout this short Chaplin plays with the twin reality of opportunity and hardship in America, which you may or may not want to ponder in-between the laughs.
Title: The Immigrant
I am taking a film study class which starts in two days and one of my preparatory assignments is to watch a number of Charlie Chaplin shorts. The Immigrant is the one that most struck me (even as One O’clock was probably the laugh-out-loud funniest.) I guess I passively knew that Chaplin mixed social commentary with his pratfalls, and in The Immigrant I finally experienced this mixture first hand. The scene that best encapsulates Chaplin’s commentary in this film occurs in a startling juxtaposition of two images. Image one, immigrants aboard ship see the Statue of Liberty in the harbor. Chaplin captures the initial moment of pure hope and pride in the immigrants’ faces. Image two, cut to the immigration workers literally cutting off the immigrants from their dream with a rope, roughly herding them like cattle. (In 2007 we also bring to the film the knowledge of the dehumanizing inspections to come.) The paradox for us to consider is powerfully set in these images. Hopes of liberty, wealthy and freedom juxtaposed with the immigrants’ current reality of poverty, bigotry and cold indifference. Throughout this short Chaplin plays with the twin reality of opportunity and hardship in America, which you may or may not want to ponder in-between the laughs.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Dreamgirls (2006)
Media: Film
Title: Dreamgirls
To quote The Stranger, this is not a good film. That said, if you approach Dreamgirls as a dollop of superficial, spectacular fluff there is an abundance to enjoy. In enjoyed watching Eddie Murphy, for instance, more than I have in 25 years. Murphy gives a terrifically exciting performance in his half Little Richard, half James Brown persona. He may even be a little too good, making Beyonce’s and Jamie Fox’s uninspiring acting feel even more flat. But they, along with everyone else, is surrounded by so much noise and color, so much fashion and hair flux that you hardly care. Actual acting is negligible to the overall effect of the spectacular. So what it’s hollow; Dreamgirls is the most fun I’ve had in the theater since Little Miss Sunshine. Don’t expect character development, don’t expect real emotion, don’t imagine that there is anything beneath the shiny surface. The best musicals are sweet frosting slathered over an empty hat box, and that’s what you get from Dreamgirls.
Title: Dreamgirls
To quote The Stranger, this is not a good film. That said, if you approach Dreamgirls as a dollop of superficial, spectacular fluff there is an abundance to enjoy. In enjoyed watching Eddie Murphy, for instance, more than I have in 25 years. Murphy gives a terrifically exciting performance in his half Little Richard, half James Brown persona. He may even be a little too good, making Beyonce’s and Jamie Fox’s uninspiring acting feel even more flat. But they, along with everyone else, is surrounded by so much noise and color, so much fashion and hair flux that you hardly care. Actual acting is negligible to the overall effect of the spectacular. So what it’s hollow; Dreamgirls is the most fun I’ve had in the theater since Little Miss Sunshine. Don’t expect character development, don’t expect real emotion, don’t imagine that there is anything beneath the shiny surface. The best musicals are sweet frosting slathered over an empty hat box, and that’s what you get from Dreamgirls.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Du Bois and Women's Suffrage
Media: Book
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
The quote that started me thinking (from a Du Bois speech):
“Every argument for woman suffrage is an argument for Negro suffrage.”
I must admit, I am a victim of the general American historic-amnesia. In my general life I forget, but was just reminded in Lewis’s book, that we were two decades into the twentieth century before the federal government accepted the fact that our founding principles include women’s right to vote. This provides such a clear example of the gulf between a beautiful ideal and the ugliness in human reality. Most of us would agree the ideal the United States was founded upon is beautiful: just, equal treatment for all individuals regardless of factors of race, gender, age etc. Yet just below the mythic, white-wigged surface is the history of those not white, male and well-off demanding the justice and equality promised yet withheld. Demands all too frequently met with ignorance, hate and violence. It makes you appreciate the Platonic duality: one, there is an Ideal realm where truth resides permanent and incorruptible vs. two, mundane reality of flesh and body, an imperfect corrupt version of that Ideal. I suppose as citizens we need to hold in mind the beautiful ideal, uncover the ugly reality, and make decisions to bring all that potential beauty closer to us all.
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
The quote that started me thinking (from a Du Bois speech):
“Every argument for woman suffrage is an argument for Negro suffrage.”
I must admit, I am a victim of the general American historic-amnesia. In my general life I forget, but was just reminded in Lewis’s book, that we were two decades into the twentieth century before the federal government accepted the fact that our founding principles include women’s right to vote. This provides such a clear example of the gulf between a beautiful ideal and the ugliness in human reality. Most of us would agree the ideal the United States was founded upon is beautiful: just, equal treatment for all individuals regardless of factors of race, gender, age etc. Yet just below the mythic, white-wigged surface is the history of those not white, male and well-off demanding the justice and equality promised yet withheld. Demands all too frequently met with ignorance, hate and violence. It makes you appreciate the Platonic duality: one, there is an Ideal realm where truth resides permanent and incorruptible vs. two, mundane reality of flesh and body, an imperfect corrupt version of that Ideal. I suppose as citizens we need to hold in mind the beautiful ideal, uncover the ugly reality, and make decisions to bring all that potential beauty closer to us all.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
The Daily Show
Media: Video Stream
Title: The Daily Show
Link: http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/most_recent/index.jhtml
I am new to streaming video. Just two weeks ago I discovered you can stream a large segment of The Daily Show on Comedy Central’s web site. (The one reason I sometimes wished I had cable is no longer a concern.) The best segment on today’s show was fake-correspondent Assif Mandvi’s piece on Barak Obama’s name. It was a hilarious discussion on why it is unsafe to vote for Obama because his name is one consonant away from being Osama. Not to mention his middle name is Hussein.
Mandvi: “Obama is be-laden with a name that causes al-ki-da problems.”
Title: The Daily Show
Link: http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/most_recent/index.jhtml
I am new to streaming video. Just two weeks ago I discovered you can stream a large segment of The Daily Show on Comedy Central’s web site. (The one reason I sometimes wished I had cable is no longer a concern.) The best segment on today’s show was fake-correspondent Assif Mandvi’s piece on Barak Obama’s name. It was a hilarious discussion on why it is unsafe to vote for Obama because his name is one consonant away from being Osama. Not to mention his middle name is Hussein.
Mandvi: “Obama is be-laden with a name that causes al-ki-da problems.”
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Du Bois Again
Media: Book
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
I'm not sure why the descriptions of southern racism are hitting me so profoundly as I continue to read Lewis's biography. I have encountered descriptions of these actrosities before. Perhaps it is because in the context of this book I have come to know Du Bois and his family, therefore the victims are literary friends. Yet it is dissimliar from such descriptions in fictions having the added bite of being real. Whatever it may be here is bit of what captured my mind and emotions with indignation today:
"Walking the two mile stretch to downtown Atlanta becuase she (Du Bois's wife) ... refused to patronize the segregated transit system. It galled her to have to wait until every white customer had been served before a drawling department-store clerk deigned to wait on her. Along her route there was not a single water-fountain or park bench lawfull permitted to Negroes. "
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
I'm not sure why the descriptions of southern racism are hitting me so profoundly as I continue to read Lewis's biography. I have encountered descriptions of these actrosities before. Perhaps it is because in the context of this book I have come to know Du Bois and his family, therefore the victims are literary friends. Yet it is dissimliar from such descriptions in fictions having the added bite of being real. Whatever it may be here is bit of what captured my mind and emotions with indignation today:
"Walking the two mile stretch to downtown Atlanta becuase she (Du Bois's wife) ... refused to patronize the segregated transit system. It galled her to have to wait until every white customer had been served before a drawling department-store clerk deigned to wait on her. Along her route there was not a single water-fountain or park bench lawfull permitted to Negroes. "
Monday, January 8, 2007
Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe
Media: Book
Title: The Silent Speaker
(I need to choose another media type don’t I, books four times running.) Well I really did want to document my finishing another Nero Wolfe novel and tell you about my Rex Stout project. I first came across Rex Stout’s character Nero Wolfe in old time radio broadcasts. Then I saw his name mentioned in Nancy Pearle’s Book Lust as a Too Good to Miss author, so I checked out one of his mysteries from the library. I was hooked immediately and had been reading the Nero Wolfe collection haphazardly, whatever was available at the library. About two months ago I decided to start from the beginning and read the entire series in order, all 48 novels. The Silent Speaker is novel 11, but two of those 11 was composed of 2 short novellas, so The Silent Speaker is mystery number 13. I will simply conclude by highly recommending picking up a Nero Wolfe mystery. (And make sure it is a Rex Stout, other authors wrote using Nero Wolfe.) He one of the most vivid characters in literature. I place him second only to Sherlock Holmes as a detective/private investigator, and Archie Goodwin outshines Dr. Watson as a companion and scribe of the great man’s tales.
Title: The Silent Speaker
(I need to choose another media type don’t I, books four times running.) Well I really did want to document my finishing another Nero Wolfe novel and tell you about my Rex Stout project. I first came across Rex Stout’s character Nero Wolfe in old time radio broadcasts. Then I saw his name mentioned in Nancy Pearle’s Book Lust as a Too Good to Miss author, so I checked out one of his mysteries from the library. I was hooked immediately and had been reading the Nero Wolfe collection haphazardly, whatever was available at the library. About two months ago I decided to start from the beginning and read the entire series in order, all 48 novels. The Silent Speaker is novel 11, but two of those 11 was composed of 2 short novellas, so The Silent Speaker is mystery number 13. I will simply conclude by highly recommending picking up a Nero Wolfe mystery. (And make sure it is a Rex Stout, other authors wrote using Nero Wolfe.) He one of the most vivid characters in literature. I place him second only to Sherlock Holmes as a detective/private investigator, and Archie Goodwin outshines Dr. Watson as a companion and scribe of the great man’s tales.
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Du Bois, 3
Media: Book
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
Well, I remain fascinated with this book for the 3rd consecutive entry.
I feel a bit naïve at my level of shocked indignation toward the discrimination of and racist beliefs about African Americans at the beginning of the 20th century, revealed by Lewis in his biography. I supposed since I came of consciousness after the 1960s civil rights struggles it seems impossible that certain assumption which seem unquestionable, such as African-Americans should have “full citizenship rights”, were in fact radical ideas within the African-American leadership in 1905, not the mention the contempt and disgust many whites felt toward this idea. Lewis makes this point in the section on the 1905 Niagara Conference where Du Bois finally and dramatically broke from the leadership of Booker T. Washington (who did little to push for equal social and political rights for African-Americans).
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
Well, I remain fascinated with this book for the 3rd consecutive entry.
I feel a bit naïve at my level of shocked indignation toward the discrimination of and racist beliefs about African Americans at the beginning of the 20th century, revealed by Lewis in his biography. I supposed since I came of consciousness after the 1960s civil rights struggles it seems impossible that certain assumption which seem unquestionable, such as African-Americans should have “full citizenship rights”, were in fact radical ideas within the African-American leadership in 1905, not the mention the contempt and disgust many whites felt toward this idea. Lewis makes this point in the section on the 1905 Niagara Conference where Du Bois finally and dramatically broke from the leadership of Booker T. Washington (who did little to push for equal social and political rights for African-Americans).
Thursday, January 4, 2007
The Souls of Black Folk
Media: Book
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois
Another quick note as I read more of Lewis's W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race in the chapter on publication of The Soul's of Black Folk. It is outstanding how clearly Du Bois takes the reins of the African-American civil rights movements with the publication of this book. Du Bois's thoughts on the African-American veil (that is their skin color), the concept of the two souls (one American, one black), the prescient pronouncement that the color line will be the problem of the 20th century, the confession of what it feels like to be labeled 'a problem' by society, and the way forward for African-Americans lead by the 'talented tenth' are all themes that remained vitally important and relevant throughout the 20th century.
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois
Another quick note as I read more of Lewis's W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race in the chapter on publication of The Soul's of Black Folk. It is outstanding how clearly Du Bois takes the reins of the African-American civil rights movements with the publication of this book. Du Bois's thoughts on the African-American veil (that is their skin color), the concept of the two souls (one American, one black), the prescient pronouncement that the color line will be the problem of the 20th century, the confession of what it feels like to be labeled 'a problem' by society, and the way forward for African-Americans lead by the 'talented tenth' are all themes that remained vitally important and relevant throughout the 20th century.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Du Bois
Media: Book
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
I am right at the mid-point of author David Levering Lewis’s biography of Du Bois and he has just begun to clearly illuminate Du Bois as the founder of the 20th century African-American civil rights movement. He is just beginning to reveal Du Bois thinking on how America needs to accept African-Americans as full members of America in all their ‘African-ness.” Lewis has already revealed 2 previous strains of thought from African-American leaders on their place in America – to assimilate completely or to leave the U.S. entirely. In the first years of the 20th century Du Bois says no to both these options offering his new way: “He simply wishes to make it possible for man to be both a Negro and an American”. The book is startling in its descriptions of the United States’, and in particular, the South’s slide from the relative opportunity offered to African-Americans during Reconstruction into the rapid, ugly, disgraceful slide back toward a form of near-slavery and view of African-American’s as sub-human beginning in the late 1870s on into the 20th century.
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
I am right at the mid-point of author David Levering Lewis’s biography of Du Bois and he has just begun to clearly illuminate Du Bois as the founder of the 20th century African-American civil rights movement. He is just beginning to reveal Du Bois thinking on how America needs to accept African-Americans as full members of America in all their ‘African-ness.” Lewis has already revealed 2 previous strains of thought from African-American leaders on their place in America – to assimilate completely or to leave the U.S. entirely. In the first years of the 20th century Du Bois says no to both these options offering his new way: “He simply wishes to make it possible for man to be both a Negro and an American”. The book is startling in its descriptions of the United States’, and in particular, the South’s slide from the relative opportunity offered to African-Americans during Reconstruction into the rapid, ugly, disgraceful slide back toward a form of near-slavery and view of African-American’s as sub-human beginning in the late 1870s on into the 20th century.
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
The Business
Media: Podcast
Title: The Business
Link: http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tb
First the confession. I have the most un-hip, the nerdiest i-pod in the U.S., perhaps the world. Well, to confess before the confession, it is a budget Sandisk mp3-player, not a sleek, cool i-pod. But worst than that, I use my player exclusively for listening to Public Radio podcasts. Not one song has ever found its way onto my player. (Although I have ripped the occasional radio show from my collection of ‘30s and ‘40s radio programs and put it onto my player; yet that hardly bumps me up in the cool category does it?)
Ok, today’s media morsel from KCRW Public Radio out of Santa Monica. The Business, a program about the all the folks who make film (from the key grips to the moguls), had a great interview with composer Danny Elfman (Simpson’s theme). Listen to it for his story about how the main theme for Batman spontaneously came to him on an airplane and how he frantically kept going back and forth to the bathroom to try and capture it on his tape recorder before the music escaped from his mind. (I’m luke-warm on the film. I love the score.)
Title: The Business
Link: http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tb
First the confession. I have the most un-hip, the nerdiest i-pod in the U.S., perhaps the world. Well, to confess before the confession, it is a budget Sandisk mp3-player, not a sleek, cool i-pod. But worst than that, I use my player exclusively for listening to Public Radio podcasts. Not one song has ever found its way onto my player. (Although I have ripped the occasional radio show from my collection of ‘30s and ‘40s radio programs and put it onto my player; yet that hardly bumps me up in the cool category does it?)
Ok, today’s media morsel from KCRW Public Radio out of Santa Monica. The Business, a program about the all the folks who make film (from the key grips to the moguls), had a great interview with composer Danny Elfman (Simpson’s theme). Listen to it for his story about how the main theme for Batman spontaneously came to him on an airplane and how he frantically kept going back and forth to the bathroom to try and capture it on his tape recorder before the music escaped from his mind. (I’m luke-warm on the film. I love the score.)
Monday, January 1, 2007
How's Your Drink?
Media: Newspaper
Title: Wall Street Journal
The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal is near the top of my weekly media experiences, for two reasons in particular. One, Joe Morgenstern’s essays on film and two, Eric Felten’s cocktail article. I keep a scrap book of the most useful cocktail articles from Felten’s How’s Your Drink? column. His column provides interesting drink history, point to books, films and other media where the drink plays a prominent role, and most importantly he tells you how to make the cocktail. For me it is a near perfect column, providing the exact right mix of intellectual curiosity and alcoholic usefulness – call in nerdy debauchery. This week’s article discusses how to create your own cocktail:
“Pick a distilled spirit you like and add 1½ ounces of it. . . Add a half ounce of an aromatic or fortified wine . . . Finish it off with a quarter ounce of a liqueur of your choice.” (Felten)
I took this advice and I am drinking my liquor-ish creation as I write. Ahhh!
Title: Wall Street Journal
The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal is near the top of my weekly media experiences, for two reasons in particular. One, Joe Morgenstern’s essays on film and two, Eric Felten’s cocktail article. I keep a scrap book of the most useful cocktail articles from Felten’s How’s Your Drink? column. His column provides interesting drink history, point to books, films and other media where the drink plays a prominent role, and most importantly he tells you how to make the cocktail. For me it is a near perfect column, providing the exact right mix of intellectual curiosity and alcoholic usefulness – call in nerdy debauchery. This week’s article discusses how to create your own cocktail:
“Pick a distilled spirit you like and add 1½ ounces of it. . . Add a half ounce of an aromatic or fortified wine . . . Finish it off with a quarter ounce of a liqueur of your choice.” (Felten)
I took this advice and I am drinking my liquor-ish creation as I write. Ahhh!
The Idea
My film blog (Big Screen Seattle) is not working. It was a good experiment, but I now realize a blog is not a good format for film reviews. It grates against the blog format. A blog is a quick, daily musing, where as my film blog is occasional, lengthy and demands the organization of a web site to be useful. My new blog idea is to spend 20 minutes each night writing a paragraph on the bit of media (books, TV shows, films, radio, music, newspapers, or podcasts) that struck my mind as most worthy of comment that day.
I’m glad this idea came to me on January 1st – such a clean marker for a beginning.
I’m glad this idea came to me on January 1st – such a clean marker for a beginning.
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