==pla|\|ing lakes==

Sunday, April 29, 2007

nice post at giornale nuovo on pietre dure, ‘the technique of using small, exquisitely cut and fitted, highly-polished coloured stones to create what amounts to a painting in stone,’ dating at least from the Renaissance

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Which Science Fiction Writer Are You? [scribblingwoman]

A rough mix pulled up Olaf for me. not bad. the long view.

His work directly influenced Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Stanisław Lem, C.S. Lewis and John Maynard Smith and indirectly influenced countless others, contributing so many ideas to the world of science-fiction (most of them inspired by his readings in philosophy) that they are too numerous to list. Although his work predated the appearance of the word "transhuman" in 1966, both the transhuman condition and the supermind (composed of many individual consciousnesses) form recurring themes in his work. Star Maker also contained the first known description of Dyson spheres. Freeman Dyson credits this novel with giving him the idea. Last and First Men also featured early descriptions of genetic engineering and terraforming.[wiki]

10:37 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, April 27, 2007

Gore Vidal on (among other things) why the coming bankruptcy of the US might just save the country

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scuttlebutt is that Ridley Scott is not only tweaking Blade Runner with CGI, he's actually done some re-shoots for the ultimate cut due out soon

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nifty idea

"New Climates will present new and existing artworks responding to the relationship between art, global climate change and networked culture. This curatorial weblog will create a flexible and open-ended space to address these ideas at a time when climate change has become a vital concern among artists. [rhizome via ikastikos]

7:50 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, April 26, 2007

"Philip Johnson designed the house so he could intimately observe a landscape that included rows of trees pruned to cast particular patterns of light"

Johnson's famous Glass House is now open to public, with structures housing art by Warhol, Segal, Rauschenberg & Stella nearby

If you're visiting New York, the site is in nearby New Canaan CT. It's $25 for the 90 minute tour, and you can even take the train from NYC if you don't want to drive.

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If only his rating system had died with him

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Saturday, April 21, 2007

"Fascism is the frenzy of sexual cripples."

. . . a Wilhelm Reich quote appearing in WR: Mysteries of the Organism, from this old review of a VHS set of Makavejev's early films, which whets the appetite for the 3 films previous to the 2 being released by Criterion soon

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Nice short review of The Queen, out on disc this week

I remember Mirren dissing Diana before her death, saying something about shutting up and playing the game and she could end up Queen or something along those lines (perhaps the interview from Us Magazine quoted here). Which I thought was harsh back then, and still do.

Anyway I've followed her work since O Lucky Man! and I'm sure I'll love this film. When Stephen Frears gets it right (as in Dirty Pretty Things, My Beautiful Laundrette, Prick Up Your Ears, & High Fidelity) his films are tight, intelligent and enjoyable.

9:50 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, April 20, 2007

If you haven't seen Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room it's running on PBS' Independent Lens series next Tuesday

You may have to clean the slime off your tube afterwards, but it'll be worth it.

7:09 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, April 19, 2007

photos of rinko kawauchi [Heading East]

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Nice review of Gilliat's Green for Danger, recently released on Criterion

Although not released until 1946, Green For Danger bears the scars of a long and bitter war. Ostensibly a work of escapist entertainment, the film slots neatly into that run of pictures which mark the undoubted high point of British filmmaking, those made during the war and immediately after it: A Matter Of Life And Death and A Canterbury Tale, This Happy Breed and Brief Encounter, Passport To Pimlico and Whisky Galore!, among countless others. Films which, no matter what their subject matter, feel infused with the spirit of wartime: fear, restraint and oppression, certainly, but also a sense of unity, perseverance and a charming streak of bittersweet gallows humour.

It's really a very odd film, and worth seeing especially if you're a Sim fan like me.

11:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Which Philip K Dick Story Are We In Today? [SF Gospel]

a regular feature at frolix_8.

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Saturday, April 14, 2007

Lowdown -- courtesy of Gary Tooze & Jonathan Rosenbaum -- on the new French release (PAL Region 0) of Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema

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Short Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson, The Believer) piece in the Guardian [Pop Candy]

'I didn't want to work in a paper mill, and I wasn't going to stay in school. I hated being a kid. I didn't like being told what to do, I didn't like my body, I didn't like any of it. Being a kid and playing and all that stuff just drove me nuts.'

So when The Mickey Mouse Club auditioned children in Montreal, 12 year-old Ryan went along. He was hired by Disney, and went on to do an indelible stint as a 'Mouseketeer' with Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake, at which point he allegedly proved such a bad influence on the girls that their mothers complained to Disney. According to Gosling, 'I just told them what I heard - like positions and stuff.' Teaching Britney Spears about sex: Now there's an achievement! 'I feel somewhat responsible for how sexual she is now,' he said when Britney was at the height of her fame, 'When I see her with a snake around her neck, I think: Did I do that?'

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Tommy (Erdelyi) Ramone is now half of a bluegrass duo [Pop Candy]

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Friday, April 13, 2007

Most of the Criterion releases so far this year haven't been at the top of my list of waiting-fors, but this summer things are turning around in a big way: Melville's Army of Shadows, Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine, 2 by Makavejev (Sweet Movie & WR: Mysteries of the Organism), Lindsay Anderson's If. . . and last but certainly not least, Chris Marker's La Jetee & Sans Soleil on the same disc

eat 'em up yum.

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mmmmm . . . calmative agents -- and Project DORK

"A recent study out of the Air War College calls for using chemicals as "first-use weapons against terrorists" -- part of a larger pitch to rethink the long-time pariah of military warfare"

And then there's puffed wheat and saluting latrines. Ketchum's book looks like a must-read.

9:37 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

"We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard ... and too damn cheap," he once suggested carving into a wall on the Grand Canyon, as a message for flying-saucer creatures

R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut

The Sirens of Titan blew me away as a teen, the first Vonnegut I read. Reading someone for whom alternate realities were naturally assumed and a source of amusement relaxed me in a way I didn't understand for years.

Thanks Kurt.

9:56 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Hollywood's portrayal of journos has morphed from hunky star-heroes in the 70s & 80s to post-9/11 em-bedded, morally dubious geek-fatales [disinfo]

This is actually a return to how the media was depicted in the 30s, 40's & 50s in movies like Blonde Bombshell, His Girl Friday & Ace in the Hole.

In those days they were still meagerly paid social outsiders though. Now they're mostly on the same team as the pols & corporate gangsters, and a similar payscale.



9:18 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Ads by Dr Seuss [everlasting blort]

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Whoops -- Good Shepherd is De Niro's second (third? -- counting The Score) film as director, not his first as mentioned below

Good Shepherd is several steps above either of the earlier films, though.

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Nice interview with Joseph-Gordon Levitt on the Onion site

AVC: Do you always put a lot of time into researching your roles, or are there occasions where you can just grip it and rip it?

JGL: That's a tough one to articulate. Not only is it different for every character, it's also different for every scene of the character. It's probably different within moment to moment in a scene. I think that anybody who says "This is the one way to go about being an actor" has probably not done a lot of professional work before. Because the truth of actually working on a movie set is that you're in the midst of a logistical nightmare.

Levitt has moved surprisingly quickly into my A-list of American actors over the last few years; he's quite adept at finding the emotional center of gravity in his roles, and leaning on that fucker till it hurts (especially in Mysterious Skin, one of the most moving & haunting films I've seen in years).

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Some other films I've enjoyed lately:

She Played With Fire (aka Fortune Is A Woman)
Machuca
The Goddess of 1967
Half Nelson
Following Sean
Proces de jeanne d'arc
Zerophilia
Tideland
The Butcher Boy
John Waters: This Filthy World
Human Desire
Pressure Point

Plus the BBC series The State Within, which is quite good.

12:24 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The main flaw in The Good Shepherd is the stolid protagonist, bereft of emotion, hard to identify with and feel for; but it's a subtle well-done film, and an impressive first feature by director De Niro

It slipped in and out of theatres and my consciousness quickly. And I nearly stopped watching it after 20 minutes due to its deliberate pacing, predictability and how utterly unlikeable the main character is (this also happened with The Talented Mr Ripley, also with Matt Damon in the lead).

But I stayed with it and ended up liking it a lot.

Particularly for those who've not read deeply about the "spook" universe, especially the C.I.A., and are too young to have lived through the Cold War, it's a good introduction to the subject. It is certainly no less relevant politically despite being a period piece -- perhaps even more important than 20 years ago. That being said , it could have been far more critical of US & C.I.A. policy and still have been woven from historically documented events, as it basically was.

The essentially corrosive effect of spook life in this or any era makes it a timeless subject anyway.

The cast is killer, of course. I didn't even recognize Hutton & Crudup, or Dullea for that matter.

Apparently De Niro cut 30 minutes; the DVD has only deleted scenes as extras and a restored version with a De Niro interview at least would be welcome.

12:08 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, April 06, 2007

doug rushkoff on how the net isn't a safe neighborhood anymore

I’ve been saying since the late ’80s—before the Internet really existed—that our networks are not a thing in themselves. They are a trial run, a social experiment: a way of practicing collective social engagement so that we might see whether or not such a thing is possible in real life. The Internet of the early to mid-’90s really was such a collaborative space, and a few of the projects that remain from those days, from Wikipedia to Craig’s List, still bear some resemblance to that earliest ethos of provisional collectivism.

But Wikipedia has now fallen victim, to some extent, to politicians and others with agendas, who change entries about their opposition to make them look bad. And Craig’s List has become increasingly difficult to patrol for scams and ruthless profiteers. Each organization has to spend more time and resources preventing abuse than it does doing the thing it originally set out to do. And that’s pretty much the definition of the “point of diminishing returns.”

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Thursday, April 05, 2007

search phrase tracked to my old blog

"email all ministers college license to cast off secret societies force fields off of eyes"

someone in philly.

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Photos by Chris Jordan [Incoming Signals]

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arthur blog lives anyway

BLDGBLOG mainman Geoff Manaugh hosts free interdisciplinary symposium on architecture and design featuring Walter Murch on the Parthenon & Erik Davis on spiritual structures in Cali

In San Francisco this Saturday.

As an aside, I too can heartily recommend the Murch/Michael Ondaatje collaboration The Conversations to anyone artistically inclined, not just cinephiles.

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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

yikes

Oh, that Keith, he does just the darnedest things . . .



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Monday, April 02, 2007

Nice piece on Wire by k-punk -- ostensibly a review of a double live album that chronicles the very beginning and early height of their career, but most importantly crisply delineates the long shadow they've cast on rock post-1978

Unlike post-punk peers such as Joy Division, The Fall and Magazine, Wire were not dominated by a single individual; and, unlike Gang of Four, they were without a ‘democratic centralist’ will-to-collectivity. Instead, the group were a roiling torrent of unresolved contradictions, forever in a state of transition and instability, never arriving at a seamless, settled aesthetic. Perhaps their over-designed sound, their refusal of spontaneity, was a symptom and a sublimation of these tensions. In any case, Wire were visionaries without a clearly identifiable Vision, their intentions opaque, their words, anagrammatic, inscrutable – they were not only art pop, but abstract art pop.

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Sunday, April 01, 2007

Early review of songs behind David Byrne's musical about Imelda Marcos [sic]

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Finally

Midomi will recognize a song you hum, sing or whistle to it -- or that's the idea, which would be great for record store clerks (like i was back in the 70s) -- if anyone still shopped in them [old Pop Candy]

6:18 PM - [Link] - Comments ()