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| blogging since Oct '01
This is Gordon Osse's blog.
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"He who does not at some time, with definite determination consent to the terribleness of life, or even exalt in it, never takes possession of the inexpressible fullness of the power of our existence."
-- Rilke
Love,
the powering,
the Widening,
light
unraveling
all faces followers of
All colors, beams of
woven thread,
the Skin
alight that
warms itself
with life.
-- Akhenaton, "Hymn to the Sun"
Opt your children out of Pentagon harassment
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WHO I WORK FOR: Mount Hope Wholesale
Wholesale nuts, grains, fruits and spices (and more) shipped from Cottonwood AZ
(Tell them you heard about them on Gordon's blog!)
WHAT I'VE SEEN LATELY:
MOVIES
(r) = re-viewing
God Told Me To (1976, Cohen)
Whispering City (1947, Otsep)
Times and Winds (2006, Erdem)
Dirty Money (Un flic) (1972, Melville)
10th District Court (2004, Depardon)
RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy (2007, O'Sullivan)
The Furies (1950, Mann)
In a Lonely Place (1950, Ray)(r)
The Adjuster (1991, Egoyan)(r)
TV
Mad Men The Buddha of Suburbia Intelligence (2006, Haddock) Family Guy
SUGGESTED VIEWING: The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (2004, Curtis) [available for streaming/download here]
I've heard only Jesu and The Thermals before -- I'm trolling for music I might like on best-of lists, so I've no idea of whether I'd like these comps or not, never mind you.
Both titles plus Baldwin's earlier short The Wild Gunman are on the Trib 99 DVD, which netflix carries along with his more recent (2000) Spectres of the Spectrum, which at 94 mins. might be too much of a good thing, though I have yet to see it.
I always learn a lot reading Jonathan Rosenbaum, and his new column in cinema scope is no exception: I was delighted to find out that John Waters has done the commentary for the new "Hollywood Royalty Edition" of Mommie Dearest & even more so for the tip to a source for reasonable (considering who knows when we'll see Criterion-quality or even decent legit DVD releases of these films) but lovingly assembled DVD-Rs of classic Japanese films like Sogo Ishii's Yume no ginga (Labyrinth of Dreams) and Imamura's Kamigami no Fukaki Yokubo (Profound Desire of the Gods)
Haven't posted much lately, due to low physical energy (December is never my peak time), a subtle yet broad range of shifts in my life, among which are a new computer, which we should have in a week or so; meanwhile here is an interesting list of blogs, mental & net-related mostly, via Pop Candy and below some movies/TV-on-disc I've enjoyed recently
Carnivale - season 2 (easily one of the best series of the last 20 years)
The Young Poisoner's Handbook
Clash by Night (some very tight noir dialogue)
Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man (a well-done tribute/concert to a unique & essential artist)
Burn to Shine 2 - Chicago, IL - 09.13.2004 (just discovered this series at the local library: 8 or so bands/artists from a metro area each perform one song over the course of a single day, recorded in hi-def, and it's quite good)
House MD (only the third non-cable series I've enjoyed since 2000, along with Family Guy & Wonderfalls)
L.I.E. (Michael Cuesta (12 and Holding) is making perhaps the least predictable and most thoughtful American movies about teens these days)
High-definition movies are quite tempting. But considering the current high player prices, limited content and uncertainty over which format to purchase, it may be more tempting to buy a good upconverting DVD player and sit a few feet farther back from the TV.
New at ubuweb: the works of Terayama Shuji in .avi and an audio companion to the Super Vision show opening next week at ICA in Boston
Art can predict technology - Jules Verne was the first to launch a ship under water, and Melies traveled to the moon long before Apollo 8. Perhaps this is even a logical necessity; after all, without conceiving of something first, how could anyone invent it? But Super Vision, the inaugural exhibition for the ICA Boston's new building, is more interested in the inverse of that relationship. "The question posed," says curator Nicholas Baume in his essay for the show's catalogue, "is how artists have responded to and interpreted the changing nature of visuality" in the emerging digital era. To answer that question, Super Vision gathers work executed almost exclusively in traditional (pre-digital) media: paintings, sculpture, photographs, film. It is not a futuristic, or speculative show-it does not ask the work to predict technological times to come. Rather, Super Vision measures the technological times we are in, by their warp and pull on the art that already is.
In constructing an audio response (you could call it a soundtrack) to Super Vision, I followed this lead. Rather than look to the latest computer-based electronica-the futuristic sounds of tomorrow-I wanted to gather work made by traditional means, which would not have been possible outside today's digital audio environment. Thus CD 1 poses the question: What happens to the sound of acoustic instruments, once musicians are familiar with the tools and techniques of electronic music? And CD 2 asks a related question about our ur-instrument, the body: How do we hear the body's sounds, now that technology has given us superhuman ears? [from the intro by Damon Krukowski]
A major solar flare (X8) occurred at 3:35 Arizona time this morning, the first flare of any kind in a while (we're just beginning to emerge from solar minimum), from a sunspot just coming around the sun's eastern horizon
Not directed at us, but significant nonetheless, as evidence builds (for example) of a relationship between solar activity and quake action here.
While researching the early Altman film That Cold Day in the Park (only around as a Republic (eek) VHS tape in the US, and an OOP DVD in the UK), I found online film magazine The High Hat (named for the famous tagline of Jon Polito's character in Miller's Crossing, one of my favorite movies), whose latest number is an overview of Altman's career
Robert Altman makes movies that seem more alive than those of most directors, movies that, at their best, tantalize the viewer with the special feel of life caught on the fly. His greatest movies don’t feel encumbered by plot or genre, yet unlike so many attempts by American filmmakers to transcend plot and genre, they don’t wind up feeling shapeless. They are collections of moments, often accidental-seeming, throwaway bits, that by the picture’s conclusion have coalesced into a vision. It’s as if the wind gradually blew together leaves and scraps of newspaper until they formed a replica of a Matisse painting. Because of this mysterious quality they have, and because they’re so moment-by-moment pleasurable, they can easily stand up to a dozen viewings
Griswold, who gave up fast-paced Los Angeles and the acting directorship of the famed Getty Museum to move here a year ago, says something "remarkable" is happening in Minneapolis. The museum's expansion alone brought 40% more floor space for art, making it one of the biggest, most comprehensive U.S. art museums. And two other institutions have undergone transformations over the past 18 months, fueled by multimillion-dollar donations by local art lovers.
The already sizable Walker unveiled a $92 million expansion in April 2005 that doubled its size. In June, the Guthrie Theater, long considered one of the best regional theaters in the nation, moved to a sophisticated, new $125 million complex on the reviving Mississippi riverfront. It houses three theater spaces, restaurants and bars.
Both new buildings are the work of big-name architects: Switzerland's Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron at the Walker and France's Jean Nouvel at the Guthrie; and the buildings are drawing attention for their facades as well as interiors. So are several other recent buildings, including the new Cesar Pelli-designed Public Library, which opened in May, and the Michael Graves-designed Children's Theatre, which opened last October.
They're not the last of the cultural upgrades. Legendary architect Frank Gehry of Guggenheim Bilbao fame has drawn plans for an expansion of the riverfront Weisman Museum, which he designed in 1993 (sometimes called Little Bilbao for its likeness to his masterpiece in Spain). It holds the small but impressive art collection of the University of Minnesota.
The fallout is a city where visitors will find more art, architecture, theater and music than they could digest in a weekend, or even a week, all in a tidy, easy-to-reach and easy-to-navigate metropolis.
Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined.
--Chris Marker