==pla|\|ing lakes==

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Short CNN piece on author A M Homes

Haven't read her yet, though I've certainly heard of her.

Reminds me a bit of Canadian writer Barbara Gowdy (Mr Sandman, The White Bone).

11:28 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

If you happen to be in SoCal next week, Achim Roedelius is doing a workshop, performing a (rare) concert and there's an ongoing installation too

In Ojai.

8:26 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

R.I.P. Shohei Imamura [DVDBeaver]

Have to get to bed so this will be short.

Imamura's Ballad of Narayama was easily one of the best movies of the 80s, and by itself made him a special director in my book. From what I remember of it, I doubt whether it's aged a bit.

I wasn't that crazy about The Eel or Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, though Dr Akagi wasn't bad.

I haven't seen much of his earlier work, but am interested in The Profound Desire of the Gods in particular (after reading The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film), and secondarily Vengeance Is Mine & The Pornographers.

A unique director anyway, and worth checking out, especially if you're interested in Japanese cinema -- his was a darkly comic and idiosyncratic vision.

10:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, May 29, 2006

Update on how China, Cuba & the UAE are attempting to censor net use

I'm sure shrubco & the Pentagon are jealous.

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

Guardian review of the second volume of Simon Callow's biography of Orson Welles, covering the six years following Citizen Kane [Arts & Letters Daily]

9:24 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, May 28, 2006

The winners and losers at Cannes

Winners: Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley, about the Irish fight for independence in the 1920s, Bruno Dumont's Flanders, Almodovar's Volver, Rachid Bouchareb's Days of Glory (North African Muslims joining the French against the Nazis), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel (starring Brad Pitt & Cate Blanchett) & Wang Chao's Luxury Car (Un Certain Regard winner) among others.

Losers: Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette, Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation, Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, and The Da Vinci Code.

3:52 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Another gem from Overheard in New York:

Girl: Oh my god. Don't even mention his name to me. I hate him so much.
Guy: You mean hate him like you'd wanna set him on fire hate him?
Girl: I mean hate him like I wouldn't even shit on him if someone else set him on fire.
Guy: Uh... I believe the phrase is "I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire".
Girl: Yeah, whatever. It's all the same when you're lactose-intolerant.

--Greenwich Ave & 12th St

11:13 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Previously unseen triptych of self-portraits by Francis Bacon [robot wisdom]

Also from RW: Where is Raed?: the movie and Michael Scheuer, former chief of the Osama bin Laden unit at the CIA, explains to Foreign Policy why he thinks Hayden is the wrong choice for the job, why intelligence on Iran is so poor, and why he thinks Iraq "is finished."

11:47 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Please remember me when I'm gown file

Ground burial not er permanent enough, what with the floods and whatnot

"I don't feel any different, I'm not dead. Someday, I will be, but I won't know it. Everything is already done and I know exactly what it's going to be like even though I won't know it when it happens"

Coming next: burial in missile silos which will survive a direct hit from a drone nuke and global warming and earthquakes and thousands . . .of . . . .years of . . . erosion. . . . . . . ..

"I WANT MY MUMMY!"

11:27 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Producer Robert Cort bemoans Hollywood's unsurprisingly whiffleheaded response to the idea of releasing movies in theatres and on disc/download simultaneously

9:30 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

A little lesson about empire -- and its corrosive effect on democracy and everything else -- from ancient Greece

Some time ago an army was dispatched over seas under the banner of crusading democracy. Not only would it break the back of tyranny, it would also secure untold riches and resources in the process, the politician in charge promised.

The year was 415 BC, the expeditionary force hailed from Athens, its destination was Syracuse in Sicily, and it was the brainchild of Alcibiades.

Athens was at war with her rival for supremacy in the Greek world, Sparta, in an internecine bloodletting which was to range across the Mediterranean and would rage on for a generation. Men would fight in this war who were not born when it first began. When it ended, both victor and vanquished would have reason to rue its beginning.

9:24 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Can you spot the oxymoron? file

Artstar: artworld reality show on dishnet in NYC

The eight-episode show is a collaboration between Jeffrey Deitch, the SoHo art dealer, and Voom, a high-definition satellite network. The producers came to the project with an odd mix of television and art experience. Besides Mr. Deitch, they include Tamar Hacker, an Emmy-winning producer who worked on the PBS series "American Masters" and has helped make documentaries about Alfred Stieglitz and Robert Rauschenberg, and Abby Terkuhle, who as founder and president of MTV Animation brought "Beavis and Butt-head" to the nation.

When an open call was issued in March 2005 for artists to audition, about 400 showed up in SoHo on a frigid Tuesday morning. They lined up for three blocks around the Deitch Projects gallery on Wooster Street for the chance — if they were lucky — to get 30 seconds of attention from Mr. Deitch or one of the critics and writers he had enlisted as judges.

Two artists camped out in sleeping bags to be first in line. An artist collective at the back of the line hid inside a huge foam-rubber head, with a cigarette the size of a baseball bat jutting from its mouth. ("Is this the line for Aerosmith tickets?" one artist inside the head asked, trying, like many others there, to mock the event while still shivering to be a part of it.)

urp.

9:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Filmmaker Magazine has an interview with Altman about his new film A Prairie Home Companion, and other stuff

I never felt any resonance with Keillor at all, but the buzz is pretty good about this film.

2:09 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, May 26, 2006

amazon wire has an audio interview with David Lynch on the long-awaited release of the last 2 seasons of Twin Peaks, and a reissue of the first season with the pilot included [DavisDVD]

The delays were due to Lynch's work schedule on Inland Empire and the transfer of the rights to the series to Paramount.

11:45 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Details from the inside artwork of the Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier set, showing exactly what you'll be getting

The half hour of additional scenes and Coppola's commentary for both versions are what's most interesting, but the post-production featurettes on disc 2 will be fascinating too.

Only the Director's cut of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven will compete with this release as the serious film fan's DVD of the year.

So far.

Also: Ridley Scott was apparently never happy with the re-release of Blade Runner in '92, despite the nearly unanimously applauded improvements over the original version. Now comes word that a Final Cut will be available for a limited time starting in September, after which a 4 disc set of all 4 versions + extras will be released.

11:31 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

R.I.P. Hamza El Din, "father of modern Nubian music" [Magpie]

Bio.

1:09 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

R.I.P. Desmond Dekker

"Israelites" was the first Jamaican single to crack the American pop charts (1969), and many listeners have never gotten reggae out of their heads since.

Thanks, Desmond (bio).

1:02 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Interview I'm in the process of reading with Mike Davis on BLDG BLOG on his new book Planet of Slums, how Ridley Scott has defined the iconic "alien Other" for most Americans through his films Blade Runner and Black Hawk Down, the remarkable success of the car bomb and why the worst urban slums are the best training ground for soldiers, among other things [Ballardian]

Like many of his readers, I'm not as pessimistic as Davis, but he's usually a good read, though as the interviewer notes, his books have not been edited well for readability. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles & Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster were very stimulating reads.

On a related note, it's interesting how governments now see their relationship with "communities" as a mass psy-ops opportunity.

9:39 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

On CNN no less

Marijuana smoking does not increase a person's risk of developing lung cancer, according to the findings of a new study at the University of California Los Angeles that surprised even the researchers

Boy I bet this pisses off the drug-demonizing whiffleheads.

9:01 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, May 21, 2006

The social climate is certainly more breathable than a couple years ago but items like these still make me agoraphobic: a new laser weapon being used in Iraq temporarily (so they claim) blinds victims & the Dixie Chicks (whom I applaud for their brave and commercially very risky public disapproval of shrubco and the gangsters at Sony) are considered "radical" for criticizing a president who'd be in Hague solitary if he were Serbian

9:48 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Not only is the NSA's phone record sweep questionable for civil rights reasons -- some analysts say it likely doesn't work at all

4:15 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

American Apparel's mission statement

After seeing their ad on the back of Arthur and noting that enoshop uses their shirts, I checked their site out.

I like where they're going as an ethical workplace bucking outsourcing and all, but their sizing doesn't work for a wideboy like me. But then I'm not the "youthful type" they're aiming at. . . and I'm not into "snug" in general, clothingwise.

Reminds me of Deva's stuff which I tried out back in the 80s, but never felt quite right either, though not because the clothing was snug.

My body type is not easy to buy for though.

The website loads slow and somewhat wonky with Opera or Firefox too, at least on my WIN98 relic, a bit too fancy.

But if you want a snug fit, you've probably got a um big processor.

9:49 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Time magazine's best novels written in English since 1923 [refdesk]

I counted 25 I've read, and it's a hipper -- or at least more relevant -- list than most I've seen since the turn of the xian millennium.

It even includes a graphic novel.

Of course everyone's list would be different. For example, I'd have to list say Beckett's Molloy / Malone Dies / The Unnameable trilogy (or pick one) instead of at least ONE of Philip Roth's works.

But it's nice to see Naked Lunch, Neuromancer, Snow Crash, Red Harvest, The Big Sleep, Dog Soldiers, The Corrections, & Ubik recognized.

8:54 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Since I wanted to get the free shipping on my new remote from amazon, I decided to take the plunge and order the 4-disc Director's cut of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven even though I haven't seen the theatrical release, because the price was killer ($17.46, reg $34.98), and I'm interested in the period & think Susan will be into it too

The price will probably go up on Tuesday when it's officially released.

The DVD Talk review linked above was the cincher I guess.

11:11 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

In case you were considering buying it file

Apparently there's an an extended edition (150 mins.) of The New World in the works for later this year

As for myself, I got about half an hour into a rental and let it go. The photography is stunning but Malick's sensibility just doesn't catch for me somehow.

10:53 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, May 19, 2006

Richard Linklater has 2 films at Cannes: A Scanner Darkly (which I've mentioned a few times here) and Fast Food Nation, a fictionalized version of the Eric Schlosser bestseller featuring 3 overlapping storylines

Trailer for FFN at the film's website, ASD trailer here.

11:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Details of the August release of Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier which I mentioned rumors of a short while back

Glad I waited to buy. . .

8:21 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Interesting music site devoted to "interesting old records": Waxidermy

8:48 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, May 14, 2006

blog of the day seems not to be daily right now, but the latest pick (from last month) does have a very funny post from the chancelucky blog on Karl Rove re-writing the Book of Judas

10:15 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The ever-more essential ubuweb has posted .avi files of the Burroughs/Gysin/Balch cut-up films [WFMU]

With a long essay on their historical importance in film history by Bright Lights Journal's Rob Bridgett.

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

Never say never file

I never thought I'd be grateful to our phone carrier Qwest for anything -- but at least they stood up to shrubco and the NSA

The three companies that turned over their customers' records -- AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon, which combined carry roughly 80 percent of the nation's landline calls and half the wireless ones -- issued terse statements saying they valued their customers' privacy and did nothing illegal. A fourth firm, Qwest, refused the government's request, despite what USA Today reported was heavy pressure by the NSA, including a suggestion that Qwest might not get future classified work with the government. In a written statement, the attorney for former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio said his client believed "these requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act."

You have to bend pretty low to make a corporation like Qwest -- which regularly pays fines for poor customer service -- look like a defender of the public good.

Of course the Bush administration has set new er standards in so many ways. . .

9:20 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Checking out the TCM schedule for the week, I chanced upon a darkly hilarious comment by "zetes" on Walk Softly, Stranger, a little-known b starring Joseph Cotten & Alida Valli -- yeah, from The Third Man, which leads to the comment. . .

Nice noirish quote from it on the main page though:

Bowen: Why don't you sit down?
Chris Hale: I wouldn't sit on your death bed.

ouch.

8:26 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Mentally ill troops forced into combat

"I can't imagine something more irresponsible than putting a soldier suffering from stress on (antidepressants), when you know these drugs can cause people to become suicidal and homicidal," said Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a New York-based advocacy group. "You're creating chemically activated time bombs."

8:12 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Nearly 50 years in the making, Ken Jacobs' found-footage epic Star Spangled to Death is available from the director

440 minutes, 4 discs plus booklet, $70.

Jacobs' collaboration with Ikue Mori & John Zorn Celestial Subway Lines / Salvaging Noise is available from Blockbuster & netflix, unlike SSTD, which isn't so far and may not be in the future.

Haven't seen either film, but both sound unique and interesting.

Dusted review of CSL/SN here.

Doug Cummings' review of Star Spangled here.

9:17 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Also from localerts: AZ Senate President Ken Bennett's son gets off easy after participating in broomstick assault on 18 boys at a summer camp near Prescott

Several of the 18 victims left the courtroom angry and frustrated. Since the assaults, many have had trouble sleeping and going to the bathroom, their parents say. Their grades have slipped, and many are undergoing counseling for victims of abuse.

"I think it's pretty stupid," Zachary Motcheck, 13, the first to report the assaults to authorities, said of the sentence. He and his parents have been outspoken about the case. "It's unfair, and it's just because Bennett's dad is a senator . . . What they did was wrong and they both deserved more jail time."

Keaton Koch, 13, another victim who has spoken out publicly with his parents, said Bennett's apology was self serving.

"I think they should get 10 years in prison," Koch said.

The case garnered national media attention after the Yavapai County Attorney's Office said it did not consider the case as a sex crime and could not prove that Bennett and Wheeler had any sexual intent.

On Friday, Judge O'Toole said he also did not believe this was a case of sexual assault. He called the conduct "extremely reckless and dangerous . . . It was not intended to be criminal in nature."

8:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Fatal truck accident involving radioactive waste materials on I-40 west of Flagstaff

This is why people along the proposed route for nuclear waste heading to Yucca Flats are um resistant [localerts]

8:24 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, May 12, 2006

Japan Suicides Seen Staying High as Income Gap Widens

According to the World Health Organization, the suicide rate in Japan was 24.1 per 100,000 people in 2000, the second-highest among Group of Eight industrialized countries after Russia's 39.4. Rates for other G8 countries included 18.4 in France and 10.4 in the United States.

Yamada, who has written that an income gap in Japan has widened recently following the breakdown of a traditional social safety net such as lifetime employment, said a rising risk of dropping out of the middle class was behind the high suicide rate.

He said counseling and offering therapy would not prevent suicides induced by such fears.

In a bid to bring down the number of suicides to pre-1998 levels over the next 10 years, the government unveiled a package of measures in December.

But is mainly focuses on promoting counseling and building more fences on train platforms to prevent people from jumping in front of trains, a common method of suicide in Japan, as well as trying to limit access to Internet sites that promote suicide.

No religious proscription exists against suicide in Japan and it has long been seen as a way to escape failure or save loved ones from shame or suffering economic hardship.

Analysts have also said if Japanese insurers stopped paying life insurance claims for those who kill themselves, the number of suicides triggered by economic problems would fall drastically.

11:02 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

'Brazilian Stonehenge' discovered

What is so surprising about finding a site like this in South America, I don't understand. Is this just weak-minded Eurocentrism? Has the writer ever been to the Serpent Mound in Ohio or Palenque in Mexico?


10:56 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, May 11, 2006

In case you're not on the moveon.org list or haven't heard otherwise, check out the save the internet site to protect Net Neutrality, which Congress is aiming to sabotage for the plutocrats

"'Net neutrality' is a concept that is still unfamiliar to most Americans, but it keeps the Internet democratic. ... One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access and slower to navigate. Providers could also block access to sites they do not like."

At least sign the petition once you understand the issue, if not contact your representatives.

6:51 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Local news

Cottonwood has a coffee shop/bakery/wifi zone where I'd probably meet you if you came to town -- Planet Java, which has a website and copies of arthur magazine which I drop there myself

Incidentally arthur has a new distro rep (hi dalasie!) and -- finally! -- an updated page of drop points. The new issue (with Growing on the cover) is out now.

7:45 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

SurvivaBall (heh heh)

They've done it again: Halliburton solves global warming

More here.

8:15 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Half right file

Warners to use BitTorrent to offer films for download [hacking netflix]

However. . .

They will be prevented from copying and distributing files they purchase through two mechanisms: one that requires them to enter a password before watching a file, and another that allows the file to be viewed only on the computer to which it was downloaded.

No gets.

8:24 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, May 08, 2006

Some good links at this post on the WFMU blog re Tsai Ming-Liang's The Hole, and the music behind the film's remarkable musical interludes by 50s/60s chanteuse Grace Chang (mp3s posted)

I tried to get this used online recently and got this instead. Fortunately I got a prompt refund and didn't have to return it. I tried to watch it but found it drab, trite and impossible to stay with.

Anyway, Tsai's The Hole is one of my favorites, and probably the most upbeat of his films, which are not generally very cheerful. OK, I'm understating a bit here -- they're dominated by long takes and alienated characters that would send Antonioni running from the theatre -- but he's really an excellent director, one of the best around.

The Hole is also a forerunner of his latest festival stunner The Wayward Cloud, from what I've read anyway. If you're interested in what he's about, this isn't a bad place to start.



9:27 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, May 07, 2006

2 more film sites: silverthreaded's Chris Marker site & Doug Cummings' filmjourney.org

11:22 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Funny how this report suddenly appears after MacKinnon reverse-tech story yesterday; meanwhile shrub is already gazing back nostalgically -- and without irony probably -- on his Reign of Terror 2 years before his departure

Assuming he's not impeached for war crimes or whatever before then...

Not likely, but there's a nasty little worm turning at the core of the Spell these days. Might heat things up to meltdown anytime.

9:19 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

New links added to film and music sections at left

FILM
Film International magazine (online and print)

Global Film Initiative

The Film Journal

Cinepad

MUSIC
The War Against Silence (no longer active but years of archives)

1:06 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, May 06, 2006

6 years ago UK hacker Bill MacKinnon used simple PERL script & commercially available software to uncover evidence of "free energy" tech suppressed by US on NASA & US military computers; now he's facing extradition charges which could put him in jail for 60 years in the US for penetrating laughably insecure PCs in those networks

Real/WMP feeds of live BBC interview here, which I viewed without being in the UK or subscribing, which I haven't been able to do before.

7:07 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, May 05, 2006

Just watched Whisky, a film from Uruguay that's part of the Global Film Initiative collection of films promoting "cross-cultural understanding through the medium of cinema"

It's a charming, very dry and bleakly funny film influenced by Jarmusch and Kaurismaki, and directed by Juan Pablo Rebella & Pablo Stoll.

If you like their work, you'll probably like this movie too.

10:42 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

I posted a while ago about the missing scenes from both versions of Apocalypse Now; perhaps the rumored kitchen sink version will resolve the issues

8:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Jeph mentioned Herzog's recent release The Wild Blue Yonder to me the other day, and I can see nothing about it that doesn't sound pretty damn cool

"The film, - a hybrid of documentary material, footage of the actor Brad Dourif as an extraterrestrial resident in America, hallucinatory images from space and the sub-arctic, and a soundtrack featuring a Senegalese singer, five Sardinian voices and a Dutch cellist – is mesmerising and beyond categorisation.”

David Jenkins, Sunday Telegraph

Available only on PAL VHS right now.

Blurbs here.

7:24 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Racism out of the closet in Russia

7:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Net censorship spreads worldwide

In many nations, the net used to be the only uncensored outlet and the place people turned to for news they would never hear about through official channels.

However, noted the report, governments have woken up to the fact that the people they regard as dissidents are active online. Many are now moving to censor blogs and the last year has seen many committed bloggers jailed for what they said in their online journal.

7:12 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

The corporation that never learned file

Micro$uck dumps crippleware on Africans

9:13 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, May 01, 2006

New Arthur out this week (pdf version) with articles on Om, Growing & Pandit Pran Nath

10:19 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

But there's something happening here and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Murdoch?

10:15 PM - [Link] - Comments ()