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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]
Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly & the Coens' No Country for Old Men are on my list to see, though I'll probably catch most of the films mentioned eventually.
Chicago Reader review of Sarah Polley's Away From Her
As the public's understanding of Alzheimer's has increased, the disease has made its way into movies that range from tragedy (Richard Eyre's British drama Iris, about the slow deterioration of fiction writer Iris Murdoch) to schmaltz (Nick Cassavetes's three-hanky hit The Notebook). But Alice Munro is a tough-minded storyteller, and the twist that occurs midway through Away From Her precludes any sentiment.
The review tells too much of the plot for me, so I just scanned it, but I have such a good fore-feeling about this film I wanted to post this anyway.
Many of the beach towns on Long Beach Island, one of New Jersey's most popular summer vacation spots, have laws prohibiting people from digging deeper than 12 inches in the sand. They stem from an accident several years ago in which a teenager died when a deep hole he was digging collapsed, burying him.
This year, the prohibition is for a different reason: More than 1,000 pieces of unexploded World War I-era military munitions were unwittingly pumped ashore during a winter beach replenishment project decades after being dumped at sea. Authorities say they've removed everything they could, but can't guarantee more munitions don't remain hidden.
of course, being canadian helps (mike myers, david cronenberg, jim carrey, barbara gowdy, dan ackroyd, eugene levy, tom green, phil hartman, rich little, martin short and catherine o'hara are all canadian).
Hilarious though considerate review of Apocalypto (out on disc now) from the SF Chronicle's Mick LaSalle, which I stumbled upon figuring I'd give Mel a chance and look for a review untainted by anti-Mel hype
By now, it's fair to say that Mel Gibson does not make boring movies. He does, however, make movies that make you a little worried about him, and Apocalypto might be the ultimate exemplar of the Gibson style. It's a bloodbath, of course, but to say that isn't enough. Scorsese movies can be a bloodbath, but would Scorsese ever show you a man eating the raw testicles of a wild boar within the first five minutes of screen time? And what about the running motif of beating hearts yanked from living bodies? No, for those excesses one can only turn to Mel.
Think I'll pass, which is too bad because this could have been interesting sans Mr Gibson's uh issues.
An appreciation by Julia Rubiner of Talking Heads' "Revolver," Fear of Music
Fear Of Music, despite several downright gorgeous turns of melody, can be scary. Songs like "Animals," "Drugs," "Air" and especially the majestic/menacing "Memories Can't Wait" engender a profound sense of foreboding. Testified Robert A. Hull in a November 1979 Creem piece, "At any moment, the words 'helter skelter' could be carved into one's flesh."
At about 1,400 to 2,400 yen ($12-$20) for a night in a central Internet cafe -- free soft drinks, TV, comics and Internet access included -- prices beat those of Japan's famous "capsule hotels", where guests sleep in plastic cells.
This means that on a Friday night in Shibuya, one of Tokyo's main entertainment districts, the dimly lit cafes are packed.
"In the last three years we've created the technology that puts a watermark on every movie print that's sent out of Hollywood," Douglas Frith, of the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, told CTV's Mike Duffy Live.
"So when you find a pirated version anywhere on the Internet, from that watermark we can determine where it was camcorded. And for 20 to 25 per cent of the cases worldwide in 2005, it was camcorded in Canada. That number, compared to the size of our population, is astronomical."
got my sony walkman from woot on friday, and this is how i filled it (half-filled actually, it's 2GB):
odd nosdam - burner stephen mathieu & douglas benford - reciprocess & vs wire - document and eyewitness nurse with wound - soliloquy for lilith (disc 1) githead - artpop david bowie - "station to station" leo abrahams - scene memory kode 9 and spaceape - memories of the future jan jelinek - tierbeobachtungen harold budd - perhaps growing - color wheel battles - mirrored devo - hot potatoes deerhunter - cryptograms coelacanth with keith evans - wrack light in copper ruins
i actually still have an old rio i won from a now defunct music site in 2000, but it uses a parallel port connection, and holds only 128MB (!).
Nope, never read any of his books either, but he did make a difference, particularly re the Vietnam War.
What I did read was William Prochnau's account of the US journos who covered the early years of the war, Once Upon a Distant War, which I heartily recommend for its insight, readability, and as a great story.
And here is a reprise of the hilarious Doonesbury tribute from '79.
Hard to imagine the embedded poodle divas of today's media standing up to an administration.
Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined.
--Chris Marker