==pla|\|ing lakes==

Sunday, October 30, 2005

textura looks a pretty good review site

Much of it has a suspended quality, of time stretched out, elongated, with overlapping waves of strummings that variously suggest guitars, harps, bells, and dulcimers constellating about a central drone. This deceptively 'pretty' music of lustrous filigrees and aural wisps exudes a meandering, seductive ambiance. It's a haunting reverberant sound that, in spite of its cool digital sheen and glassiness, feels natural and inviting. The melodies are vaguely defined, as if Rabelais is sculpting his sound as an aural analogue to the blurred outlines of a Gerhard Richter painting. No one element carries a melody but instead crystalline elements coalesce to suggest them. It approximates a hocketing process where instruments build upon each other in constructing a melody.

-- from the review for akira rabelais' ...benediction, draw

12:09 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, October 29, 2005

In honor of this month's release of the collectors' edition of The Big Lebowski -- as well as the Achievers Set for the truly obsessed -- here's the story of the guy who inspired the character

8:17 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

I posted back in '02 on my old blog about phthalates, which I seem to remember the above article relating to "new car smell," though I can't find the reference now -- anyway the Japanese are admitting the chemical cocktail that creates that smell is toxic

Though as the latter article says, some people like it so much they buy aerosols mimicking it.

The smell of new vinyl is what I'm talking about. The highest phthalate exposure comes from cosmetics, medical supplies, vinyl toys and home furnishings.

In 2003, the EU ordered the phase-out of these chemicals by January 2004. This site has no recent updates, but there's more here.

For anyone thinking of building or remodeling their home with the latest attention to toxicities chemical and electromagnetic -- and you have the bucks -- hookup with the Bau-Biologie people.

After checking all this out, you might watch Todd Haynes' movie with renewed interest...

8:02 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Wal-Mart calls for higher minimum wage

Yes it's a charm offensive to offset the gender discrimination suit and bad image in general.

The sad thing is that Americans are so poor that Wal-Mart has to do this so they can afford to shop even there.

Once again I'll say it.

3 words folks.

"Global living wage."

6:35 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, October 24, 2005

UbuWeb is up again, and has audio and video files of Robert Ashley's Music with Roots in the Aether (1975) posted, along with the text of the new foreward to the book from 1999

"Music with Roots in the Aether" is certainly just one of thousands of big ideas, dreams, desires, plans that composers have had since the beginnings of serious music in America that never really get finished, because there are no mechanisms of support in our society, yet, that the composer can look to for help.

I am not talking just about money, though that always appears to be the main problem. I am talking about the more complex-and unsolvable by any single person-problem of how to get the work produced and made available to the audience for which it is intended. That this problem can have disastrous personal effects on the composer̳ intentions even as the idea is being conceived must be obvious, but I can̴ go into that. The argument is simply that assuming the composer to be superhuman in optimism and good will-or just plain nuts-to the degree that the project is actually begun and the composer keeps believing in it and working on it, there comes a point inevitably when it must be recognized that the next obstacle is insurmountable. The sun is setting and the day is over. End of project. Depression. Chemicals. Suicide. Get a job selling something. Who cares?

Every composer knows this and knows all the reasons why. Spare the reader a long list of complaints against publishers and the more up-to-date media. The reason is that we are, apparently, too young and raw as a "people" to know how to make it work. And so our serious music, the audience for which is demonstrably enormous in number but spread all across a huge continent, is in a disastrous disarray, divided against itself, attacked on all sides by an almost universally stupid and ignorant "critical" press and dispirited to the point where one has to wonder how the music continues to grow at all. But like a sort of misunderstood teenager of great intelligence and promise, it goes on anyway, sometimes blinded in tears, often in trouble with all conventions of good behavior and without much hope, but destined to grow simply according to the laws of nature.

10:09 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Founder of the modern civil rights movement

R.I.P. Rosa Parks

She changed the world by refusing to give up her seat on a bus because of the color of her skin.

Future generations will remain amazed, and wonder how the world was ever so barbaric.

And in the true tradition of American democracy, she was no one special. Not an icon, not a hero, not a Gandhi, just a woman who stood up for herself.

Reminding us all that we make choices every day that influence the world.

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

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Quite a week for DVD releases, as per netflix at least (I notice that IMDB and netflix don't always agree on release dates); I added the following to my queue: BBC sci-fi mini Invasion: Earth, Passenger screenwriter Mark Peploe's 1992 psych-thriller Afraid of the Dark, UK TV Victorian mystery The Woman in White, Sebastien Lifshitz's Wild Side, Annette K Oleson's Dogme entry Forbrydelser (In Your Hands) (new to me only), Wet Asphalt, an intriguing 50s German noir from Frank Wisbar I've never heard of, 2 atypical films by prolific Japanese phenom Takashi Miike: a TV crime procedural call Kokonin (Negotiator) and what some say is his best film (this is not new this week but new to me), The Bird People in China -- perhaps also his least typical.

Also (deep breath) Travellers and Magicians, by Bhutanese monk/director Khyentse Norbu, Peter Riegert's King of the Corner (with a great cast), the apparently long overdue Leolo (from '92) and the Korean thriller Spider Forest.

Finally, DVD releases of the landmark Twyla Tharp/David Byrne collaboration The Catherine Wheel (essential for fans of either artist) and the classic 1996 HBO documentary by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinotsky Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills.

I should also mention that 2 recent Herzog docs, Wheel of Time (on Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims) and The White Diamond are also out on disc this week.

10:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Why some disease cures will someday be personalized to the sex of your brain

8:52 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Found out about the French Qwartz Music Awards through the minusn netlabel, the only netlabel nominated among a field I have heard little of, even though most of what I listen to is electronic and new to some degree or other

Here's the English version.

I can recommend the Andrey Kiritchenko EP & minusn's own first comp.

8:03 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Re-imagining Gaza

Gaza is one of the oldest cities in the world and amidst the chaos and violence most people associate with it, archaeologists uncover its 3500 year history

The chariots of the armies of the Pharaohs and Alexander the Great, the cavalry of the Crusaders, and even Napoleon Bonaparte all rode this route, which is now named after the famous Muslim General, Salah al-Din.

Gaza has also known times of peace and prosperity.

In the age when Alexandria's famous library was earning it a reputation as a centre of civilisation, just across the Sinai, Gaza was also known as a place of learning and scholarship.

And Gaza used to be the port at the end of a trade route that connected the Arabian peninsula with the Mediterranean world.

The city did business in fish, slaves and highly valuable frankincense - produced in the mountains of what are now Yemen and Oman.

7:55 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, October 20, 2005

DVDTalk review of Batman Begins, which I liked best of any comic-based movie I've seen, except Ghost World

Fine cast and Bale is perfect as the lead. Chris Nolan kicks some ass directing. For mainstream Hollywood entertainment of the spectacle variety, the most engaging film since The Matrix. The Lord of the Rings trilogy seems to be in a different category for me anyway.

In case you don't follow what I watch, most films I enjoy could be made for the make-up & wardrobe budget of films like Batman Begins, just to contextualize my perspective. And they'd put most people to sleep.

9:40 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

"Kurt's Rejoinder" by Brian Eno [sing365.com]

Burger cruising just above the ground ground ground
And gunner puts a burnish on his steel
Anna with her feelers moving round round round
Is sharpening her needles on the wheel.


Burger Bender bargain blender shine shine shine
And gunner burn the leader on the fuse
Bundle up the numbers counting 3 - 6 - 9
Here's Anna building webs across our shoes
Celebrate the loss of one and all all all
And separate the torso from the spine
Burger Bender bouncing like a ball ball ball
So Burger Bender bargain blender shine.


Do the Do-si-do, do the Mirror Man
Do the Boston Crab, do the Allemande.

10:58 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, October 16, 2005

I have to say I'm more intrigued by the new musical based on Imelda Marcos' love of nightclubbing penned by David Byrne & Fatboy Slim than Roger Waters' opera about the French Revolution

4:18 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

I don't share their tastes generally, but I like the large-hearted boy blog anyway

8:50 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Navy-trained cloud physicist Ben Livingston on the ongoing US weather modification program, in play since the 60s

Livingston, now 77, has a master's degree in cloud physics from the Naval Weapons Center and Navy Post Graduate School in California, a degree he later used in the battlefields.

According to a recent report "He seeded clouds and dramatically increased rainfall in his theater of war, creating impassably muddy roads, slowing down the Vietnamese and Korean troops, and saving lives and entire towns from occupation."

Livingston was even invited to the White House where he briefed President Lyndon B. Johnson on the effectiveness of weather control activities. Livingston asserts that hurricane control was a national priority of the government in the 60s and they had the ability to do it at that time. That was 40 years ago.

He now works with scientists and pilots at Weather Modification Inc., in Fargo, N.D. His research of hurricane control has been confirmed by the Stanford Research Institute.

He has personally flown on 265 missions into the eyes of hurricanes and has gone on record as "most disgusted" with Hurricane Katrina because he knows that the storm itself could have been minimized.

Livingston revealed that to reduce or redirect a category 4 hurricane would not be that difficult.

[...]

Mr Livingston went on to describe how Project "Storm Fury" of which he was a national director was then set up in the mid 60s. Much of the research was carried out on hurricanes in the Atlantic at that time.

Project Storm Fury was shut down on the logic that the data was not good enough to use in statistical studies. Many believe that the research then became part of a black operation on weather modification.

2:23 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Severe drought hits Brazilian Amazon

7:08 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Adding mood alert to "Intuitives" list at left

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Sunday, October 09, 2005

A warning?

While the failure of the Cryosat launch can easily be attributed to technical problems, I can't help but speculate on the possibility of foul play, considering the um vested interests who might prefer to suppress any new evidence of global warming

8:01 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

From disquiet: a print magazine I might even subscribe to -- e/i ("e|i is a quarterly magazine spanning the continuum of electronica, experimentalism and the avant-garde, shattering genre margins to encompass the past, the present and the future, as presented to the reader by artists who challenge the very notions of sound and vision.") -- and a link to downloads of lectures from the Longnow Foundation, including speakers Brian Eno, Bruce Sterling and Ray Kurzweil

Also: an interview with Kenneth Kirschner, composer of indeterminate, unresolved and perhaps endless music using Flashtech. Much of it is available for er perpetual streaming or extended samples for free download at the last link.

7:43 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

When the executive branch started to become the tree: the shadow of Tricky Dick & co. falls on shrubco

Interesting post at xymphora on Stephen Hadley's link to Plamegate and the pernicious influence of the National Security Council since Kissinger's infamous retooling of the NSA position

7:27 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, October 08, 2005

New George Clooney-directed film Good Night, and Good Luck -- starring David Straithairn -- recounts Edward Murrow's courageous takedown of Red Scare architect Joseph McCarthy in 1954

Emile de Antonio's classic doc on the McCarthy hearings Point of Order will be on disc Nov 8.

The USA Today review above mentions Day One as Straithairn's best performance up to now, and it certainly should be on disc -- it's the Joseph Sargent (Warm Springs, Something the Lord Made, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) docudrama on the making of the atom bomb from '89.

5:16 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Evidence of biowar on D.C. anti-war protesters suppressed by Homeland Security -- or is it just part of the same disinfo campaign behind the "bird flu" media virus to sell martial law-creep?

4:53 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, October 07, 2005

Nagin nails coffin shut

New Orleans mayor suggests turning NO into a Vegas-style gaming town to "save" it

11:24 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Got a referral from this site on Frank Lloyd Wright today, so I added it to my "Art" section at left

7:38 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Jonathan Lethem's top 10 films available on Criterion discs

A fine selection, though mine would be different. He makes Kihachi Okamoto's The Sword of Doom sound like a hit, though I have little patience for the conceit of samurai movies generally (couldn't hang with Sogo Ishii's Gojoe: Spirit War Chronicle, for instance, despite it being the only film of his available here on disc).

I can certainly vouch for Videodrome, The Man Who Fell to Earth, 3 Women, and especially Powell/Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going.

If you haven't read Lethem, I can strongly recommend Motherless Brooklyn, and I got a kick out of Gun, With Occasional Music.

I've tried to start The Fortress of Solitude, his most ambitious and autobographical work yet, a couple times and just couldn't get into it, but that's maybe more my mood than anything to do with his writing.

For more on and by Lethem, see this site -- though it hasn't been updated since before Solitude was published. It has its own site anyway.

7:19 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, October 03, 2005

The rerun of Los Angeles Now on Independent Lens this week seems worth a look

8:06 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, October 02, 2005

Dan Callahan's appreciation of the underexposed Margaret Sullavan

Sullavan made just 16 movies, and only one of them, The Shop Around the Corner (1940), is an accepted classic. Most of her best films have never been on video and are rarely shown on television. Many people don't know her at all. Some might think of Maureen O'Sullivan, Tarzan's Jane and Mia Farrow's mother. Others know Shop and nothing else. Sullavan has never become a cult, though she certainly has all the elements necessary.

[...]

[She] never makes conventional choices as an actress and never hits an emotion hard; she always comes at things obliquely. Where others would be pathetic, she would be rueful. Where others would be sorrowful, she would light up with perverse gaiety. As Klara Novak, the pretentious shopgirl in The Shop Around the Corner, she finds just the right balance of loftiness and vulnerability. No other actress could have played Klara like she does. Katharine Hepburn would have been too hard, Jean Arthur too soft. Sullavan is just right because she's never quite nailed down to anything. She was versatile: she would have killed as Ibsen's Nora, but her Hedda Gabler would have been one for the books as well.

2:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, October 01, 2005

New collection of Jean Renoir interviews, some translated into English for the first time

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TCM is squeezing 32 Bob Mitchum movies into 5 days next week

One of the most interesting mainstream Hollywood figures, and star of a number of classic noirs, David Thomson extols

...the intriguing ambiguity in Mitchum's work, the idea of a man thinking and feeling beneath a calm exterior [so] that there is no need to put "acting" on the surface. And for a big man, he is immensely agile, capable of unsmiling humor, menace, stoicism, and above all of watching other people as though he were waiting to make up his mind.

He made a lot of bad movies (particularly later in his career), but is worth seeing in many as well.

If you haven't caught these before, I recommend The Big Steal, Out of the Past, Macao, Crossfire, Angel Face, Blood on the Moon, The Lusty Men, Cape Fear (1962), and of course his unforgettable, classic portrayal of a demented preacher in Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter.

Thomson suggests as well Vincente Minnelli's Undercurrent, The Locket, Til the End of Time, My Forbidden Past, His Kind of Woman, Second Chance and Home from the Hill -- none of which I remember seeing except HKOW.

All of these will be on TCM next week.

12:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()