11 August, 2007
10 August, 2007
Deutsch and Español at the Sinny
When was the last time there were so many films by Germans here in Madison? (Not counting festivals, mind you.) Die Große Stille (Into Great Silence) has returned to Sundance where it is accompanied by Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn. I may be seeing Herzog's latest this evening with a friend whose birthday was earlier this week. Rob Thomas of The Capital Times interviewed Herzog recently and you can read what he had to say here. To complete this Teutonic trifecta is Das Leben Der Anderen (The Lives of Others) over at the cheap seats of Market Square.
Sean over at Dane101 has the movie round-up for the week so I won't repeat much of what he said. However, I do want to mention the Found Footage Festival which is at the Orpheum tonight and that sci-fi/fantasy/Neil Gaiman types will be pleased to know that Stardust opens today.
One thing Sean neglected to mention was that Westgate will be showing Pirates of the Caribbean 3 with Spanish subtitles and Spider-Man 3 dubbed in Spanish and with English subtitles. (Why the subtitles?) I don't know how many Latinos read Dane101 but I think it deserved a mention as they're part of our community as well. Anyway, I'm unsure if the folks at Westgate are feeling the pinch from Sundance or whether it's just business as usual in trying to enter a different market. I'm hoping The Dulcinea, who is learning Spanish, will take me to one of the showings. She can learn a new language and I'll get to see a film for free.
The Latino community in Madison seems to really be making its presence felt. Shops & restaurants, a Spanish-language radio station and publications, films in Spanish or with Spanish subtitles, and it has apparently wrestled Hispanic Fest from politically correct hands and made it their own. With the ubiquity of cable, Madison is spared that period when Spanish language channels sprout up with all those cheesy soap operas. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for the Wisconsin Los Lobos to appear. I want to hear a band which mixes norteño with polka, blues, and rock.
If Jesse Russell is reading this – have you considered finding someone to write at Dane101 in Spanish for the Latino community?
Sean over at Dane101 has the movie round-up for the week so I won't repeat much of what he said. However, I do want to mention the Found Footage Festival which is at the Orpheum tonight and that sci-fi/fantasy/Neil Gaiman types will be pleased to know that Stardust opens today.
One thing Sean neglected to mention was that Westgate will be showing Pirates of the Caribbean 3 with Spanish subtitles and Spider-Man 3 dubbed in Spanish and with English subtitles. (Why the subtitles?) I don't know how many Latinos read Dane101 but I think it deserved a mention as they're part of our community as well. Anyway, I'm unsure if the folks at Westgate are feeling the pinch from Sundance or whether it's just business as usual in trying to enter a different market. I'm hoping The Dulcinea, who is learning Spanish, will take me to one of the showings. She can learn a new language and I'll get to see a film for free.
The Latino community in Madison seems to really be making its presence felt. Shops & restaurants, a Spanish-language radio station and publications, films in Spanish or with Spanish subtitles, and it has apparently wrestled Hispanic Fest from politically correct hands and made it their own. With the ubiquity of cable, Madison is spared that period when Spanish language channels sprout up with all those cheesy soap operas. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for the Wisconsin Los Lobos to appear. I want to hear a band which mixes norteño with polka, blues, and rock.
If Jesse Russell is reading this – have you considered finding someone to write at Dane101 in Spanish for the Latino community?
09 August, 2007
No Allowance For the Other
A couple weeks ago The Dulcinea and I headed downtown to hear Matt Rothschild speak about his new book, You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression.
Rothschild is the editor of the magazine The Progressive which is located right here in Madison. The room at The Overture Center was sparsely populated at first but filled up at 7:30 approached. Allen Ruff from Rainbow Bookstore was there selling copies of You Have No Rights as the crowd found its way to their seats. There were people young and old but mostly old. This disparity in the ages of the attendees is common from my experience. There is a healthy smattering of senior citizens who want to go to their graves informed and involved. The majority of the audience were middle-aged folks – people who probably rioted here at the UW against the Vietnam War. They have been political since their college years and continue to be so. The paucity of younger adults, however, was striking. There was a handful there scattered as they were around the room. You'd think the people that are going to toil under the effects of the government policies & decisions of the last six years the longest would have a keen interest. Perhaps this is because Rothschild just doesn't have the reputation and movie star charisma of a Michael Moore.
My observation aside, I personally enjoy hearing Rothschild speak immensely. He and I are in agreement politically most of the time and he is a godless heathen like myself. In fact, I enjoy Rothschild's work so much that The Dulcinea has taken to referring to him as my boyfriend. His book is basically a best-of compilation of stories from his "McCarthyism Watch" column which collects stories of civil rights abrogations. I've only glanced at the book and don't have it with me but Marc Eisen of Isthmus wrote a piece in anticipation of the event and listed a few of the 82 stories in the book. To wit:
* Stephen Downs being arrested for trespassing at the mall when he wears a tee shirt that says "Peace on Earth" on one side and "Give Peace a Chance" on the other.
* Laura Berg, a nurse at an Albuquerque veterans hospital, being investigated and accused of sedition by the Veterans Administration after she writes a letter to the editor accusing the Bush administration of criminal negligence for its Iraqi war.
* Frank Van Den Bosch of Platteville being arrested for disorderly conduct when he unfurls a sign saying "FUGW" when the Bush campaign caravan rolls through town.
* U.S. rowing champion Aquil Abdullah being repeatedly detained, questioned and searched at airports because he happens to be a black man with a Muslim-sounding name.
* Members of Peace Action Milwaukee being barred from flying to a demonstration against the School of the Americas because some of their names pop up on the mysterious law-enforcement "watch list."
There's also the story of Renee Jensen in West Virginia who put a sign up in her yard reading "Mr. Bush: You're fired". This prompted a visit by the Secret Service. Or take Marc Schultz who was reported to the FBI because he stood in a line at a coffee shop reading an article critical of Fox News.
It's hardly surprising that people trying to exercise their right of free speech at, say, a Bush rally are arrested. But what is surprising to me and even more profoundly disturbing are stories like Mr. Schultz's. It's one thing for a guy donning a black trench coat and sunglasses to bully people with slogans on t-shirts – those in power like to bully those who are not. But it's absolutely chilling to read about someone being reported to the authorities by a member of their community. What must be going through your mind to call the police or the FBI when you see someone in line for a latte reading criticism of Fox News? Who did this? How did this person feel threatened?
When John Nichols of The Cap Times editorialized in favor of the book, it elicited comments which basically said that, because Rothschild was allowed to publish the book and not get sent to Gitmo, then there's no problem. Either the most extreme bad thing happens or all is well with no middle ground, no shades of gray pointing in one direction or the other. How does one acquire this mindset?
Just as Bill Lueders published his account of being on-air with Ann Althouse, I was finishing up listening to the audiobook of John Dean's Concervatives Without Conscience. In it, Dean examines the history of conservatism in this country and contrasts his Goldwater conservatism with the flavor(s) now prevailing here. He uses the research of Bob Altemeyer, specifically his research into right-wing authoritarianism. Both the negative comments directed at Nichols and Althouse's incredulity that someone would actually want to wait for evidence seemed to me authoritarian in nature – both submission and aggression. Likewise for some of the examples in Rothschild's book. 9/11 induced fear into people and the Bush administration stepped up as a father figure, of sorts, to allay those fears. Authoritarian types will tend to go along with whatever the Bush administration says because it is attempting to do away with certain fears. And they heap derision on those who would be critical of the father figure.
I am certainly not giving Dean nor Altemeyer their due and I highly recommend reading their works. It is difficult for me to read the incidents in You Have No Rights and not think that authoritarian figures are at work.
Rothschild is the editor of the magazine The Progressive which is located right here in Madison. The room at The Overture Center was sparsely populated at first but filled up at 7:30 approached. Allen Ruff from Rainbow Bookstore was there selling copies of You Have No Rights as the crowd found its way to their seats. There were people young and old but mostly old. This disparity in the ages of the attendees is common from my experience. There is a healthy smattering of senior citizens who want to go to their graves informed and involved. The majority of the audience were middle-aged folks – people who probably rioted here at the UW against the Vietnam War. They have been political since their college years and continue to be so. The paucity of younger adults, however, was striking. There was a handful there scattered as they were around the room. You'd think the people that are going to toil under the effects of the government policies & decisions of the last six years the longest would have a keen interest. Perhaps this is because Rothschild just doesn't have the reputation and movie star charisma of a Michael Moore.
My observation aside, I personally enjoy hearing Rothschild speak immensely. He and I are in agreement politically most of the time and he is a godless heathen like myself. In fact, I enjoy Rothschild's work so much that The Dulcinea has taken to referring to him as my boyfriend. His book is basically a best-of compilation of stories from his "McCarthyism Watch" column which collects stories of civil rights abrogations. I've only glanced at the book and don't have it with me but Marc Eisen of Isthmus wrote a piece in anticipation of the event and listed a few of the 82 stories in the book. To wit:
* Stephen Downs being arrested for trespassing at the mall when he wears a tee shirt that says "Peace on Earth" on one side and "Give Peace a Chance" on the other.
* Laura Berg, a nurse at an Albuquerque veterans hospital, being investigated and accused of sedition by the Veterans Administration after she writes a letter to the editor accusing the Bush administration of criminal negligence for its Iraqi war.
* Frank Van Den Bosch of Platteville being arrested for disorderly conduct when he unfurls a sign saying "FUGW" when the Bush campaign caravan rolls through town.
* U.S. rowing champion Aquil Abdullah being repeatedly detained, questioned and searched at airports because he happens to be a black man with a Muslim-sounding name.
* Members of Peace Action Milwaukee being barred from flying to a demonstration against the School of the Americas because some of their names pop up on the mysterious law-enforcement "watch list."
There's also the story of Renee Jensen in West Virginia who put a sign up in her yard reading "Mr. Bush: You're fired". This prompted a visit by the Secret Service. Or take Marc Schultz who was reported to the FBI because he stood in a line at a coffee shop reading an article critical of Fox News.
It's hardly surprising that people trying to exercise their right of free speech at, say, a Bush rally are arrested. But what is surprising to me and even more profoundly disturbing are stories like Mr. Schultz's. It's one thing for a guy donning a black trench coat and sunglasses to bully people with slogans on t-shirts – those in power like to bully those who are not. But it's absolutely chilling to read about someone being reported to the authorities by a member of their community. What must be going through your mind to call the police or the FBI when you see someone in line for a latte reading criticism of Fox News? Who did this? How did this person feel threatened?
When John Nichols of The Cap Times editorialized in favor of the book, it elicited comments which basically said that, because Rothschild was allowed to publish the book and not get sent to Gitmo, then there's no problem. Either the most extreme bad thing happens or all is well with no middle ground, no shades of gray pointing in one direction or the other. How does one acquire this mindset?
Just as Bill Lueders published his account of being on-air with Ann Althouse, I was finishing up listening to the audiobook of John Dean's Concervatives Without Conscience. In it, Dean examines the history of conservatism in this country and contrasts his Goldwater conservatism with the flavor(s) now prevailing here. He uses the research of Bob Altemeyer, specifically his research into right-wing authoritarianism. Both the negative comments directed at Nichols and Althouse's incredulity that someone would actually want to wait for evidence seemed to me authoritarian in nature – both submission and aggression. Likewise for some of the examples in Rothschild's book. 9/11 induced fear into people and the Bush administration stepped up as a father figure, of sorts, to allay those fears. Authoritarian types will tend to go along with whatever the Bush administration says because it is attempting to do away with certain fears. And they heap derision on those who would be critical of the father figure.
I am certainly not giving Dean nor Altemeyer their due and I highly recommend reading their works. It is difficult for me to read the incidents in You Have No Rights and not think that authoritarian figures are at work.
08 August, 2007
Off to the Orchard
Last weekend I sang "Cup of Wonder" by Jethro Tull to myself several times. I grilled some most excellent corn that The Dulcinea had bought and the song contains the line "lie in August's welcome corn". I really must get one of those corn de-cobbers as I'd like to try my hand at canning the stuff. Thinking about corn being in season reminded me that apples too are beginning to tempt us to pick them. I am looking forward to heading out to one (or more) of the many apple orchards around Madison. I've got a number of medieval recipes that I'd like to try that involve apples including: apple muse, a pie of grene apples, Blaunderellys (baked apples), apple cream, Fruays, Tartys in Apples, or Fretoure. Fretoure are apple fritters and you make them with ale. (Unpasteurized, please – I want that batter to rise a bit.)
The problem is that I'd love to be able to make these dishes with apples that were actually around back then. Cortlands? Developed in New York and first put on sale in 1915. McInoshes? Take off, Hoser. They're Canadian from c. 1800. Granny Smiths? These puppies originated in Australia in the mid-19th century. The University of Minnesota was busy last century developing new varieties – Zestars, Honeycrisps, Regents, Honeygolds, Haralsons, and Firesides.
This is not to say that Wisconsin is without apples to call its own. I know of two. Firstly is the Bonnie Best which originated in Cooksville, a town that is just south of Stoughton. The second is the Wolf River variety which was found c. 1880. These puppies are huge and can get up to one pound in weight. Legend has it that you can make a pie from a single Wolf River apple and I intend to test the veracity of this.
However, where I might find any medieval varieties such as the Edelborsdorfer, Costard, Pearmain, Nonpareil, or White Joaneting is beyond me at this point. The Royal Russet is an old variety which remains fairly common by which I mean not impossible to find.
While I'm on the topic of apples, the Steve's Liquor at Mineral Point and Junction Roads is having a cider tasting next Thursday the 16th from 4-6. It will feature ciders from ÆppelTreow Winery.
Oh Dionysus, Where Art Thou?
Camille Paglia has a rather distressing piece up at Salon today called "Art movies: R.I.P.". Not only does she pronounce art film dead, but also rock music and she takes some nasty & unwarranted swipes at a few prominent atheists.
Ms. Paglia's views the world through Dionysian-tinted glasses. She wants to see a world of sexual liberation and equality adorned by art whose taproot is religion, even if she rejects the tenets of its supernaturalism. It's a passion-at-all-costs philosophy where our Apollonian sides are to be chained by our natural energies, imagination, and romanticist pursuits. By way of slander she writes:
As a professed atheist, I detest the current crop of snide manifestos against religion written by professional cynics, flâneurs and imaginatively crimped and culturally challenged scientists. The narrow mental world they project is very grim indeed -- and fatal to future art…My pagan brand of atheism is predicated on worship of both nature and art. I want the great world religions taught in every school.
Just as one decodes "American Pie", I'll give this a go and suggest that here she's attacking Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins specifically and, no doubt, others such as Daniel Dennett. While I can't recall if Sam Harris has espoused this, Hitchens, Dawkins, and Dennett have all said they are quite in favor of teaching the great world religions in school. Hitchens takes it upon himself to do the teaching since schools don’t do so while Dennett made his position clear at the TED Conference earlier this year and you can watch his presentation at this page. These people want religion to be studied – that's the entire argument behind Dennett's last book, in fact. They want people to know the history of the great religions; they want religion to be seen as genuine topics for inquiry and studied; they want religion to be looked at and treated as another genuine part of the human experience. What they don't want is for religion to be privileged or for kids to be indoctrinated with the notion that Yahweh actually exists whereas Zeus and Thor don't; they don't want science to be displaced by religion; they don't want the religious to impose their views upon the non-religious nor for public policy to be predicated upon a goofy, irrational belief that a fictional deity actually exists.
As far as I can tell from reading their works and interviews, none of these folks deny the profound influence of religion on art and the humanities at large. To say that Dawkins is "culturally challenged" is patently ridiculous. I don't doubt for a second that he knows next to nothing about the latest pop music acts or hit TV shows. But, if you listen to an interview which isn't just a collection of sound bites that are sure to be controversial, you will almost indubitably hear him extol his tremendous love for music and poetry. Hitchens: "I couldn't do without devotional music and architecture and poetry I must say. I've never thought it was eradicable, or that anyone should try [to eradicate it]..." I can't see what's so narrow about their mental worlds nor what is so expansive about religion. Besides, these authors do not expect their books to eradicate religion but rather see their screeds as an attempt to push religion out of the public sphere and into the private where no artist would be deprived of religious contemplation to inspire their work. And being non-religious didn't keep Percy Shelly, Mark Twain, or Ernest Hemingway from being creative. Paglia builds up a straw man and then tears him down thusly avoiding any of the arguments that the above gentlemen present.
This self-described "pagan atheist" is now 60 years old – a crone. But instead of dispensing wisdom here, she just bloviates about how things were better in her beloved Age of Aquarius in the 1960s & 70s. She goes on about seeing films by Bergman, Antonioni, and Truffaut but has all of two sentences about art film today. Seriously, all she can say about it is "But art movies are gone, gone with the wind." and "Now, in contrast, aspiring young filmmakers are stampeded toward simplistic rejection of religion based on liberal bromides (sexism, homophobia, etc.)." That's all. She never bothers to talk about any contemporary makers of art films or their films themselves. Ms. Paglia has apparently watched every art film in the whole of the world and, not having found the proper reverence for the "cosmic vision" (whatever that is) of religion in this corpus, pronounces it dead. Art films may not pack the houses like it did when Paglia was in college – after all, nudity can now be found in mainstream domestic movies – but it is still very much alive. Do you miss Antonioni? Then watch Battle in Heaven (Batalla en el cielo) by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas. Lynch, Sokurov, von Trier, and many others keep making art films. The problem is that, unless the films appeal to her sensibilities about religion as artistic inspiration, then they're worthless; unless the art film scene mirrors that of her beloved college days, it is dead.
From film she moves on to rock music which, for her, is also dead:
Rock music, which exploded in the artistic renaissance of the '60s and '70s, seems to have exhausted its formulas, At the moment, hip-hop and disco-derived dance music enjoy far greater prestige everywhere.… It's no coincidence that the geriatric Rolling Stones are still going strong: Their style is grounded in African-American rhythm and blues…"
Again we have the old fart mentality – "Everything was better in my day!" No, the reason why The Stones are "still going strong" is because Baby Boomers like you have no qualms with paying $500 for a nosebleed seat at their concerts. I say this as a Stones fan as well as someone who enjoys their latter-day albums. While not groundbreaking, Voodoo Lounge is a great album. Hip-hop and disco-derived dance music have far greater prestige everywhere? What does this mean? The much ballyhooed festivals – SXSW, Pitchfork, Lollapalooza, etc. - feature mainly rock bands. The highest grossing touring acts this year include Rod Stewart, The Police, Kenney Chesney, Roger Water, and Eric Clapton. Hip-hop album sales are declining. Some are pronouncing it dead for a myriad of reasons including that the main consumers of it are kids from the "bland white middle class" which Paglia derides later in her article. Music blogs = indie rock blogs.
Is there any hasty generalization that Ms. Paglia won't use? Rock is still very much alive and well.
Paglia trots out the tired argument that folks like Dave Marsh, Simon Frith, and Lester Bangs used as the foundation of rock criticism back in Ms. Paglia's salad days. She points to a video of Naomi Mather doing Howlin' Wolf's "Smokestack Lightning" and then declares:
In general, aspiring young performers emerging from the bland white middle class in America seem to be having trouble expressing or controlling emotion, with its myriad of subtle gradations. Unless they hail from the gospel-rich South, they lack direct experience of the vocal authority and operatic dynamics that most young African-Americans automatically absorb from church.
Marsh, et al promoted the notion that rock music had a "genuineness" to it because its taproot was folk music, most prominently, the blues (i.e. – "black music"). For them, rock becomes dislocated when it eschews its blues roots and looks towards music such as Western art music (i.e. – "white music"). For them, having blues roots allows rock musicians to adopt a process which allows feelings & emotions to be directly transcribed into music without mediation. By looking towards other sources for inspiration, this process of transcription is mediated and thusly the result is not "pure". Simply and crudely put, black music appeals to the foot while white music appeals to the head. The upshot of this way of thinking is to posit with black people a certain simplicity with rhythm being favored and white people being scorned for getting all complicated by favoring melody.
Paglia merely dresses this old argument (which is potentially girded by racism) in new clothes by shifting things to locale and, unsurprisingly, the influence of religion, which she seeks to protect and place on a pedestal. Despite the sleight of hand, her conclusions are the same – white people make "inauthentic" music while blacks make music that is "genuine". "Rock will be spectacularly reborn by a faithful return to roots," she says. Same bullshit, different clothes.
Apparently there just aren't enough rockers in tight leather pants ala Jim Morrison leading faux bacchanalias in concert halls these days for her.
Ms. Paglia's views the world through Dionysian-tinted glasses. She wants to see a world of sexual liberation and equality adorned by art whose taproot is religion, even if she rejects the tenets of its supernaturalism. It's a passion-at-all-costs philosophy where our Apollonian sides are to be chained by our natural energies, imagination, and romanticist pursuits. By way of slander she writes:
As a professed atheist, I detest the current crop of snide manifestos against religion written by professional cynics, flâneurs and imaginatively crimped and culturally challenged scientists. The narrow mental world they project is very grim indeed -- and fatal to future art…My pagan brand of atheism is predicated on worship of both nature and art. I want the great world religions taught in every school.
Just as one decodes "American Pie", I'll give this a go and suggest that here she's attacking Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins specifically and, no doubt, others such as Daniel Dennett. While I can't recall if Sam Harris has espoused this, Hitchens, Dawkins, and Dennett have all said they are quite in favor of teaching the great world religions in school. Hitchens takes it upon himself to do the teaching since schools don’t do so while Dennett made his position clear at the TED Conference earlier this year and you can watch his presentation at this page. These people want religion to be studied – that's the entire argument behind Dennett's last book, in fact. They want people to know the history of the great religions; they want religion to be seen as genuine topics for inquiry and studied; they want religion to be looked at and treated as another genuine part of the human experience. What they don't want is for religion to be privileged or for kids to be indoctrinated with the notion that Yahweh actually exists whereas Zeus and Thor don't; they don't want science to be displaced by religion; they don't want the religious to impose their views upon the non-religious nor for public policy to be predicated upon a goofy, irrational belief that a fictional deity actually exists.
As far as I can tell from reading their works and interviews, none of these folks deny the profound influence of religion on art and the humanities at large. To say that Dawkins is "culturally challenged" is patently ridiculous. I don't doubt for a second that he knows next to nothing about the latest pop music acts or hit TV shows. But, if you listen to an interview which isn't just a collection of sound bites that are sure to be controversial, you will almost indubitably hear him extol his tremendous love for music and poetry. Hitchens: "I couldn't do without devotional music and architecture and poetry I must say. I've never thought it was eradicable, or that anyone should try [to eradicate it]..." I can't see what's so narrow about their mental worlds nor what is so expansive about religion. Besides, these authors do not expect their books to eradicate religion but rather see their screeds as an attempt to push religion out of the public sphere and into the private where no artist would be deprived of religious contemplation to inspire their work. And being non-religious didn't keep Percy Shelly, Mark Twain, or Ernest Hemingway from being creative. Paglia builds up a straw man and then tears him down thusly avoiding any of the arguments that the above gentlemen present.
This self-described "pagan atheist" is now 60 years old – a crone. But instead of dispensing wisdom here, she just bloviates about how things were better in her beloved Age of Aquarius in the 1960s & 70s. She goes on about seeing films by Bergman, Antonioni, and Truffaut but has all of two sentences about art film today. Seriously, all she can say about it is "But art movies are gone, gone with the wind." and "Now, in contrast, aspiring young filmmakers are stampeded toward simplistic rejection of religion based on liberal bromides (sexism, homophobia, etc.)." That's all. She never bothers to talk about any contemporary makers of art films or their films themselves. Ms. Paglia has apparently watched every art film in the whole of the world and, not having found the proper reverence for the "cosmic vision" (whatever that is) of religion in this corpus, pronounces it dead. Art films may not pack the houses like it did when Paglia was in college – after all, nudity can now be found in mainstream domestic movies – but it is still very much alive. Do you miss Antonioni? Then watch Battle in Heaven (Batalla en el cielo) by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas. Lynch, Sokurov, von Trier, and many others keep making art films. The problem is that, unless the films appeal to her sensibilities about religion as artistic inspiration, then they're worthless; unless the art film scene mirrors that of her beloved college days, it is dead.
From film she moves on to rock music which, for her, is also dead:
Rock music, which exploded in the artistic renaissance of the '60s and '70s, seems to have exhausted its formulas, At the moment, hip-hop and disco-derived dance music enjoy far greater prestige everywhere.… It's no coincidence that the geriatric Rolling Stones are still going strong: Their style is grounded in African-American rhythm and blues…"
Again we have the old fart mentality – "Everything was better in my day!" No, the reason why The Stones are "still going strong" is because Baby Boomers like you have no qualms with paying $500 for a nosebleed seat at their concerts. I say this as a Stones fan as well as someone who enjoys their latter-day albums. While not groundbreaking, Voodoo Lounge is a great album. Hip-hop and disco-derived dance music have far greater prestige everywhere? What does this mean? The much ballyhooed festivals – SXSW, Pitchfork, Lollapalooza, etc. - feature mainly rock bands. The highest grossing touring acts this year include Rod Stewart, The Police, Kenney Chesney, Roger Water, and Eric Clapton. Hip-hop album sales are declining. Some are pronouncing it dead for a myriad of reasons including that the main consumers of it are kids from the "bland white middle class" which Paglia derides later in her article. Music blogs = indie rock blogs.
Is there any hasty generalization that Ms. Paglia won't use? Rock is still very much alive and well.
Paglia trots out the tired argument that folks like Dave Marsh, Simon Frith, and Lester Bangs used as the foundation of rock criticism back in Ms. Paglia's salad days. She points to a video of Naomi Mather doing Howlin' Wolf's "Smokestack Lightning" and then declares:
In general, aspiring young performers emerging from the bland white middle class in America seem to be having trouble expressing or controlling emotion, with its myriad of subtle gradations. Unless they hail from the gospel-rich South, they lack direct experience of the vocal authority and operatic dynamics that most young African-Americans automatically absorb from church.
Marsh, et al promoted the notion that rock music had a "genuineness" to it because its taproot was folk music, most prominently, the blues (i.e. – "black music"). For them, rock becomes dislocated when it eschews its blues roots and looks towards music such as Western art music (i.e. – "white music"). For them, having blues roots allows rock musicians to adopt a process which allows feelings & emotions to be directly transcribed into music without mediation. By looking towards other sources for inspiration, this process of transcription is mediated and thusly the result is not "pure". Simply and crudely put, black music appeals to the foot while white music appeals to the head. The upshot of this way of thinking is to posit with black people a certain simplicity with rhythm being favored and white people being scorned for getting all complicated by favoring melody.
Paglia merely dresses this old argument (which is potentially girded by racism) in new clothes by shifting things to locale and, unsurprisingly, the influence of religion, which she seeks to protect and place on a pedestal. Despite the sleight of hand, her conclusions are the same – white people make "inauthentic" music while blacks make music that is "genuine". "Rock will be spectacularly reborn by a faithful return to roots," she says. Same bullshit, different clothes.
Apparently there just aren't enough rockers in tight leather pants ala Jim Morrison leading faux bacchanalias in concert halls these days for her.
Davros to Return?
The UK tabloid The Sun is reporting that Dalek creator Davros is to return in the next season of Doctor who and that a big name has been tapped to play the part:
Doctor Who bosses are set to sign up Gandhi star Sir Ben Kingsley to play the Daleks' creator Davros.
Sir Ben, 63 - who won an Oscar for his movie role as India's peace-loving spiritual leader - is in final negotiations to play one of the most dangerous baddies in the galaxy.
A source said: "Ben's agent has been in talks for a while now and he's very keen to play the part of Davros. A deal will be signed any day now."
Fans will be delighted that insane half-man, half-machine Davros is returning for the fourth series of the hit BBC1 show, which stars David Tennant as the Timelord.
The alien scientist - who first battled the Doctor in 1975 - is hell-bent on destruction with his army of exterminating Daleks.
Doctor Who bosses are set to sign up Gandhi star Sir Ben Kingsley to play the Daleks' creator Davros.
Sir Ben, 63 - who won an Oscar for his movie role as India's peace-loving spiritual leader - is in final negotiations to play one of the most dangerous baddies in the galaxy.
A source said: "Ben's agent has been in talks for a while now and he's very keen to play the part of Davros. A deal will be signed any day now."
Fans will be delighted that insane half-man, half-machine Davros is returning for the fourth series of the hit BBC1 show, which stars David Tennant as the Timelord.
The alien scientist - who first battled the Doctor in 1975 - is hell-bent on destruction with his army of exterminating Daleks.
07 August, 2007
Disaster Averted on German Train
It could have been a disaster when a tap broke aboard a train loaded with German soccer/football fans. Luckily quick action saved the day.
Federal police said Monday that the beer tap failed aboard a special train carrying Bayer Leverkusen fans to Hamburg on Saturday. The fault was discovered half an hour into the journey.
"In order not to endanger the good mood" of the passengers, railway officials halted the train in Wuppertal for 25 minutes and had a replacement part delivered by taxi, a police statement said. It added that there was no trouble among the fans.
Federal police said Monday that the beer tap failed aboard a special train carrying Bayer Leverkusen fans to Hamburg on Saturday. The fault was discovered half an hour into the journey.
"In order not to endanger the good mood" of the passengers, railway officials halted the train in Wuppertal for 25 minutes and had a replacement part delivered by taxi, a police statement said. It added that there was no trouble among the fans.
There Really Are Atheists in Foxholes and They Still Get Berated by Christians
This comes courtesy of Ed Brayton. It's the text of an e-mail he received concerning a very small gathering of U.S. soldiers in Iraq who are atheists. The message was originally sent to Kathleen Johnson, the military director for American Atheists.
Kathleen Johnson:
Thought you'd be interested in this report of the first-ever meeting of Atheist service-members in Iraq under the umbrella of the MAAF-Iraq chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers. This meeting was put together by the same young MAAF member who recently had his second letter published in the Stars and Stripes.
One of our members, a young Atheist enlisted soldier, thought he would like to see if he could generate some interest in MAAF meetings at his Forward Operating Base (FOB) here in Iraq (not the base I'm at, by the way). He got things coordinated and started hanging flyers, and after weeks of having to re-hang his flyers almost daily because some vandal kept tearing them down, he finally succeeded in having a small MAAF meeting. I wasn't there because the meeting wasn't on my FOB, but I knew he was holding it and was expecting to hear from him after the meeting. Keep in mind that this young soldier did everything right - he went through the Chaplain's office and jumped through all the hoops it takes to legally hold meetings that are religiously or philosophically based. Four soldiers attended this meeting - all of them very junior enlisted soldiers with the exception of one Major (an O-4), who claimed to be a "freethinker".
Well, to make a very long story a little shorter, the Major turned out to be a fundamentalist Christian who verbally berated the other attendees, accused them of plotting against Christians and disrespecting soldiers who have died protecting the Constitution, and threatened them with punishment under the UCMJ for their activities (said they were "going down") and said he would do whatever it took to shut the meetings down. Keep in mind that by this point, he had two of the attendees (one soldier fled when the shouting started) standing at the position of attention so that he could yell at them, berate them, and humiliate them. This apparently went on for several minutes at which time the Major shut down the meeting by saying he wasn't some "push-over Chaplain" and that he would not tolerate the meetings to continue.
The young MAAF member who hosted the meeting is absolutely freaked out about what happened, but he said he's going to continue with the meetings and isn't going to be bullied by the prayer warriors. I've advised him to immediately notify the Chaplain sponsor of what happened to get guidance while I try to figure out what to do next. I should hear something back from him tonight sometime and there's even a small possibility I might be able to score a mission to his FOB and attend one of his meetings in the next few weeks (if I do, I'll meet with the Chaplain in person).
As for immediate action, he's going to get me the names of his Chaplain sponsor and the name of the officer who disrupted the meeting. My intent right now is to make a formal report to the most senior Chaplain I can find along with possibly an Equal Opportunity complaint against the officer if we can get him fully identified. I may not be eligible to make that complaint because I wasn't there, but I can at least smooth the way for this young troop to make one if he elects to. At the very least, I can make the EO office formally aware of what happened there.
More info will follow when I get it, but right now, feel free to disseminate this information since I've intentionally sanitized it for names and locations. I will be happy to forward any words of support to him if they get mailed to my (redacted email) address - he could really use some encouragement right now, I think.
Is there any level to which Fundies won't stoop? Here these guys are thousands of miles from home serving their country and they still get hassled by Christians.
Kathleen Johnson:
Thought you'd be interested in this report of the first-ever meeting of Atheist service-members in Iraq under the umbrella of the MAAF-Iraq chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers. This meeting was put together by the same young MAAF member who recently had his second letter published in the Stars and Stripes.
One of our members, a young Atheist enlisted soldier, thought he would like to see if he could generate some interest in MAAF meetings at his Forward Operating Base (FOB) here in Iraq (not the base I'm at, by the way). He got things coordinated and started hanging flyers, and after weeks of having to re-hang his flyers almost daily because some vandal kept tearing them down, he finally succeeded in having a small MAAF meeting. I wasn't there because the meeting wasn't on my FOB, but I knew he was holding it and was expecting to hear from him after the meeting. Keep in mind that this young soldier did everything right - he went through the Chaplain's office and jumped through all the hoops it takes to legally hold meetings that are religiously or philosophically based. Four soldiers attended this meeting - all of them very junior enlisted soldiers with the exception of one Major (an O-4), who claimed to be a "freethinker".
Well, to make a very long story a little shorter, the Major turned out to be a fundamentalist Christian who verbally berated the other attendees, accused them of plotting against Christians and disrespecting soldiers who have died protecting the Constitution, and threatened them with punishment under the UCMJ for their activities (said they were "going down") and said he would do whatever it took to shut the meetings down. Keep in mind that by this point, he had two of the attendees (one soldier fled when the shouting started) standing at the position of attention so that he could yell at them, berate them, and humiliate them. This apparently went on for several minutes at which time the Major shut down the meeting by saying he wasn't some "push-over Chaplain" and that he would not tolerate the meetings to continue.
The young MAAF member who hosted the meeting is absolutely freaked out about what happened, but he said he's going to continue with the meetings and isn't going to be bullied by the prayer warriors. I've advised him to immediately notify the Chaplain sponsor of what happened to get guidance while I try to figure out what to do next. I should hear something back from him tonight sometime and there's even a small possibility I might be able to score a mission to his FOB and attend one of his meetings in the next few weeks (if I do, I'll meet with the Chaplain in person).
As for immediate action, he's going to get me the names of his Chaplain sponsor and the name of the officer who disrupted the meeting. My intent right now is to make a formal report to the most senior Chaplain I can find along with possibly an Equal Opportunity complaint against the officer if we can get him fully identified. I may not be eligible to make that complaint because I wasn't there, but I can at least smooth the way for this young troop to make one if he elects to. At the very least, I can make the EO office formally aware of what happened there.
More info will follow when I get it, but right now, feel free to disseminate this information since I've intentionally sanitized it for names and locations. I will be happy to forward any words of support to him if they get mailed to my (redacted email) address - he could really use some encouragement right now, I think.
Is there any level to which Fundies won't stoop? Here these guys are thousands of miles from home serving their country and they still get hassled by Christians.
05 August, 2007
Indie Sex
(Photo found here.)
Violet Blue has a mini-review of the new IFC series that debuted this weekend - Indie Sex. Ms. Blue is an author, blogger, and sex educator. Given her sex positive pedigree, it's not surprising that found it riveting. I too have watched it and found it informative as well as entertaining but I just can't gush over it like Ms. Blue.
One thing that struck me came in the last episode when John Cameron Mitchell was discussing his film Shortbus. He described it as being about a group of sexually dysfunctional New Yorkers and it occurred to me that many of the folks interviewed were from New York. When I shifted my mind from the flesh on my TV screen and looked at the show critically, I felt it was overly pedantic. There are times when it feels like the program bombards the viewer with the pontificating of film critics from New York. If you are a reviewer from the Village Voice or The New Yorker, then your opinions about sex and its role in life & art are privileged or sacrosanct. I agreed with most of what was said but it got old hearing the same people espousing essentially the same point of view over and over and over. I think the lone voice outside of the film community was Dita von Teese, a burlesque performer and you've got to be shittin' me if you think I'm going to accept her commentary as being typical vox populi. There were no dissenters, not even someone saying, "I think sex certainly has a role in art generally and film specifically but this particular movie was crap."
Watching a critic in his late 20s give an encomium for Porky's made me acutely aware that virtually everyone was fairly young. This guy was shitting his pants when the film came out and this brings up another criticism. With the emphasis on younger interviewees, there was an overload of comments about how this person or that saw a particular film as a youth followed by how the experience made the person feel and react. I wasn't expecting a bunch of octogenarians to give their perspectives on blue movies from the 1930s but how hard could it have been to find folks who were mature adults in the 1980s to talk about the teen sex flick? How difficult could it have been to find an older person who could give a first hand account of watching the portrayals of sex and sexuality in films change from, say, the 1950s up to the present? I felt like yelling at the television, "There are still people alive from back then, you know. You don't have to have someone born in the mid-1960s up there talking about the period as if it were ancient history!"
While the series is to be applauded for taking a serious look at topics that don't get a lot of attention and some of which are taboo, it is easy to watch and think of it as white people talking about white people who make movies about beautiful white people having sex. For all the lip service paid to the notion that indie films portray sex and sexuality in ways that are more realistic and more like the experiences of real folks in the audiences at theatres, there were sure a ton of groups of real people excluded. The only instance where there was an abundance of people of color came during the "Teens" episode in which one film about black teenage girls was discussed - Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.. That's it, as far as I can recall. And the films discussed to the exclusion of one featured thin people who conformed to the popular notions of beauty. The only instance of someone who is overweight being featured was again in the "Teens" episode with the French film À ma soeur! (Fat Girl). Have films never addressed the sexuality of an overweight adult? The vast majority of people in the films discussed were stereotypes of physical beauty. The women were thin as were the men and, at least in newer films, the gents were all perfectly fit and hairless.
I can see why Violet Blue was riveted by the series and can understand that she saw a portrayal of sex & sexuality in the films featured in which she can see her experiences reflected. After all, she is young, white, thin, and conventionally pretty. The Indie Sex series broached an interesting and important topic – of that there's no doubt. But it was unable to justify its claim that indie films give a reflection of the sexual experiences and sexuality of the average Janes and Joes who populate theatre audiences. The program was too white, too pretty, and relied too much on the opinions of younger, cosmopolitan New Yorkers.
Towards a YouTube Aesthetic?
UW professor and independent filmmaker J.J. Murphy recently posted some commentary at his blog about the viability of YouTube as a distribution vehicle. Although I have some ideas for documentaries that I'd love to do, I am no filmmaker so I just wanted to post some thoughts from the P.O.V. of a viewer, of a consumer.
Murphy's post centers around the film Four Eyed Monsters. The film's financial prospects looked dim going the festival route so the creators have posted the film on YouTube and, in general, use the Web as the primary promotional vehicle.
Murphy's complaints are that YouTube generates no direct income and that time spent trying to promote the film via various social networking sites is time not spent being creative on another project. I'll have to let the art v. commerce issue be one that the filmmakers deal with since I'm merely a consumer. However, reading Murphy's comments made me question just who would want to sit in front of a computer screen and watch a feature film in a small box and of mediocre video & audio quality. The Dulcinea recently bought a video iPod and I put some episodes of LOST on it for her both because she hasn't seen any of last season and as an experiment, of sorts. Watching it to make sure my work had paid off, I was struck by how uninspiring and unsatisfactory it is to watch the program on such a small screen. Perhaps this is because I'm spoiled as I was able to watch most of last season in high definition on a 52" TV. Still, I must wonder if we're so desperate to watch moving pictures that we will accept even the smallest screen sizes and the lowest acceptable quality. If I had an hour-long commute each morning sitting on a train or bus, watching an iPod might be fun but I don't and I can't see myself sitting in a coffee shop staring at such a tiny screen.
Murphy says, "My point is simply that people are not going to attend screenings, rent films, or buy DVDs when the work is already available for free on YouTube." I would hazard a guess and say that this certainly applies to many people, though not all. All quibbling over numbers aside, the comment also illustrates the double-edged nature of the Net and things like iPods. The Internet surely delivers quantity but is quality being sacrificed? Would the majority of people rather watch a movie on YouTube for free than pay to see it in a theatre or watch it on DVD?
I know a couple people who, like me, are fans of Doctor Who and who download the show rather than wait a few months for it to be shown on PBS or the Sci-Fi Channel. The two people I'm thinking of immediately download the most recent episode when it's available which means they download files that are 350-375MB. On the other hand, I wait a few more hours to begin the much lengthier process of downloading the episode as a 1.5GB file. Does this make me a snob and/or old fashioned? Sometimes I wonder if music is being cheapened. I mean, if your audience is increasingly going to buy a single song instead of an album and in a lossy compression format where certain frequencies (usually on the high end) are lost and then listen to it with earbuds that can't reproduce much bass, are you as a musician going to stop caring about making a quality recordings because no one will notice anyway?
Professor Murphy's concern in his post is compensation. For me, I have to wonder, if you're a filmmaker and you know a major venue for your work will be a tiny portion of a computer screen or some kind of portable media player, how, if at all, will that influence how you make your films?
Here is Four Eyed Monsters:
Murphy's post centers around the film Four Eyed Monsters. The film's financial prospects looked dim going the festival route so the creators have posted the film on YouTube and, in general, use the Web as the primary promotional vehicle.
Murphy's complaints are that YouTube generates no direct income and that time spent trying to promote the film via various social networking sites is time not spent being creative on another project. I'll have to let the art v. commerce issue be one that the filmmakers deal with since I'm merely a consumer. However, reading Murphy's comments made me question just who would want to sit in front of a computer screen and watch a feature film in a small box and of mediocre video & audio quality. The Dulcinea recently bought a video iPod and I put some episodes of LOST on it for her both because she hasn't seen any of last season and as an experiment, of sorts. Watching it to make sure my work had paid off, I was struck by how uninspiring and unsatisfactory it is to watch the program on such a small screen. Perhaps this is because I'm spoiled as I was able to watch most of last season in high definition on a 52" TV. Still, I must wonder if we're so desperate to watch moving pictures that we will accept even the smallest screen sizes and the lowest acceptable quality. If I had an hour-long commute each morning sitting on a train or bus, watching an iPod might be fun but I don't and I can't see myself sitting in a coffee shop staring at such a tiny screen.
Murphy says, "My point is simply that people are not going to attend screenings, rent films, or buy DVDs when the work is already available for free on YouTube." I would hazard a guess and say that this certainly applies to many people, though not all. All quibbling over numbers aside, the comment also illustrates the double-edged nature of the Net and things like iPods. The Internet surely delivers quantity but is quality being sacrificed? Would the majority of people rather watch a movie on YouTube for free than pay to see it in a theatre or watch it on DVD?
I know a couple people who, like me, are fans of Doctor Who and who download the show rather than wait a few months for it to be shown on PBS or the Sci-Fi Channel. The two people I'm thinking of immediately download the most recent episode when it's available which means they download files that are 350-375MB. On the other hand, I wait a few more hours to begin the much lengthier process of downloading the episode as a 1.5GB file. Does this make me a snob and/or old fashioned? Sometimes I wonder if music is being cheapened. I mean, if your audience is increasingly going to buy a single song instead of an album and in a lossy compression format where certain frequencies (usually on the high end) are lost and then listen to it with earbuds that can't reproduce much bass, are you as a musician going to stop caring about making a quality recordings because no one will notice anyway?
Professor Murphy's concern in his post is compensation. For me, I have to wonder, if you're a filmmaker and you know a major venue for your work will be a tiny portion of a computer screen or some kind of portable media player, how, if at all, will that influence how you make your films?
Here is Four Eyed Monsters:
03 August, 2007
At the Sinny – Setting the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
I have a bad habit of reading too much about films before I go and see them. Sometimes this doesn't matter an awful lot if the movie is a remake or based on source material with which I am familiar. But other times is drains the surprise away because I either know what's going to happen or have gleaned enough info to make educated guesses. In the case of the film I saw last night - Sunshine - I had read only the slimmest of summaries before heading to the theatre. The reviewer had said that the first half was in the vein of 2001: A Space Odyssey while the second deteriorated into schlock. But even this barest preview setup expectations and preconceptions in my mind and I'm still ambivalent about whether the film is in some way objectively messy or that it merely didn’t meet my expectations.
The year is 2057 and our distant sister Sun is dying. The small crew of Icarus II are nearing Mercury as they hurdle towards the sun to deliver a nuclear payload which will "re-ignite" the star and thusly save mankind. This second incarnation of the mission was brought about because the first neared the Sun and was then never heard from again. The ship itself is a long needlelike vessel with antennae rotating along its axis and a massive heat shield out front that protects the ship as it approaches the Sun. The shots of Icarus II from outside the ship are truly awe-inspiring; from the short fly-by cutaways to the extended scenes, the Sun looms ominously in the background. Director Danny Boyle and his DP Alwin Küchler took great advantage of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Not only are the exterior shots gorgeously panoramic, but many interior shots place characters (and sometimes just their faces) at the extreme ends of the frame. This is a film not to be missed on the big screen.
Towards the beginning of the film, we witness the crew sharing a meal. There is some light-hearted banter but tension as well with one crewmember taking complaints about the dinner directly to the cook who becomes irritated. They eat at a table whose surface is lit and anyone who has seen Alien will find him- or herself feeling déjà vu. Lighting from below casts the crew's faces in a pallid miasma which mirrors their states of mind. Having been aboard the ship for years with just one another for company and the fate of humanity in their hands, they are drained of any exuberance and are just ready to complete the mission. Their faces stand in stark contrast to the photo of the crew that hangs on one of the walls. Presumably taken shortly after lift-off, it features brilliant colors and a host of smiles.
Hiroyuki Sanada plays Captain Kaneda. With his straight hair and scruffy beard, I again thought of Alien as he looked suspiciously like Tom Skerritt's Dallas. The ship's botanist is Coraxon as played by Michelle Yeoh of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame. She tends to the ship's greenhouse which provides food and oxygen. Cillian Murphy is Capa, a young physicist on whose shoulder the burden of detonating the payload falls. The crew is rounded out by Harvey, Cassie, Mace, Trey, and Searle who is the ship's psychologist and responsible for the crew's mental health. This is the same man who grasps at fleeting moments of transcendence in the observation deck by staring at the Sun through windows tinted just enough to keep him from going instantly blind. ("It's invigorating, like taking a shower in light.")
Icarus II approaches Mercury as the plan is to use the gravity of the planet to slingshot it further on towards its destination. (A trick used in 2010.) As it approaches, a signal is detected which is identified as the distress call from Icarus I. Searle suggests that their course be altered so as to make contact with the stranded vessel to find out if its payload remains intact. The reasoning being that two massive nuclear matches are better than one. This deviation brings out high emotions amongst the crew but the clam, pensive Kenada defers the decision to Capa as he is the physicist. Capa eventually comes to agree with Searle and a rendezvous is plotted.
He and Cassie are having what is perhaps the closest thing to a tender moment when Icarus II violently shudders. Trey had made the modifications for the rendezvous but he had neglected to alter the angle of the heat shield. This prompts an extravehicular walk by Kaneda and Capa to examine the shield. I absolutely adored the spacesuits. They were these huge, bulky things with a welder's mask attached and were a million miles away from anything sleek. As they are out repairing the broken panels of the shield, the ship's computer does a HAL and refuses to let the crew maneuver the ship so that Kaneda and Capa are out of the Sun's fiery gaze. Kaneda sacrifices himself although the physicist survives. As the captain is enveloped by giant furnace before him, Searle asks him to describe what it's like.
This brings me to something that disappointed me about the film. By this time, Searle has spent so much time in the observation room that the skin on his face is peeling off. This certainly makes for a disturbed yet very interesting character. While I greatly appreciated that he didn't lose his mind and collapse into a psycho killer (which is very much against type) but Searle is never developed. The scene with him in the observation room has many close-ups of his eyes behind a pair of sunglasses and, indeed, such close-ups are very prominent throughout the first third or so of the film. I distinctly recall sitting there after 20 minutes thinking that Sunshine used the eye motif the most of any film since Blade Runner. Unfortunately this motif suddenly disappears and is only briefly resurrected towards the end. It felt like every motif and theme got up but never went anywhere. Such thematic dead ends would have been fine if the film had an existentialist bent like Le Samouraï but Sunshine never developed a cohesive stratagem in the department. In addition, the dialogue and plot never much doubt as to the fate of the crew so this stylistic device seemed overkill. Is this a "mistake" by the filmmakers or my expectations having been thwarted?
Icarus II eventually meets the rendezvous point. Trey is so wracked with guilt that he is sedated lest he commit suicide and four of the remaining crew members board Icarus I. As the crew enter via the airlock, quick flashes of Icarus I's crew appear. These are from their own colorful portrait and these brief glimpses are disorientating but not distracting making them quite effective. The interior is covered in a layer of dust but the greenhouse has flourished and is overgrown. A message from the captain of the dead ship, Pinbacker, is found and played. The video is pixilated and distorted and the voice on the message is clearly one of someone who's gone insane. He speaks of talking to God and other such delusions. Eventually the crew are found in the observation deck having been turned to dust by a blast of the sun's rays at full exposure. The core of the ship's computers, which need to be submerged in coolant, are discovered to have raised out of the liquid - they overheated and shut down. As Mace wanders in the lush greenhouse, Icarus I shudders. The connection of the two ships' airlocks has been sabotaged. Searle sacrifices himself by manually operating the airlock door to allow Capa, Mace, and Harvey to get blasted out towards Icarus II. Harvey misses the target and flies off where he freezes to death while Capa and Mace make it back into the airlock.
Aboard Icarus II, it has been calculated that there was enough oxygen to get four of them home and, in an all-too brief scene, it is decided that Trey must be killed. Mace goes to the medical room only to find Trey slouched against the wall in a pool of blood let from his wrists. Meanwhile Capa is checking the payload and making sure it will be ready for detonation. He asks the computer about the crew and discovers that there is a fifth person aboard who is on the observation deck. Capa investigates and finds that it is Captain Pinbacker whose body has been severely burned and he looks like a walking scar. This scene was shot as a near white-out with the figures barely penetrating the glare. When we do see Pinbacker, the image becomes distorted which questions Pinbacker's physical make-up or Capa's sanity.
At this point the film turns into a thriller as a creature ranting and raving about sending humanity to heaven hunts down the crew. I'm ambivalent about it. On one hand, it is just formulaic. But on the other it is symbolic with a war between religion and science, destiny and determinism being played out. While I appreciate the symbolism, it is inserted too late in the game to have much of an impact. As I noted above, thematic material has an incredibly short half-life in this film. If the crew had talked about it and it had been developed from the start, this conflict would have had stronger resonance.
Just as Sunshine hints at other classic sci-fi films such as 2001, Alien, and Solaris, it only dips its toe into the metaphysical pool. The characters are occupied by their concerns over the vagaries of space flight and their technology which means precious little time is given to scenes where Icarus II is humming along smoothly. To make matters worse, most of these scenes merely serve as brief preludes to trouble befalling the ship and crew.
Those who see this film on the small screen are lost but I'm still looking forward to the DVD release as I’m hoping for extended and deleted scenes. Sunshine clocks in at under two hours and, to my mind, it could have benefited from another 30 minutes of running time. I am forced to wonder if more scenes like those of Searle on the observation deck and Kenada in his quarters watching a video message were left on the cutting room floor. And perhaps there are more of the crew interacting in a way that involves socializing and/or moments of reflection instead of troubleshooting. My problems with Sunshine are more about what it's not rather than what it is. I didn't need grand themes popping up all over the place but I kept waiting for the less grandiose thematic devices to point me somewhere instead of just trailing off. While the cul-de-sacs could have been meaningful in and of themselves, I didn’t feel the movie did much to imbue them with importance.
Despite these criticisms, the film did many things right. The best was the all-pervasive mood which I can only describe as giving a sense of stately loneliness. It does this via a combination of great sets, cinematography, and by juxtaposing the interior of Icarus II against what is happening outside it. Inside the ship is a cramped, almost lifeless, world of drab grays that is betrayed only by the occasional glimpse of the verdant greenhouse and Trey's crimson blood. It is a mechanical environment where everything is done with mathematical precision. Meanwhile, outside is an exemplary hierarchy of size with the goliath heat shield which is dwarfed by the enormity of the Sun which, in turn, pales in comparison the vastness of space. The brilliance of the refulgent orb contrasts with the blackness of the great emptiness and exterior scenes are full of bright areas and those black or shaded. Unlike the interior of Icarus II, the Sun is active and appears alive with its tentacles of flame swirling and eddying as they seem to reach out at the ship. The great widescreen cinematography is complemented well by the music which is by the electronic group Underworld. The score is very minimal and highly moody. There were a few scenes where I wished that music was absent but, on the whole, its drones and rumbles served the visuals well.
As I noted earlier, Sunshine is a fantastic widescreen spectacle from the vast stretches of space to the arguments between crew members which pitted the verbal pugilists at opposite ends of the screen. The scene where Capa finds the mutated Pinbacker in the observation room almost made me shield my eyes and there were a couple other instances where the brilliance overwhelms the screen which fades to white. The first act features very shallow depth of field with close-ups of people's faces and extreme close-ups of their eyes. It helped establish the cramped feel inside Icarus II and did a bit to humanize the characters who were trapped in a technological bubble left to single-mindedly carry out a task. Plus it made the exterior shots all the more expansive. When this shooting style returns very late in the film, it helps bring things full circle as we see Cassie shed tears, Corazon's joy at finding that one seedling had survived a fire, and Pinbacker's madness.
Although Sunshine is scattered thematically, it is a bracing film visually and viscerally. It creates a mood and a tension which creeps inside and stays with you. I noticed things around me in the theatre maybe two times – it held my attention that well. If I have seemed overly harsh on the film this is because I enjoyed it tremendously and just wished that there was a little more to get it over the hump so it could take its place with the greats of the genre.
The year is 2057 and our distant sister Sun is dying. The small crew of Icarus II are nearing Mercury as they hurdle towards the sun to deliver a nuclear payload which will "re-ignite" the star and thusly save mankind. This second incarnation of the mission was brought about because the first neared the Sun and was then never heard from again. The ship itself is a long needlelike vessel with antennae rotating along its axis and a massive heat shield out front that protects the ship as it approaches the Sun. The shots of Icarus II from outside the ship are truly awe-inspiring; from the short fly-by cutaways to the extended scenes, the Sun looms ominously in the background. Director Danny Boyle and his DP Alwin Küchler took great advantage of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Not only are the exterior shots gorgeously panoramic, but many interior shots place characters (and sometimes just their faces) at the extreme ends of the frame. This is a film not to be missed on the big screen.
Towards the beginning of the film, we witness the crew sharing a meal. There is some light-hearted banter but tension as well with one crewmember taking complaints about the dinner directly to the cook who becomes irritated. They eat at a table whose surface is lit and anyone who has seen Alien will find him- or herself feeling déjà vu. Lighting from below casts the crew's faces in a pallid miasma which mirrors their states of mind. Having been aboard the ship for years with just one another for company and the fate of humanity in their hands, they are drained of any exuberance and are just ready to complete the mission. Their faces stand in stark contrast to the photo of the crew that hangs on one of the walls. Presumably taken shortly after lift-off, it features brilliant colors and a host of smiles.
Hiroyuki Sanada plays Captain Kaneda. With his straight hair and scruffy beard, I again thought of Alien as he looked suspiciously like Tom Skerritt's Dallas. The ship's botanist is Coraxon as played by Michelle Yeoh of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame. She tends to the ship's greenhouse which provides food and oxygen. Cillian Murphy is Capa, a young physicist on whose shoulder the burden of detonating the payload falls. The crew is rounded out by Harvey, Cassie, Mace, Trey, and Searle who is the ship's psychologist and responsible for the crew's mental health. This is the same man who grasps at fleeting moments of transcendence in the observation deck by staring at the Sun through windows tinted just enough to keep him from going instantly blind. ("It's invigorating, like taking a shower in light.")
Icarus II approaches Mercury as the plan is to use the gravity of the planet to slingshot it further on towards its destination. (A trick used in 2010.) As it approaches, a signal is detected which is identified as the distress call from Icarus I. Searle suggests that their course be altered so as to make contact with the stranded vessel to find out if its payload remains intact. The reasoning being that two massive nuclear matches are better than one. This deviation brings out high emotions amongst the crew but the clam, pensive Kenada defers the decision to Capa as he is the physicist. Capa eventually comes to agree with Searle and a rendezvous is plotted.
He and Cassie are having what is perhaps the closest thing to a tender moment when Icarus II violently shudders. Trey had made the modifications for the rendezvous but he had neglected to alter the angle of the heat shield. This prompts an extravehicular walk by Kaneda and Capa to examine the shield. I absolutely adored the spacesuits. They were these huge, bulky things with a welder's mask attached and were a million miles away from anything sleek. As they are out repairing the broken panels of the shield, the ship's computer does a HAL and refuses to let the crew maneuver the ship so that Kaneda and Capa are out of the Sun's fiery gaze. Kaneda sacrifices himself although the physicist survives. As the captain is enveloped by giant furnace before him, Searle asks him to describe what it's like.
This brings me to something that disappointed me about the film. By this time, Searle has spent so much time in the observation room that the skin on his face is peeling off. This certainly makes for a disturbed yet very interesting character. While I greatly appreciated that he didn't lose his mind and collapse into a psycho killer (which is very much against type) but Searle is never developed. The scene with him in the observation room has many close-ups of his eyes behind a pair of sunglasses and, indeed, such close-ups are very prominent throughout the first third or so of the film. I distinctly recall sitting there after 20 minutes thinking that Sunshine used the eye motif the most of any film since Blade Runner. Unfortunately this motif suddenly disappears and is only briefly resurrected towards the end. It felt like every motif and theme got up but never went anywhere. Such thematic dead ends would have been fine if the film had an existentialist bent like Le Samouraï but Sunshine never developed a cohesive stratagem in the department. In addition, the dialogue and plot never much doubt as to the fate of the crew so this stylistic device seemed overkill. Is this a "mistake" by the filmmakers or my expectations having been thwarted?
Icarus II eventually meets the rendezvous point. Trey is so wracked with guilt that he is sedated lest he commit suicide and four of the remaining crew members board Icarus I. As the crew enter via the airlock, quick flashes of Icarus I's crew appear. These are from their own colorful portrait and these brief glimpses are disorientating but not distracting making them quite effective. The interior is covered in a layer of dust but the greenhouse has flourished and is overgrown. A message from the captain of the dead ship, Pinbacker, is found and played. The video is pixilated and distorted and the voice on the message is clearly one of someone who's gone insane. He speaks of talking to God and other such delusions. Eventually the crew are found in the observation deck having been turned to dust by a blast of the sun's rays at full exposure. The core of the ship's computers, which need to be submerged in coolant, are discovered to have raised out of the liquid - they overheated and shut down. As Mace wanders in the lush greenhouse, Icarus I shudders. The connection of the two ships' airlocks has been sabotaged. Searle sacrifices himself by manually operating the airlock door to allow Capa, Mace, and Harvey to get blasted out towards Icarus II. Harvey misses the target and flies off where he freezes to death while Capa and Mace make it back into the airlock.
Aboard Icarus II, it has been calculated that there was enough oxygen to get four of them home and, in an all-too brief scene, it is decided that Trey must be killed. Mace goes to the medical room only to find Trey slouched against the wall in a pool of blood let from his wrists. Meanwhile Capa is checking the payload and making sure it will be ready for detonation. He asks the computer about the crew and discovers that there is a fifth person aboard who is on the observation deck. Capa investigates and finds that it is Captain Pinbacker whose body has been severely burned and he looks like a walking scar. This scene was shot as a near white-out with the figures barely penetrating the glare. When we do see Pinbacker, the image becomes distorted which questions Pinbacker's physical make-up or Capa's sanity.
At this point the film turns into a thriller as a creature ranting and raving about sending humanity to heaven hunts down the crew. I'm ambivalent about it. On one hand, it is just formulaic. But on the other it is symbolic with a war between religion and science, destiny and determinism being played out. While I appreciate the symbolism, it is inserted too late in the game to have much of an impact. As I noted above, thematic material has an incredibly short half-life in this film. If the crew had talked about it and it had been developed from the start, this conflict would have had stronger resonance.
Just as Sunshine hints at other classic sci-fi films such as 2001, Alien, and Solaris, it only dips its toe into the metaphysical pool. The characters are occupied by their concerns over the vagaries of space flight and their technology which means precious little time is given to scenes where Icarus II is humming along smoothly. To make matters worse, most of these scenes merely serve as brief preludes to trouble befalling the ship and crew.
Those who see this film on the small screen are lost but I'm still looking forward to the DVD release as I’m hoping for extended and deleted scenes. Sunshine clocks in at under two hours and, to my mind, it could have benefited from another 30 minutes of running time. I am forced to wonder if more scenes like those of Searle on the observation deck and Kenada in his quarters watching a video message were left on the cutting room floor. And perhaps there are more of the crew interacting in a way that involves socializing and/or moments of reflection instead of troubleshooting. My problems with Sunshine are more about what it's not rather than what it is. I didn't need grand themes popping up all over the place but I kept waiting for the less grandiose thematic devices to point me somewhere instead of just trailing off. While the cul-de-sacs could have been meaningful in and of themselves, I didn’t feel the movie did much to imbue them with importance.
Despite these criticisms, the film did many things right. The best was the all-pervasive mood which I can only describe as giving a sense of stately loneliness. It does this via a combination of great sets, cinematography, and by juxtaposing the interior of Icarus II against what is happening outside it. Inside the ship is a cramped, almost lifeless, world of drab grays that is betrayed only by the occasional glimpse of the verdant greenhouse and Trey's crimson blood. It is a mechanical environment where everything is done with mathematical precision. Meanwhile, outside is an exemplary hierarchy of size with the goliath heat shield which is dwarfed by the enormity of the Sun which, in turn, pales in comparison the vastness of space. The brilliance of the refulgent orb contrasts with the blackness of the great emptiness and exterior scenes are full of bright areas and those black or shaded. Unlike the interior of Icarus II, the Sun is active and appears alive with its tentacles of flame swirling and eddying as they seem to reach out at the ship. The great widescreen cinematography is complemented well by the music which is by the electronic group Underworld. The score is very minimal and highly moody. There were a few scenes where I wished that music was absent but, on the whole, its drones and rumbles served the visuals well.
As I noted earlier, Sunshine is a fantastic widescreen spectacle from the vast stretches of space to the arguments between crew members which pitted the verbal pugilists at opposite ends of the screen. The scene where Capa finds the mutated Pinbacker in the observation room almost made me shield my eyes and there were a couple other instances where the brilliance overwhelms the screen which fades to white. The first act features very shallow depth of field with close-ups of people's faces and extreme close-ups of their eyes. It helped establish the cramped feel inside Icarus II and did a bit to humanize the characters who were trapped in a technological bubble left to single-mindedly carry out a task. Plus it made the exterior shots all the more expansive. When this shooting style returns very late in the film, it helps bring things full circle as we see Cassie shed tears, Corazon's joy at finding that one seedling had survived a fire, and Pinbacker's madness.
Although Sunshine is scattered thematically, it is a bracing film visually and viscerally. It creates a mood and a tension which creeps inside and stays with you. I noticed things around me in the theatre maybe two times – it held my attention that well. If I have seemed overly harsh on the film this is because I enjoyed it tremendously and just wished that there was a little more to get it over the hump so it could take its place with the greats of the genre.
02 August, 2007
Charlatans on State Street
Last week while wandering State Street I noticed that a new group of charlatans have joined the mountebanks over at Mimosa and opened up a new shop – The Psychic Gallery.
Just look at the prices:
For a mere $35 you can have someone look at your palm and give you a line of bullshit. Madison ought to take a page out of Philadelphia's book and ban fortunetelling "for gain or lucre". I saw nothing indicating that this was just all in good fun or strictly for entertainment purposes which means they're con artists, plain & simple. Just like some of the folks that Mimosa brings in. Check out their events calendar. The Goddess Akeeya will be here later this month to take your time and $95 and then give you a certificate verifying that you received "Seer attunement". Ooooooh! Want a picture of you being attuned for the photo album? No dice: "Please be aware, because of the sacred nature of the information shared, NO videotaping, digital recording, or otherwise allowed." Yes, watching a con artist at work is much too "sacred" to be documented. This charlatan is known at the "female John Edward", with Mr. Edward being a self-proclaimed psychic. He too is fraud, a con, and bullshit artist. These hucksters ought to be driven out of town with brickbats.
Just look at the prices:
For a mere $35 you can have someone look at your palm and give you a line of bullshit. Madison ought to take a page out of Philadelphia's book and ban fortunetelling "for gain or lucre". I saw nothing indicating that this was just all in good fun or strictly for entertainment purposes which means they're con artists, plain & simple. Just like some of the folks that Mimosa brings in. Check out their events calendar. The Goddess Akeeya will be here later this month to take your time and $95 and then give you a certificate verifying that you received "Seer attunement". Ooooooh! Want a picture of you being attuned for the photo album? No dice: "Please be aware, because of the sacred nature of the information shared, NO videotaping, digital recording, or otherwise allowed." Yes, watching a con artist at work is much too "sacred" to be documented. This charlatan is known at the "female John Edward", with Mr. Edward being a self-proclaimed psychic. He too is fraud, a con, and bullshit artist. These hucksters ought to be driven out of town with brickbats.
01 August, 2007
The Great Beer Flood of 1814
I found this over at Pharyngula. Yes, it's the Great Beer Flood of 1814.
On October 16, 1814 the metal hoops that held the big vat together snapped and beer exploded in every direction, causing all the other vats in the building to rupture. A total of 8,500 barrels (1,224,000 liters) of beer smashed through the brick wall of the building and out into the crowded slum area of St. Giles. The sea of beer ran through the streets, flooded basements, and demolished two homes. The wave collapsed a wall in the nearby Tavistock Arms pub and buried a barmaid for three hours. In one home, the beer busted in and drowned a mother and her three-year-old son. A total of eight people were killed, seven due to drowning and one due to alcohol poisoning.
On October 16, 1814 the metal hoops that held the big vat together snapped and beer exploded in every direction, causing all the other vats in the building to rupture. A total of 8,500 barrels (1,224,000 liters) of beer smashed through the brick wall of the building and out into the crowded slum area of St. Giles. The sea of beer ran through the streets, flooded basements, and demolished two homes. The wave collapsed a wall in the nearby Tavistock Arms pub and buried a barmaid for three hours. In one home, the beer busted in and drowned a mother and her three-year-old son. A total of eight people were killed, seven due to drowning and one due to alcohol poisoning.
31 July, 2007
R.I.P. - Michelangelo Antonioni
What's with all these great directors dying lately? First it was Ingmar Bergman and now I find that Michelangelo Antonioni has also passed away. Well, he was 94 so it's not like he died young. Instead he had a long, fruitful career. The last film of his I saw was The Passenger. RIP
Older Brothers Are Evil
My birthday was last week and The Dulcinea made me a cake.
It was a pecan bourbon pound cake with the emphasis on the bourbon. I think I got a buzz eating a piece. Here's how it was served - with bourbon-infused whipped cream which had freshly grated nutmeg.
I went down to Chicago over the weekend to celebrate my birthday as well as my mother's and grandmother's which are this week. My grandma had been in the hospital but out and looking well. She'll be 92 tomorrow. We had dinner at What's Cooking over on Lincoln Avenue. My reuben was quite tasty. Afterwards my brother and I headed over to Border's Books. We'd been talking about books earlier and Harry Potter had come up. I enjoy HP whereas my brother does not. No biggie. To each his own. We walk in and find that there's a HP display right by the door. And so my brother proceeds to pick up a copy and read the last line to me. Older brothers (and siblings generally) are just plain evil.
It was a pecan bourbon pound cake with the emphasis on the bourbon. I think I got a buzz eating a piece. Here's how it was served - with bourbon-infused whipped cream which had freshly grated nutmeg.
I went down to Chicago over the weekend to celebrate my birthday as well as my mother's and grandmother's which are this week. My grandma had been in the hospital but out and looking well. She'll be 92 tomorrow. We had dinner at What's Cooking over on Lincoln Avenue. My reuben was quite tasty. Afterwards my brother and I headed over to Border's Books. We'd been talking about books earlier and Harry Potter had come up. I enjoy HP whereas my brother does not. No biggie. To each his own. We walk in and find that there's a HP display right by the door. And so my brother proceeds to pick up a copy and read the last line to me. Older brothers (and siblings generally) are just plain evil.
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