And Speaking of....
The self same Brian Mickelthwait has some thoughts on
The Godfather today. He seems to like the more structured, linear, and operatic Godfather over the sequel, Godfather Part II. He has yet to get to Godfather 3.
The second one had a really strong "deleted scenes from the real movie" feeling about it. I don't share the widespread opinion that Godfather 2 is the greatest movie in general and sequel in particular ever made. I thought half of it was those deleted scenes, and the other half was a rather slight anti-capitalist Americans Being Evil in Central America movie, that every star seemed to want to do one of in those days, usually starring a journalist or a photojournalist. The Godfather is, in short, one movie, not three. There is The Movie. There are the extra bits. There is the Al Pacino versus the Jewish Guy bit, which is as small and mundane and stitched on as the Real Movie is big and remarkable and of itself. And there is 3, which everyone says is nonsense, and which I'll let you know about when I've sat through it.
Yes, G2 is less linear, yes it is focused on the parts of the book that got left out of G1, but the great Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth, Fredo in the boat, De Niro at his best as the young Vito Corleone. There is so much good stuff in G2. The film has a more sprawling, Sergio Leone or Bertolucci style to it. It is less opera and more family epic history.
The Godfather (Part I) may in fact, in some ways, be the better movie. But to dismiss Part II as a collection of deleted scenes is to miss the point. Where I agree with Brian is that these movies are best seen together. He mentions the TV version (known in America as "The Godfather Saga"), which re-edits the two films chronologically. I would love to see this version on DVD (without the cleaned up language that Coppola did for American TV).
Read the whole thing
here.
Going All Mickelthwait on Your A**
Yes I'm promoting a new word, in honor of culture blogger
Brian Micklethwait.
What is going
Micklethwait, you ask?
Answer: Excessive photo blogging, containing bridges, birds (in the British sense), and buildings. Let's make it a meme.
And all of this is merely by way of introduction to a few pictures I took of a covered bridge in Felton, California last Saturday.
[Update: I've corrected the spelling of Messr. Micklethwait's name. I seem to have inverted an ee and an el.]
Baseblog Phlog
Wasn't a good weekend for the
Giants, but it was a great weekend for Barry. If you care about this sort of thing, there is a very good piece at SFGate (
here).
Here are some images I shot from my seat, high above SBC park.
Say Hey!
Bonds tied Mays
Cruising by the park
Barry takes his hacks
The night we attended, Barry knocked number 662 out of the park, and there was an awards presentation for number 660 at which Willie Mays said a few well chosen words. Worth the price of admission right there. Mr. Mays is, and always has been, a class act.
Quick Note on an Ongoing Controversy
Aaron Hapel summarizes the plot of Kill Bill Vol. 2, and manages to get in some entertaining jabs. Aaron and I went back and forth a tiny bit on KB1 and agreed to disagree. I will withhold comment until I've actually seen KB2, which I plan to do this week.
Stay Tuned
Read Aaron's comments
here, [Beware: one or two minor spoilers]
Baseball has been very good to me
I'll be at the
Giants game tonight. Mr Schmidt is pitching. Barry is hitting. The hated and reviled Dodgers will be batting first. We're in the nosebleeds, high above the third base line, but it is SBC Park (formerly known as Pacbell Park, don't you hate corporate sponsorship?), and the smell of garlic fries will be filling the air.
Maybe some pictures on Monday.
Elsewhere
At Wired News, an
interview with author Neal Stephenson. I had a hard time getting through
Quicksilver and will probably give a pass on the rest of the
Baroque Cycle, but I've enjoyed his work in the past and he is a very interesting guy.
The Best of Baseball Blogs can be found via an article at Slate. To find your favorite team,
BaseballBlogs.org is the place to go. And there are no less than 10 blogs for my Giants.
Singer, poet, photographer, Patti Smith has a new website, a new label and a new album.
Check it out.
I (shame, shame, snik, snik) admit to being hooked on
American Idol. My daughter got us started watching it and we can't stop. Last night's episode featured guest judge Quentin Tarantino. Sounds odd, but he claims to be a fan too.
Blogcritics.org has some ongoing reviews and commentary, so I'm obviously not the only one to get Idol fever. But if you really want to enjoy snarky commentary on Idol or any of your favorite reality shows or teen dramas, the place to be is
Television Without Pity. Home of the snark.
Marcel Duchamp
Some quotes and images from the father of Dada,
Marcel Duchamp
In his own words...
an-artist, chess player, cheese dealer, breather, fenetrier
By John Cage
The check. The string he dropped. The Mona Lisa. The musical notes taken out of a hat. The glass. The toy shotgun painting. The things he found. Therefore, everything seen - every object, that is, plus the process of looking at it - is a Duchamp.
He simply found that object, gave it his name. What then did he do? He found that object, gave it his name. Identification. What then shall we do? Shall we call it by his name or by its name? It's not a question of names.
One way to write music: study Duchamp.
Say it's not a Duchamp. Turn it over and it is.
-from 'Statements Re Duchamp'
By Salvador Dali
The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.
When Duchamp understood that he had generously sown the wind with his youthful ideas until he had no more, he aristocratically stopped his "game" and announced prophetically that other young men would specialize in the process of contemporary art.
Then he played chess itself.
-from Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp
Duchamp
The Bride Stripped Bare
Nude Descending the Staircase
Fountain
Page 23, Sentence 5
Terry Teachout has a
great game that he got via via. Grab the nearest book, go to page 23, find the fifth sentence and post it to your blog.
I'll play along.
From
The Photoshop Bible by Deke McClelland (yes, that was the nearest book)...
"If the second value is bigger than the first, then all is happiness and Photoshop is running as fast as your particular brand of computer permits."
660 Baby
Go Barry!!!!
660 BONDS TIES MAYS
Dark Thoughts
Welcome back to Michael Chabon central. Or at least it seems that way lately. The author today has an op-ed at the New York Times on the subject of children expressing themselves in writing.
Chabon writes...
It is in the nature of a teenager to want to destroy. The destructive impulse is universal among children of all ages, rises to a peak of vividness, ingenuity and fascination in adolescence, and thereafter never entirely goes away. Violence and hatred, and the fear of our own inability to control them in ourselves, are a fundamental part of our birthright, along with altruism, creativity, tenderness, pity and love. It therefore requires an immense act of hypocrisy to stigmatize our young adults and teenagers as agents of deviance and disorder. It requires a policy of dishonesty about and blindness to our own histories, as a species, as a nation, and as individuals who were troubled as teenagers, and who will always be troubled, by the same dark impulses. It also requires that favorite tool of the hypocritical, dishonest and fearful: the suppression of constitutional rights.
Kids can be violent and dark creatures. As a child I sought out lurid comics, horror movies and read Lovecraft and Poe. And what did I get out of it? A healthy ability to separate fantasy from reality, a tad of creativity, and a morbid sense of humor.
It is important that in the time of the Patriot Act and in the wake of Columbine that we not throw out the baby with the bathwater by stifling our children's creativity in the name of protecting them. What you attempt to suppress comes out in all sorts of ways. Be involved, be aware, but don't block their creativity. They need that outlet. I know I did.
Read
Solitude and the Fortresses of Youth
Le Mepris
I know Godard half as much as I should. I'm a fan of
Alphaville and
Breathless, and have seen a couple of others over the years, but it was only this past weekend that I finally saw
Contempt. It is perhaps his most commercial film, in blazing technicolor and cinemascope, with money from Hollywood and Italy, featuring Brigitte Bardot and Jack Palance.
Charles Taylor writing in Salon back in 1997 describes the plot...
"Contempt" is built on a single moment of seeming inconsequence. Paul Javel (Piccoli), a promising young French writer, is courted by Jeremiah Prokosch (Jack Palance), a brash, vulgar American producer, to rewrite the screenplay for Lang's film. Paul and his young wife, Camille (Bardot), visit the studio one day, and Prokosch invites them to his home for a drink. He suggests that Camille ride with him in his sports car and Paul follow in a taxi. Despite Camille's objections, Paul agrees. He arrives at Prokosch's to find his wife out of love with him, convinced Paul left her alone with Prokosch so the producer could make a pass at her. While coping with the unraveling of his marriage, Paul has to decide whether to work on the rewrite, which is expressly against the wishes of Lang. From that scenario, "Contempt" becomes another of Godard's explorations of how much of ourselves we can sell and still remain true, a questioning into how love or work is possible in a world constantly urging us to name our price.
But it is not just Bardot's contempt for Picolli that the film's title is about. Godard's contempt for Hollywood film making, his contempt for the crass producer played by Palance, even his contempt for the sex kitten icon Bardot is apparent.
Fritz Lang, who represents an older, more pure style of film making is the only one that seems to escape Godard's venom. Lang's filming of Homer's
Odyssey becomes a metaphor for Picolli, a fedora wearing Ulysses, with Bardot standing in for Penelope, Palance the suitor, and Lang a sort of Zeus watching the whole thing from above.
Read Taylor's essay
here.
Carnival of Souls
This is a most striking
series of documentary photography and text by a woman travelling on her motorcycle through the "dead zone" of Chernobyl.
Elsewhere
Al Franken and his Team have a
blog at the Air America Website.
Chris at Crooked Timber muses on how
fictional presidents are best. Watching The West Wing often leads to similar fantasies in our house as well.
And Brian, also of CT offers a link to a remix of
Man of Constant Sorrow. Mmmmmm, downloads.
The unbelievable Tony Pierce has a
dancing Angus Young. It made me smile.
Via
DVD Journal we have this bit of Mel-ania,
Our friends at Warner are prepping a 30th Anniversary Edition of Mel Brooks' 1974 Blazing Saddles, which will include new Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, commentary from Brooks, a featurette on Madeline Kahn, a cast-reunion documentary, and the 1975 TV pilot "Black Bart." Drat, how many special editions will I have to buy?
A Piece of Work
In the irony is not dead category....
While attending a speech given by Antonin Scalia, reporters were ordered to stop taping mid speech. This prototcol had not been explained before the speech began and reporters were approached by federal marshals during Scalia's talk.
The reporter initially resisted, but later showed the deputy how to erase the digital recording after the officer took the device from her hands. The exchange occurred in the front row of the auditorium while Scalia delivered his speech about the Constitution...
[Scalia] said he spends most of his time thinking about the Constitution, calling it "a brilliant piece of work."
Read the whole thing
here
Smells Like Sonic Youth
I kind of missed out on grunge. I was living in Holland when Nirvana came around and didn't even hear of grunge until it was already passe.
Later, I discovered
Nevermind and
Unplugged in New York and loved them. I've never been a gigantic Nirvana fan, but have grown to respect their work. I'm especially fond of the unplugged version of Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World", and their cover of The Vaselines "Jesus Don't Want Me For A Sunbeam".
Writing in the New York Times today Thurston Moore, of the Post-Punk band Sonic Youth, pays tribute to Kurt Cobain in a thoughtful piece that does a good job of putting Kurt, the band, and grunge in context.
Read it
here.
A Futurist's Holiday
I am informed that today is the birthday of Gino Severini, Italian Futurist, and contributor, along with our namesake, to the
Futurist Manifestos.
Take the day off.
Schmatahs
More Yiddish stuff for Passover. Yiddisha.com has a collection of T's with Yiddish words. So you can wear your
tochus on your chest or let the world know you have a
shayna punim.
I myself would opt for the Meshuggenah shirt.
The mannequin for the Mamaleh shirt is a bit zaftig, especially compared to the Shiksa model. Are they making some kind of statement there?
Find Yiddishe Schmatahs
here.
A Fraylekhn Pesah
In honor of Passover, Crooked Timber reprints (and links to) an essay by Michael Chabon,
Next year in Yisroel. Coincidentally, you can also read a piece about Chabon at the blog of my good friend George Wallace,
A Fool in the Forest.
I'd actually read
this essay before, and might have even linked to it. Though I'm certain at having linked to
Chabon's site, which is very generous with reprints of essays and articles by the author.
Chabon's essay is a sad lamentation on the melancholy idea of a book called "Say it in Yiddish". Where would you use such a book? In what country would you need to ask an airport employee, "what is the flight number" or a medical worker, "I need something for a tourniquet" in Yiddish?
Yiddish is the kitchen table language of Jews. Sadly it is the language that my grandparents used when they did not want the children to understand. So, apart from a smattering of expressions and curse words, I am illiterate in the Yiddish language.
Fantasizing an alternative Jewish state, Yisroel, where the Hebraists lost out in favor of the establishment of Yiddish as a national language, Chabon writes, " There is Yiddish on the money, of which the basic unit is the herzl, or the dollar, or even the zloty. There are Yiddish color commentators for soccer games, Yiddish-speaking cash machines, Yiddish tags on the collars of dogs. Public debate, private discourse, joking and lamentation, all are conducted not in a new-old, partly artificial language like Hebrew, a prefabricated skyscraper still under construction, with only the lowermost of its stories as yet inhabited by the generations, but in a tumbledown old palace capable in the smallest of its stones (the word nu) of expressing slyness, tenderness, derision, romance, disputation, hopefulness, skepticism, sorrow, a lascivious impulse, or the confirmation of one's worst fears."
Now to look for my copy of "Say it in Ladino".
Odds and Oddities
2 Blowhards gives an
extensive review of
"Standing in the Shadows of Motown"
I concur that it is a better musical experience than it is a piece of movie making, but the music is fantastic. See it. And if you are looking to make it a soulful double feature, pick up the new DVD edition of Alan Parker's
"The Commitments" finally available in a worthwhile widescreen version after years of a hard to find pan and scan, no extras DVD.
Small Trivia point on
"The Commitments"... While several castmembers went on to have musical careers, perhaps the best known musician in the movie had a non-musical role. Andrea Corr, of the Corrs, played Jimmy Rabitte's sister Sharon, and her sister Sharon Corr was an uncredited fiddle player.
Chris at Crooked Timber is
Joogling.
Jew,
Jew,
Jew,
Jew,
Jew. Happy Passover.
Since I linked to
this excellent site on Evolution in an
earlier post, I feel obligated to link to Kevin Drum's posts on the subject of Evolution vs. Creationism in our schools. Read Kevin
here and
here.
New Photo Gallery
There is a new gallery at
Futurballa Photography, aka 'the other site'.
Just click on the
San Juan Bautista gallery link. I concentrated largely on architectural elements such as doors and windows. There are a couple of landscapes as well.
The majority were shot on Kodak Ektachrome G and the black & whites were shot using Kodak's professional BW400CN film.
Prints can be had by visiting the
Futurballa Store or emailing
store@futurballa.com
End of shameless self promotion.
Air America
Not much time for Blogging today, and I forgot my camera this morning, so even a quick photoblog isn't happening. But while I try to juggle multiple projects here at the office, I can listen to
Air America's O'Franken Factor in the background. The best stream for those of you, like myself, not lucky enough to get it over the air, seems to be
Portland's AM 620.
A Little Less Conversation
In an interesting and amusing literary exercise, Kevin Drum shares one half of a press briefing and let's us fill in the blanks.
Read the whole thing
here.
Send Poets, Guns and Money
I seem to be making a habit of commenting whenever Aaron Haspel posts, but he posts so rarely these days that it is often noteworthy, and today's post would be noteworthy regardless of frequency. Following some references to
favorite bloggers who wax poetic at the drop of a couplet, Aaron goes on to discuss the poetry of programming.
His praise for the single line of code as a sort of haiku is poignant, and his comment that code often grows into an epic in modern programming is well taken, but as someone who works on a mature application with years of code bloat, I might argue that the complete works of Shakespeare might be a better analogy.
Read
"Code Poems"
In Praise of Suburbia
I'm quite fond of the photographic schools known as
snapshot aesthetic and
new topography. A couple of my favorites are Bill Owens, whose book
Suburbia documents the suburban lifestyle of the 70s, and
William Eggleston ,who pretty much defines
snapshot aesthetic.
Here is my humble homage to them, taken at my Mother-in-law's garage sale in California's central valley...
Last Night I Saw the Strangest Thing
Bob Dylan, in his guise as Vincent Price, is pimping for Victoria Secret. An advertisement for La Victorias newest line of bras and panties features a cameo by Bobby Z to the tune of
Love Sick, from the
Time Out of Mind album.
Great song and I always enjoy seeing Dylan, but just struck me as more than odd.
We are Devo... D*E*V*O
UC Berkeley's (Go Bears!) paleontology department has put up a site for teachers on how to combat the growing antipathy in schools to the teaching of evolution. Sad that this is necessary, but they've done a wonderful job of creating an entertaining and educational website.
My only complaint is that the cartoon illustration of
Darwin looks like a Rabbi.
Understanding Evolution
[Link via
SFGate]
Whodathunk!
This might be a first at Futurballa Blog, but I'm linking to Glenn Reynolds, but not in his guise as conservative blogger, Instapundit, but instead writing at Tech Central on our favorite subject, digital photography.
Mr. Reynolds makes some excellent points about why digital is changing the nature of the pictures we take.
Web photos have a number of limitations compared to prints, but those limitations may -- as limitations have done throughout its history -- shape the nature of photography for the medium. Back when photography was limited to black and white, lighting and shadows were the dominant theme (think of Edward Weston's famous studies of nudes and peppers, as collections of interlocking shapes). Web photos have different limitations, but the results will likely be similar. Web photography is limited in resolution -- since most monitors won't display more than 72 dots per inch, photos are either low in resolution or displayed as so huge that viewers can't see more than a fraction on-screen at any given time.
He goes on to explain how camera manufacturers are pushing the envelope in the opposite direction, making 8, 11 and even 14 megapixel cameras (not too mention digital backs for medium and large format cameras that can top 30 megapixel) that can produce high quality photographs which can only be truly appreciated in a large print.
Interestingly, I myself have found that my 4 megapixel point and shoot, downsizing the images in Photoshop CS, is my preferred device for photoblogging, while using high resolution digital slr's (borrowed still, but not for too much longer) or film for my "serious" photography.
Certainly the images I choose to display on the blog are different then the ones I create for my photo galleries at my
other site, or offer
for sale.
Read
The Greatest Picture Show on Earth.
[Link via
George]
Commenting
Thanks to the fine folks at
Haloscan, I've added comments and trackback capability to futurballa blog. Give it a try. If you dare!
Kevin Smith
Not an auteur, certainly not a visual director, but one of the most legitimately funny guys around (at least to my juvenile sensibilities).
An amusing article from the Globe and Mail.
Read it here
Favorite quote on why he cast Jennifer Lopez after seeing Gigli? Smith says, 'Because Ben was in love with her so he didn't have to act and you want Affleck to do as little acting as possible. . . .'"
I got nothing
What with work, a training class and a general empty-headedness today, I don't have too much to blog.
Couple of items worth quickly sharing...
Josh Marshall is Richard Clarke central this week, and if you are following the 911 hearings, Josh is definitely worth your time to visit.
Secondly, friend George took the bait and has a detailed history of The Two Noble Kinsmen over at
Fool in the Forest. And remember, TNK can also refer to a Beatles cover by 801 Live.
Blogspot Irony number 1: What you criticize you will advertise.
Hotel De Anza
One of my favorite older buildings in downtown San Jose. Most of our downtown area was built in the era when office buildings conformed to the ugly gray box school of architecture, but the De Anza is a classic.
Destino
Here are some
beautiful stills from the Dali/Disney short film,
Destino.
Widely Reported
An entertaining piece on Jon Stewart and The Daily Show from the
Chicago Tribune.
Random Thoughts
This is just kind of ironic, don't you think.
He is risen, indeed.
Last night's
The Simpsons featured a throwaway joke about Moe the bartender wiping up a spill with a lost Shakespeare play. It was The Two Noble Kinsmen. I have a peripheral connection to that play, but
this blogger has a more than peripheral relationship. Perhaps he will expound.
I watched
The Day the Earth Stood Still over the weekend. One thing that struck me was the scene in which two military doctors are discussing how Klaatu's advanced medical knowledge makes them feel like witch doctors, as they both light up a cigarette. My question is was this ironic back in 1951?
Starting with
Terry Teachout's comments on Keaton vs. Chaplin, it is becoming the thing to comment on how un-funny the Little Tramp was (
Aaron Haspel and
George Hunka comment). I haven't watched much Chaplin since I was a child. I enjoyed him then, but will agree that what little I have seen in recent years has not particularly made me laugh. But honestly, I am not a big fan of Silent comedy in general. Terry poses the "two kinds of people" question in the Chaplin/Keaton debate. I'd update it slightly to talkies and ask the question of intellectual humor vs. slapstick in the Marx Brothers/Three Stooges dichotomy. My preference has always been the Marx Brothers over The Stooges, which puts me firmly in the camp of witty dialog over slapstick.
Representing the satiric wing of the Democratic Party. The New York Times has a lengthy
profile of Al Franken. [Link via
Kevin Drum]
Also via
Terry Teachout, find out
which classic novel you belong in. I will join Terry in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
