The New Auterism

"Nothing like this is done in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Here is a film that works with a space that is nearly incoherent and where the quick changes of locations (and the visual impact that comes from those quick changes) are far more important than is a need to explore them. And yet McG makes wonderful use of this strategy, creating a space/time relation that has nothing to do with any of the usual norms of probability, but from an idea of immediate meaning that exists in a constant flux according to how its characters experience whatever is happening on the screen. Many lazy critics write this film off as another by-the-numbers blockbuster, but truth be told, we never know what will happen in the next shot, even if after a while we start to expect something both silly and in bad taste."

The poetics of babytalk

"'Babytalk is full of poetic features, such as metrics and phonetics,' Miall said. 'I was surprised by how systematic it is, and how it works to shape and direct attention.' "

Gandalf Gets Swivey on the Wheels by Sasha Frere-Jones
"The hometown crush is crunk, our own version of dancehall: full of fire, committed to staying local, and not all that interested in moving from A to B. Consistency puts trunk salesmen on the red carpet and asses between windows and walls. And yes--I discount your beats if your MC is a jerk who asks a woman to do anything against her will, including but not limited to adjusting her purple Lycra bicycle shorts. Call me uptight, feminist lite, or Dionne Warwick's water bearer, but people have no right to treat other people like Kleenex. Do Tim and Magoo get a pass here? A thousand times no. 'Cold Cutz' is the least appealing sexual metaphor in a pretty bad month, and the video for 'Indian Flute,' from Tim and Magoo's current Under Construction Part II, is a sexist (and racist, bonus beat!) piece of shit, but, hey, they're not Lil' Flip, whose work I cannot debase any further than he has himself. AnD--please lower the neon 'get out of jail' sign from the rafter--Tim works with Missy. Tim works with Missy. Add 4,000 points. Not fair? Did I leave the text behind? Go on any hip-hop video set and ask a woman shaking her butt into a fish-eye lens what the fucking text is. "

NYPress on Craig Baldwin and Jon Mortisgu :

"They might be pretentious or insufferable were it not for two factors: Baldwin's George Carlin-ish sense of the absurd and his supple cutting, which marks him as one of the most skilled and surprising editors in American cinema. "

Sugar, by Marshall Sokoloff--pictures of rusty boats (thanks kottke.org)

The Tyee: A "Terrorist" with Lots of Local Fans

"The Plum Tree"

"The Romance of Zion Chapel"

"Little Pilgrimage Among French Inns"

19th cent. American pictorial book covers

way detailed review of upcoming SCTV on DVD

On Hearing That a Friend Has Attained a Position of Influence in the East (for RS)

How fortunate
the riders arrived
just in time,
silhouetted against the pink sky
as they closed the gap.

What a stroke of luck
the signatures remained legible
when every other word
was streaked
with our unreadable tears.

But if proof were not demanded
so much the better,
these bus locker keys
the ragged index
of our faces
slipping on the cobblestones
as we land face up
in each others arms.

In the shielded cities of limestone
such paper cuts
are public policy,
so how fortunate it was
that our full immersion
in their stagnant waterparks
protected us from their ravines
full of hungry ghosts,
rattling and flapping
the torn bunting of their suits,
gnawing at their watchbands,

or Wendigo himself, barely crawling--
but what a good thing he did--
out of Erin's bonfire
during the harmonic convergence,
the end of ironic Elvis
immediately
preceding the end of history--
Scheider snowballing Prochnow
in "The Fourth War", the green cigar
of Chavalas, Donald Sutherland's
Christ, the apotheosis
of Don Rickles---

So what great good luck it was
that the tanks arrived
before I was forced
to invoke the holy turbines,
the hoodoos of Airdrie,
or the famous last night
when the place that never closed
closed, the Lux
the Marine Club, the Pofi
Bar...

sending us blinking
into the silty membrane
of a mackeral spring shower.

Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales Index
THE TWO MICE.

THERE was a mouse in the hill, and a mouse in a farm.

"It were well," said the hill mouse, "to be in the farm, where one might get things."

Said the farm mouse, "Better is peace."

(thanks Plep)

Julianne Swartz in the Whitney: "Standouts in this piecemeal kingdom are David Altmejd, Eric Wesley, Mark Handforth, possibly Christian Holstad and Matthew Ronay, and certainly Julianne Swartz, whose stairwell installation fills the air with the sounds of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.' "

Dim Sum Cart

ambrosial Dim Sum with Harlan, Eli & co. @ Sun Sui Wah Seafood Restaurant on Sunday

eat cheap in NYC but beware the Bisquick naan

Overlap: Drew Gardner's Blog

"Poetry has the capacity to deal with the nonevents of life in a way that other art forms couldn't possibly manage."

Photos of Toronto Ravines

Petting Cafes!: "It is tempting, on the evidence of this book, to compile a list of disgracefully honest answers to the question: 'What did you do in World War Two, Daddy/Mummy?' These could run: 'I inspected housewives' larders to make sure that they had no more than a week's food'; 'I drove young women round town, sending them into shops to see if they could trick the assistants into supplying goods off ration'; 'I was sent to jail for hiding my Canadian Army lover in a wall cupboard for a month'; 'I blew safes in the Blitz, relying on bombs to drown out the noise'; 'I blew safes for the Army, in North Africa and Italy'; 'I flogged coffin lids from the crematorium to cabinet-makers and shrouds to the underwear workshops'; 'I reported publicans for decorating their premises without a licence'; 'I was a tart, under orders to badger my clients for petrol coupons'; 'I was in Army Intelligence and was loaned to the police to help stamp out crown and anchor games'; 'I was a policeman trying to stop people sending flowers from Cornwall to London by rail'; 'I worked for the London County Council making sure that fan-dancers gave nothing away, and that comics were not corrupting servicemen with dirty jokes.' "