the Roberto Bolaño plot "thickens"
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
YouTube - Colour on the Thames (1935)
This film is tricky to describe: is it a boat study, a film-poem, an experiment, a picture postcard? One thing is certain: it's a rare colour snapshot of the Thames and London in the 1930s - and it looks
quite magical.
Its artistic qualities may look a bit
old-fashioned to us today; the slow pace, orchestral music and moody colours definitely belong to a bygone era, strikingly peaceful and
undemanding. Yet colour film was still a novelty for audiences in 1935, and the photography (using the new Gasparcolor system) succeeds in
accentuating the sharp contrast between the vivid green banks of the countryside and the drab tones of the industrial landscape. (Sonia
Genaitay)
This film is tricky to describe: is it a boat study, a film-poem, an experiment, a picture postcard? One thing is certain: it's a rare colour snapshot of the Thames and London in the 1930s - and it looks
quite magical.
Its artistic qualities may look a bit
old-fashioned to us today; the slow pace, orchestral music and moody colours definitely belong to a bygone era, strikingly peaceful and
undemanding. Yet colour film was still a novelty for audiences in 1935, and the photography (using the new Gasparcolor system) succeeds in
accentuating the sharp contrast between the vivid green banks of the countryside and the drab tones of the industrial landscape. (Sonia
Genaitay)
Monday, January 26, 2009
Rank And File: Sundown (1982)
...in Kansas there waged a great civil war,
between those wanting freedom
& those wanting more--
slavery's claim
was that man would own man--
throw it down
John Brown!
...in Kansas there waged a great civil war,
between those wanting freedom
& those wanting more--
slavery's claim
was that man would own man--
throw it down
John Brown!
trees from the Great Storm in London 1987
also from 1987--Robert Altman's film of Harold Pinter's
also from 1987--Robert Altman's film of Harold Pinter's
The Room, with Annie Lennox, Julian Sands, Linda Hunt, Donald Pleasance
essay on criminally neglected poet Charlotte Mew's "The Trees Are Down"--
In Praise of Tree-Valor by Molly Peacock
They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens...
In Praise of Tree-Valor by Molly Peacock
They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens...
Sunday, January 25, 2009
250th birthday of Robert Burns today
Epistle To Davie, A Brother Poet:--
To lie in kilns and barns at e'en,
When banes are craz'd, and bluid is thin,
Is doubtless, great distress!
Yet then content could make us blest;
Ev'n then, sometimes, we'd snatch a taste
Of truest happiness.
The honest heart that's free frae a'
Intended fraud or guile,
However Fortune kick the ba',
Has aye some cause to smile;
An' mind still, you'll find still,
A comfort this nae sma';
Nae mair then we'll care then,
Nae farther can we fa'...
Epistle To Davie, A Brother Poet:--
To lie in kilns and barns at e'en,
When banes are craz'd, and bluid is thin,
Is doubtless, great distress!
Yet then content could make us blest;
Ev'n then, sometimes, we'd snatch a taste
Of truest happiness.
The honest heart that's free frae a'
Intended fraud or guile,
However Fortune kick the ba',
Has aye some cause to smile;
An' mind still, you'll find still,
A comfort this nae sma';
Nae mair then we'll care then,
Nae farther can we fa'...
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Wire - Map Ref. 41°N 93°W
An unseen ruler
defines with geometry
an unruleable
expanse of geography
An aerial photographer,
over-exposed
To the cartologist's 2D
images knows
the areas where the water flowed...
so petrified
the landscape grows
straining eyes
try to understand
the works
incessantly in hand
the carving and the paring of the land...
The quarter square, the graph divides
Beneath the rule a country hides...
Interrupting my train of thought
Lines of longitude and latitude
Define refine my altitude
The curtain's undrawn
Harness fitted, no escape--
Common and peaceful,
duck flat lowland
landscape canal canard,
water coloured--
Crystal palaces for floral kings
A well-known waving span of wings...
Witness the sinking of the sun,
A deep breath of submission has begun...
Interrupting my train of thought
Lines of longitude and latitude
Define refine my altitude
An unseen ruler
defines with geometry
an unruleable
expanse of geography
An aerial photographer,
over-exposed
To the cartologist's 2D
images knows
the areas where the water flowed...
so petrified
the landscape grows
straining eyes
try to understand
the works
incessantly in hand
the carving and the paring of the land...
The quarter square, the graph divides
Beneath the rule a country hides...
Interrupting my train of thought
Lines of longitude and latitude
Define refine my altitude
The curtain's undrawn
Harness fitted, no escape--
Common and peaceful,
duck flat lowland
landscape canal canard,
water coloured--
Crystal palaces for floral kings
A well-known waving span of wings...
Witness the sinking of the sun,
A deep breath of submission has begun...
Interrupting my train of thought
Lines of longitude and latitude
Define refine my altitude
My Bloody Valentine - "Map Ref. 41°N 93°W"Map Ref. 41°N 93° single download
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
.jpg)
Kim Novak, Ernie Kovacs, Pyewacket the Siamese, Jack Lemmon as a hipster warlock & the camera of James Wong Howe star in my all time favorite witch-in-Manahattan movie Bell, Book and Candle on TCM tonight...
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy,
Of value is thy freight, 'tis not the Present only,
The Past is also stored in thee,
Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western continent alone,
Earth's résumé entire floats on thy keel O ship, is steadied by thy spars,
With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee,
With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the other continents,
Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant;
Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye O helmsman, thou carriest great companions,
Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee,
And royal feudal Europe sails with thee.
Walt Whitman
Monday, January 19, 2009
.jpg)
Robert Wise's great late noir Odds Against Tomorrow written by Abe Polonsky, starring Harry Belafonte & a never-better Robert Ryan, on TCM tonight...
Friday, January 16, 2009
Some Promising Futures for Art Criticism
...But at the same moment that the old guard has been decrying the sorry state of "criticism" (a contested term that's come to mean everything from academic papers to exhibition reviews), something has been happening in art writing. While James Elkins, author of the doomsaying What Happened to Art Criticism?, claims that art criticism is "dying, but everywhere . . . massively produced and massively ignored," writers are pushing out in new directions, trying hybrid forms, and blurring the distinction between art writing and art making...
Thursday, January 15, 2009
1. Barack Obama
2. Michelle Obama
3. Martin Luther King Jr.
4. Thurgood Marshall
5. Rosa Parks
6. Barbara Jordan
7. Cynthia Wesley
8. Carole Robertson
9. Denise McNair
10. Addie Mae Collins
11. Emmett Till
12. Susan B. Anthony
13. C.T. Vivian
14. James Meredith
15. Homer Plessy
16. Harvey Milk
17. Ida B. Wells
18. Malcolm X
19. Bayard Rustin
20. John Lewis
21. Mahatma Gandhi
22. Abraham Lincoln
23. Frederick Douglass
24. Cesar Chavez
25. Sojourner Truth
26. Nelson Mandela
27. Stephen Biko
28. Oliver Brown (Brown v. Board of Education)
29. Chief Joseph
30. Lyndon Johnson
31. Medgar Evers
32. Rev. James Reeb
33. Fred Shuttleworth
34. W.E.B. Du Bois
35. Ralph Abernathy
36. Viola Gregg Liuzzo
37. Marcus Garvey
38. Andrew Goodman
39. James Chaney
40. Michael Schwerner
41. John Brown
42. Jackie Robinson
43. Dolores Huerta
44. Mary White Ovington
45. William Lloyd Garrison
46. Wang Dan
47. Stephen Samuel Wise
48. Harriet Tubman
49. Dred Scott
50. Booker T. Washington
51. David Richmond (and)
52. Joseph McNeil (Greensboro Four)
53. Martin Delany
54. The Little Rock Nine
55. William Still
56. Thomas Garrett
57. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
58. Samuel Burris
59. Thomas Paine
60. Abigail Kelley Foster
61. Jesse Jackson
62. Eugene V. Debs
63. Lucretia Mott
64. Paul Robeson
65. Henry David Thoreau
66. Shirley Chisholm
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