Wishbone Ash

Wishbone Ash - Argus - 1972

Time Was
Sometime World
Blowin Free
The King Will Come
Leaf and Stream
Warrior
Throw Down the Sword

Van Gogh brushstrokes

There are 1753 brush strokes in Van Gogh's "Vincent's Bedroom in Arles".

The whole video about catching fake Van Gogh paintings with computers is here.

Godard tweets

So I did a Twitter search for Godard as in Jean Luc Godard.
And it's interesting because in a matter of a few hours there were two famous quotes by Godard that were going around and mentioned by a good number of people who I am guessing were not connected to one another.

To be or not to be. That's not really a question. showed up 8 times in 40 tweets.

A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order showed up 4 times in 40 tweets.

The first quote is one I had never heard from Godard and I am not sure where everyone else heard it. I am guessing a meme is going around.

Huntington

I visited the Huntington Library this weekend. It's a beautiful place. Of course, I forgot my camera, which is actually a good thing because otherwise I would have spent too much time snapping photos and not enough time looking at the beauty and sheer size of the place. However, there are many good photos over at Flickr.

Number 9

Beatles remastered release 090909

Severe cuts

Why are they smiling?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders will begin working today to line up votes for the budget agreement they reached Monday evening to close a $26.3-billion deficit and allow the state to begin paying all of its bills again...
The plan has not been formally released. But... it does not include any broad-based tax increases, relying instead on deep cuts in government services, borrowing and accounting maneuvers to wipe out the deficit....

Tens of thousands of seniors and children would lose access to healthcare, local governments would sacrifice several billion dollars in state assistance this year and thousands of convicted criminals could serve less time in state prison. Welfare checks would go to fewer residents, state workers would be forced to continue to take unpaid days off and new drilling for oil would be permitted off the Santa Barbara coast.

------------

So again, why exactly are they smiling?

Hippy Summer tunes

A 60's Psychedelic mix

Lemon Fog - Summer
Plastic Cloud - Dainty General Rides
Rhubarb Rhubarb - Rainmaker
Renegades - I Was There
The Chocolate Watch Band - I'm Not Like Everybody Else
The Visions - Small Town Commotion
Tyrannies - She's a Queen

Dust

Dust - Hard Attack [1972]

Pull Away So Many Times
Walk in the Soft Rain
Thusly Spoken
Ivory

Just a few tracks from their second album.

Lost Island of VHS...

Antoine et Antoinette - Jacques Becker - 1947

Jacques Becker's light but highly enjoyable French film from the 1940's 'Antoine and Antoinette' is about an attractive working class couple living in Paris who get their hands on a winning lottery ticket that is sure to end all of their woes. Only the ticket gets lost in a busy train station. Antoine scrambles to find the ticket at the same time Antoinette finds herself the object of affection from a lecherous businessman who employees her. The film is sort of a remake of Rene Clair's 'Le Million'. Less artful perhaps but maybe a bit more empathetic and down-to-earth.
I suspect this could be part of the Janus Collection and may show up on Criterion some day. As it is now you can only see it on a cheap VHS copy that is tough to find.

Spiegelman does Peanuts

This is from the 2/19/00 issue of The New Yorker.

Lost Island of VHS...

The Nasty Girl - Michael Verhoeven - 1990

One of my favorite German films from the 1990's was 'The Nasty Girl' by Michael Verehoven. A young woman writes an essay that wins her the respect and love of her small home town. So for her next assignment she decides to write an essay about the town's Nazi past and before she knows it she is an outcast facing the wrath of the town along with death threats to her family. The film's story is good enough but the style and distinct energy of the directing and editing make for a really delightful cinematic experience not to mention one that deals with a subject that still riles some Germans.
This one deserves to be on DVD. Miramax has the rights.

Jukka Tolonen is a Finish guitar legend.

Here are a few tracks from his 1971 album Tolonen!. It's more jazz oriented than rock - just so you know.

Elements: Earth, Fire, Water, Air
Ramblin
Mountains
Wanderland

What is this recent New Yorker cartoon all about?
Answer below.

John
Marsha
John
Marsha
John
Marsha
John
Marsha...

The piece was written by Stan Freberg in 1951.

There was also a long running TV sitcom in the Philippines called John en Marsha back in the 1980's.

Egg breaking revival

Tear Gas - 1971 hard blues rock


Yeah Yeah Yeahs - 2009 rock album

No downloads here - just a comparison of images.

Culpeper's Orchard

Culpeper's Orchard was a Danish psych / rock band [with folk influence] from the 1970's. Their sound has hints of Led Zeppelin, Cream and Genesis. Check it out.

Here are choice cuts [from YouTube] of the first album Culpeper's Orchard - 1971.

Mountain Music Part 1
Hey You People
Teaparty for an Orchard
Ode to Resistance
Your Song & Mine
Gideon's Trap
Blue Day's Morning
Mountain Music Part 2

Magazine cover

This week's New Yorker cover was done on an iPhone.

Ramases

Ramases - Space Hymns.
Ramases was an early 1970's band that produced [I think] only this one album in 1971.
And it's a good one. Sort of a psychedelic, freak folk rock album done by Martin Raphael - who made a living as a heating salesman in Sheffield, England. He and his wife, Selket, put this album together and in a short time it obtained a cult following.

Here are a few tracks to listen to available on YouTube.

Life Child
And The Whole World
Quasar One
You're The Only One
Earth People
Balloon
Jesus Come Back

Some 09 Movies

Here is what I have seen recently. In order of preference.

Revanche - A terrific thriller from Austria about a criminal bent on killing the cop who killed his girlfriend. Has a gradual pace and builds beautifully and then shifts focus very subtly and effectively.

Il Divo - An impressive, impressionistic Italian film about a former Prime Minister who may have had connections to the mafia and the murders of his rivals. This is not a traditional biopic and it's all the better for it. Very well assembled. I'm not sure if the director or the editor or the cinematographer gets the bigger applause so I'll salute all three.

Lemon Tree - A [rich] Israeli couple move next door to [poor] Palestinian woman who happens to have a lemon orchard they think will be a hideout for terrorists who want to kill them. So they arrange to clear cut the orchard. This is a well made and engaging film that gets into the personal emotions of the Israeli Palestinian conflict even if is a bit predictable and, at times, heavy-handed.

Adventureland - Young man gets job before going to college in a theme park where he does drugs, falls in love and has a great summer. Despite the fact that many jokes fall flat this is a good film because of the believability of the characters, their situations and the 80's East Coast milieu. It captures youth and falling in love about as well as any youth film out there.

Séraphine - French film about [real life] sightly crazy painter Séraphine de Senlis. Great first hour that carries on a bit long into the second hour as we watch the woman make bad decisions and descend into madness - a place where, unfortunately, most dramas about painters go.


Departures - Japanese film about a cellist who becomes an undertaker preparing bodies for their 'departure'. Sensitive film with some good early scenes about rituals but it gets too sentimental midway through. I like the rock metaphor but it only adds some interest to the story. Also what's up with most of the recently departed being women?

The Limits of Control - Laconic hit man (Isaach De Bankolé) - who lives on paper and espresso - goes to Spain to kill some bigwig [Bill Murray] in this flatter than a pancake drama. I'm a fan of Jarmusch's existential, dead pan style but I had no connection with this film at all.

70's classic

I've always wanted to hear this album. Some guy is streaming** it on a website called Vinyl Archives.
Buckingham Nicks

**[Note this only plays the full album on a Windows Media player. If you only have iTunes it will only play the first song, which it downloads].

Also available here to listen to no matter what you have.

Cannes 2009

The 2009 Cannes competition lineup:

“Abrazos Rotos” (Broken Embraces), directed by Pedro Almodovar
“Antichrist,” directed by Lars Von Trier
“Bright Star,” directed by Jane Campion
“Enter The Void,” directed by Gasper Noe
Faces directed by Tsai Ming-liang
“Fish Tank,” directed by Andrea Arnold
“Kinatay,” directed by directed by Brillante Mendoza
“Les Herbes folles,” directed by Alain Resnais
“In The Beginning,” directed by Xavier Giannoli
“Inglorious Basterds,” directed by Quentin Tarantino
“Looking For Eric,” directed by Ken Loach
“Map of the Sounds of Tokyo,” directed by Isabel Coixet
“A Prophet,” directed by Jacques Audiard
“Spring Fever,” directed by Lou Ye
“Taking Woodstock,” directed by Ang Lee
“The Time That Remains,” directed by Elia Suleiman
“Thirst,” directed by directed by Park Chan Wook
“Vengeance,” directed by Johnny To
“Vincere,” directed by Marco Bellocchio
“The White Ribbon,” directed by Michael Haneke

When possible I've tried to include the trailer.

Infinite monkey comics

Godard


Deneuve


Create your own three panel cartoon.

Ballardry

"J.G. Ballard began as a hardcore SF writer. His very early short stories, on familiar themes such as overpopulation, societal decay and so on, are as good as anything in the genre.... There followed four novels of glazed apocalypse": [Martin Amis]

Where the world was destroyed by:

The Wind from Nowhere (1961) Wind
The Drowned World (1962) Water
The Drought (1964) Heat
The Crystal World (1966) Mineralisation

Evolution of Dancing Gangsters

Walk Cheerfully (1930) silent Ozu film.
The Band Wagon (1953) Vincent Minelli musical.
Band of Outsiders (1964) Jean-Luc Godard movie
Pulp Fiction (1994) - Quentin Tarantino flic.

Old prof...

Stanton Englehart has passed away. He was a great artist but an even better human being. He was very compassionate, humorous, generous, vibrant and a pleasure to be around.
He taught art classes at Fort Lewis College in CO.
One of the classes he taught was on Aesthetics. I took the class back in 1990. It was a cool class because the students would talk aesthetics and art most of the day. Then Stanton would play music and we would write in our journals or read the books he had assigned. At the end of the year he would let the students grade themselves. He felt we ultimately would be humble enough to not give ourselves an A+ and he was right: He had to talk some of us out of giving ourselves a B.
He painted a lot of landscapes and was particularly partial to the Southwestern United States [close to where he lived his entire life]. He would visit Lake Powell often, with his wife, and he would come back and paint these big colorful paintings that would take up half the wall. A book on his paintings can be found here.

The books he assigned for his class were:

The Memory of Old Jack
The Universe is a Green Dragon
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

He had an influence on my life. He'll be missed by many.

Handshakes [and smiles]

Khrushchev & JFK


Mao and Nixon


Bush and Abdullah


Obama and Chavez

You getting the picture people? Diplomats shake hands. This is how the world moves forward.

Italiano Prog

I stumbled upon a Seventies Italian Prog Rock band while perusing the internet recently.

Il Mucchio
They only made one album back in 1970 but it's considered one of the first Italian Prog Rock albums so it has some importance.
It's pretty wild stuff with a lot of organ soaked psychedelic / pop rock sounds accompanied by guitars, drums and, of course, lyrics in Italian. They even do an interesting version of Ave Maria.
There is a My Space page where you can hear some of their music.

Song on YouTube

Lost Island of VHS...

The Dead - John Huston - 1987
One of the best 'last movies' by a master but also a great ensemble work that stands up viewing after viewing. Based on a James Joyce short story it's about a gathering of family and friends for an Epiphany dinner circa 1904.
What starts as a seemingly random series of scenes that resemble a Masterpiece Theater episode slowly evolves into a remarkable warm and rewarding film about the fragility of life. The fidelity of the direction, editing and all around acting [Angelica Huston, Donal McCann, Dan O'Herlihy and many others) make it one of the better films of the 1980's.
I watched this recently through On Demand on The Sundance channel. It was full frame with poor audio quality. This needs to be on DVD in R1.

--------
Update: This is finally getting a DVD release in November 2009 but the first pressing of the DVD is missing the film's first 10 minutes. It apparently was fixed on the second pressing but the first pressing is still on sale out there.

Jane Austin & Zombie attacks

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.

It was inevitable, right?

Toho-ho-ho

The H-Man is a 1958 Japanese sci-fi thriller [of sorts] that pits cops against both Tokyo's underground and mysterious radioactive slime monsters that melt everyone they touch.
Like many Japanese monster films of the period this one deals with the terror that the Atomic age wrought; The film's opening image is a nuclear bomb exploding and the monster [or monsters] are mutants that are believed to have developed due to a Hydrogen bomb test.
The Japanese title translates as "Beauty and the Liquid Men". Beauty in this case is a nightclub singer (Yumi Shirakawa) who is kidnapped by one of the gangsters. And the Liquid Men are, naturally, the slim monsters, which makes you wonder why the film was retitled The H-Man rather than The H-Men. I guess singular is more scary than plural in this case?
On the surface this is a promising film. I mean, you've got your heroin trading gangsters, your scantily clad nightclub dancers and an oozing thing crawling up an down the walls attacking amd melting everyone in its way. And it all marches along to a climax in the Tokyo sewer which the city has decided to firebomb in order to get rid of the menace. Plus, it's directed by Ishiro Honda best known for Godzilla. But The H-Man really doesn't deliver. It's neither scary nor suspenseful nor provocative. Although it is watchable and frequently humorous - especially the English dubbed version Columbia released that shown on TCM the other night.

The DVD for this film is not available through regular commercial channels on R1 but it can be found here.

Lost Island of VHS...

I'm starting a column of films that are not available on DVD in R1 but are available on VHS if you can find them.

Stage of Siege - Costa-Gavras - 1972
State of Siege is political cinema at its most potent and [some would say] heavy handed. It's both dynamic and talky but never less than engaging and is frequently suspenseful. The setting is Uruguay and the time is the 1970's when Leftists were fighting well-funded right wing dictatorships.
A group of underground leftists have create a 'state of siege' whereby they kidnap a few key political figures. One of them is a diplomat played by Yves Montand. While kidnapped he is taken to a dark hideout where he is questioned by hooded guerrillas who know everything there is to know about him. But he holds his own with questions with a right leaning reasoning as to why things are the way they are.
Much like some of the films of Francesco Rosi the film starts with the death of the main character [Montand] and then goes back in time to show us what lead to the death. Stylistically I was struck by the editing choices and use of zoom shots, which were common the in the 70's. But here the zooms serve a narrative function rather than just add an aesthetic mood. Whether zooming in on the action as vans kidnap people or on a pair of eyes that stare at yet another diplomat walking off a plane to try and control the social and economic future of another South American country.
The film's message is that even though the guerrillas may not win they are watching, they are planning and they will not compromise their position. Costa-Gavras empathizes with them. In this regard, the film is not politically correct to the world we live in today. In fact, I don't think a film like this would be made today unless - like Marco Bellochio's Good Morning, Night [on DVD] or Paul Schrader's Patty Hearst [not in R1] - the message was about the folly and mistakes of such far left groups. Still it is hard to find fault with Costa-Gavras' criticisms of the atrocities of Latin American dicatorships.

I watched this on an old VHS tape that was full-frame and dubbed[!]. It was one of those heavy ones and it seemed it would fall apart at any moment. Fortunately, it held up fine.
Z is coming soon and Missing was released by the Criterion Collection recently so let's see if they will put this out too.

WB releases many classics

Warner Bros. have released 150 classic titles from their archive that are only available at WBshop.com.
Each title is 19.95 if you want the actual dvd or 14.95 if you want to download it yourself into your computer.
A partial title list of the pre-1970 titles can be seen here.
Discussions of the whole enterprise can be seen here.

Rare movies that aren't

There are so many good rare films available now on DVD that it can be tough to parse the good from the bad. Back before video you would have had to wait years to see good films come back around. And while there are still a lot of films not on DVD there is plenty to keep any cinefile occupied for a while.

Here are five 'rare' ones that are relatively easy to get on Amazon or for rent at places like Greencine.

Wildcat [Kino] - A very funny, uniquely shot German silent film made in 1921 by Ernst Lubitch. This film has the makings of a landmark film but for some reason it is only mentioned in obscure silent film books. It should be taught in every film school. Once you see it you'll know why. It is also one of Peter Bogdanovich's favorite comedies.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed [Image] - A 1926 animation masterpiece made by Lotte Reiniger using a silhouette cutout technique it tells an enchanting Arabian night tale. This film is rare in the sense that no one made films like this then and no one [or very few] makes films that this now.

Drole de Drame [HVE] - A wonderful 1936 farce by Marcel Carné [written by Jacques Prévert] about a rich man and wife who try to fool a visiting guest but only land themselves in hot water. Odd film that keeps the laughs coming. Look for it to be release at some point again under Criterion's Eclipse box sets.

Moontide [Fox] - This is one of those rare 40's suspense films [not technically a noir] starring Ida Lupino and Jean Gabin - only it's not rare anymore. Directed by Archie Mayo, it is one that people talked about in the past but few had seen. Tense, humorous, well shot by Charles G. Clarke and an interesting pairing of two stars. After seeing it you'll know why it has a cult following.

Gumshoe  [Sony/Columbia] - All but forgotten Albert Finney seventies comedy/noir directed by Stephen Frears. Just released on DVD. When you watch it you will feel like you have really made a find. Don't tell your friends you got it used at Amazon for $5.99.

Americans flunk science

This is discouraging.
These people need to go back to school!

Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.
Only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time.
Only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth's surface that is covered with water.
Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly.

The test is here.

They were not looking for exact answers - just general answers.
For instance, the earth revolves around the sun in...well one year! 365 days was acceptable and 365.25 days was even better - but the survey didn't ask for these choices - so a year was right.
Obviously, they were not looking for dates on when the dinosaurs disappeared or when humans first existed. Approximately 65 million years passed between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the evolution of humans.
And the last question can be tough to get exact but the survey people say anything between 65% to 75% was an acceptable answer. I was taught as a kid that 2/3's of the Earth's surface is covered in water. That would be 66%. The correct answer is really 71%.

Less than 1% know how much of the Earth's water is fresh. The correct answer is 3%.
This is one I did not know. I guessed 4% to 10% So maybe I need some schooling?
The other two questions dealt with evolution and, actually, upwards of 70% surveyed believed in evolution.

Check, mate?

"Hi I'm selling this DVD for $2,000.00 even though it is still in print and can be bought for $20.00 from other sellers."



Are these guys nuts or did one seller mistakenly price this DVD for $2,400.00 and another seller try to undercut him by a penny?
[Now if someone comes along to buy one of these then I guess the seller will be a genius]

Mid East Weddings

Two DVD covers but different movies.

Kluge

'Yesterday Girl' was one of the first important films of the New German cinema. The most well known [and talked about] directors were Wim Wenders, Ranier Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta. But not mentioned as much is Alexander Kluge. I don't know the exact reason except that it probably has to do with the tepid [and naive] response by the New York Times to his first two films here in the US. But in Europe he was much more appreciated. 'Yesterday Girl' won the Silver Lion in Venice in 1966.

Shot in black and white and edited in a dynamic way that jumps from scene to scene the narrative style of 'Yesterday Girl' is very much like a Jean Luc Godard film from the sixties. And, as Peter Cowie mentions in his book Revolution!: The Explosion of World Cinema in the Sixties, the main actress [Alexandra Kluge] would be right at home in a Godard film from the period.
In the film the woman has moved from East Germany to West Germany but cannot find a way to fit in. She is alert, attractive but confused and cannot get a good job or meet anyone who is friendly. She moves from place to place, job to job, school to school - usually in a skirt and with a suitcase. It's not necessarily a literal film so much as a film with metaphors and impressionistic scenes that give the viewer the feeling of alientation. The film is about 89 minutes in length but has a fresh feel throughout and is over before you know it mainly because there is a terrific energy to the whole thing.

Kluge is still not well known in cinema circles. His first two films 'Yesterday Girl' and 'Artists under the Big Top: Perplexed' aren't even mentioned in this Wikipedia post.
And they are very hard to find on DVD. Facets put out a few of his films last fall and they are already out-of-print. I searched and noticed that 'Artists under the Big Top: Perplexed' is available on Ebay. [But I cannot vouch for their quality since they may actually be copies of Facets DVDs rather than the real thing].

I have yet to see 'Artists...' but from reviews I have read it seems to be even more abstract in its editing style. Which means I cannot wait to see it. But I recommend watching 'Yesterday Girl' if you can find it.

Here's a good write-up on the film from Film Ref.
Here's a cinemascope article on Kluge and here's one from Senses of Cinema.

Norma Rae

I received an email from someone who read a review I wrote on the DVD of Norma Rae a few years ago. They wanted to know the town it was shot in.
The fictionalized town is called Henleyville but [as this cool link of labor movies notes] "it is based on the real-life story of textile union activist Crystal Lee Sutton in her fight against the J.P. Stevens Co. in Roanoke Rapids, N.C."
But the real town they shot the movie in was Opelika, Alabama where they had a real unionized mill.

The Nation has a good article on the film.

Now you know...

New Yorker films...

New Yorker Films is going out of business. This is sad news for anyone who loves foreign language films. Some of the films they released over for the past 40 years were among the most memorable and what one could call essential.
Filmmakers such as Jean Luc-Godard, Ranier Werner Fassbinder, Alain Tanner and Ousmane Senbene had films distributed to the US by New Yorker.
In the 1990's, when VHS was the main home format, they had a lock on some of the best film titles available. Many of these titles never actually made it onto DVD. But some of the titles managed to go over to Rialto Pictures, which puts them on The Criterion Collection.
Over the past ten years New Yorker DVD has released fewer and fewer titles.
But they were good titles. Here is a list of some of the best titles available on DVD from New Yorker. [I guess once stores sell out of New Yorker DVDs they may not be available for a while unless they can be found used].

After Life - Hirokazu Koreeda
L'Argent - Robert Bresson
Beau Travail - Clair Denis
Chunhyang - Im Kwon-Taek
Cyclo - Tran Ahn Hung
The Eel - Shohei Imamura
Fireworks - Takeshi Kitano
Flamenco - Carlos Saura
Gabbeh - Moshen Malkmalbaf
How Tasty Was My Little Frenchmen - Pereira Dos Santos
Jazz on a Summer's Day - Bert Stern
La Belle Noiseuse - Jacques Rivette
Landscape in the Mist - Theo Angelopolous
Loulou - Marice Pialat
A Man Escaped - Robert Bresson
Moolaade - Ousmane Sembene
My Architect - Nathaniel Kahn
Platform - Jia Zhang-ke
Shoah - Claude Lanzmann
The Son - Dardenne Brothers
Songs From The Second Floor - Roy Andersson
Weekend - Jean Luc Godard
The Wind Will Carry Us - Abbas Kiarostami
Underground - Emir Kusturica

A complete list of New Yorker titles can be found here. Note some of the titles were not announced titles but were in the New Yorker library and are on VHS].

Director list

Entertainment Weekly has a list of the Top 50 Active directors working today.

Please note that - even though they don't say it directly - this list is really a Hollywood 'power list'. These are the directors who define mainstream cinema and bring in the bucks. That's why few really good foreign language directors such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Alexander Sukorov, Patrice Leconte, Clair Denis or Werner Herzog manage to not even make it into the top 50.

Women are missing, which is in some part because they are still not invited to the table with the big boys. That said, Sofia Coppola makes it but Katherine Bigelow doesn't.

But one should also note that even among this power list Jon Favreau #25 edges past Woody Allen #26. What? A director who has made 2 good films in 6 years is in front of a director who has made a good film [and some great ones] every year for the past 26 years?

James Cameron makes the top ten despite the fact that he hasn't made a film in 13 years. Huh? I guess The Titanic gives him a free ride for a lifetime? May as well throw Francis Coppola or William Freidkin on there too.
I also had to look three times at the overall top 50 because I could scarcely believe Gus Van Sant didn't make the list.

I'll acknowledge that any list they come out with will raise heckles from some quarter. And, after all, they are Entertainment Weekly - not Film Comment or Sight & Sound so anything not aligned with Hollywood mainstream would seem to go against their base. But then again maybe they just make these lists to provoke us? Because if they think we are supposed to take it seriously then they would make a serious list.

Simon says

One of Bunuel's best if for no other reason then that it feels unfinished and therefore more surreal. But, as always, the religious angle is there. Even though he mocks religion he brings up debatable points as well.

Review here.

Inauguration...celebration, liberation, transformation, revelation, standing ovation, respect for nation and hopefully job creation.

Rolex

Is it chic to ride with a Rolex?

From a 1968 issue of The New Yorker.

Electoral predictions

Electoral College predictions compared to reality:

Markos Moulitas, DailyKos / Obama 390 McCain 148
Morton Kondracke, Fox News host / Obama 379 McCain 159
George Will, conservative columnist / Obama 378 McCain 160
Final Electoral College results / Obama 365 McCain 173
Larry Sabato / Obama 364 McCain 174
Alan Abramowitz, Emory University / Obama 361 McCain 177
Sandy Maisel, Colby College / Obama 353 McCain 185
Ed Rollins, Republican strategist / Obama 353 McCain 185
George Stephanopoulos, ABC News / Obama 353 McCain 185
Eleanor Clift, political writer / Obama 349 McCain 189
Mark Halperin, Time editor / Obama 349 McCain 189
Nate Silver, statistician / Obama 347 McCain 191
Donna Brazile, Democratic strategist / Obama 343 McCain 197
Matthew Dowd, former Bush strategist / Obama 338 McCain 200
Karl Rove, Bushie / Obama 338 McCain 200
Chris Matthews, MSNBC host / Obama 338 McCain 200
David Plotz, Slate editor / Obama 336 McCain 202
Tom Doherty, NY Republican consultant / Obama 331 McCain 207
Paul Begala, Democratic strategist / Obama 325 McCain 213
James Carville, Democratic strategist / Obama 330 McCain 208
Dan Gerstein, Dem media consultant / Obama 318 McCain 220
Arianna Huffington / Obama 318 McCain 220
Chris Cillizza, Washington Post / Obama 312 McCain 226
Charles Mahtesian, Politico editor / Obama 311 McCain 227
Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard / McCain 286 Obama 252 [?!]

Info source from here.

F music

Does anyone else confuse the Fiery Furnaces the Friendly Fires and the Fleet Foxes?

Election day in 2 minutes

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Yes, he did

The first chapter from a Newsweek book on how he did it. [some excerpts]
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Chapter six
Chapter seven

Legend

> "I think what would really be terrible would be to watch a retrospective and see yourself age forty years over a period of forty-five minutes. That'd be traumatic. And maybe one day I'll be able to go back and look at those old films with a charitable eye. The hard part is not to add any ornaments or embellishments to your memory of them. But maybe that's asking the impossible."

>"What you're able to achieve on the screen has nothing to do with you. The only thing sometimes I think is that you pick up certain mannerisms from characters that you play and they become part of the way you present yourself. The only two things that ever stuck to me were, unfortunately, from Rocky Graziano. I never used to spit in the street and I was with Rocky for about nine weeks before the picture began filming, and I spit in the street. It sickens my wife. I never used to swear. I never used any kind of foul language. Now, it's not worth being in the same room with me. And it's funny, of all the attributes that could have stuck to me, that those were the two that stuck the strongest and the longest. But I don't take much of it seriously. I really don't."

>"The embarrassing thing is that the salad dressing is outgrossing my films."

> "Being on President Nixon’s enemies list was the highest single honor I’ve ever received. Who knows who’s listening to me now and what government list I’m on?"

>"I started my career giving a clinic in bad acting in the film ‘The Silver Chalice’ and now I’m playing a crusty old man who’s an animated automobile. That’s a creative arc for you, isn’t it?"

>“We are such spendthrifts with our lives. The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.”

>"You say I'm an icon. I don't say it. My grandchild does not think I'm an icon."

RIP

Best films...1958

It is interesting how there are a bunch of 40th anniversaries telling us how great and influential 1968 was. But what about 1958? Surely a 50th anniversary is in order? No doubt the politics of 1968 were big news and still resonate today. But is it also because the films from 1968 seem to have a more modern feel to them than the films from 1958? I mean, who wants a preachy Stanley Kramer movie when you can have a Jean Luc Godard film? Who wants to see a bloated Hollywood picture when you can see something fresh and exciting like Bonnie & Clyde [which in '67 gave new life to Hollywood]?

Nonetheless, a selection from 1958, I think, stands up pretty well today:

Vertigo
Touch of Evil
Paths of Glory
Pather Panchali
The Seventh Seal
The Cranes are Flying
Big Deal on Madonna Street
Look Back in Anger
The Horse's Mouth
Left Handed Gun
Man of the West
Le Beau Serge
Mon Oncle


Here's a longer list.

Fox Wilde

"I could see myself in a relationship with a girl -- Olivia Wilde is so sexy she makes me want to strangle a mountain ox with my bare hands. She's mesmerizing."
- Megan Fox

Tokyo!

Tokyo! is a mixed bag. Three films by three filmmakers.
The first film; Interior Design by Michel Gondry is original, funny and unexpected. It starts as a film about a young Japanese couple who are staying with a friend while they look for an apartment. Then it takes an wild turn and focuses on the woman as she begins to feel inconsequential. By itself the film is worth a look

The second film is Merde by Leo Carax [who has done much better work] and it is just plain bad. It starts promising as a wicked looking character crawls out of a sewer onto a Tokyo street where he assaults people and eats money. Then it dives off into a very annoying trial after the guy kills of bunch of people. It is just bad.

The third film Shaking Tokyo by Joon Ho Bong is a rather inert short about a dull everyman whose life becomes shaken up when he makes eye contact with a young pizza delivery woman. Oh yeah, and an earthquake hits the area just to add a level of interest to the whole thing. It is a mediocre short that can't save the film after the second short.

Perusing YouTube I came upon the animated work of Piotr Kamler. He was an Eastern European animator [by way of Paris] whose work has nifty surreal elements.
If anyone has seen the work of Jan Svankmajer or the Brothers Quay you will see something similar.

Here is one of his shorts:

Man's Castle

Man's Castle is an excellent and rare 1933 film directed by Frank Borzage. It showed on Turner Classic Movies the other evening. Rare mainly because it's has a 66 minute running time, which doesn't fit our full length feature standard and therefore has yet to get released on DVD; although it was common in the era before television when moviegoers saw double and triple features on a regular basis.
Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young star as a down-on-their-luck couple dealing with their new found love during the depression era. It's funny and sharp-witted but also has a tough edge with Tracy playing a character who feels so frustrated at not being able to be the breadwinner he should be that he doesn't always treat Young with kindness. But, this being a Borzage picture, you know he will come around.
It has many nice touches including a scene with Tracy on stilts. The acting, which has a more natural feel than most films from the early 30's, is also very good. And it moves along quickly [but not rushed] from scene to scene

Here's a link to a couple clips.