Water Songs

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Village Du Jour

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

portisaaccornwallPort Isaac, Cornwall, England

Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Quote Du Jour

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

Today’s quote comes from the great American urbanist William H. Whyte:

It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people – what is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.

Why do we in the U.S. build so many bad and/or ineffective public spaces? Is it something about America and Americans? (I think it may be, at least partly.) This page is full of visual examples, both good and bad.

Related

  • Whyte’s book “City: Rediscovering the Center” will heighten your awareness of the spaces we inhabit; it’ll also wake you up to how silly, stupid and basic most of the mistakes we make are. No fancy theory — just down-to-earth observations and reflections about what works and what doesn’t work. And isn’t that 90% of what the discussion about architecture-and-urbanism should consist of?
Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

“Much Ado About Nothing”

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

Much-Ado-About-NothingW1-1024x663

Whenever I see an interview with Joss Whedon I experience a slight urge to throw up. Yet I’ve enjoyed several of his projects. I thought his recent stab at “Much Ado About Nothing” was pretty good. The material provides the director with an opportunity to spotlight his ensemble-oriented strengths, and the mundane suburban setting allows the characters to take hold in your perceptions. The movie comes across as a conscious repudiation of the superhero genre’s Need to be Awesome, a mandate which sometimes made Whedon’s “Avengers” feel hectoring and overburdened. Here the tone is casual but with a sneaky intensity. You can sense how much Whedon likes his actors; even the weaker performances display a tenderness that feels carefully nurtured. Of the cast, Amy Acker shines most brightly. By turns fierce and vulnerable, her Beatrice is a child-woman whose convictions regarding love and honor provide the movie with fire. How has Acker, who’s quite a beauty, reached the age of 36 without becoming a star? As Dogberry, Nathan Fillion is funny and oddly touching. Though his scenes don’t always come off, his performance seems an extension of the picture’s woozy, slightly daffy temperament. Not only is this one of the better Shakespeare movies of recent years, it’s one of the better romantic comedies. It’s got sparkle and some bite.

Related

Posted in Movies, Performers | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Beach Boys’ Third Studio Album: Surfer Girl

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Sax von Stroheim

Sax von Stroheim writes:

SurferGirlCover

The last album in their Early Surfin’ Trilogy. We have moved from the Specific to the Mythic. Of the title song, Mike Love tells us “the words were found on a tablet in a field in Hawthorne, California”:

This cover of the song by Pere Ubu certainly sounds as if David Thomas learned it off of a stone tablet. This is what folk music sounds like:

The Beach Boys tell us it’s “not a fad ‘cause it’s been going on so long”. The lyrics are about surfing, but the fad they’re singing about is rock and roll, rising up from America, and spreading out all over the world. “All the surfers are going strong/They said it wouldn’t last too long/They’ll eat their words with a fork and spoon/And watch ‘em they’ll hit the road and all be surfin’ soon.”

How could there be any doubt? It’s a genuine fact that rock and roll rules:

And then the move from the ideal back to the real. Make your own Southern California Summer Dream come true:

In the middle of this, the second (chronologically, that is) great Brian Wilson song: “In My Room”. The vastness of “The Lonely Sea” caused an existential crisis for Brian: now he must turn inward in retreat. This turn inward is the first step towards the heart-breaking solipsism of Pet Sounds.

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

(money) – (control) = (failure)?

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Glynn Marshes

Glynn Marshes writes:

On the NPR website, a story on the charity GiveDirectly

that’s trying to help poor people in the developing world in an unusual way: by sending them money with no strings attached.

Skeptics thought “the poor” would blow the free cash on gambling and alcohol and cigs. Turns out they didn’t.

“Instead we see them investing in their kids’ education, we see them investing in health care. They buy more and better food.”

But there’s a problem.

Even though households were spending more on health and education, it didn’t seem to be having much effect. People who got money were sick just as often as those who got less. And school attendance rates for their kids didn’t really change . . .

IOW, they spent their free money “wisely,” but the outcomes weren’t what their benefactors would have liked.

Caveat. In another study in Uganda,

the government gave people money and people’s incomes went up — and stayed up, even years later. People had used the money to start small businesses, like metal working or tailoring clothes.

And one of the GiveDirectly founders asserts (giddily?) that having more money reduces stress, and when you’re less stressed, you’re better able to cope with organizing your life to improve your circumstances. Sounds reasonable to me . . . only — what if a bit of gambling, alcohol, and cigs helps you relax? Heh.

Other question: if no-strings-attached cash doesn’t improve “outcomes,” doesn’t it follow that — if your goal is to improve peoples’ lives — you need to force them to consume services designed to drive your desired outcomes?

Force kids into school. Force people to consume healthcare services. Force people to save their money.

Result: utopia.

Right?

Posted in Politics and Economics | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Book-Reading Today

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

Although these days I do probably 90% of my reading on the computer, and although I enjoy being a little irreverent about books — good Lord, can’t some people get mighty sentimental about books! — I’ve nonetheless found myself deep in the middle of three books simultaneously. Here’s a snap of them:

ne_nyc_2013_10_home_reading_three_booksOnly one of them (“Seeing Like a State” by James C. Scott) is a traditional ink-on-paper book. Another (“The Discovery of France” by Graham Robb) is an ebook that I’m reading on my Nexus 7; the third (“The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”) is something I’m going through on audiocassette as I take my daily walk. I still own a Walkman and a stack of books-on-cassette, as archaic as that sounds, so I’m doing what I can to get through some of these productions before that particular tech collapses entirely.

No particular point to make in this posting aside from: Wowee, we’re really living in the 21st century now! How are you doing most of your own book-reading these days?

Related

  • I’m a huge fan of the literature published in audiobook form by Audio Connoisseur, all of them produced and narrated by Charlton Griffin. What a great way to get through a lot of classic literature, philosophy and history. They can be bought on Amazon or via Audible.
Posted in Books Publishing and Writing, Computers, Technology, The Good Life | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

The Camera Loves…

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

kateupton…Kate Upton.

Posted in Sex | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Johnnie To’s Romances

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Sax von Stroheim

Sax von Stroheim writes:

Johnnie To usually makes movies about cops and robbers, but in the spirit of the great Hollywood studio directors, he seems willing and able to tackle any popular genre. In the comments on his recent post on Double-Digit Directors, Fabrizio admitted that while he likes To, he wasn’t a fan of some of the maestro’s recent romantic melodramas. Since they’re among my favorites and they tend to get overlooked by U.S. fans of his crime pictures, I thought I’d say a few things about them.

Romancing in Thin Air is a romantic fable worthy of Minnelli: I think it may be Johnnie’s greatest film so far – or at least his greatest film not about cops and criminals. It’s a movie about the power and seduction of happy endings, but it isn’t cynical about it: it’s made by someone who still believes that the movies – big, goofy, sentimental entertainments – can save your life.

romancingposter

And it’s definitely sentimental: it’s a love triangle, where one corner of the triangle is missing and presumed dead. The question: can a flesh and blood person ever really compete against a memory? The story is worked out in quite a sophisticated manner, with the same kind of doubling and narrative rhyming that To uses in his crime flicks. Sammi Cheng stars in it and she is super cute:

Sammi-Cheng-in-Romancing-in-Thin-Air-2012-Movie-Image

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, which is co-directed by Wai Ka-Fai, is another love triangle movie, but it’s more of a straight-up romantic comedy and less of a melodrama than Romancing in Thin Air. It does have the same kind of fable-like structure and Minnellian mise-en-scène, though. Yuanyuan Gao stars in it and she is also super cute:

dontgo5

There’s a great scene where Louis Koo and Yuanyuan are flirting with each other from their adjacent office buildings by putting up cute drawings in their window that is pretty much my definition of “real cinema”. David Bordwell usually does a great job of getting across how these kinds of sequences work just by posting screenshots: I’m no David Bordwell, but here’s the jist of it:

Dontgo1Dontgo2dontgo3dontgo4

Hey, dig those ‘scope compositions! People making these kinds of movies in America aren’t really thinking in terms of telling the story through the filmmaking anymore: the screenplays are much more play-driven and not especially screen-driven.

Related

  • Both of these movies are available for streaming on Hulu.
  • David Bordwell writes a little bit about Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, here.
  • Fabrizio wrote about To’s Life Without Principle, here. Life Without Principle makes a neat double-bill with Don’t Go Breaking My Heart: their plots both pivot around the financial crisis, but Life Without Principle is more in the vein of his crime thrillers. It stars Denise Ho, who is also also super cute:

life-without-principle-johnnie-to

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

If You Were a Cute 20 Year Old Today …

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

… would you be sexting with your sweetie? And would the two of you be swapping sexy jpgs? To kick it up one more level: If you and your sweetie were feeling juicy and mischievous, would you be uploading naughty stills and videos of yourselves to, I dunno, a show-yourselves-off site like Reddit Gone Wild? I suspect that I’d be doing it. How could I resist the thrill of doing the dumb-and-sexy things everyone else my age seems to be doing?

I find myself wondering about these questions because … Well, partly because they’re fun to think about, but also partly because earlier today I found myself mulling over piercings and tattoos. Here’s how my musing went: When middle-class, educated kids first started getting tattoos and piercings, like many people I thought, “They’ll regret that one of these days! Plus, don’t they know that bosses will never stand for it? Bad work decision!” But, as happens so often, reality hasn’t played out according to my predictions. What has emerged instead is that, instead of the kids having to adjust to aging and the office, aging and the office have accomodated the kids. Offices today (at least media and arts/fashion offices in NYC) are full of tattood adults, many of whom also have visible piercings. Being a pierced-and-tattood person-with-a-respectable-job is no longer a big deal; no one’s life or career seems to be held back by it. The kids — well, young adults now — laugh about their ink and hardware, and have fun comparing them. It’s the new normal — the new young-adult normal.

I found myself trying to apply that experience to the nude-selfies question. The Wise Thing to say to youngsters today is, “It may look like fun now but one day you’ll regret uploading nude shots of yourself to the web.” But maybe the future won’t play along with this prediction either. Maybe one day it’ll be as common for young adults to have nude selfies floating around the web as it is for them currently to wear tattoos and piercings. Maybe one day having jpgs and gifs of yourself naked online just won’t be a big deal. Maybe young adults will be casual about it, and even laugh and compare their online histories.

Major life lesson: It’s young people, and not old ones, who generally get to define what life becomes.

Incidentally: when nudes and having-sex shots are uploaded to the web by (NSFW alert) the people who took the pix and are in the pix, doesn’t it dramatically complicate the “what’s porn and what’s not?” question? After all, who’s exploiting whom? These youngsters aren’t damaged druggies reaching for the stars, submitting to a scuzzy business and destroying their lives in the process. Maybe many of the youngsters who upload nude shots of themselves are just nice kids having today’s (or, possibly, tomorrow’s) version of good wholesome fun. And maybe the world’s going their way.

Related

Posted in Sex, The Good Life, Women men and fashion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 20 Comments