“A Model for Matisse”

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

matisse01

Arts buffs should enjoy this sweet documentary about Sister Jacques-Marie, a French nun who was close to the painter Henri Matisse during his final years. (She not only posed for him but also helped him realize the Vence Chapel, which Matisse himself felt was his masterpiece.) It’s a pleasantly modest and slight production, a straightforward combo of interview and archival footage and photos. But director Barbara Freed’s work also has brains as well as considerable charm, not the least of which is in the glimpses it affords of both the aged Matisse and the very plain-spoken sister. It should suit when you’re in a mood for a footnote to art history.  The film, which is just over an hour long, is available on Netflix Instant.

Am I the only person who, thanks to Netflix Instant, finds him/herself watching a lot more documentaries than usual?

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

Linkage

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Posted in Education, Linkathons, Movies, Politics and Economics, Science | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

The Inevitable Outcome . . .

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Glynn Marshes

Glynn Marshes writes:

. . . Hollywood will keep producing the same movie. Over and over and over and over . . .

A chain-smoking former statistics professor named Vinny Bruzzese — “the reigning mad scientist of Hollywood,” in the words of one studio customer — has started to aggressively pitch a service he calls script evaluation. For as much as $20,000 per script, Mr. Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success. His company, Worldwide Motion Picture Group, also digs into an extensive database of focus group results for similar films and surveys 1,500 potential moviegoers. What do you like? What should be changed?

Posted in Movies | 1 Comment

Quote of the Day

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

charles-willeford

Thinking, when you first try it, is very difficult. I had never tried to think before, seriously, I mean, and I didn’t quite know how to go about the process. Most people, under ordinary circumstances, living with their families, attending school, getting jobs, don’t get around to thinking until their early twenties — if then. Sometimes they are married and have two or three children before they begin to think abou their lives. I have talked to men who told me that they never did any serious thinking about themselves until their mid-thirties. Thinking, as opposed to making rather superficial distinctions and decisions is, apparently, unnecessary for everyday life. Most people simply go along with their lives, accepting what happens to them, attributing to good and back luck whatever fortune or plight comes their way.

But as I sat there alone, very alone, in the deserted and empty prison, with my mind alert for options — aware that there were options for the first time in my life — my mind reeled as I tried to get my thoughts into some kind of order. I was untrained in formal logic, and my mind kept going off on tangents. The experience was heady, exciting, bewildering, and I had to make a determined effort of will to prevent myself from being distracted by a buzzing fly, or even from contemplating the beauty of the swirling red-brown-ocherous pattern on a knot of manzanita root. It is much easier to slip into a daydream than it is to think.

Hours passed. But I was unaware of time as I tried to think things out. My thoughts were not profound, nor did they involve philosophy in any way. It was merely straight thinking, if that is the name for what I was doing, exploring ideas and possibilities in an effort to forge a new identity for myself. I was not concerned with any overall life plan, either for the immediate future or for the months and years ahead of me. The world itself would take care of my future…

— Charles Willeford, I Was Looking for a Street

Posted in Books Publishing and Writing | Tagged | 4 Comments

Linkage

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

  • I’ve been pretty amazed at how quick many people have been to make excuses for the surviving Jonas Brothers bomber. Okay, I get it — he’s cute, he has cool hair, and if Obama had a son he probably wouldn’t look very much like him. But does it really matter if his older brother set him on the path to terrorism? Isn’t everyone who does terrorism encouraged down that path by someone in their lives? I mean, if I started buying you lots of delicious smoothies, and thereby gained your confidence, would you set off a shrapnel bomb in the middle of the Wal-Mart condiments aisle just because I told you to?  Or would that depend on how developed your frontal precortex is? (H/T Gucci Little Piggy)
  • It’s true.
  • Is it really a good idea to allow college “tribunals” to circumvent traditional legal standards when adjudicating sexual assault claims?
  • “You have to understand that to a boy of the 1970s, the line between comic books and real life people was hopelessly blurred. Was Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man, real or fake? Fake? Well, then, how about Evel Knievel jumping over busses on his motorcycle? Oh, he was real. The Superman ads said, “You will believe a man can fly,” and Fonzie started jukeboxes by simply hitting them, and Elvis Presley wore capes, and Nolan Ryan threw pitches 102 mph, and Roger Staubach (who they called Captain America) kept bringing the Cowboys back from certain defeat, and Muhammad Ali let George Foreman tire himself out by leaning against the ropes and taking every punch he could throw. What was real anyway?” — Joe Posnaski (H/T Daring Fireball)
  • Shouting Thomas takes an inquisitive look at thrash metal. I was a big fan of thrash when I was between the ages of 11 and 15. Seeing this post reminds me that I had that Vio-lence album. It is a pretty great cover.
  • Genius.
  • It’s become a thing lately to accuse the porn industry of racism because some women won’t do stuff with black guys. Here’s the thing: “interracial” porn isn’t just about race; it’s also a genre. And as a genre it’s generally pretty rough: lots of scenes involving guys playing “hood” characters, lots of scenes involving women wandering into the ghetto and then being taken advantage of by dudes who say things designed to highlight their conquests of white women, etc. I’m sure it’s not all like that, but I believe that’s the image that’s become associated with the genre. Anyway, is it really so bad if a performer isn’t into that sort of thing? I see it as being like a mainstream actress not wanting to be in a certain type of movie. Shit, some female porn stars probably don’t want to work with a rough-stuff guy like Rocco Siffredi. Because they know what that entails. There’s also a marketing angle involved: if a girl avoids doing interracial stuff, she can maybe charge more for it down the road. Finally, I call bullshit on the above-linked article’s contention that porn involving white guys and black girls is “quite popular.”
  • I’ve been loving catching up with Unleash the Beef over the last few weeks. Smart, ballsy, hilarious stuff. This post on recent idiocy is really good. So is this one on sexting. Oh, and this one on porn. Fuck it — you should read through the whole damn blog.
  • Speaking of recent idiocy. Can you believe this guy is apparently getting paid (not to mention feted in the media) for painting over the makeup on Barbie heads?
  • I got a big kick out of this movie and pop culture blog. Worth spending a few minutes looking through it.
  • Is it important to like the same movies as your significant other? I don’t really think so, though I guess it helps. That reminds me. . . I once forced Buster Keaton’s “The Navigator” on a girl I was dating. I felt certain it would convince her that silent movies were enjoyable things. She didn’t laugh once. When it was over, she looked at me and said: “That was nice. But we won’t have to do this again, will we?” I later rogered her while maintaining a perfect Buster Keaton stone face.
  • Does global warming cause hookers? (H/T Glynn Marshes)
  • “In Charles Royster’s excellent and only mildly neo-Unionist picture of the Civil War, The Destructive War, he mentions a foreign traveler in 1864 who asked some random American to explain the war. ‘It’s the conquest of America by Massachusetts,’ was the answer. Massachusetts, of course, later went on to conquer first Europe and then the entire planet, the views of whose elites as of 2007 bear a surprisingly coincidental resemblance to those held at Harvard in 1945.”  — Mencius Moldbug
Posted in Linkathons, Movies, Sex, Sports | Tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments

No Farms No Food

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Sir Barken Hyena

Sir Barken Hyena writes:

That’s a bumper sticker I saw on a truck today. It was the only one on it, with simple bold letters, so clearly it’s a statement the owner thinks important.

The genre of smug bumper stickers is thickly populated with examples, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that left me completely puzzled.

Just what the hell does this mean?

Is it from the food industry, as a reminder? Or is it an anti-sprawl thing? Or an old style left wing small farmer booster campaign? Or what?

Theories? I mean beyond “you’re dumber than a hyena Sir Barken”, please.

Posted in Food and health | 5 Comments

Things I Wish They’d Told Me About Women

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

This article got me thinking: Where relationships are concerned, is it possible that women are bigger fantasists than men? I’ve known quite a few gals who seemed to construct fantasies around me — that I was some kind of struggling artist, a soon-to-be significant person, a just-waiting-to-be-ultra-successful guy who had been held back by bad luck or lack of direction, and so forth. Apparently this was more fulfilling than facing the fact that I’m just a normal schlub who likes to relax, listen to old Gang of Four records, and have his balls played with once in a while. Over the years I’ve learned that you should never try to deflate a gal’s fantasies, especially the ones concerning you. She’ll just stop playing with your balls. Like Fox Mulder, girls want to believe. So maybe we should let them? For what it’s worth, I think gals want guys to fantasize about them as well. I once made the mistake of suggesting to a girlfriend that she quit stressing about school and her career, find a decent job she could tolerate, and just enjoy life for what it is — by which I meant a chance to have lots and lots of sex with me. After all, she wasn’t likely to figure out cold fusion or re-discover penicillin, so why get hung up on all of this approval-seeking shit? I might as well have told her that I hadn’t voted in the last presidential election (I hadn’t). She never looked at me in the same way again.

Posted in Personal reflections, Sex, Women men and fashion | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

“I Survived BTK”

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

Charlie Otero in New Mexico

Charlie Otero in New Mexico

Low-budget documentary about Charlie Otero, a Wichita native whose parents and a couple of whose siblings were murdered in 1974 by “BTK,” a Wichita-based murderer who went on to become Kansas’ most notorious serial killer. It’s a rarity — a serial-killer/true-crime doc focused not on the killer or the investigation, but on someone who has endured family members being murdered. When you think about it, it seems odd that the subject should be dealt with so seldom.

Marc Levitz’ film could be criticized for not being slick or clear enough — it’s sometimes hard to know who’s who, what order events happened in, why a behavior is being highlighted, even what’s being said. But I took it more as poetry than as history or journalism anyway — as something rather like “Be Here to Love Me,” Margaret Brown’s very touching movie about the Texas country-folk singer Townes Van Zandt. After all, if and when you want clearly presented facts, there’s always the web to turn to — Wikipedia and much else.

As an evocative thing, “I Survived BTK” is far more crude (even home-movie-esque) than the artful and delicate “Be Here to Love Me.” You might compare its style to strung-out, obsessive, garage band-style rock — there’s a lot of wailing and agitation, murk and muddle. But it’s also undeniably powerful. It’s about how losing loved ones to a horrific, stupid crime can fuck a life up. To all appearances a soulful, decent guy, Charlie has spent years wrestling with booze and drugs, and even in the best of times lives a motorcycles-and-trailer-homes, sub-blue-collar, lost-in-the-fringes kind of life. The movie’s turbulent messiness, even Levitz’s often lopsided organizational choices, convey how the emotions set off by such a crime (rage, hurt, sorrow, impotence) can make a life careen out of control.

A great stroke of luck for the filmmaker: as he was shooting his film about Charlie (mostly in New Mexico), the pyscho who went by the handle BTK was finally apprehended back in Wichita. So we get some glimpses of the murderer, and we get to accompany Charlie as he reconnects with his surviving siblings, returns to Kansas, attends court and copes with the tough new emotions the murderer’s arrest sets off. What a strange and hard hand of cards some people have been dealt.

FWIW, The Question Lady and I have both recently been struck by the same thought — that these new documentaries are now playing the culture-role that long reported pieces in Esquire, The New Yorker, Harper’s and Rolling Stone used to play: they’re enhancing the news by conveying what experiences we know mostly through headlines are actually like.

We watched “I Survived BTK” on Netflix Streaming. I see that it’s also available (for $3.99) on Amazon Instant.

More

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments

Linkage

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

    • Has the time finally come to end affirmative action?
    • Meet Stoya, favorite porn star of today’s hipsters. Safe for work — the link goes to a Village Voice article.
    • Although a majority of Americans want immigration rates reduced, one estimate says that the pending Senate bill, if passed, would result in more than 33 million people immigrating over the next decade alone. “The pending bill allows illegal immigrants to bring their overseas spouses and children into the country,” warns NumbersUSA. I sometimes wonder why we bother with borders at all. Link tks to Steve Sailer.
    • Foseti reads an unusual biography of Lincoln. I can recommend a Lamont Johnson-directed TV movie about Lincoln, as well as the Gore Vidal novel it was based on. I’m no Lincoln scholar, but both works struck me as unusually sophisticated about politics generally.
    • The Manolo knows just which shoes a getting-married-on-the-beach bride ought to wear.
    • Teaching multicultural values in school often backfires. Who could have foreseen such an outcome?
    • Russia: Awesomest country on earth.
    • Netflix Instant Movie Du Jour: Torremolinos 73, a droll charmer about a hapless couple who stumble into making porno films. Spanish filmmaker Pablo Berger may not develop his storyline as fully as one might want, but he has a sweetly offbeat touch as well as an infectious fondness for the 1970s. And his lead actors deliver performances that, in their combination of daring, frankness and comic control, are worthy of a Bertrand Blier movie. Candela Peña’s doleful expressions especially are something to treasure. Quiet, deadpan hilarity to the max.
Posted in Linkathons, Movies, Politics and Economics | 12 Comments

Inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Since Sir Barken Hyena was unable to get a look inside the Disney Concert Hall, I thought I’d post these pictures I took in December. Besides, while the exterior is famous, I usually see far fewer pictures of the interior.

Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Photography | Tagged , | 9 Comments