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Friday, June 27th, 2008
WALL-E was a really good movie, and I encourage you to go see it. (I'm not much of a movie reviewer so I'm not going to spend a lot of time explaining why I think you should see it -- just want to add my voice to the chorus of  recommendations I think you're going to be seeing over the next few weeks.) This is head and shoulders above anything else Pixar has done.
It seemed to me like a really well-thought-out movie, very close to internally consistent -- the logic it adhered to was of course cartoon logic rather than real-world, but it was well-enough developed that I could really put myself in the movie's world, feel for its characters, feel the urgency of its problems and solutions. In a bit of irony (an annoying bit of irony, it must be said), this movie about robots competently assuming human functions was screened by a robot projectionist who was not up to the task -- in a climactic moment he broke down and had to be serviced by human staff. Seems like Sylvia is not yet ready to stay up late for a movie -- she did fine through the end of the film but once we got home it was like an hour past her bed time, and she had real trouble getting back into her routine.
 There was a charming short cartoon before the feature, about a magician in a battle of wills with his rabbit. I'm confused about the credits, which included a "Lighting" credit -- I'm trying to figure out what that means in CGI animation.
posted evening of June 27th, 2008: Respond
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Two pleasant things to know about: Pixar's new movie WALL-E sounds (despite its silly title) like it's  going to be really good, if A.O. Scott's opinion (and that of critics in general) is anything to go by. And, Studio Ghibli is releasing a new movie next month: Ponyo on the Cliff, directed by Miyazaki. Presumably it will take a while longer for the translation and US release to happen; but this is really exciting! I've loved the Ghibli movies I've watched so far (in the past two years, since we first found out about Kiki's Delivery Service), and it will be great to get to see one in the theater. Pandora Brewer posted a nice, incomplete guide to Miyazaki's films over on The Great Whatsit yesterday, which inspired me to do some research. Looks like I need to watch Panda! Go, Panda!, Miyazaki's first writing credit for a feature film, which Adriana says is trippy, and Castle of Cagliostro, Miyazaki's first directing credit for a feature film, and Princess Mononoke. I was a little surprised to see that many of the Ghibli films which I think of as "Miyazaki films" are not written or directed by him, such as Kiki and The Cat Returns.
posted afternoon of June 27th, 2008: Respond
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 Lax management of our Netflix queue has led to all of our movies currently checked out, being dark, heavy movies: Battleship Potemkin, Metropolis, and Frankenstein. I sort of think we'll watch Metropolis tonight, but not quite sure.
 Update: No, forget that -- we're totally gonna watch WALL-E!
posted afternoon of June 27th, 2008: Respond
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Megan of Arctic Oak posted yesterday about the movies of Agnès Varda, one of my favorites; today in comments she links to a lecture by Varda on YouTube; and following the link I see there are several more available. (Or maybe they are all part of the same lecture -- I can't watch them right now so I'm not sure.)
posted morning of June 27th, 2008: Respond
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Tomorrow afternoon and evening, Bob and I are going out to Scotch Plains to jam. A lot of people I haven't met, and some I know; I think Doug will be there, I haven't played with him in a few years, and also the Marlow clan. Looking forward to it! The e-mail said they would be set up to record the jam, so I may get some archives out of it. (I should set up and check my pickup this evening, I haven't played electric violin since December or so.)
posted morning of June 27th, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, June 26th, 2008
Last night's post about Nixonland was not completely fair, maybe. I mean I feel like I'm getting a lot out of the book; I am getting more of a sense of context for the events around the time of my birth that I have always perceived as major cultural markers -- in this evening's reading I am catching up on the pre-Roe v. Wade anti-abortion movement and the anti-sex-education movement (still very active during my own childhood; I haven't heard much from them recently, but maybe they're still out there); the media circus surrounding Chappaquiddick; and Woodstock. I wish the information were presented with more care though. There are a lot of clunky sentences, awkward constructions; bits of information that are not connected to the information surrounding them; logical leaps that don't make sense. It would be different if Perlstein were doing Gonzo -- and occasionally I get a sense that he's trying to do that, or something like it; but it doesn't fit in with the rest of the book.
posted evening of June 26th, 2008: 2 responses
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Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
Halfway through Nixonland I am liking it less than I was a quarter of the way in. Something seems to have gone wrong with the editing, with the result that the details Perlstein presents are serving to confuse the narrative rather than to focus it. I want the narrative focus to be on Nixon and his crew, with the news of what's going on in America and the world there to provide context for their story, and to show how their tactics play out. And this is mostly how the first and second parts looked. But toward the end of Part II and in Part III so far, lots of scattered detail is being given about the news events of the day, but it is failing to coalesce -- it is drawing my attention away from the machinations of the administration, rather than pointing them up. (One possibility is, I was so much less familiar with the news events being described in the early part of the book, that I was able to see Perlstein's narrative structure without getting lost. I'm not sure this would make sense though, indeed it sounds kind of backwards.)
posted evening of June 25th, 2008: Respond
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Tom Hunter has been sick with Kreutzfeld-Jacob disease; he passed away on Friday morning. Memorial service is this Saturday. Light a candle and think of him.
posted morning of June 25th, 2008: Respond
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This is the bibliography from Michael McGaha's Autobiographies of Orhan Pamuk: The Writer in his Novels, which professor McGaha has graciously allowed me to reprint here. I am hoping to extend it as time goes by, and to keep the links up to date. Contributions in the comments section are of course welcome. Note: I have added some entries that are not in McGaha's bibliography. To differentiate these I have enclosed anything I add in square brackets.
↷read the rest...
posted morning of June 25th, 2008: 2 responses
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Monday, June 23rd, 2008
I'm making my way through chapter 1 of Autobiographies of Orhan Pamuk, which deals with the events around Pamuk's being prosecuted in 2005 for "hostility to Turkishness" and his eventual exile. Man this is confusing stuff -- not McGaha's fault, his writing is pretty terse and straightforward. But there are a lot of conflicting issues competing for my attention as I try to figure out what's going on. Pamuk is hoping to win the Nobel prize for literature (he did not, but won it the following year, at which point I think the prosecution had already happened -- I don't know if he was still living in Turkey at this point); Turkey is hoping to be considered for admission to the EU, and busy revising its laws (including the one under which Pamuk is charged) to abide by international human rights law; Turkish nationalists are opposed to the EU and see the prosecution as an avenue for preventing it. Erdoğan, a moderate Islamist, who was prime minister in 2005, had been prosecuted some years earlier (if I understand correctly) by Turkish nationalists for expressing hostility to secularism; and he could not have been prime minister if it were not for the liberalization going on to further Turkey's chances of acceptance into the EU. I want to make a timeline of events but I don't think I'm up to that point yet. I totally want to make a hypertext version of this book's bibliography* -- it is chock full of useful articles, a lot of which are available on the web. Loving this line from Pamuk's acceptance speech when he was awarded the Friedenspreis of the German Book Trade: Even as [the novel] relates our own lives as if they were the lives of others, it offers us the chance to describe other people's lives as if they were our own.
 Note: it seemed funny at first, for Pamuk's trial to come at the front of the book, which is otherwise arranged chronologically; but as I read it is making some sense to me to have this before the novels rather than after -- it gives a sense of the environment in which Pamuk is writing and coming to write, and a context for his cosmopolitanism and Turkish identity. *And, update: Dr. McGaha has granted me permission to post the bibliography. I hope to put it up tonight or tomorrow.
posted evening of June 23rd, 2008: Respond
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Jay Parini 