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alexsarllA quiet weekend there, especially yesterday when I barely left my room, and didn't even click until afterwards how suited that was to an afternoon of gaol-based viewing. Having finished off the second half of Oz season 2* I settled in with my Guardian freebie disc of Kiss Of The Spider Woman. I'd always wondered why William Hurt kept getting acting roles when he manifestly wasn't able to act; I knew he had an Oscar but I assumed it must have been a precursor to Halle Berry's - perhaps people made of wood were the Academy's desired tokenistas that year and Pinocchio didn't have a film out? Turns out I had him wrong - he's more a Vin Diesel, a man who acted extremely well, once and then realised he didn't need to bother, he'd still get paid. But let's not allow his subsequent decline to sully that one magnificent performance. Let's pretend that he died like James Dean, maybe even got the Oscar posthumously...what a star! What a performance, what a film, what an opposite number in Raul 'Gomez Addams' Julia! I'm not even sure what I took away from the film - something beyond its slowly reconciled opposition between dreams and revolution, for sure, but something somehow formless and at once poetic yet inexpressible. A film about films that don't exist, from which I take away a message I can't verbalise - apt, I suppose.
I wouldn't like it thought that I won't give credit where it's due on those rare occasions when something good comes out of christianity. this computer game, for instance. Or, more timelessly, GK Chesterton. I've read his poetry and fiction before, and been very impressed by the quality of his mind and the facility with language which models it so well upon the page. Orthodoxy is the first I've read of his essays, and even if I don't agree with his ultimate agenda, every page has gems of phrasing and logic:
"Shakespeare is quite himself; it only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else."
"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."
And so forth. I must always concede that he at least presents a case to answer, which is more than can be said for most thinkers. Ultimately, I think he and I could rally together behind Planetary's slogan: It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way. He wants a mystery and a grandeur to life, but also a welcome; if we would both guarantee those inalienable rights by reference to different gods, well, heavens know it's a lot closer than I feel to most of my nominal co-religionists.
NME Hack Throws Ill-Informed Strop is not, in and of itself, newsworthy. When features editor James McMahon grunts that "Today's Observer Music Monthly feature on 'the new eccentrics' has left me dizzy, shaken and above all furious at what my beloved rock music has become. For one thing it was seemingly written by an idiot whose politics and ideology have been formed by books rather than life experiences and emotional toil"...well, that's just the sort of wilful ignorance one expects from the strand of music journalism which loves illiterate oiks for their own sake, and that was ever with us (it was the Stud Brothers who epitomised it back when I followed the Melody Maker, but Garry Bushell's probably the most famous exponent). What interests me is that among the acts which this apparently appalling document of prole-hate champion are...Foals and Lightspeed Champion. Both acts which the NME cannot currently do enough to rim.
Also from the Department of Huh?: the shooting component of the accursed Olympics is to be held in Woolwich. The games are taking place primarily in East London. And what part of London goes more iconically with 'shooting' than 'Hackney'? OK, maybe Peckham or Brixton should also be in with a shot, but Woolwich? OK, it has the Arsenal, but a better way to honour that would be to move Arsenal back there (probably in the first hundred Things I Would Do If Super-Rich, that). Then again, we are talking about sportists here, so probably shouldn't expect too much evidence of brainpower.
Are Tube announcers going to keep mentioning the East London Line closure for the next 2 1/2 years (plus however much longer it takes in reality)? Because if so, it's going to get very boring.
*Not quite the first season's equal, I think, perhaps because Tom Fontana was only co-scripting many episodes. A few of the plotlines feel a little forced, harbingers of the whole 'ageing drug' fiasco when s4 was overstretched. But certainly there is still much to love and more to be impressed by. And less of Poet's Speech Painter-style performance poetry, which has to be a bonus.
I wouldn't like it thought that I won't give credit where it's due on those rare occasions when something good comes out of christianity. this computer game, for instance. Or, more timelessly, GK Chesterton. I've read his poetry and fiction before, and been very impressed by the quality of his mind and the facility with language which models it so well upon the page. Orthodoxy is the first I've read of his essays, and even if I don't agree with his ultimate agenda, every page has gems of phrasing and logic:
"Shakespeare is quite himself; it only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else."
"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."
And so forth. I must always concede that he at least presents a case to answer, which is more than can be said for most thinkers. Ultimately, I think he and I could rally together behind Planetary's slogan: It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way. He wants a mystery and a grandeur to life, but also a welcome; if we would both guarantee those inalienable rights by reference to different gods, well, heavens know it's a lot closer than I feel to most of my nominal co-religionists.
NME Hack Throws Ill-Informed Strop is not, in and of itself, newsworthy. When features editor James McMahon grunts that "Today's Observer Music Monthly feature on 'the new eccentrics' has left me dizzy, shaken and above all furious at what my beloved rock music has become. For one thing it was seemingly written by an idiot whose politics and ideology have been formed by books rather than life experiences and emotional toil"...well, that's just the sort of wilful ignorance one expects from the strand of music journalism which loves illiterate oiks for their own sake, and that was ever with us (it was the Stud Brothers who epitomised it back when I followed the Melody Maker, but Garry Bushell's probably the most famous exponent). What interests me is that among the acts which this apparently appalling document of prole-hate champion are...Foals and Lightspeed Champion. Both acts which the NME cannot currently do enough to rim.
Also from the Department of Huh?: the shooting component of the accursed Olympics is to be held in Woolwich. The games are taking place primarily in East London. And what part of London goes more iconically with 'shooting' than 'Hackney'? OK, maybe Peckham or Brixton should also be in with a shot, but Woolwich? OK, it has the Arsenal, but a better way to honour that would be to move Arsenal back there (probably in the first hundred Things I Would Do If Super-Rich, that). Then again, we are talking about sportists here, so probably shouldn't expect too much evidence of brainpower.
Are Tube announcers going to keep mentioning the East London Line closure for the next 2 1/2 years (plus however much longer it takes in reality)? Because if so, it's going to get very boring.
*Not quite the first season's equal, I think, perhaps because Tom Fontana was only co-scripting many episodes. A few of the plotlines feel a little forced, harbingers of the whole 'ageing drug' fiasco when s4 was overstretched. But certainly there is still much to love and more to be impressed by. And less of Poet's Speech Painter-style performance poetry, which has to be a bonus.
Tags:
- bad pop,
- bloody olympics,
- film,
- gk chesterton,
- gods,
- london,
- magic,
- monotheism,
- oz,
- peons,
- wtf
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 07:19 pm (UTC)I flick through office copies of them both, which seldom takes me more than five minutes each, often less.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 07:30 pm (UTC)It's odd what is and isn't out on DVD, though even for a freebie I was surprised by how no-frills this is - ie, it's all in one scene, so no chapter jumps.
I recalled you mentioning it, but had no idea that you were quite so keen based on only the one viewing.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 10:39 pm (UTC)more on barry being wrong
Date: 2008-01-21 07:38 pm (UTC)For once I can definitively say that in no sense am I being wrong
Date: 2008-01-21 07:45 pm (UTC)Re: For once I can definitively say that in no sense am I being wrong
Date: 2008-01-22 07:46 am (UTC)that'll teach me to read things properly
no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 07:50 pm (UTC)I know it's only a minor thing, but the thing that's annoyed me is that for two and a half years, the "live news" thing on the TFL website will NEVER say "A good service is operating on all London Underground lines".
I don't understand why they need to keep mentioning the ELL - it doesn't exist any more, and it never will again! Do they do announcements saying "Aldwych station is currently closed"...?
no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 11:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 09:09 pm (UTC)(There's been lots of incredibly boring 'intelligent' music and plenty of great 'dumb' pop).
no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 11:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 12:33 am (UTC)thats all i can say
no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 08:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 07:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 10:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 07:40 pm (UTC)Cool quote
Date: 2008-05-11 02:50 pm (UTC)America works less, when you say "Union Yes!"
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