July 12, 2008
Clapping Music
Ligeti (previous) things of himself as microtonal, here we have macrominimalist Steve Reich. Again, for adventurous listeners.
You have to admire the concentration required for a performance.
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100 Metronomes
While looking for some music to match my mood of present (Alban Berg's Lulu comes to mind as one of the few possibilities), I found this delightfully odd experiment in sound. Enjoy, or, if you will, not, but I did for reasons I can't begin to understand myself.
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April 28, 2008
Waters and Obama
Had I any interest at all in the present election, and had I any interest at all in Mr. Obama, this would have finished it off.
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April 18, 2008
Ants in Surrealism
The presence of ants in some surrealist imagery never fails to both amuse and, in some small way, horrify me. Luis Bunuel and Salvidor Dali brought this imagery to the forefront in Un Chien Andalou although it had been a staple of Dali's painting for some time before that. I won't pretend to know the significance of the ant, but it does present a compelling image for contemplation of the junction of the natural and supernatural which is where surrealism lives. (Even though its chief thinkers--not really being very profound thinkers--ever knew or acknowledged this. But then, we're talking André Breton and his crowd of absinthe-imbibing Parisomaniacs.)
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April 16, 2008
"Last Night I Dreamt I went to Manderley Again. . ."
Not really. Instead I had a creepy little dream in which a very punked out proto-goth androgyne was taking me somewhere for some unspecified but distinctly unsavory or unpleasant rendezvous. He asked me, "Haven't you ever defied God?"
I answered, "Of course I have. All the time. But. . ." and fortunately that little walk came to a screeching halt with the sound of the alarm.
But the question and its circumstances were salutary and rewarding because it caused me to think that while I do defy God and while I do sin and ignore the things I ought to do, and while I am imperfect in the practice of my faith and even in holding the central principles of it, nevertheless, I always do what I do knowing that God exists. That may not seem like much, but when I got down under the skin of that statement, I realized that it is not possible for me NOT to believe in God. Despite all of the arguments I have read and those I can dream up myself, the existence of God is more proven to me than any proven fact or visible reality. God exists. I know that is belief, but I have discovered the place that Mortimer Adler describes when he says that belief can be the strongest knowledge there is.
So it is for me. I cannot choose to not believe in God or to act as though I don't believe in Him. I can choose to do what I want anyway. I can choose to go against the law I know to be true. (And I frequently do both of these things.) But I can't say, "There is no God and so I'm free to do as I choose." That simply isn't an option.
The odd part is I can't tell you why there is this solid foundation. Or I can tell you why but it would be meaningless to someone who lacked it. Grace. Amazing grace. He has graced me with this gift, this rock to which I always return. I cannot escape from Him, but He is no relentless hound--no, He is an island in a cobalt sea where the breezes play day and night and I am the only person to see and enjoy its pleasant shores--or if I am not alone, the crowds on the island are as vapor and there is neither clamor nor anguish in it. When I stray far from my island, the memory of it always calls me home. It does not follow me, it sings to me and calls me back.
And here is the song I hear (though not necessarily in Dean Martin's voice--but also not necessary NOT in Dean Martin's voice.)
Return to Me
Return to me
Oh my dear I'm so lonely
Hurry back, hurry back
Oh my love hurry back I'm yoursReturn to me
For my heart wants you only
Hurry home, hurry home
Won't you please hurry home to my heartMy darling, if I hurt you I'm sorry
Forgive me and please say you are mineReturn to me
Please come back bella mia
Hurry back, hurry home to my arms
To my lips and my heartRetorna me
Cara mia ti amo
Solo tu, solo tu, solo tu, solo tu
Mio cuore
Yes, God sings that to me--all of it--not that He can err or He can be the cause of my straying. But His love is in His kenosis and He, being love, can know that love hurts even when it does not desire to.
(Okay, so my theology isn't so great, I'll admit that. But theology is only as good as the purpose it serves--and if that purpose is to make one cling to God, then the theology, however inexact performs the necessary, life-giving function. We don't get into heaven based on our quiz scores.)
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April 6, 2008
Turandot--Orlando Opera
Friday night we went out to see the last opera of the season. This year it was Turandot. (For anyone curious that is pronounced pretty much as spelled in english--Tur-ahn-dot.) And it was magnificent. Orlando Opera company had gone all out to make certain that this 50th season closer would be a set of performances to remember, and they handily accomplished the goal. The sets, costumes, and staging were all spot-on, the orchestral unusually fine under the baton of Anton Coppola, and the singing by both hired talent and the company professionals, top-notch.
The story of the Opera is pretty repellent and ridiculous, and had me half alienated to start with--but as it played out, I was won over--which speaks to the power of Puccini's music.
The Opera is in Three Acts and starts abruptly, without an overture. I speculated that this may have been because Puccini never finished the Opera--it is his last and the music he composed for it ends somewhere in the third act. I speculate and suggest that Overtures may be among the last pieces composed for an Opera, requiring, as they do, a full range of the ideas in the remainder of the music. However, that is speculation.
What is not speculation is that while this is Puccini, it is Puccini in 1922 or so, and it reflects some of what was going on in music through the early twentieth century. There is some discordant and dissonant scoring, largely masked by the fact that the Opera takes place in China and Chinese harmonics are evident throughout the score.
Unlike Madama Butterfly, which to my mind had a single powerful, gorgeous, memorable aria--the music throughout this Opera has several memorable themes, not the least of which occurs in act three when Calaf, the hero, sings what for lack of a better analogy might be called his "Rumpelstiltskin" aria. Turandot, the Princess, is busy torturing and threatening the people of Peking to find our heroes name so that she will not have to marry him in the morning. While the people and Ping, Pang, and Pong (somewhat comic relief characters) plead with him for the sake of all to reveal it, he sings a powerful and memorable aria, which even the most casual classical listener is probably familiar with--"Nessun Dorma." (For better insights into the libretto and the meaning of all the weird goings-on, you might check out this site wherein I found the lyrics to the aria.
The performance of this aria with chorus caused a collective peril of anoxia in the audience--not a sound, not a rustle, nothing--still, quiet, attentive, rapt. And, of course, that was the intent of the composer. Probably the most magnificent of all of his Arias, in what is undoubtedly the capstone (both literally and metaphorically) of his career in Opera.
I had gone ready to hate it, from the story, from my previous Puccini experience, from the fact that I could just barely keep my eyes open. And I came away wanting to have a copy of this Opera so that I could listen to it regularly.
If anyone from the company happens to read this, Bravo and Brava. Magnifico.
Later: Our Local newspaper's review with film clips including Nessun Dorma.
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March 17, 2008
No Coincidence-More Faulknerian Ruminations
Synchronicty, not coincidence.
Reading The Sound and the Fury and what should transpire other than a trip to Boston. Why is this remarkable? Well, I can't really tell you straight out without giving away much of the book; however, suffice to say that one of the main characters has something critical and large happen to him in Boston.
So, reading The Sound and the Fury during Holy Week when it occurs during Holy Week, and visiting Boston, the site of one of the main events of the book. Wow! What a tremendous experience.
I have more to share on this. But now a delightful little tidbit. Arrived in Boston, walked down to the commons, stopped in a small used book shop near Emerson College and happened to pick up a first edition of The Collected Short Stories of William Faulkner for less than it would cost me to pick up a paperback edition. Oh, how wonderful to be back in a city where literacy is valued, perhaps even treasured.
One last point--the soaps and lotions and shampoos in this hotel are all verbena-scented. I have to come to the chilly late-winter north to smell "The Odor of Verbena." If the significance of that is not clear, google the phrase in quotation marks.
May God bless all who read this during this Holy Week. Indeed, may He bless anyone who reads this every--so few are my readers, I can afford to cast my blessings far abroad.
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February 25, 2008
Thanks to Julie
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January 8, 2008
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Full disclosure in case the review sounds unduly. . . something: my first experience with Sweeney Todd occurred on 31 October, probably 1983, when I went with the person who was to become my wife to the Kennedy Center and saw the inimitable Angela Lansbury and (I think) Len Cariou perform. Angela Lansbury played Mrs. Lovett and you can catch bits of this performance on You Tube if you care to take a look. It is unmatchable in its sheer brilliance. Helena Bonham Carter had a hard act to follow, literally.
Tim Burton made some interesting choices in the film. The original Sondheim play was a dark comedy/satire/social commentary wrapped up in a rollicking, non-stop nearly grand guignol spectacle. Burton's choices are directed toward making a darker, more somber experience. Perhaps he was aiming for tragedy--unfortunately, the character of Sweeney hasn't the substance of a hero and so what we get is bathos--elegant and beautiful bathos, but bathos nevertheless. One doesn't come away with a sense of how tragic it all was or how, with a few minor choices things could have come out all right. One comes away with a sense of having visited some of the more secure precincts of bedlam where not a person seems to have any grasp of the real and rational.
I won't go into the story--suffice to say that it came out of the time of the penny dreadfuls, taking its place alongside such delights as Varney the Vampire and other such. Burton films it beautifully. Johnny Depp actually does a creditable job of singing his role. The same cannot be said of Helena Bonham Carter, unfortunately; however, her performance is not so terrible as to damage the structure or intent of the overall film.
One major problem I had with the film is that while the instrumental music suggesting "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" is played frequently, the audience that has not seen the play will have no notion of where it comes from. This choice is one that comes from adapting a stage play to the screen, but it is also one that deprives the viewer of the frame of reference and the clear sense of where the play was meant to go. It is the primary blow that changes the film from dark comedy to bathos.
In all, while I liked the film greatly, I don't think the changes in tone served Burton or Sondheim well. We get a solid film with interesting if oddly disconnected performances, reminiscent of professional night in the psychiatric ward; however, iltle of the brilliance of the play shines through.
Despite that, I enjoyed, indeed liked the film a great deal. One must try to respect the intent and vision of the artist when viewing a work of art, and while I don't think this film is as strong as its Broadway source material, it still serves well.
One other point--we have a mini-Harry Potter reunion in the forms of Snape and Pettigrew who play two of the key conspirators in the downfall of Mr. Todd and family.
Recommended for adults--especially if you've seen the play. It provides an interesting contrast to the original.
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December 10, 2007
Karlheinz Stockhausen R.I.P.
I had posted this some days ago, only to discover that for whatever reason it did not take, so I will repost.
Karlheinz Stockhausen died in his home in Germany on 5 December. While I do not think that he is a great composer, or for that matter much of a composer at all, I do think that his work was enormously influential, giving rise to entire strains of electronic and ambient music. Moreover, he did have an effect on the Classical World, in both directions. He inspired those inclined to experimental music to go forth and experiment and he provoked a strong reaction against the atonalism and structural chaos of the post-modern school of composers.
I know Erik would disagree with me in this evaluation, and I welcome the retort, but maintain the stand. Stockhausen is a divisive figure. However, whatever he may be in the realm of the art himself, he was an essential catalyst and a genius of sorts. His influences has permanently shaped that face of music. Much of what comes after him (in the classical realm) will be in some way influenced by him, either by reaction or inspiration. When the art world loses such a figure, it is always a great loss.
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November 29, 2007
In the Court of the Crimson King--Redux
A reader very kindly sent me this link to an in depth "reading" of the King Crimson Album, In the Court of the Crimson King. This particular section seems to be a "close reading" of "21st Century Schizoid Man" and looks at it from a psychoanalytic and Christian perspective. Go and enjoy.
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November 24, 2007
A Brief History of Classical Music
through its essential compositions
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September 4, 2007
Quartet and Quintet
About half of the references to The Bridge Between refer to it as a work of the "Robert Fripp String Quartet" which, considering it is made up of five guitarists, makes it an improbably, but certainly Frippertronic title. However, the "album" cover correctly lists it as "Robert Fripp String Quntet."
And indeed, the album is played by a group of stringed-instrument players That the stringed instruments are guitars adds a certain interest to the work. Additionally, that these guitars sometimes end up sounding very much like a traditional string quintet, becomes even more intriguing.
I have liked nearly every musical mask Mr. Fripp has decided to wear--and heaven knows they are many--Fripp and Eno, King Crimson (multiple groups under a single name with a single continuing member), the String Quintet, Fripp and Summers, The League of Crafty Guitarists, Robert Fripp and David Sylvian--and session musician and producer on countless albums. In a sense Fripp (and Rick Wakeman) is the Dostoevsky of the musical world--not necessarily in terms of quality--though I do tend to like almost everything--but in terms of sheer temporal lobe epilepsy productivity. It's phenomenal. (As I said, Rick Wakeman is also way up there--I'm astounded by the number of albums he has with a group, solo, or contributing.) Truly tireless workers in the field.
At any rate, this was only to alert those who are even less alert that I have been over the past XX years that there is much good from the days of really fine music to be discovered. Before the tide of grunge swept in and removed the electroeuroboys from the stage there was Fripp. And after grunge had washed away, leaving in its wakes a certain grittiness and definitely a fabric that could use some bluing, there is Fripp, still moving along, still playing, still producing music, ambient and otherwise--grating, experimental, soft, delicate. All the textures of the musical world wrapped up in one continuously moving producer of gorgeous sound.
The String Quintet album is definitely worth more than one listen. Go and sample at Amazon, I suggest tracks 9 and 10. Passacaglia, track 9, manages to sound considerably like a harpsichord and 10, Threnody for Souls in Torment has me once again thinking about the religious theme that underlay much of what Mr. Fripp produces.
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Hymn
Listening to Ultravox, John Foxx, and other friends of other times. And this one struck me both lyrically and, far, far more, musically.
Hymn
lyrics by UltravoxGive us this day all that you showed me.
The power and the glory 'til thy kingdom come.Chorus:
Give us this day all that you showed me,
The power and the glory 'til thy kingdom come.
Give me all the story book told me,
The faith and the glory 'til thy kingdom comes.And they said that in our time,
All that's good will fall from grace.
Even saints would turn their face,
In our time.And they told us that in our days,
Different words said in different ways,
Have other meaning from he who says,
In our time.(Chorus)
And they said that in our time,
We would reap from their legacy,
We would learn from what they had seen,
In our time.And they told us that in our days,
We would know what was high on high,
We would follow and not defy,
In our time.(Chorus)
Faithless in faith.
We must behold the things we see.(Chorus - Repeat 4 times and fade)
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August 31, 2007
From a Friend, Gratefully Acknowledged
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August 13, 2007
Hairspray
I've always liked John Waters's films. I don't know why--perhaps because I haven't seen the earliest--perhaps because I have seen that he has an extraordinary penchant for puncturing the worst of human foibles with a smile. He looks at the insanity of the world around him, grins, and holds up a mirror.
The original Hairspray was a film in this genre. The new one, secondarily derived from the original via a Broadway Musical has a lot to offer and a lot to think about. I enjoyed it tremendously after I got over a few deep-seated reservations. The reservations were not about the film itself--although there are some of those that I'll get to in a moment. They were about how I felt about the subject matter and how difficult it is to explain to a young man why some people used to treat people with brown skin differently from the way they treated people with white skin and why that still happens too often in the world today.
But the movie takes on the old view of prejudice and thereby introduces a new one that is both subtle and starkly disturbing. Taking on the purity of the late fifties/early sixties, the movie producers end up equating the liberation of the civil rights movement with the liberation of the sexual freedom movement. Throughout the film there are subtle but clear messages that those more in touch with the sexual nature of human beings (people of color) were repressed for this very earthiness which is clearly next to godliness. This was the one element of the film that kept bothering me. We've replaced the old prejudice of inferiority due to skin color with the new prejudice of superiority due to lack of moral inhibition. Neither are true for an entire group of people--both are prejudices, and both are harmful.
Okay, now that I have my preaching over with, on with the show. The movie is delightful--the songs, the message (with the exception of the caveat above), the fact that the heroes triumph in a completely nonviolent fashion and that the whole film resolves itself neatly without undue angst, trauma, bodily injury, or profanity. In addition, it has Queen Latifah. I don't know what this woman is like in real life, but every time I see her on the screen, I think, "Now there's a woman I'd really like to know in person." There is a warmth and a genuineness about her that gives a punch to lines like, "If we get any more white people in here, this will be a suburb."
John Travolta is amusing in Divine's role. Does he do as well? I couldn't really say--he brings something different to the role and the difference is amusing and entertaining in itself--so I suppose one might say that he does as well in his own right.
The movie is delightful, insightful, genuine, and warm. It has the single flaw I noted above, and perhaps that was a flaw resulting from too close a "reading" of the film. I can recommend this to all and it would serve as a good place to start talking to children about how we need to let people be people and love them where they are and as they are. After all, that's what God does isn't it? And that's what we, as the bearers of God to those in the world need to learn to do better. I think this movie helps to teach that a little bit.
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June 18, 2007
Two Surfers
Father's Day weekend was spent in movie theaters--not the best of situations, but certainly one that has its advantages.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is typical fare for a comic book movie. It has all the depth and emotional appeal of a comic book, and all of the fascination with the impossible, outr&eaucte;, and bizarre. By far and away better than its predecessor, Rise of the Silver Surfer gives us in all its unalloyed oddity, the story of the Herald of Galactus and his arrival on Earth. Interestingly, Galactus is morphed from a person having shape and form into an intergalactic devourer of planets. Nice.
High points include (of course) the sky surfing and Johnny's "flame on" pursuit of the surfer early on to the draining of the River Thames. (An interesting possibility given its tidal nature.)
What I won't tell you, because you can guess, is whether Sue and Reed actually manage to tie the knot. The "demise" of Von Doom and of the surger himself, leave this movie open to a sequel. Given that this one is better by far than the first, that bodes well. What the producers did right in this case is kept the movie svelte. As a result there is a punch that many other such films, more larded and angst-ridden, lack. Surfing in at just about an hour and a half, this is one of those rare pleasures, a movie that moves quickly and leaves you wanting more even though your a satisfied with the roller coaster ride you've just experienced.
Highly recommended for older children (seemed fine for Sam, despite some mild sexual innuendo) and adults. May be too intense for younger or more sensitive children (scary earth-devouring things).
On the other hand, the second surf movie of the weekend Surf's Up, was an animation delight. Entirely unexpected, and therefore even more delightful, this story of the importance of friendship and of doing what is right as opposed to what makes you win, is a wonderful parable.
Filmed as a documentary of the world Penguin surfing championship, it starts with the recruitment of our lead character Cody Maverick, from his Antarctic home. We see him fall in love, develop a close friendship with a flaky chicken who introduces everyone to "Squid on a stick," an ultimately enter and . . . well, that would be telling.
The delights of this movie are its charming jokes, its deadpan documentary delivery, the remarkable voice cast, and the dead-on portrayal of certain aspects of the surf culture.. But its heart is the gentling and much-needed message that winning isn't the only thing, nor is it even the most important thing. In giving this message a real home and a real substance to children, the filmmakers give us all a great gift.
High recommended for all older children (8-up) and adults. And make certain you stay through the credits roll.
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April 21, 2007
Meet the Robinsons
In two words--"See it."
A loving and passionate tribute to the legend of Walt Disney the man in every possible way those words can be interpreted. Inventive, funny, inspirational, loving, and ultimately reaffirming about those things that matter most in family life.
I want to encourage everyone to pour their money into seeing this film to send the message that we want more films like these. I would far rather sit in the theatre for two hours to see this than to see the drivel that has recently been poured out as fare for our children.
So, to reiterate, "See it."
No, I'm not going to tell you about it--not a word--every moment is a surprise, although adults will see the denouement long before the end. The only words that need be said is that I didn't have a single "cringe" moment in the course of the entire work. Rare nowadays even for a family film. Go, take your children and enjoy.
Oh, and I saw the 3-D version and it was perfect--not a lot of stuff to just get a reaction, but it really added to the depth of the film. (Yes, I know, throw rotten materials elsewhere please.)
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March 25, 2007
Not Your Standard View of Butterfly
Took Sam to see Madama Butterfly Friday night and I had forgotten how angry the Opera makes me. It seems that Puccini lavishes his lyrical might in the service of a story that, at best, is a thin tissue of immoralities strung together by implausibilities: a predatory, pedophile, American naval officer toys with the affections of a mentally unstable codependent girl, leaving her with a chld to go off and marry a "real" wife in America, and returning only to steal away the son he had by here, ultimately to her destruction.
My questions--what use her friends, who in the moments of greatest torment run off one direction or another? Am I supposed to be sympathetic to the moral monster that is Pinkerton--please--knowing that you are basically hiring a long-term prostitute even though she thinks she's getting married, running off and marrying elsewhere, returning and then whining about how upset you are that you upset her?
Every syllable a waste in the service of such nonsense. Even the amazingly beautiful aria Un Bel Di basically a neurotic paean to deliberate and cultivated ignorance.
Well, I can say that the performance I saw had the virtue of versimilitude. Madama Butterfly was played by an up-and-coming young Korean Opera star, the voice, the orchestra, and everything flowed together smoothly into an evening of really beautiful, if terribly wasted music.
I know, I was supposed to cry. But I was too busy wondering where in all this mishmash there was anyone who really cared. Even when there are people who do care, there can be tragedy--but this ultimately manipulative melodrama is better listened to without any sense of the story--or with perhaps the few glimpses you get from time to time through television or the movies. Believe me--if you've seen them, you've seen enough.
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March 14, 2007
Speaking of Music
As I wasn't, last night I found two of the most remarkable and enjoyable pieces I've heard in quite some time. They're really off the beaten track so you may have to go out of your way to find them, but I assure you, it is worth the effort.
The first is Liu Wen-Jin's Erhu Concerto. The friend who shared it with me did not tell me where it came from, but it might be part of this.
The erhu is a traditional instrument of China--sometimes called the "Chinese fiddle." It has two strings and a sound that is, as with the Koto or the sitar, absolutely distinctive. When you hear this you will say as my wife did, "Chinese restaurant music." Now, she didn't listen to the whole thing, but she also has little tolerance for the tones of the Chinese instrument. And it is displayed to virtuoso perfection in this concerto. You never once leave the bounds of China, and yet the composition is also strangely formal and classically western, with moments that suggest Tchaikovski and Beethoven.
The other piece is a magnificent harpsichord concerto by Henryk Gorecki. The harpsichord is distinctive and yet perfectly blended with the orchestra in this very minimalist, or at least minimalist-influenced piece. It's only about 10 minute long and divided into two very agitated, very rapid movements. I love the harpsichord and I regret its relegation to the closet of antiquities just because of the tonalities of the Piano. It is good to hear it used to such good purpose in this concerto.
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March 13, 2007
The Shuffle Thing
In news you can't use--the top ten on the iPod after shuffle:
Cantus - Song Of Tears: Adiemus
Mexican Shuffle: Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
Come Together/Dear Prudence/Cry Baby Cry [Transition]:The Beatles
The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of: Carly Simon
Ave verum Corpus: William Byrd
Ave Verum Corpus: Mozart
Temptasyon: Mediaeval Baebes
Hablas De Mí: Gloria Estefan
El Cumbanchero: The Ventures
Rose Garden: Lynn Anderson
That was actually fun and informative. Even if you don't post the results, try it--you might find the results very interesting.
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March 12, 2007
Alberto Ginastera
In the category of "as if you care" I am presently enjoying the string quartets of Alberto Ginastera--a remarkably fine treading of the sensiblities between utter atonalism and slavish modalism. For all I know reviled by both sides because he refused an encampment with either. But you know, it doesn't really matter all that much, it appeals to me. And critics largely exist to try to drain the joy from everyone else. So I've grown accustomed to ignoring them.
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February 28, 2007
Brubeck and the Church
So you thought I was joking--lookee what I found. Utterly fascinating.
Excerpt:
from "Jazz Goes Back to Church"
Fr. Michael Sherwin O.P.Brubeck reached a turning point in his religious development when he accepted a commission from Our Sunday Visitor to compose a Mass. Brubeck did not want to undertake the project. Not being a Catholic, he did not feel qualified. Yet, as Brubeck explains, the paper’s editor, Ed Murray, would not take no for an answer. "For two years he bugged me. . . . I’d kick him away like a dog you don’t want nipping at your heels, but he kept coming back." Finally, Brubeck agreed but only conditionally. "I told Ed, ’I’ll write three pieces and I want you to find the best Catholic expert to look at them and say whether they’re alright.’" Murray chose Sr. Theophane Hytrek. It was an inspired choice. "She got together a group of musicians in Milwaukee. The message came back, ’tell Dave to continue and don’t change a note.’" So Brubeck continued. The final result, To Hope ! A Celebration (1979), is stunningly beautiful.
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Jazz--A Lenten Discipline
The title is sort of a joke--but not really. I've promised myself to try to get over my almost gut-level reaction to most Jazz. I don't like the seeming formlessness of a lot of Jazz. I need melody, something that when I hear it I recognize and can "follow" the line of and understand the development of.
By way of exercising this discipline, I decided to pick up the Dave Brubeck Quartet's mega-best-seller Time Out.
I have nothing coherent to say about the album, and nothing particularly helpful to the readers except (1) you will recognize the sound if not the tunes--it seems to have infiltrated every film of the early to mid sixties and has given rise to countless imitations; and (2) I like it. A lot. Far more than I would have thought possible.
So, knowing that Erik and other more knowledgeable about these matters stop by from time to time, this post is merely a request for references to other similar, accessible pieces. I'm not ready to leap off into the world of Keith Jarrett whose piano work gave me impossible headaches in my college years--nor am I interested at this point in acid jazz or be-bop as such. I need to get a solid grounding in things accessible before I reach beyond. And I'm afraid I do need a hook to engage me. But if you all have any suggestions for good stuff to listen to, please note them and I'll look them up.
Thanks!
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February 8, 2007
Vicki Carr Spirituality
Don't blame me, I can't help where inspiration comes from.
It Must Be Him
I tell myself what's done is done
I tell myself don't be a fool
Play the field have a lot of fun
It's easy when you play it cool
I tell myself don't be a chump
Who cares let him stay away
That's when the phone rings
And I jump
And as I grab the phone I pray
Let it please be him
Oh dear God
It must be him
It must be him
Or I shall die
Or I shall die
Oh hello, hello,
My dear God, it must be him
But it's not him and then I die
That's when I die
After a while
I'm myself again
I pick the pieces off the floor
Put my heart on the shelf again
He'll never hurt me anymore
I'm not a puppet on a string
I'll find somebody else someday
Thats when the phone rings
And once again I start to pray
Let it please be him
Oh, dear God,
It must be him
It must be him
Or I shall die
Or I shall die
Oh, hello, hello, my dear God
It must be him
But it's not him
And then I die
That's when I die
Let it please be him
My dear God, it must be him
Or I shall die
Or I shall die
In a short, melodramatic song we have the summary of the spiritual life of most lukewarm Christians. Or at least how it might look from outside and how it sometimes must seem to God that we react.
I sit and wait for God, praying for intervention, enlightenment, help. I spend my time doing for myself, think my own thoughts and going my own way and telling myself that I can do it alone, completely alone.
Then something happens. Great or little, good or bad, the telephone rings and I rush to it completely devoted now to the thought that this is God's communication to me. He's there, he's calling, finally I'll hear what I've wanted to hear all this time.
And no, it isn't Him, and I'm let down. I die.
If so, I die in ignorance. It's always Him. Always. In every caress of the breeze, in the noise of children playing, in the traffic in the streets, in the snow in the driveway. Not one thing happens that He did not cause to happen. And every day we meet Him in the persons of those around us. Every day.
Nothing happens without His consent, without His will. What we see as catastrophic is His will for the moment and we must recall that "all things work for the good of those who are called to His purpose."
When the telephone rings, no matter who is on the other end, it is Him. There is a task, there is a job, there is a need to fulfill. I just need to learn to hear Him on the other end.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 28, 2007
Support Your Local Orchestra
A logical followup to the post below.
Particularly with classical music it is important to make the effort to get out and hear the performance in person. No recording I have ever heard reproduces every nuance of a live performance. Each suffers from a curious deadening effect of dynamics. It's rather like looking at an art print that has been too long exposed to the sun. You can get a sense of what it was all about, but it is pallid, washed-out.
Linda and I took Samuel to hear Mozart's Symphony 41 and Holst's The Planets on Saturday evening. I had forgotten some of the tonalities and all of the dynamics of The Planets and was very happy to make their acquaintance again. It is remarkable how even in a mediocre performance, they overwhelm anything you've heard on CD or vinyl (despite the latter's reputed "warmth").
Symphony Orchestra's need care and feeding. They need the support of the local community. And they need an audience. Help do the truly conservative thing and preserve the great pieces of the past and do it in a progressive way--locally. Then you can boast to all your progressive friends about how progressive you are in your retrogressive fashion.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Dancing About Architecture
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”
– Frank Zappa
Nevertheless, despite the genius of Mr. Zappa, I intend to write about music--but what I have to say is less about music and more about true conservation.
Classical music has fallen on hard times. It's hard to make money with performances live or on album. There are any number of explanations for this; however, the reason matters little--we are in serious danger of losing a great heritage if we do not pay attention.
Many people seem to think that classical music is "for the few, the proud," . . . the snobs. Not so. One of the reasons people may come to this conclusion is that music may be the most underappreciated art. Most people don't know how to listen to music, or don't care. Erik Satie noted that the way in which most people listen to music turns it into wallpaper or furniture. When we see the number of people strolling around with iPods or glued to their headsets at work (I admit to being among them), we can see that there is considerable truth to the statement.
Even when people begin to listen to music rather than just hear it, the reactions tend to be on one plane--"I like it, I don't like it." Now our reaction to almost any form of art begins with this simple dichotomy; however, for most of us, we do not remain there. "I like The Violent Bear it Away because. . . " "I don't care for the paintings of Georgia O'Keefe because. . . " What follows the because begins to enter the realm of analysis if it consists of anything more than mere surface impressions. But most of our reaction to music come down to, "It's got a great bit, good, kicky melody, really danceable, I give it an 8 out of 10."
Music, classical or otherwise, requires attention. In fact, because its impressions are fast and fleeting, it can require more attention than any of the other arts. Unlike walking through an art gallery where you can choose to stand for as long as you wish in front a a painting, a live performance of a piece of music is a fleeting, ephemeral experience. If you are not trained to listen, the experience can be exhausting. And yet. . . to experience music it is necessary to really listen--and despite what many people think, you can listen even if you have no real idea of how the music gets to be the way it is.
So, you can't read a note and you've had no music appreciation courses. What's a person who wishes to listen to do? I suppose it might be wise to start small. Pick something you really like and listen to it. Observe how the notes go up and down, get faster and slower, louder and softer. If it's vocal music, listen to see how the voice interplays with the instruments. You may not have the words to describe this interplay, but you can hear and understand it.
All music has depth. Some pieces are deeper than others. You'd be surprised where you might find musical depth if you listen. Just listen of "Eleanor Rigby" or "Take me home, Country Roads." There is more to them than what most people ever know. They hear it, but they do not really understand or listen to it.
Music is great for creating a soundscape conducive to other activity; however, this is a secondary function, but like hanging a painting to "decorate" your house. Indeed, the painting does "decorate" but its primary function is to stimulate the mind and the heart. When we allow either music or art to become wallpaper, we've lost a source of contact with God. (You knew I'd get there sooner or later.)
Music and Art speak either directly or indirectly of the creator. Often they speak of the creator despite the express intentions of the artist. It cannot be otherwise because it is an act of co-creation. The creation of art is a participation in the divine life and so will always reflect the divine life.
What a tragedy then, when we deny ourselves some part of the good that has been laid out before us.
So today, before you do another thing, take a short break and begin the practice of really listening to music. Turn your musical lawnchair or William Morris into a piece of art again and begin to appreciate how it is turned and fashioned, what went into its making. If you've any musical ability at all, sit down at a piano and try to compose just six or eight bars of melody--forget harmony for the moment. Begin to understand that music, like art and writing, truly is an endeavor requiring an incredible talent and precision.
Then do yourself a favor and start to listen--really listen to the music that you love. Don't use it for a background for something else--or if you do get to know it first so that it can transport you, even as a background, out of the world as it is and into the world as it can be.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 26, 2007
Who Is the Crimson King?--A Catholic Reading
Following in the line of my much "admired" and frequently sited "award-winning" "Devotional Reading of H. P. Lovecraft," I present for your delectation and delight and short excursion into In the Court of the Crimson King. Partly this was driven by the discovery of Robert Fripp's magnificent Pie Jesu album, which is apparently a compilation of other bits and pieces. And there are frequent hints throughout his oeuvre of a religious background if not of a religious feeling. Working on the premise that God uses great art often despite the intentions of the artist, I present this consideration of the first song on In the Court of the Crimson King.
I have no idea who composed the lyrics for this song, but as Fripp was always a leader of the group, no matter how many people swirled around it at a time, and considering that the album is a work of musical genius, we can find in it the fingerprint of the Creator. (All one needs to do is squint and look hard enough.) {Also a caveat: I won't pretend that this is a profound musicological understanding of the work as a whole--I haven't the background for that. I work with words, and so it is the interplay of the words and the music that I shall try to look at and open up for you what I see there.)
For our first class let's consider the first song: "21st Century Schizoid Man." For those who have not heard it, it is a rather grating introduction (as befits the subject matter) to a magnificent album. There is a very astringent guitar line with a voice altered in some way to create the sense of growling or screaming. The song proceeds for the first two verses indicated below in a very rigid, tense semi-melodic line--yes, there's a sort of tune to it, though I don't think one would typify it as hummable.
21st Century Schizoid Man
Robert Fripp/Ian McDonald/Greg Lake/Michael Giles/Peter SinfieldCat's foot, iron claw
Neurosurgeons scream for more
At paranoia's poison door
21st century schizoid manBlood rack, barbed wire
Politician's funeral pyre
Innocence [Innocents?] raped with napalm fire
21st century schizoid manDead sea, blind man's greed
Poets starving children bleed*
Nothing he's got, he really needs
21st century schizoid man
Now, if you haven't heard the song, you need to know that the first three lines of each stanza should be read as accented/stanzaic poetry in which there is a pause in the middle of the line--very common to Celtic Epic Poetry. Thus the effect is
Cat's foot
Iron Claw
Neurosurgeons
Scream for more
at Paranoia's
poisoned door
21st Century Schizoid Man.
This detail merely contributes to the image of the song. In addition, this first stanza (as well as the title) give us the immediate indication that whoever the Crimson King is, his court is not a thing of the past, but a very modern, very relevant occurrence. This is in opposition to some of the songs that follow in which there is a vaguely medieval or ethereal sense to what is happening. "I Talk to the Wind" seems a perfectly appropriate follow-up to this song, because to whom else will a schizoid (who, as we shall see, experiences a total psychotic break) talk to?
After the first two stanzas of this song, the music enters into a instrumental break that initially takes the form of a fugue, mimicking the state of some schizoid patients. The saxophone and guitar take off on their own and begin chasing one another in a free-form jazz mode. Initially the structure is quite tight, but the fugue state breaks down to bring about the musical equivalent of a total psychotic episode.
The patient recovers briefly--long enough for the final stanza, which may be the key stanza of the whole song, and perhaps one of the keys to the entire album:
"Dead sea, blind man's greed
Poets starving children bleed
Nothing he's got, he really needs
21st century schizoid man"
And within this one line on which hangs much of my thought about this as a fundamentally religious song--"Nothing he's got, he really needs." At once a biting criticism of modern society and the true schizoid state of the person who is a materialist and who has acquired all that he has through the pain and hardship of others and still seeks to fill the emptiness inside. None of it will. Ever. It cannot. You cannot put gold into the hole in your soul. And everything you acquire trying to fill that emptiness only rips the hole wider until it becomes a wound at the surface of the mind--the materialist becomes a schizoid personality, constantly fleeing reality in the pursuit of filling the void that he only succeeds in making larger.
Now, this is just as easily a secular criticism of a plutocratic society in which the pursuit of wealth is regarded not only as laudable but as something nearly holy. However, as I am a Christian, I tend to place a great deal of weight on "Nothing he's got he really needs," which conversely indicates that what he really needs, he does not have. If he does have all this wealth, if he really is within the Court of the Crimson King, what could he possibly be lacking?
Peace--peace that comes when the mind assents to the soul's prompting to look for what really matters. The 21st Century Schizoid Man lacks knowledge of God and desire for God. And what is truly frightening about this is that from my survey of many people within the Church, this is as true of them as of the hard-core materialist. We have surrendered, in many cases, the one-track, express-train pursuit of God for the pursuit of the legitimate, lesser goods of our present life. While we aren't in the full fledged auto-drawing-and-quartering that occurs to the ardent materialist, we have been sufficiently affected by his disease to have lost our own sense of belonging to God and pursuing His ends over our own. I can think of countless examples just from the blogging world, and I think each of you can as well.
Okay, to finish up--the last verse is sung, brought to a resounding screeching, scraping end, and then there is a total break. The interlude between verses two and three are a fugue state--a loss of self-control and self knowledge. The very end of the song, which features every musician flying off on their own riffs--the saxophonist not so much playing notes as torturing the instrument--the schizoid man has gone psychotic. And then, he "talks to the wind."
The ultimate end of pursuing material things is a total break with reality. In our language, were we to die in that state, it is called Hell. Hell is a state of being utterly opposed to the only reality. Hell is the continued anguish of trying to fill up a gaping hole, when all you are is that gaping hole. Hell is what is left of us when all we have done with our lives is to seek to make more of ourselves.
And the music seems to nicely mimic this as well. Hell is cacophony, the cacophony of self in the total absence of boundaries and freedom. Hell is being chained to our own wills for all eternity. "Neuro surgeons SCREAM for more at paranoia's poison door." All because we cannot surrender to love--we seek love from created things and create more pain for ourselves and for others in our pursuit.
In the Court of the Crimson King is a hard album. It has an adamantine brilliance--a high gloss that results both from the genius of the musicians and from the truth they manage to convey so clearly. Whether or not they buy into the truth, God has nevertheless used their music to convey a strong message to the person who takes it seriously. The flaw with the album is that no way out is shown--the Court of the Crimson King is simply the prison entered by the 21st Century Schizoid Man. In the title song, "In the Court of the Crimson King", the last song on the album, there is an initial promise of freedom:
The dance of the puppets
The rusted chains of prison moons
Are shattered by the sun.
But that is all done away with by the end of the song:
On soft gray mornings widows cry
The wise men share a joke;
I run to grasp divining signs
To satisfy the hoax.
The yellow jester does not play
But gently pulls the strings
And smiles as the puppets dance
In the court of the crimson king.
I cannot say where they were going when they composed this modern masterpiece, but I can say where they go for me. When we surrender to our materialist urges we are made puppets by the things we desire. We will do anything to have them because they will fill the void, or so we think. But that void, unless fill by the One, is a black hole--all that is fed into it strengthens it and enlarges it.
The only way out is to negate "nothing he's got he really needs," and to find the one thing necessary--Our Lord.
*Later Upon rereading this, I found this line very interesting. although it is pronounced
Poets starving
children bleed
I wonder whether it isn't a single thought regarding the starving children of poets? Thus:
Poets' starving children bleed.
Fascinating the way punctuation or lack thereof can lead to a productive and fruitful ambiguity. It works that way in scripture often as well.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 23, 2007
Rediscoveries--Annie Haslam--Still Life
Annie Haslam was the lead singer for the progressive group Renaissance (I don't know if some version of Renaissance still exists.) On the album A Turn of the Cards, they introduced the idea (or at least perfected the idea which had actually been made prominent by Procol Harum in "A White Shade of Pale") of singing lyrics to classical music that wasn't meant to be vocal. The song, "Cold is Being," was sung to the tune of Albinoni's famous Adagio.
Still Life (1985) is an album of such songs. It features songs sung to the tunes of Mendelsohn's Overture to the Hebrides (aka Fingal's Cave), St. Saen's "The Swan," Wagner's "Seigfried's Rhine Journey," and Satie's "Trois Gymnopedies No. 2." She reprises the use of Albinoni's Adagio in a song titled "Save Us All." There are other melodies that I can't so easily place--famous and immediately familiar if not leaping directly to the memory. In addition she does a treatment of "Ave Verum Corpus."
Annie's voice may require a bit of getting used to for some. I find it pure and lovely while not so ethereal as the voice of, say, Sissel or even Sonja Kristina. There is a robust quality and roundness of tone. While I'm not wild about some of the vocal choices she makes, they do tend to grow on you as you listen.
The classical melodies do tend to make for overly dramatic lyrics at times and occasionally some overly dramatic vocal choices. However, overall, it is very pleasing to hear familiar melodies with an interesting overlay of words. Annie's voice has always had a tremendous appeal for me--it is pure and clear, light and delicate, while still being robust and full bodied. It's an interesting combination.
When I first heard her solo work, I was so used to her work with Renaissance, I didn't care for it; but now, upon a relisten with years between and the memories of Renaissance not nearly so close to the surface, these are very appealing and lovely songs. It is so nice to make their reacquaintance without the patina of ingrained preconceptions.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 22, 2007
One I Left Out
You know in all that blather a couple of posts down, I managed to leave out a real favorite:
Alan Parson's Project, Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
I first encountered them with I, Robot and never liked Tales as much--but I've concluded, perhaps incorrectly, that I was wrong. I'll need to listen to I, Robot again and see where it falls out.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 1:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
In The Court of Excess
People truly love King Crimson. Things I found while looking for lyrics:
In the Court of the Crimson King
and for those who can follow it better than I can,
An Analysis of In the Court of the Crimson King
If you get a chance, you really should listen to this album, most particularly the title song which is at once quite lovely in ways that I cannot give proper voice to and a bit melancholy. When I listened to this album again, I was reacquainted with brilliance. I believe this is the version of King Crimson that includes Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer on both bass and vocals.
And you know, considering that there is a fair amount of a type of Jazz that I absolutely dispise on some of the tracks, this recommendation might be regarded as some fairly strong stuff. If you find yourself initially put off, skip the first track--or better yet, listen to the last track, "In the Court of the Crimson King" and after you have a sense of the group, come back--it makes better sense. (In fact in the context of "21st Century Schizoid Man" the endless tootling of the acid jazz, or whatever it is called makes perfect sense and gives the whole song interesting context, vision, and power.
"Nothing he's got he really needs,
21st Century Schizoid man. . ."
After which we have complete breakdown.
Followed by , "I Talk to the Wind."
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Vinyl Review
In the course of converting vinyl to mp3, I've made some interesting rediscoveries. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed some King Crimson albums--In the Court of the Crimson King and Lizard are standouts for me. I had also forgotten small treasures like Hero and Heroine by The Strawbs, Pawn Hearts by Van der Graaf Generator and 666 by Aphrodite's Child.
In looking through the collection I dug out 801 Live, Night after Night by UK, and Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy) by Brian Eno. I also pulled out the eponymous The B-52s and once again visited "Planet Claire." (Same recognized this cut from a Hallowe'en album we have.) Echo and the Bunnymen and Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division, mixed in with Dazzle Ships (OMD) and Chameleon in the Shadow of Night--Peter Hammill. I renewed my acquaintance with "The Pothead Pixies" who appear first on Camembert Electrique and then drive the entire Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy.
We mustn't forget the electronic side of things--Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Edgar Froese (particularly Aqua), Cluster, Roedelius, Klaus Schulze.
But, what was most gratifying is to hear that despite youthful pretensions, the real talent and drama of Genesis was there, right from the beginning. From From Genesis to Revelation right on through to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway there are, at first flashes, and then a sustained high level of art, intelligence, and real beauty. Foxtrot is still the standout, but I had forgotten some of the beauties of Trespass, Nursery Cryme and Selling England by the Pound.
All of this before the stranger realms of This Heat and From a View to a Scream by Tuxedo Moon. Snakefinger and Nash the Slash make appearances before we arrive at the pinnacle of oddness and interest--The Residents. I got through The Residents, The Third Reich and Roll Album and Fingerprince--I have yet to get Diskomo, The Commercial Album and whole "Eloi and Morlock" trilogy of Plutonian Jazz.
Next up--I hope--The Unfortunate Cup of Tea, The Tain, The Book of Invasion, The Man who Built America and other treasures from the nearly forgotten Horslips. And perhaps some YMO, more Peter Hammill, Gentle Giant, Gryphon, Renaissance, Curved Air, and bits and pieces from more renowned but less preferred sources--The Cars, Focus, The Human League, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet. And then there's the standout of Ultravox and John Foxx. They still await electronic transformation. And given Metamatic I don't know why I didn't pull these out first--perhaps deferred gratification.
It's very nice to visit past greatness and it gives me pause to wonder why I stopped listening. And then I remember--I got married and everything else faded in importance. Now, I hardly know a modern group or a modern sound and somehow, I have no real sense of deprivation. That's a good thing.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 16, 2007
Supper's Ready
As a result of You-Tube exploration, I went back to the vinyl collection that I have kept from my early interest in music and wondered, other than the fact that the technology is now so primitive as to be nearly outmoded, why I didn't listen to these things what were so formative for me at the time.
So I turned back to several favorites and listened to them as I thumbed through the Amazon Catalog (and finally contacted a friend who had been ripping vinyl to MP3). Chief amongst these early works were Tales of Mystery and Imagination by The Alan Parsons Project, Phantasmagoria by Curved Air (the You-Tube cut by Sonja Kristina, "Melinda (More or Less)" is from this album) and Foxtrot by Genesis (with Peter Gabriel).
Foxtrot is something of a "concept album" with the second side consisting of a single song in multiple movements. I remember listening to this over and over again at the time it was issued. I thought it one of the most profound pieces of music ever written. You won't be astonished to hear that I was wrong. But the people who wrote the lyrics knew how to pull strings and how to set up certain expectations. Much of this is youthful pretension--one can end up reading all sorts of meanings into the song, but much of this is an exercise in reading the overstuffed and vague lyrics in a certain way. All of this amounts to a certain amount of pretension--a pretension that comes of youth.
"He watched with reverence as Narcissus
was turned to a flower. . .
A Flower?. . ."
And the next song bounces along "happy as fish and gorgeous as geese" hops along in its odd sort of way.
And take this delightful bit of nonsense:
Lyrics from "Supper's Ready"
Apocalypse In 9/8 (Co-Starring the delicious talents of Gabble Ratchet)
With the guards of Magog, swarming around,
The Pied Piper takes his children underground.
Dragons coming out of the sea,
Shimmering silver head of wisdom looking at me.
He brings down the fire from the skies,
You can tell he's doing well by the look in human eyes.
Better not compromise.
It won't be easy.666 is no longer alone,
He's getting out the marrow in your back bone,
And the seven trumpets blowing sweet rock and roll,
Gonna blow right down inside your soul.
Pythagoras with the looking glass reflects the full moon,
In blood, he's writing the lyrics of a HIP brand new tune.And it's hey babe, with your guardian eyes so blue,
Hey my baby, don't you know our love is true,
I've been so far from here,
Far from your loving arms,
Now I'm back again, and babe it's gonna work out fine.
As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs (Aching Men's Feet)Can't you feel our souls ignite
Shedding ever changing colours, in the darkness of the fading night,
Like the river joins the ocean, as the germ in a seed grows
We have finally been freed to get back home.There's an angel standing in the sun, and he's crying with a loud voice,
"This is the supper of the mighty one",
The Lord of Lords,
King of Kings,
Has returned to lead his children home,
To take them to the new Jerusalem.
And we're to make what of this? I remember back before they published the lyric sheets just trying to figure out what the heck they were singing. Now that I know, I'm little better off. And yet there is such a tremendous sense of fun about the whole thing--sheer delight in verbal wordplay. "666 is no longer alone. . ." such an interesting observation that can be taken so many ways depending upon one's perspective.
That said--it is still solid and interesting. One can forgive the excesses of youth and even engage in them from time to time. This is the kind of thing that true geniuses look back on and say, "Oh well, youth, what can you do about it." The music moves in all sorts of interesting symphonic ways and rock ways--there are about 20 styles and segues that lead through a labyrinth of possible meanings to result in sheer entertainment.
So rather than faulting meaning or lack thereof, it's far better to sit back and enjoy the sheer loveliness of some of the treatments and let the rest go. Yes, some of it is silly, some pretentious, some overblown. But there are delicate interludes and a real sense of unity and organization in a piece that goes on for about 22 minutes--a true symphony of sorts. And it still charms.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:39 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 13, 2007
Okay, One Step Beyond Lene
Possibly inspired by her, possibly part of the zeitgeist Nina Hagen was Germany's response to Lene Lovich. And here you see her at her best.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:13 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 12, 2007
The Proof of the Pudding
In the arena of too much information--my wife endured this grueling test of character prior to our marriage. After she agreed to attend a Lene Lovich concert I knew that she was the girl for me.
(Among Lene's true admirers her style was known as Transylvanian Boogie. Perhaps another reasonable characterization might be a deranged Pippi Longstocking.)
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Some Sounds of My Time (Before My Time)
Curved Air, "Melinda More or Less" featuring the remarkable voice of Sonja Kristina
The equally remarkable Annie Haslam with Renaissance
I entered the musical world at a date later than these bands and discovered them in retrospect. Those I discovered as they came along include:
Camel and The Snow Goose, their finest effort:
And then there is:
"In the Court of the Crimson King"
Eddie Jobson, who worked with, among others UK and Ultravox--here with Memories of Vienna
The weird, even for me, even at that time, The Residents with "The Simple Song"
And Gentle Giant giving us the odd poetry of psychiatrist (and bad poet) R. D. Laing in a modern-day madrigal--"Knots"
The Strawbs with Rick Wakeman at the Keyboard--"The Hangman and the Papist"
And Peter Gabriel in his previous incarnation as the Leader of Genesis
The guitarist, Steve Hackett, on his own. . .
Finally, because the fifth amendment is insufficient protection for some of the excesses of youth, the remarkable John Foxx, one of the talents behind Ultravox.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:50 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 6, 2007
Things Seen, Things Read
Okay, first beware:
The dreadful tedium of yet another animated mess--Happily N'ever After. This pallid attempt to capitalize on the genuinely clever Hoodwinked starts from the wrong premise and from there makes ever choice in precisely the incorrect manner to assure maximum adult tedium. The kids may get something from it--but not enough to endure except perhaps on DVD as the iPod gently lulls the mind.
Now to the excellent: Apocalypto. When I first heard that Mel Gibson intended to make another film in which dead languages feature largely, I thought, "Oh goody. More pretension."
Don't judge a film by its pretensions. By turns amusing and truly ghastly; high-school locker room and abbatoir, the film has heart and meaning for anyone trapped in the grinding soul-breaking toil of much of the American Corporate system. The message, in a sense boils down to a simple Simpson's episode. Those who watch it will know what I mean when I say "Do it for her."
A love story, a survival story, an historical epic--the true brutality and horror of life among the peoples of ancient North America is exposed for what it likely was. No PC approach to living in harmony with nature, although that is also shown for what it is.
I haven't said much, but I was moved and enjoyed the film despite the gory and ghastly images that can linger behind. Intense, but intensely meaningful and really beautiful.
And now, for reading. I finished one last book during vacation, a book by an author I had long ago abandoned and thought never to pick up again. The author: Dean Koontz. The book Odd Thomas. I believe I first saw a positive word about it at Julie D.'s Happy Catholic and as our tastes have large areas of overlap and her enthusiasm was evident, I thought it good to try the series. Well, I must confess myself surprised and satisfied. This is not the usual stamped-from-the-same-fabric plot that Dean Koontz churned out in so many early books that he finally alienated me as part of his audience. Odd Thomas has many clever ploys and dodges that wind up in a most satisfying, if somewhat unexpected conclusion.
Odd Thomas, you see, sees dead people. He sees the ghosts of those who pass on--including Elvis who has as many unique features as a ghost as he had as a living person. These ghosts, and other, more unpleasant entities, cue him on on happenings or about-to-be-happenings in the spirit world that affect the world of the living.
A remarkable and entertaining diversion that contains hints of something more. As I continue to read the series I am hoping to see that something more develop. But as it stands, Odd Thomas is recommended reading.
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December 18, 2006
Eragon
It should come as no surprise that when an 8-year-old boy is given the choice between Eragon and Charlotte's Web, it is nearly inevitable that he will choose Eragon. I see this as a very healthy interest for the young--action, excitement, adventure. It should also come as no surprise that their middle-aged fathers would far prefer the gentle remembrance of youthful reading, especially when the reviews for Eragon were so tepid.
So, what of Eragon? It's faults are faults that every reasonable child will overlook, and every adult whose chief interest is the happiness of that child can deal with readily. The movie is precisely what one would expect of a movie made from a highly derivative novel written by a 15 year-old boy. Every plot turn is not only expected, but is directly mappable to something you've seen elsewhere. There are youthful romantic notions of what it means to die with dignity. There is a Sauraman-like evil wizard who commands groups of made-from the Earth nasties whose chief job is to hunt down the hero and kill him. There are several references to Star Wars, one in the death of Eragon's Uncle another in the mysterious mentor who helps Eragon become a dragon-rider.
I won't go on with the catalogue, these illustrate the point. The movie takes bits and pieces of nearly every prominent action/adventure/mythic movie made in the last 30 years and compounds them into a unique film. Was it good? Well, let's say that it was as good as a film of this description could possibly be. The dragon-riding was probable and well-done, the acting mostly passable. It was not a fantastic film, but given its source material, that would be much to expect.
It was sufficient to entertain, entrance, captivate, and otherwise stimulate the mind and imagination of an eight-year-old boy. And so, it served its purpose well. Is it as good as other films that might do the same? Probably not. But this is one of those matters that is judged by the instance, not by the entire literature of film. In this instance, it performed to a magnificent degree the task set before it. It made an 8-year-old boy, and thus his father, very happy for a short time. It isn't a saga for the ages, but it is a saga for age 8.
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December 7, 2006
"The Shifting and the Solid" and Debussy
For those of you who are admirers of the fiction of Virginia Woolf, you will already know to what I refer by these words--and she was among the leading practitioners of them. If you read Mrs. Dalloway or To the Lighthouse or most particularly Jacob's Room you will experience within the works an oddly disconcerting element, a subtle ambiguity of character and incident. There is about her stream of consciousness a looseness, an almost frightening element of uncertainty, instability, which resolves into a rather gentle, perhaps slightly surreal, serenity. It pervades the works and its ambiguities make the characters themselves rather ambiguous in some ways.
I was thinking about this solid and shifting as I considered how whatever I was feeling, wheresoever my emotional state, I could put on Debussy (and for me, it is only Debussy, not Ravel, not Vaughn-Williams, not Delius, not Holst, not even Satie--Debussy alone) and the entire world seems to shift for a moment in its orbit and is suddenly a better place--better lit, better coordinated, better composed. Debussy captures the serenity of flowing water, the tumble of the stream over a rocky bed, the smell of smoke in autumnal air, all things momentary, evanescent, ephermal, diaphanous--all things that shift in a moment and are gone. Debussy encapsulates them all and contains them so that shifting and solid are together. Those glimpses, those moments, those intuitions, are suddenly tangible--no longer vague and fleeting and gone, but substantial, permanent, perennial. The moments of the opening of a blossom are suspended, it is forever opening--not a loop, but a continuity that never reaches an end. In this way, for me, Debussy capture eternity--time vanishes while I listen to his music and I am caught up in the flow of the eternal where all that happens happens not in a moment but in a continuity that never ends. The blossom never stops opening even though at some point the flower is full-blown.
And if that isn't vague enough for you, just post a comment and I'll see if I can make it even more vague.
Later: Although on reconsideration, there are parts of Daphnis and Chloe that approach the power of Debussy to bridge the shifting and the solid.
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December 2, 2006
Karlheinz, revisited
Because I really do want to try to see the beauty in things that others recognize as beautiful, I listened through a couple of things on Erk's site and then went here to sample the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. It had been some time ago that I first formed my impressions of this composer and it was time to revisit.
While I have to say that my impressions were a good deal less negative than those of a while back, I still come away with the sense that "There's no there, there." (I'm quoting someone in saying that, but I don't recall who.) There is sound--I won't label it with the seemingly perjorative "noise" but it doesn't seem to do much of anything. There may even be some principles of composition--I can't say, I haven't studied the matter and probably would come as close to understanding this as I do understanding Aquinas (it is a good thing to recognize one's limitations.)
But what I can say is either that my prayers for patience have paid off, or that there is some other intrinsic mellowing device such that these pieces no longer try my patience. I listen and the music stops and I am left with an impression of some interesting moments, but generally an unresolved and unresolvable sound mass.
But I will continue to try from time to time. As with Aquinas and others, I don't anticipate success. We come with intrinsic boundaries and it appears that Mr. Stockhausen is well outside of mine--which I'm sure would come as enormously gratifying to him-- (I tend to get the impression that he has no time for "middlebrow" music listeners who cannot appreciate his genius)--but that is as it may be. If there's something there, persistence will break down the barriers and I will get from it what there is for me.
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November 30, 2006
The Trout Quintet
I am NOT a truefan of most chamber music. To my ear it tends to sound a bit thin, weedy, and forced. I suppose if I were actually in the chamber while it was being played, the effect would be quite different. But to listen to chamber music in the privacy of my own room on my stereo gives a kind of wan and weak portrait of the experience. It's rather like watching Opera on television, or worse yet, listening to an Opera on disc. This can be a satisfactory and satisfying experience for many, I suppose, but I almost never enjoy a recorded Opera (in its entirety) before I've had the chance to actually see the Opera performed.
I digress. What I wanted to do was say that if you also are disoriented, unmoved, indifferent, or positively antagonistic to chamber music, you might wish to give Schubert's "Trout" quintet a try. This is one of those rare pieces that, though only five instruments play, there is a depth of sound and of theme and motif that really shows what chamber music construction is all about. After a glorious, bright, and quickly moving first movement, there follows a somewhat slower, more meditative, "interior" second movement--a natural flow from the first and an obvious development of the themes. Again, the third movement is bright, fast, and almost strident, lapsing into a fourth, quieter, meditative line and culminating in the fifth movement that brings the light and darkness together into a brilliant synthesis and summary of the entire work.
Words are not really meant to describe music, they cannot do it justice. And my words are particularly inept because I have no real training at describing these things, nor do I have the proper training and terminology to express all that is present in the music.
What I must do however, is encourage anyone interested in classical music to listen, really listen to the piece. Not put it on as background music and let it go--rather listen to it and to what the composer manages to do with relatively few instruments.
Bright and brilliant, one of the few chamber pieces I actually choose to listen to over and over again.
Now, Erik can come and chastise me for succumbing to the lush Romanticism of the 19th century--but then, you'll get a better picture of what the music is all about. And I'm always ready to learn the error of my ways, even as I continue to like what I should not. But let's face it, it isn't Brahms--and it is on Brahms that Erik and I can agree nearly whole-heartedly.
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November 28, 2006
"Easy Listening"
I listen to a lot of different kinds of music. Yes, I even subject myself to stuff that Erik calls "absolutely gorgeous" and which I find essentially indistinguishable from cicada song except perhaps in volume. I want to learn to listen to new things and I readily admit some are beyond me.
But the horrible little secret that I don't even really try to keep from any one, is that I have a real liking for classics, remakes of classics, and certain varieties of what is variously called "Tiki-music" or "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music." (This does not extend to the wheezy electronic organ or skating rink music that sometimes accompanies these things.)
I brought some in to work to add to my iTunes and I know someone here who really enjoys "The Exotic Moods of Les Baxter" as much as I do. She made a comment this morning that hit the nail on the head for me. "It is somehow so soothing and calming." It is indeed, and I have no real explanation for why. I find certain composers and styles very soothing. There may be real virtuosity in the composition, but I regard the music largely as background sound--more than white noise, I think, because the sound probably helps even out the daily spikes in blood pressure that come when someone approaches your desk with something that is manifestly NOT your responsibility and begins to discuss the problem. (Or worse yet--it IS your problem/fault.)
So I admit, I like the light sounds of Les Baxter, Martin Denny, Henry Mancini (in his own original compositions, not general in his reconstruction of others.) I like Rosemary Clooney, Early Frank Sinatra, and all the classics. I even like Bette Midler and Rod Stewart and Linda Rondstadt and Cyndi Lauper redoing "I Only Have Eyes for You," or "Stardust."
I don't listen to these things all the time. I also like Vivaldi, Varese, Ligeti, Ravi Shankar, Brad Paisley, Ultravox, Bill Nelson, Arvo Part, Aine Minogue, Loreena McKennit, and any number of other styles/types/artists. You might say I am catholic in my tastes. The less charitable would say (not without reasonable support) that I am undiscriminating in my choices. But there's a wide world of music out there and I have stopped trying to make a point by abhorring this or that popular artist or genre. Instead, I put on my headphones and listen to Tina Turner and am reminded for a moment of what beautiful things people can do and produce. And that is a comfort and a world that seems intent upon ugliness.
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November 25, 2006
Children's Cinema Offerings
This may be too late for some of you, but I post in hopes of alerting the rest as to the relative merits of three children's films I've had the duty to sit through this season:
(1) The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause--A mild entertainment--neither offensive nor particularly compelling. Whatever message is here is so coded and buried by all the fluff that surrounds it that it will at worst do no harm and at best encourage some form of family solidarity. The worst part of this is that family solidarity, as good as it is, is not the central message of the Christmas story.
(2) Happy Feet: The one with the greatest potential for damage. Another of George Miller's nearly endless and endlessly preachy films. It seems that after Babe, Miller got up on his hobby horse and has been riding it into the ground ever since. Ostensibly the tale of the Penguin who is not gifted as other penguins are, the main messages of this film are dissent, disagreement, and headstrongness. Most children won't see it, but it is a two hour long polemic on preserving the fish for the starving penguin populations of Antarctica. In addition, it has some fairly strong anti-parental and anti-religious elements. Again, very young children won't catch on, but Samuel came out of the theatre lecturing us on the need to preserve fish populations for other animals. And while it is good to have one's consciousness of these things elevated, it does make for preachiness and polemic that are hardly worth the spectacle of dancing penguins, particularly when compared with . . . singing slugs.
(3) Flushed Away: The film that most amused me and featured the inspired talents of singing slugs and a city of sewer rats. A straightforward adventure film/love story with, as I said, singing slugs, some "adult" humor a la "Rocky and Bullwinkle" and a tight and clever plot line. One example of "adult humor--" La Frog is summoned by his British cousin Big Frog to help capture the heroes and play out his evil plot to drown sewer world and populate it with his voracious tadpoles. The French ninja-frogs show up and La Frog tells them, "Time for action, men." At which the dozen or so frogs raise their arms and say "I surrender." "Not that action!" (My sincere apologies to any French readers I may have.) There are other moments as well, but overall, it is fast paced, with amusing interludes featuring fleeing slugs, singing slugs, flying slugs, and yes, dancing slugs. Overall, it seemed pretty message free and a lot of fun. Recommended.
The other two films I can't really recommend because I was bored by the preachiness of Happy Feet and simply bored by The Santa Clause 3, neither charming nor inventive. But the latter has no discernible harmful message and the former has a strong but relatively coded anti-religious message that will be missed by pre-teens, and perhaps by some adults.
Now on the kid scale--Sam loved all three. I don't know which one he liked best because best usually means most recent. So your pre-teen child is likely to enjoy all three.
Oh, how I long to see a film made for adults!
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November 17, 2006
Evening's Entertainment
This evening we take Samuel to his fourth Opera this year: Camille Saint-Saëns, Samson et Delilah.
His previous operatic experiences: L'elisir d'amore, Le Nozze di Figaro, and Tosca. In addition last year he saw The Rockettes and Riverdance or Lord of the Dance (I forget which).
Next year he will see The Pirates of Penzance and Madama Butterfly and there's a good chance that he'll see the Khachaturian ballet Sparatacus.
I used to think that Orlando was pretty much a cultural wasteland. But I've discovered that while the pickings are a little slim compared to larger cities, there is much to be found if one looks. Given that both Opera and Ballet are largely dying arts to the Brittany generation, it seems good to give Sam some experience with these marvelous artforms before they completely vanish.
Most interestingly of all, Sam is absolutely riveted by the performances and seems very much aware of all that is going on. He reads the supertitles on the operas (which, by the way, I often have to do even when the Opera is in English), and is able to give a pretty good run-down of the story--which is not always such a good thing. I've no idea what we'll do when we get to Madama Butterfly, but we'll deal with that in its time.
To prepare for tonight's Opera Sam has been practicing the "Egyptian Dance" from Samson and Delilah as part of his piano practice. It's wonderful to see him so interested in these things and so well versed in them at so young an age. I think the first Opera I saw was when I was in college.
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November 8, 2006
Victory at Sea
Film music has, for the most part, replaced formal classical music as the classical music of our time.
I'm presently listening to Victory at Sea and More Victory at Sea which had their origins as soundtracks to documentary films about WW II produced (I think) for television in the late 50s early 60s. What I think occurred is that Richard Rodgers composed some new material and reworked materials from his musicals into the soundtracks as appropriate. For example, "Beneath the Southern Cross" has a motif that is very familiar but which I am not able to place immediately, not being terribly conversant in musical theatre.
Whatever may be the case, there is some interesting music here that has stronger classcial music leanings than the music of most contemporary composers. Dissonance serves a real purpose in the course of the music rather than the ritual extolling of disorder commanded of the high priests of modern anarachy. There is form and function here, and while it doesn't have the strict structural elements of prolonged classical music, it does within each short piece contain both thematic and musical elements that hearken back to musical predecessors in ways that might be called "musical quotation."
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November 7, 2006
An Odd Day
Lunchtime, recording the listening for the morning:
4 different versions of O Mio Babbino Caro--including one by Charlotte Church
Visi d'Arte
Janet Baker's magisterial performance of the rather odd English Renaissance set piece (hard to call it an opera) Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas
Bohislav Martinu's Symphony's 3 and 4
What I'd like to listen to and don't have available at the moment is Mendelsohn's "Overture to the Hebrides" and Rimsky-Korsokov's Scheherazade
Later this afternoon music by Casting Crowns, Out of Eden, and Selah, along with a compilation of "inspirational" songs by country musicians.
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October 28, 2006
MamaT's Homeschool Contribution
MamaT posted a link to Pachelbel's Canon, a piece Sam is currently learning for a future piano recital.
Here's my response to MamaT:
Dear MamaT,
Thank you! You just contributed to a homeschool lesson about why it's important to practice your piano. Sam loved that piece and he's learning it on piano now. I pointed out to him that once he learned enough piano playing and theory he'd be able to build his own Canon.
"And my own music?"
"And your own music."
"And other people would play it?"
"Yes."
Thanks again MamaT.
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October 24, 2006
"So Long Self"
In the car, I tend to listen to a Christian Music station. I don't much like it; however, if I'm going to hear words coming out of Samuel's mouth I'd rather they be "Holy, Holy, Holy" than "I'm as good once as I ever was." Given the dearth of classical music and even of classic radio, it's either CDs or Christian music or silence, and a car is never silent.
So, I was listening this morning as I came into work and I was really surprised by a very pop-py, kicky sixties-mod Beatles invasion-rock piece by a group called Mercy Me. For a moment I forgot I was on Christian Radio and was just really enjoying the music, and then I paid attention. I was stunned by the subversiveness of the lyrics and how I was drawn into this very anti-secular song. This is the power of Christian art--it creeps in under the radar and wallops you. A perky, Petula Clark tune becomes an anthem to immersing oneself in Christ and putting on the "new man." Cool.
Note: For several days I had the wrong title in the header. I thought I fixed this yesterday (10/26) but it appears to have failed. So, trying again.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:28 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 19, 2006
Harry Potter and the Communion of the Saints
In the category of preaching to the converted:
Each book of the Harry Potter series is imbued with great Christian lessons. We might argue over Rowling as stylist or Rowling as successor to Tolkien and Lewis or Rowling as literature; however, to the reader who has spent any time with the books, Rowling as devout and informed Christian is nowhere in doubt. Each book teaches something about the believer in Christ and how that believer behaves in certain circumstances.
The particular event of interest occurs at the end of the fourth book of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It is spectacularly portrayed in the movie, and caps the book off with a scene horrifying, dramatic, and stirring. Harry Potter and Cedric Diggory have both touched a device that transports them to a place where the bane of the series Lord Voldemort await the arrival of Potter. Upon arrival, Cedric is summarily dispatched and Harry's blood is used to revivify the skeletal, embryonic Voldemort.
Then ensues the duel in which Voldemort attempts to finish off what he began so many years ago--the death of Harry Potter. The two engage.
Now the remarkable instance--in the course of the engagement Harry sees Cedric, Harry's mother and father, and (in the book, if I remember correctly) a whole host of those whom Voldemort has killed over time. Harry's mother tells him, "We can only give you a little time." The host descends upon Voldemort giving time for Harry to run to Cedric's body and transport the two of them back to Harry's world.
If, in this instance, we allow Voldemort to stand-in for sin, which, as we know from St. Paul leads to death (hence the derivation Vol-de-mort or "flight of death"--which will have several meanings in the series) we can see the communion of the Saints as it works. We engage in a battle with sin, temptation. We are the combatants. The fierceness of the battle and our faith summons help from Heaven's throneroom, the Saints, who engage through prayer the powers, principalities, thrones and dominations, that trouble Heaven and our own world. As Harry's mother advises, they can only give respite, it is up to us to flee from sin--but they can and do intercede for us providing the out--we can escape if we move away (of course aided by the Saints and God's will).
This image is reinforced later when Dumbledore, unpacking the experience for Harry, reminds him, "You know, we can never bring back the dead." Harry doesn't seem to understand this for what it means, but it is very clear to the reader that we cannot bring back the dead because, in fact, they never leave us. They are a cloud of witnesses gathered about us thickly and participating in every event of our lives--those tied to us by blood, most fiercely, but aided by all the warriors of Heaven (It is my hope that, undeserving as I am, the chiefest of those warriors is the Holy Mother of God and the Great Redwood of God, St. Therese.)
Thus, embedded, entangled, and completely blended throughout her series of novels, Rowling gives us lessons and views of how Christianity really operates. "But no one ever goes to Church or prays, or anything Christian." And of course, as anyone knows, that is less than nothing as an objection because the same holds true for both Tolkien and Lewis, her forbears in the art of bringing the truth of Christianity to the unsuspecting reader.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:17 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
October 8, 2006
On Parsifal
A remarkable non-analysis from John Runciman in Wagner.
"PARSIFAL" (1882).
This disastrous and evil opera was written in Wagner's old age, under the influence of such a set of disagreeably immoral persons as has seldom if ever been gathered together in so small a town as Bayreuth. The whole drama consists in this: At Montsalvat there was a monastery, and the head became seriously ill because he had been seen with a lady. In the long-run he is saved by a young man—rightly called a "fool"—who cannot tolerate the sight of a woman. What it all means—the grotesque parody of the Last Supper, the death of the last woman in the world, the spear which has caused the Abbot's wound and then cures it—these are not matters to be entered into here. Some of the music is fine.
I'd like to know more about how Wagner used this legend contrary to its orirgin. I've never watched it, but have long admired some parts of it. I should think that Tristan und Isolde would be far more problematic.
From Richard Wagner, Composer of Operas by the same Runciman:
The whole affair is a spectacle which I must say is disgusting to healthy minds. The insinuations are frightful. Consider, reader, seriously for a moment: Parsifal—Siegfried grown to manhood—knows and cares nothing about womankind. As soon as he knows what a woman is he revolts, learns through that knowledge and by his acquaintance with suffering—acquaintance, I say, because he himself has never suffered—that there are two cures for all the woes of humanity. Discard women and pity the men. The thing is absurd, and suggests that the mighty genius was on the verge of imbecility. But the desire to please mad Ludwig accounts for it all in a very undesirable fashion.
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September 29, 2006
Samuel's Précis of L'enfant Sauvage
This summary is paraphrased around the edges, but the jist of it is correct.
"There was this boy living in the wild. They caught him. They brang him to socialness. Then they teached him French."
Yep. That just about covers it, especially the "brang him to socialness" part. That's my boy, can't you see the similarities?
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L'enfant Sauvage
I firs saw this film some years ago as a field trip from French class. It was shown subtitled, but I remember being amazed how much of the French I could understand. And it struck me once again as surprising.
Samuel had wanted to see this film when he saw it at the library, and as there is no harm in it and it is one of the two Truffaut films I know I like, we brought it home. Samuel loved it. He learned two or three words of french and was thrilled. For one, he learn "L'enfant sauvage" and thinks that is much cooler than wild child and asked that he be called "L'enfant sauvage" rather than wild child from now on. (Of course he hasn't heard the Troggs yet, so there's a chance he'll change his mind.) Sam also learned the words for milk and water, two words they try to teach Victor in the course of the film.
The story is based on a supposedly true story of a child captured in the Averoyne woods in 1798. He had been abandoned early in his childhood. His parents had attempted to kill him but failed and the child is thought to have fended for himself from the age of 3 to the age of 10 or 12 when he was captured. The story centers around the efforts of a scientist to help this child rejoin civilization (if that is how one refers to France in 1798).
Filmed in black and white, the boy in the film gives an absolutely believable and remarkable performance as the child brought in from the wood. Truffaut himself (I think) plays the Doctor who is is helper and attempts to bring not just a veneer of civilization but a sense of a moral being into one raised wild. It has the odd misunderstanding of the enlightenment about the nature of humanity, but the film is still solid, if not beautiful.
For those with wild children, this film may have some appeal. For those who have experienced one or more l'enfants sauvages you'll already know what it's about. Think the terrible twos about ten years later. For those becoming acquainted with or reacquainted with French, it's a good film to see.
Overall, recommended--a good story, a good film, and relatively short--about 85 minutes.
(Oh, and for those of you too polite to ask--no, it's never too early to infect your children with the "watching-obscure-foreign-films" virus. In fact as we were looking at the films, Samuel asked "What does foe rain mean?" "Films produced in other countries." "Do they speak English?" "Well, if their from England, Australia, or South Africa they might." "Let's get one where they don't. Let's get one in Japanese." But he settled on L'enfant Sauvage.)
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 28, 2006
The Decalogue: IV and V
As I noted in the review of the first three films in this series, it is not always possible to sort out which parts of the decalogue are being dealt with in any given episode. This is particularly true of IV, but not at all true of V.
Film IV appears to encompass honoring your father and mother, not coveting your neighbors wife (husband), and not bearing false witness. In IV a Father leaves his daughter during a business trip. She discovers an envelop that has written on it "To be opened in the event of my death." And she considers opening it. Finally she does open it to find within another envelop, labeled in a different hand, "To my darling daughter." From this simple kernel, a plot of intrigue, deceit, false and real betrayal and reconciliation all spins out. By far and away one of the more complex of the series so far.
In V we get a simple admonition, "Thou shalt not kill." We see a young man who, apparently at random, decides to rob and murder someone. Everything possible is done to make the young man thoroughly unlikable. His counterpoint is the young attorney who is assigned to defend him and who does everything in his power to convince the court that capital punishment is not justice but institutionalized revenge. This is the summary speech that occurs at the beginning of the film and which only gradually begins to make sense.
I'm uncertain what feeling I was supposed to leave with. We have at the end the young attorney hammering on his car in a field and saying, "I abhor it. I abhor it." I don't know if he speaks for the director, for himself only, or for some other group. But I didn't find the appeal particular persuading in this instance. While I am sympathetic to the argument overall, this didn't strike me as a very strong entry in opposition to it.
Still, despite that failure on my part, it is enjoyable to watch. Most interesting are some of the cinematic techniques used to couch the whole story. And also interesting is the appearance of the young man, said by some to symbolize Christ or His Angels. He has appeared in every film to this point, always at key junctures. In IV he appears twice and seems to be the impetus toward reconciliation and redemption.
So far, the only thing close to a misstep in the series is # 3, and even that was supremely interesting. Highly recommended.
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August 20, 2006
Tetsuo: The Iron Man
My initial and stronger reaction was: "What the heck was that?" My secondary reactions follows. And my tertiary is the wrap-up.
Japano-bizarro vertigo-fest filmed á la Eraserhead and Night of the Living Dead and owing much to the Cronenberg-Romero-Lynch triad. Grainy, jerky off-centered, over-exposed and jumpy. The story a teratological blend of cyberpunk and self- and other- loathing rarely, if ever, seen this side of Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with a dollop of the frigid and horrifying eroticism of Tennessee Williams in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth. Then inflate it with the excesses of Cronenberg's Crash, Dead Ringers, and Naked Lunch.
What passes for a plot lumbers by mercifully undisturbed by such things as logic and sequence. And so the film speeds along like Koyannisqatsi on an overdose of caffeine and designer club drugs careening wildly from one oddity to another without ever pausing to smooth out wrinkles and attempt to make sense.
And in writing this I know I've told you nothing about the movie--and yet everything essential. Finally a film for hardcore fans of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.
In sum--far more unpleasant than the gestalt formed from blending all of the references above together and filming them in black and white. And weirdly interesting. Although only recommended for the hardcore Asian film fanatic or the collector of the odd and outré.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 18, 2006
Jules et Jim
Sometimes I watch films recommended by the critics and I understand the art and the beauty behind them. Perhaps I'm not aware of all the filmic techniques that went into making them, nor entirely persuaded as to the art, but I find them powerful, enjoyable, watchable, and perhaps even entertaining.
Not so with this highly recommended film by François Truffaut. Obviously I do not have the sensibilité Français, and, frankly, if this film represents either French or European sensibilities, I'm glad to be stuck in my American rut. It is an aimless mishmash of a ménage á trois that fails to entertain, amuse, enlighten, or even be nice to look at.
Jules and Jim are best friends; Jules is Austrian, Jim is French. In the course of the film they both fall for Catherine, a rather shallow, self-centered, vicious adulteress. At the start of WW I Jules and Jim are separated by their allegiances and Jules marries Catherine--a mistake if ever one was made. AFter the war the three reunite and carry on in a fashion unbecoming goats, much less human beings. Jules realizes that Catherine is about to live him and their daughter Sabine so he invites Jim to be her husband and live together in the same house. But, of course, Catherine tires of Jim and so the story goes.
I could see neither the directorial brilliance of Truffaust (which, honestly eludes me with every film I see by him) nor the value of the film that earned rave reviews from several major critics. I couldn't believe that anyone would put up with the nonsense dished out by Catherine or would choose to live their lives in such an unstable and unsettled fashion. The cinematography did not enchant and the endless odd angels of railway stations, the Eiffel Tower and whatever other object happened to fall under the camera's scrutiny was enough to induce vertigo. What we have is a amoral mishmash that winds up in a tragedy that leaves the viewer heaving a sigh of relief that the film is finally over. Why I watched the whole thing, I do not know. I suppose I thought something might happen that would redeem the hideous spectacle that was playing out before my eyes. I don't know what I was supposed to have gotten from this film--but all I was left with was a sense that I would think very carefully about watching another Truffaut film. (This despite the fact that I did enjoy L'enfant Sauvage and Fahrenheit 451
NOT recommended unless required by your local film department and then, please be so kind as to tell me why anyone thinks this film is magnifique.
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August 17, 2006
The Many Disappointments of Truman
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Capote, that is.
Perhaps it is memories of Music for Chameleons, lingering traces of story and prose, moments that come back every now and then that convince me that Capote was a writer of enormous potential and great power. Unfortunately, for the most part, that power and potential were wasted in work that rarely surpasses the level of gossip in an apartment stairwell.
Take Breakfast at Tiffany's, one of the works he is most well-known for, in large part due to the movie based upon the book. I've never been able to sit through the movie despite the enormous talents of Ms. Hepburn, and I find that the reason lay not in the film itself, but in the source. Perhaps there are layers and layers of meaning and character and idea all imbedded in this tale of Ms. Holly Golightly who is, for lack of a better term, a prostitute. Although Capote is not so crude as to call her that in the course of the work, and his job is to get us to sympathize and collaborate with Holly in her goings-on, for this reader he failed utterly. And he didn't fail simply because the matter is immoral--so are the basics of the plots of Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary. The difference is the prurience and the gossip that seem to pervade Breakfast at Tiffany's. As you read the story you are told about Holly by many different characters, each whispering in the hallway, wondering what has happened to her.
In Cold Blood the real masterwork that made his name, is much of the same tone. A "non-fiction novel," which, as one commenter has pointed out was more a marketing ploy than an innovation--(witness John Hersey's Hiroshima and Walter Lord's A Night to Remember as examples in Capote's recent past that did much the same thing. In Cold Blood takes on the same persona of endlessly unwinding tales out of school and rumor and gossip. Of course, that is how a murder story would evolve in a small town where everyone knows everyone else, so in some sense the tone is justified. But the work still suffers from the pervasiveness.
Reading Summer Crossing a recently discovered "unfinished" novel from very early in Capote's career, I realized what flaw linked them all together. Or perhaps what flaw made many of them charming and interesting. In his writing, Capote could never leave Capote at home. He's always there, always commenting, always churning, always getting things moving, always starting the conversation, always seeking information, always sharing half-truths--or perhaps more correctly Truman's version of the truth. This flaw enters all of the works. You cannot read Capote without hearing him talk in that strange mixture of hoarseness and lisp. And while that could be all very find, Capote himself is such a conflicted person that you can't trust his narrative or his voice.
Capote
The movie, to my great disappointment, was about the writing of In Cold Blood. I'm told that Philip Seymour Hoffman delivered a superb performance. And on one level that seems true. He seemed very much like Capote. But the movie failed for me and it failed precisely at Capote himself, and perhaps its failure is inevitable given its subject. Capote, even at this point is an empty shell of a human being, casting about endlessly for support, love, and meaning. This new book is to make is meaning and his mark, and he sets about its creation with a firm purpose and resolve that would have done the founding fathers proud.
But the endless need weighs on one as the film progresses until, finally, one is bogged down under the weight of it and turns the film off. There are too many great things in the world of books and cinema, and its no sin to say, "I've given this the time to engage me and it has failed to do so." I gave Capote an hour of my life and it was far too much.
It's a shame, because Capote is charming in his own way. He has to be because he isn't seeking so much fame and glory through his writing, although that too is part of his ambition; he is seeking acceptance as a broken and not particularly likable man who was too firmly made in the image of the women who brought him up. Flamboyantly gay, he came of age at a time when being gay might make you a character, but still earned social opprobrium and disdain. To some extent the same is true today, and will always be true, because there is some streak in those who are not gay that resists the charms and allures and recognizes the transgression of natural law and, unwarrantedly, uses that as a bludgeon, sometimes literally. While one must not endorse the gay "lifestyle" or "way of being," the person who is gay is a person first and must have the respect, love, and acceptance that any person needs to survive. Truman attempted to get this through ingratiating himself to others with his gossipy ways, and with his attempts at being the modern-day Oscar Wilde. This attempt ultimately undermined him and deprived him of nearly all associations until is long, slow, suicide culminated in his early death at the age of the age of 59.
He was iconic and he was provocative, and he was in his time important. Whether that will continue to be true after the generation that knew him personally is gone, remains to be seen. The difficulty is that he did write marvelously well. The prose he composed was such that one is almost compelled through the unreadable by sheer force of his voice and storytelling. Almost, but not quite--as it was in his real life, so it remains in much of his extant writing. And that really is a shame.
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August 16, 2006
Thérèse (1986)
As promised, I got and watched the 1986 production of Thérèse--a film in French celebrating the life of St. Thérèse, and by far and away a better film than the more recent production, although it does have several cinematic austerities. Interestingly enough, for this viewer the austerities work to the improvement of the overall feel of the film. There were no full "sets," only furniture against a constant backdrop of grey-brown. There was no music, only the ambient sounds of the actors and their movements. The entire motion of the film is a series of vignettes separated by dissolves or wipes, one moment not necessarily carrying clearly from the next. One of the difficulties of the film was keeping all of the women straight in my head. I often found myself wondering who was who as the action continued. While disorienting, it served also to emphasize the singularity of Thérèse herself.
Everything about the production was quiet, subdued, and intimate, inviting the viewer in to the intimate life of Thérèse herself. And of this intimate life, one got far more of an impression that with the other film of the same title. There is much more sense of Thérèse as a fully rounded person--Thérèse as impish, young, and terribly dedicated.
The Hairshirt and the Celice
There were some moments in which Thérèse had slightly the wrong emphasis, or a tweak in the wrong direction--not because what was depicted was incorrect but because it was not modified by what we now understand of Thérèse. Most notable among these is a scene in which Thérèse is preparing for the day. They show three different devices for mortification--a hairshirt, and two toothed or spike straps or belts--one for around the upper arm, one for around the upper leg. We see Thérèse putting these on and smiling her little smile. As noted, this is not an error--Thérèse was an obedient child of her time and observed the practices of the Carmelites at the time; however, Thérèse was one of the first to observe that these practices were utterly unnecessary. Indeed, part of the emphasis of the little way is that life itself brings mortification enough in the course of the day, one need seek out no more.
And this is well demonstrated by another scene in the film during which Thérèse falls asleep during the reading of scripture before the meal. Mother Superior tells her to go and lie on the floor before the refectory, and the nuns proceed to (mostly) step over her.
Je souffre. . . De mieux
One of the more dramatic moments in the film is a dialogue between Thérèse and one of her sisters. Thérèse is near the end of her life and talks about her suffering. She says Je souffre, and at first her sister responds Non.
Je souffre . . . Non
Je souffre . . . Non
Je souffre . . . Non
Je souffre . . . De mieux
Je souffre . . . De mieux
Je souffre . . . De mieux
Je souffre . . . De mieux
Je souffre . . . De mieux
Je souffre . . . De mieux
Je souffre . . . De mieux
So the dialogue goes getting faster and faster. The sister's later response is translated in the film as "good" but a better translation might be, "For the better."(Good is merely bien, something subtly different is being said here. Not that suffering is good, but that it is for the better). But the real point is that I had failed to notice up until this moment how similar the French Je souffre and Jésus are. Toward the end of this interchange it sounds as though Thérèse is speaking the name of Jesus over and over again. This is notable as nearly the only time in the film where the name is spoken, Jesus is referred to under a number of different names, but rarely spoken of by name.
Thérèse et Thérèse
This 1986 film gives a much more realistic, much grimmer look into the last sufferings of Thérèse, and it does not candy-coat the dark night. In addition, it feature one of the most revolting episodes committed to film, and reinforces my allergy to the notion of self-administered mortifications--it strikes me the that are often a perverse form of pride--taking upon ourselves what is more properly the realm of God. However, this beautiful little film does portray a Thérèse who is at once girl and Thérèse--who accepts the everyday realities of life even as she struggles to grow closer to Jesus.
Overall, a much more satisfying and fulfilling treatment of similar subject matter. Be forewarned that there is much more here that is more difficult to take that in the more recent production of Thérèse. And as a result, the film emerges as a truer, more intimate portrait of Thérèse. (Also, it doesn't hurt that it is in French, so some of the more saccharine things said, don't sound nearly so bad nor so French school-girly.
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August 13, 2006
Thérèse
Well, I'm relieved to say that this wasn't nearly as awful as I had been led to expect from the previews and trailers. Not a masterpiece--and if you didn't like Thérèse before, this isn't likely to make you think more of her. In addition, things were taken out of context or recontextualized to make journal entries be something that is spoken in the course of the film. But apart from that kind of fiddling, what's here is true to the story.
Part of the difficulty is that it is very hard to sympathize with a poor little rich girl who had every advantage in the course of her upbringing and whose insistence upon early admission to Carmel must just as easily be viewed as headstrongness as it is desire to serve the Lord.
The movie tries to give us the whole of Story of a Soul and that may be in itself another difficulty. The book was not composed as one coherent history, but as at least three separate manuscripts. And there is much tha tThérèse said and thought that did not make it into Story of a Soul. As a result the film is episodic and depends upon the viewer to fill in many of the blanks. In addition, the director of the film has chosen to leave out those things that Thérèse accounts that might make both her and the film more palatable--her sudden temper tantrums, her own stubbornness and selfishness, and the interior of what hid behind the smile given to one of the more acerbic nuns. We are left with the outward drippings of piety and devotion, and this can make long work of a short story.
And when at last we come to the long dark night of Thérèse, it seems like another trip to the park. This most important aspect of Thérèse and her spiritual life is reduced to the level of one of her comments about dolls. Once again we get the pietistic Thérèse, suffering a minor discomfort rather pettishly.
I can say that I really enjoyed the film score tremendously, and despite the shot-on-video look of most of the film, it had some beautifully done moments.
Recommended for Thérèse-admirers only. I wouldn't recommend showing this to people who you want to get to admireThérèse, it really doesn't do her the justice needed for that kind of work.
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August 12, 2006
Kairo
Soon to be known, probably far less effectively, as Pulse in an American Remake.
The central concept--the Internet is populated by ghosts. That's it. They're there and they cause a lot of problems. No, more than that, they bring about an apocalypse that starts in Tokyo.
The film is quiet and horrifyingly effective with very little of the trick photography or the overt horrors of many lesser works. This film works because of its suggestion. It also works because it has more to say that most horror films. It asks questions about death and eternity that it doesn't dare answer or even really suggest answers to--but it asks them in a most disquieting way.
The imagery of the film is odd and suggestive. People disappear into shows of themselves left imprinted on the walls. Those in turn "pixelate" and vanish. But it is interesting that Kiyoshi Kurosawa has chosen this imagery for the disappearance of humankind, most particularly as it is the haunting imagery of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and of the Katsuo Oda short story "Human Ashes."
Be forewarned, the story never really goes much of anywhere--the film is almost entirely about atmosphere and about the loneliness of the human condition--both points conveyed superbly. And it does provide a few creepy moments and some surprising jolts.
Understated, elegant, and thoughtful--for those into the Asian Horror Movie field this is a superb entry. High Recommended for adults.
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August 10, 2006
The Decalogue I-III
In 1987 Krzysztof Kieslowski did a series of ten films for Polish Television. We might refer to it as a mini-series; however, it differs in that while some characters show up in the films that feature others, there is no continuity of story and no strong connections between them. These are short stories, short films, to be viewed each as a separate piece. Kieslowski employed ten different cinematographers so that there would be a distinct visual style with each one.
So far I've seen the first third of these films and all I can say is that if television were like this even 10% of the time, it would be worth watching. They are superbly acted miniatures, each dealing with the dilemmas and problems that come from violating the commandments. Roger Ebert points out that there is little purpose in trying to determine which film is linked to which commandment, as many are linked to more than one, and some are obscure.
For example, in the first film, a young, brilliant professor and his son work together to devise a program that will calculate when ice will be thick enough to safely skate on a nearby lake. The results are disastrous. It appears that this might be "I am a jealous God , thou shalt have no other gods before me." But it's difficult to say. The second of the three is somewhat easier--"Thou shalt not commit adultery." But it presents us with a profound moral dilemma of the type "you will not do evil that good will result."
SPOILER ALERT
What follows has spoilers, although I'm uncertain that these films can be spoiled. A young woman consults her husband's doctor to find out if her husband is going to survive after an operation. She loves her husband but she had been seeing another man and is pregnant by him. If her husband will survive, she will abort the baby--her only chance of having a child because her husband is infertile. But if he will die anyway, she will carry the child to term. In the Poland of this time, there appeared to have been restrictions with regard to the term during which one might have an abortion and she is at the very limits of that term. Anyway, the problem is resolved because of a lie the doctor both manufactures and supports with false evidence and another doctor's opinion. The husband will survive after all and the end of the movie shows the husband thanking the doctor for the lie that will preserve the child he and his wife are to have.
Thus, this film deals not only with adultery, but also with false witness--a pair that seems to go together rather naturally. Believe it or not, even with this spoiler, there is tons of other stuff going on, both subtle and overt, that make this film worth watching over and over.
END SPOILER ALERT
The third of the three I've seen so far has been the weakest and least conclusive. It covers "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." It features a woman who at one time had an affair with a man and now, on Christmas Eve, seems to be seeking him again.
The films are instructive in another sense. We see in them the elite of Polish society--a musician in an orchestra, a Doctor, a Professor. We see also the conditions in which they live, which, while not absolutely squalid, are bleak. The hospital the husband is recovering in has a leak in the ceiling and down the walls and the paint is peeling off and flaking, the Doctor's offices are tiny uncomfortable cubicles. We have here a chronicle of just post-Soviet Poland and the bleak grayness to which communist policies reduced everything.
So far these films have the very highest recommendation. They are short, taut, brilliantly conceived. They are to cinema what Chekhov or deMaupassant were to literature--brilliant miniatures connected by theme and recurrent characters, but each an individual film.
As I view the remainder I'll keep you updated.
Tonight we'll do the Swedish Film, Fanny and Alexander, supposedly an autobiographical film by Ingmar Bergman. Also on the agenda are possibly a Thai film found at the local public library, a post-invasion/war Iraqi film Turtles Can Fly and François Truffaut's masterpiece Jules and Jim. I'm getting quite the film education this summer. It helps when there's ironing to do.
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August 9, 2006
Tonight's Agenda
Originally I had scheduled two short Polish films (the Decalogue II and III) and Franny and Alexander which is a three-hour long Swedish film. (Linda asked me if I would be speaking English by the time she got home.)
But I think I'll probably watch the two short Polish films and a surfing movie, perhaps Step into Liquid--it's been a while since I've seen it. And except for the surfers, the scenery is spectacular.
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August 6, 2006
Uzumaki
Variously translated Spiral or Vortex, Uzumaki is yet another one of those Japanese Horror films that is disturbing or odd and at some place inaccessible to western Audiences. It provides the same mysterious non-explanation of events that haunts films like Ringu and Gu-on and so the film comes off more as a nihilist dadaist exercise in film-making. Indeed, as I watched it, the Dadaist classic, Vormittagsspuk which I saw in a short film festival with Un Chien Andalou.
The film centers on the obsession of first one character and then many others with spirals and spiral patterns. The real infection in the film is this obsession which gradually turns people into giant snails and sends the smoke from their cremations into the atmosphere in anti-tornadoes.
I don't know what the point of this film was or what I was supposed to derive from it in terms of horror or even sense. However, that said, I did enjoy it on its own terms. There was a kind of surrealist/dada sensibility to it that permeated it in a far more profound way than anything since the 1930s. The events make no real sense, and yet they are compelling and interesting to watch and the film plays out to an inconclusive conclusion that is its beginning.
While not particularly frightening, it is eerie and unsettling, and perhaps on some level even thought-provoking.
Recommended for fans of Japanese Cinema, Horror Movie Completists, and Dadaist/Surrealists. Wouldn't recommend for anyone younger than teens.
For additional comments on films mentioned in this review:
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Trois Coleurs: Rouge
The third, and perhaps the best of the trio, Rouge is the story of doubles and a kind of romance. The story really gets underway when our heroine accidentally runs into a dog. She picks up the dog and takes it to her owner who turns out not to care much. It is the relationship with the owner that causes things to get interesting.
The owner is an ex-judge. He spends his time listening to the phone calls of others, spying on them. This judge is double in many particulars of his story by a young man who is taking his exam to become a judge.
It was in the course of this film that I realized that the enlightenment trinity Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité has actually, in the course of the three films been transmuted into the three theological virtues Faith, Hope, Love.
In Bleu, the young woman has lost everything that she lived for, she's lost all sense of self and all desire to continue an existence and yet cannot find itself in her to end her own life. So she decides to live a life without connections. It is her belief and her inner strength that brings her back to the real world, to an attempt at communion with humanity, to love and charity. In the Blanc, the man getting a divorce hangs on perpetually to the hope that his ex-wife really does love him. Time after time this hope is dashed, but ultimately it proves itself in unexpected ways. And finally, in the most compassionate of the three, the young heroine in Rouge brings life to an old man and to those around her through her simple compassion, love, and humanity. At the end of this film the three virtues are united and they stand alone in an odd juxtapositioning.
The three films are well worth seeing and they must be seen, for full impact together or at least in close proximity. I'm glad that I wasn't waiting a year between films when these came out because the freshness and the meaning would not have come through as clearly as it does watching them all within a week or so.
High recommended for ADULT audiences. Some of the finest film-making I've seen in a while.
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August 4, 2006
Trois Coleurs: Blanc
I found this segment of the trilogy interesting, engaging, but a bit more problematic than Bleu. Blanc (White) is the second of the three and stands for the second in the Enlightenment French trinity--&eaucte;galité. The thematic color is white, from the statue the hero steels to the snow-dusted polish fields, to the (literal) climax of the film--white predominates until at the end, it becomes mixed with red portending the next and last of the three, Rouge.
Karol is a Pole living in Paris. His wife decides to divorce him for a number of reasons, among them the lack of consummation of the marriage. But Karol believes that Dominique still loves him.
He meets a fellow Pole in the train station and schemes to go back to Poland. He packs himself in a trunk and goes as part of his new friend's luggage. Upon arrival the bag is stolen and when the thieves open it and find only poor Karol they thrash him.
Karol was a successful hairdresser in Warsaw and all the ladies are glad he is back. But he is not content and starts to make a new life for himself.
Okay, enough of the plot because once again this is an intimate film turning on very small moments and to say too much would be to ruin the surprise of the film. But to the problems of the film. It is an interesting paradox, the film is big-hearted and small minded or small-hearted and big-minded. Or perhaps it is Karol who is big-hearted and terribly confused. Whatever it is, the &eaucte;galité when it domes is &eaucte;galité in smallness, in pettiness and in revenge that ends oddly and interestingly.
I don't quite know what to make of the film except that I really enjoyed every moment. Not so simple and clear as Bleu., Blanc will reward multiple viewings with, I think, both depth of meaning and depth of feeling.
Highly recommended to all ADULTS. A rewarding, interesting, fascinating film with enough substance to be appreciated time and again--and enough to think about to keep you thinking for days to come. Excellent.
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The Subtle Art of the Subtitle
An example from Blanc:
Actual Line: Dites-moi quelque choses.
Translation: Say something (or several things) to me.
Subtitle: Say anything.
Actual line: N'importe quoi.
Translation: It doesn't matter what.
Subtitle: Anything.
The art of the subtitle is to try to get across the essence of a spoken passage without tiring the viewer by having him or her read the entire script/spoken part of the film. But sometimes the compression goes too far, and something is lost. Fortunately, in French films, I am less reliant on the subtitles than I am in other foreign language films. Blanc, however, is in French and Polish, so I'm only halfway home.
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July 31, 2006
Ikiru
I can't afford to hate people. I don't have that kind of time.
Among the many lessons that can be derived from this beautiful, compassionate, and sensitive Kurosawa film of 1952, the sentences above resonate both in post-war Japan and in the world today. No one has the time to hate people.
Ikiru means "to live." And the story traces the end of life for one man, Watanabe-san, who has been diagnosed, but not formally told, that he has stomach cancer. He is introduced to us via an x-ray of his stomach and we are told that he has not lived in the past thirty years, he is dead already.
The story follows Watanabe-san's awakening through a night of drunken revel and a few weeks of dating a young woman from his office. About two-thirds of the way through the movie Watanabe-san dies off-stage and the remainder takes place through flashbacks and at his funeral.
It is at the gathering of office workers at the funeral that we get the other piece of wisdom that has not changed in lo! these many years. "Doing anything but nothing is radical." That was the root of Watanabe-san's radicality, he did something other than the nothing that bureaucracy is erected for.
I've already said more than enough about the film and given away too much perhaps because this is a small and intimate film; little details tell too much. Every moment is fraught with meaning, every line carefully considered, every gesture, every action choreographed to the lustrous end. And yet, fraught as it is, it is never heavy nor depressing. It is at times positively light and playful and at others deeply felt. Particularly poignant is a scene in the park where Watanabe-san swings in the snow and sings a song introduced earlier in the film, only this time quite differently.
Don't trust too much the liner notes that talk about this as a modernist existential film tract. As a professor once told me about Shakespeare: bring to it any ideological system and you can make it light up--feminist, socialist, homosexualist, you name it. I have a feeling the same may be true of this film. For the time, it is remarkably forward thinking in the portrayal of women, hence feminist. And already there are the signs of the "think globally, act locally" cant that runs the rounds in many circles today pretending to be thought.
Our lives would all be immeasurably better if we could remember Watanabe-san's words quoted beneath the header. We might consider them the Japanese equivalent of, "She would have been a good woman if there’d been somebody to shoot her every day of her life." Let's rather choose not to make this our emblem and to take after Watanabe-san--a Silas Marner, an Ebeneezer Scrooge, a Watanabe-san after his own fashion.
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An Apology of Sorts
Perhaps it is more an explanation.
I feel also bad posting so many reviews and talking about so many films because so many people cannot indulge in them; however, the reality is that there will come a time in the not too distant future (praise God) when I'll return to my more infrequent reviews.
Presently my wife and child are not with me. During their absence I sleep a lot less than is normal for me. I fill up all of that "extra" time with my writing and reading and watching of film. When they return, the patterns of life will resume and the reviews will slow to a trickle.
So, I don't really apologize, except in the sense of offering an explanation for, because I know no one was chiding me; however, my guilty conscience observes that this is not normative behavior and it isn't available to all. Take heart, it soon won't be for me either and I look forward to that time. Film, no matter how well crafted or beautifully made is a very small consolation in the absence of those we love most.
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Hail the Era of the DVD
Not so long ago, perhaps twenty years, perhaps a bit more, the literature of film was largely inaccessible. We were left to the tender mercies of local television statements to broadcast whatever it was they had available or that they felt would make a splash with television audiences. With the advent of videotape and now DVD, the incredible richness of the cinematic world became largely available. I can think of time during which it would have been impossible to see Rashomon or The Hidden Fortress or Throne of Blood or Ran. In fact, I would guestimate that more than 90% of film literature was inaccessible to most of us.
Now we are at Hollywood's mercy determining what will be trnasferred and thus made available. That's why it is very good to have smaller DVD companies, such as Criterion to find and rescue some of the great old films. In addition to those listed above, Criterion also made available Carl Dreyer's remarkable and moving Passion of Joan of Arc, the haunting Les Yeux sans Visage (Eyes without a Face), and The Seven Samurai among others. In this short list are the films that gave rise to Star Wars and The Magnificent Seven
And lest you think they are simply snootyville, they've also produced the "authoratative" edition of Armageddo.
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Rashomon
I know, a lot of reviews, but when you have a lot of laundry to take care of, and other relatively immobile housework/repair, one has time for movies. And what a movie!
Akira Kurosawa's 1950 masterpiece remains as relevant and as pointed today as when it was first made. Based of two stories by Akutagawa (who is sometimes called the "Poe of Japan"--I'd say he is the de Maupassant of Japan) Rashomon tells the story of the forest rape of young woman and the murder of her husband. And all of this with neither overt sexuality nor overt bloodshed.
But the events of the story are less important than its telling. The main events are narrated by four different narrators--a bandit, the wife, a witness, and the dead person through a medium. It is this last that gives the film some of its creepier moments, as the medium is a pretty Japanese woman speaking in the voice of a Samurai.
Naturally the four stories do not agree on the details and particularly not on the manner of death of the Samurai. And what you realize is that there is no way for an observer outside the scene based upon the stories alone to say what really happened.
When I finished watching the film, I thought, "Wow, it's just like reading any modern political commentary--Ann Coulter, Al Franken, Pat Buchanan--most are documented to a greater or lesser extent and yet look at the same presidency and the same actions and see entirely different things. And each of the things they see redounds to their greater glory and honor, just as in the film. Odd, no?
Kurosawa managed to give the film a "happy" resolution, which is more than I can hope for from the American Political scene or news scene. I remarked in an email to TSO one time that I didn't see any reason to read a book by John Cornwell because I felt upon finishing anything I had to go and check out everything that had been written.
Kurosawa aptly taps into the human condition, and he does it in the context of a beautifully filmed movie. This is one of those films "in glorious black and white" that just shimmers and explodes off of the screen to come alive in the mind. The questions Kurosawa poses and the lack of a substantive response are disarming and to those unconvinced of the fall of humankind, perhaps a bit disheartening. But they are eye-opening and they are the necessary questions even for today.
Highest possible recommendation--even though you will have to read it and perhaps watch it several times for it to sink in. Also, the Criterion package (I love Criterion produced DVDs) includes a booklet that contains the short stories "Rashomon" and "In the Grove" on which the film was based.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:03 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
July 30, 2006
Trois Coleurs: Bleu
The first of a series of three films thematically connected by color and by the meanings of those colors as represented in the French flag stars Juliette Binoche as ayoung woman who loses her husband and her daughter in a car crash. The rest of the film builds on this simple premise, peeling away layers of character and layers of meaning.
Juliette Binoches seeks the liberty that blue represents. But the liberty she seeks is not mere political or economic liberty. She seeks the liberty to live life without really living it--to do life as a walk-on, unattached to anyone or anything. Typical of her approach, "Now I have only one thing left to do: nothing. I don't want any belongings, any memories. No friends, no love. Those are all traps." And yes, they are traps--tender traps, the traps that make us human, as Juliette discovers in the course of the film.
The film presents another kind of liberty as well, a kind of counterpoint to the main theme (which is appropriate because Juliette's husband is hailed all over Europe as one of its finest composers). Ultimately, Juliette discovers the liberty that may only come when the truth is told all around. Her life has been a continual hiding from one truth and another, but as the movie unfolds, she begins to see and understand the truth. And the truth really does set her free from her misconceptions about freedom and how to live.
This is a hard film, there is a new cinematic language in parts. There are about four moments in the film when there is a cut to black that then cuts to a continuation of the same scene. These scenes are shot through with the portentous music that is being composed for the celebration of the Unification of Europe. You know they are meaningful, and yet their meaning is not necessarily what you think until you have seen all of them.
This is a film I will have to rewatch, but only after I have seen the other two. White or Blancis next in order, but I already have Red or Rouge in my possession so that will probably be next. While the films are called a trilogy, they share no characters and don't even occur in the same country.
The director Krzysztof Kieslowski died in 1996 leaving these three films as his final work. And it is hard to imagine how anything before might have compared with the wonder of this one. I can't wait to see the other two.
Highly Recommended--ADULTS ONLY, there are several scenes that would not be appropriate for any child of any age.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 29, 2006
The Fog
No, not either one of the two versions John Carpenter made, this is rather a wierd little ditty from Bollywood--kind of a corss between a 1950s-1970s Spanish/Italian Horror movie complete with ketchupy blood flowing at all the wrong times, and a chaste Madonna video (talk about oxymoron).
That is one thing that truly impresses me with Bollywood films, and perhaps it speaks to their audiences. The embraces, the close encounters, the amount of skin shown is about what one could have seen in the U.S. pre-1965. And that's refreshing. Another refreshing point is that these films are so darn sincere. When everyone gets up and dances, you want to dance with them. It's hard not to like Bollywood.
Now I have a question for those who know more about Indian film--what language are most of these films in? Half of the time I'm hearing English words, phrases, and sentences that need no subtitles. The other half there is some other language. Is this a creole or a patois that would make the film more comprehensible in a nation that has more languages and dialects than all the erst of the world combined? (Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but not by much.) I haven't figured it out and its a bit disconcerting because I find myself half understanding and half in the dark and by the time I realize they've trailed off English, I've missed the subtitles.
Well, for films that explore the challenging territory of the bare midriff AND disappearing and reappearing corspes and monsters, this film must be one of the very finest. Nevertheless, it is lengthy and I can give it only a half-hearted recommendation as an odd blend with some great Bollywood musical numbers and some really bad horror cinema story and acting. But, it makes for a unique and interesting blend.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 5:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 28, 2006
The Daddy of The Matrix
Dark City 1998--take a dollop of The Matrix mix thoroughly with about a half gallon of The Forgotten and a small dose of The Truman Show and you have the daddy of them all.
Dark City is an odd little film--Australian/United States Production with the talents of Rufus Sewell, Keifer Sutherland, William Hurt, and Jennifer Connelly.
Man wakes without memories in a hotel room wherein there is a murdered prostitute. And he travels about in a city where it is always night and where no one is the same from day to day.
Innovative, interesting, and surprising even after you've seen all that derives from it. One of those obscure films that help you to trace the origins of dozens of others. And perhaps rather than influencing The Matrix it shared the same Zeitgeist--but its motifs show up again and again in other films.
Adult subject matter, recommended for adults only, and only for those with a penchant for quirky SF.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Aesthetic Tyrants
Zippy and Rob will be happy to know that other than this there is nary a mention or an intention toward them. I'm sure Tom, shaking in his boots, will breathe a sigh of relief when I say the same is true of him. In fact, this is not directed at anyone in particular, but toward and peculiar attitude that crops up every now and then, which I consider to be worse than many of the aesthetic foibles we have paraded across the floor in the past few days.
Some people, usually a small group, feel it incumbent upon themselves to infringe upon the small joy others take in any given work of art. They take it upon themselves to be the gatekeepers of the objective artistic merit, and those with the checklist of what qualifies and what does not. Frankly, this attitude sickens me. They usually proclaim years of experience in the field or a string of letters behind their names that give them some oracular ability to pronounce whether or not a work is "good" or not.
I hate to tell them this, but they aren't the gatekeepers. No experience and no string of letters gives them the right to rob anyone of the pleasure they experience from licit entertainments. They have the right to their opinion and to substantiation of that opinion on the basis of their understanding, but they are not allowed the codicil, "And anyone who does like it doesn't know what they're talking about and suffers from a terminal case of bad taste." What presumption--of course I know what I'm talking about when I say I enjoyed a book, film, or piece of art--and it may be that what I enjoy about it is precisely what brings these aesthetic mavens to the verge of apoplexy. Too bad. I'm sorry to make them distraught, but whatever they say, I'm going to like the work anyway.
I read J.D. Robb and Georgette Heyer with nearly the same enthusiasm and enjoyment as I read James Joyce. I can name a myriad of reasons why the latter is more important, more literary, and better taste than the latter. So what? I can enumerate countless reasons why Agatha Christie is a lesser writer than James Gould Cozzens. However, at the present time, it appears that Ms. Christie will be a writer for the ages whereas Mr. Cozzens has practically disappeared.
I went through college courses that enunciated to me why I must despise Charles Dickens and love Thomas Hardy. Sorry to say, I must not have been listening too well. I love Charles Dickens, and Thomas Hardy.
The reality of the matter is that every person is entitled to his or her own opinion and enjoyment or lack thereof in a work. For example, while I can train my eye to understand and even appreciate some of the works of Picasso, there are very few I can truly be said to enjoy. There's absolutely nothing of the work of Robert Motherwell that means a thing to me, and a Jackson Pollack--in my estimation, mind you--is a massive waste of time. Now, that doesn't mean that there is something deficient in my critical faculties nor in my taste. It means that I find the aesthetic appeal of these artists harder to grasp and not so accessible as say Magritte, Gaugin, Rousseau, Corot, and Courbet.
Personally, I would class most of Thomas Kinkade in with those for whom I have little appreciation. But what would I waste anyone else's time outlining the deficiencies of style, subject matter, depth of light, etc. (Well, only so Linda won't put them up on the walls, but that's a different issue.)
People are entitled to their enjoyment of licit pleasures. The critics are entitled to their opinion of what makes good art. Personally, I am more interested in a critique of the moral appropriateness of the art. Is the pleasure truly licit--or is the subject matter essentially immoral?
Critics and scholars are entitled to their appreciation or lack thereof of works of literature. Harold Bloom, whom I consider to be brilliant in other ways, shows an unaccountable lack of access to the work of E.A. Poe. He tries to convince everyone these works are somehow inferior to other works that are a great deal more tedious and deadly to read. Just stop it!
When I critique a book, I try to give some sense of why I did or did not like it and what I found problematic about it, if anything. I often include a recommendation. I expect those who have read enough of my writing to know what I like and dislike will weigh that evaluation and say, "Well, HE didn't like it, so I will." I would not presume to judge the person who found something to enjoy where I did not. In fact, that is the person from whom I wish to learn.
A few years back Jonathan Franzen, author of an enjoyably mediocre tale of family angst The Corrections bemoaned the fact that Oprah had picked him up for her book club. "It's so middlebrow." Frankly, if Oprah had breathed a word of my novel or short story to the world, let along made it her book club selection, I'd build her a statue from the money I'd be rolling in as a result.
Watch for words like, "middlebrow," "bad taste," "I have twenty years experience," "I know what constitutes good painting," "I have a Ph.D. in semiotics and symbology. . ." what follows is sure to be a tedious, uncharitable tirade and detraction of another person's opinion.
If you (the general and vague "you", not YOU gentle reader) don't like what I like--you're entitled. Tell me about it. Let me learn from you, or talk to you and tell you what I saw. Don't tell me how you have twenty-two years experience teaching English and can recite "My Last Duchess" backwards and forwards, and you have a Ph.D. in "Post Modern autodeconstructive hegemonic theory." I don't care. Don't waste my time. Tell me what you want to say and give good, solid reasons. Or refer me to where you have provided good, solid reasons. And be charitable enough to recognize that you are not the center of the universe, nor are you the last word on theory and practice of aesthetics. In short, don't be a boor. Here, at least, you'll wind up being ignored or summarily deleted. I haven't the time nor the patience, and I don't wish to subject my readers to a diatribe about why some obscure homosexual feminist transvestite from Akikasho Japan is the only filmmaker who even makes a real movie any more. It's unbearably pretentious, precious, and more than a little bit sad.
So do yourself and everyone else a favor, lighten up--stop taking yourself so seriously and chill. (Advice I could do with following myself.)
[End spate of vituperation and frustration]
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:50 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
July 27, 2006
Art as Children
Many artists often compared their works to children. When asked what their favorite novel or painting is, they would respond with something like, "How do you pick a favorite child?"
But to my mind, what makes art difficult is that the products are closer to a person than children. When someone asks me "What poem is your favorite?" it strikes me as asking, "Which toe do you like best?"
This sounds dramatic, and I don't mean it to be so. One of the things that makes publication very hard for many, myself included is that it is akin to standing naked on a soapbox at the corner of the village green and shouting, "I have something important to say." You are completely exposed to the world. Every work I have produced still feels as though it is a part of me. And reading the older works, I become for a moment the person I was when I wrote them, and the person that I still am as a result of writing them.
So, I probably overstate, but for me, the metaphor of children fails, because as much as I love my son, I feel somewhat differently--not love precisely--about my big toe.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:14 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
July 26, 2006
The Eye
Subtle shades of the Cassandra theme played out twice in the course of this low key suspense/supernatural thriller. I hesitate to call it a horror movie, because it most certainly is not. More the atmosphere of The Forgotten
A young woman, blind since the age of two, undergoes a corneal transplant that restores her vision. Along with the restored vision comes the ability to see the forthcoming death of those near her.
Very nicely played, and very coherent. I can't imagine what the American studios will make of it. The woman who was the star of My Left Eye Sees Ghosts played the sister of the heroine in this film.
Recommended for adult audiences looking for style and fun with a very tiny dollop of substance thrown in.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 11:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 25, 2006
"New Again"
I have not read about this song at TSO's and, darn it, I should have. Shame on you TSO for not talking about it! (Or shame on me for not noticing it when you did.)
The above-titled song is a collaborative effort between Brad Paisley and Sara Evans, two of my very favorite country music stars. It occurs on the CD The Passion of the Christ: Song. It takes the form of a dialogue between Jesus (sung by Brad) and Mary (Sara). And it is, simply splendid and beautiful.
"Whatever happens,
Whatever you see,
Whatever your eyes tell you has become of me,
This is not
not the end,
I am making all things new again."
Go to your library and get a copy of this CD (if that is possible in your local library) if only for this song.
"Behold, I make all things new!"
(Hope you know it was just a ribbing TSO, haven't written to/about you in a while.)
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:04 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
My Left Eye Sees Ghosts
Incorrectly described by Netflix as a "horror-film," My Left Eye Sees Ghosts is more along the lines of a light romantic comedy with ghosts.
After a car accident, May suffers from a blood clot that allows her to see ghosts--out of her left eye only. Once the ghostly realm is aware of her she is barraged by a panoply of ghosts who simply want to be seen, or who want something. For example the ghost of an overweight woman wants to know what it is like to be thin if only for a moment.
The only ghost she cannot see is the ghost she most wants to--her husband.
If you want an idea of what this film is like, think 30s screwball comedy (á la Topper) made in 1990s Hong Kong. The film production value is high and I'm beginning to see that Hollywood may be losing its monopolistic grip on the film media. I'm seeing more and more films from Asia that have themes and presentations that make them not only palatable but popular among western Audiences. Witness the success of Ringu and Gu-On not to mention works like Bollywood Hollywood and Bride and Prejudice. This is a welcome relief as an industry without any competition tends to stagnate, and we've been mired in the entrenched mindset of Hollywood far too long. It's about time that the doors opened up and allowed in a breath of sweet fresh air.
And that is exactly what My Left Eye Sees Ghosts is--sweet and while not absolutely fresh (we must remember that "there is nothing new under the sun") certainly with a fresh presentation.
I don't recall anything that would preclude teens to adults from enjoying this film. Younger children may be put off by having to read it and by some of the conventions of Chinese film.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:46 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
July 23, 2006
Three Extremes
Let's start with a hearty NOT recommended for the weak of stomach or heart, nor for those not into Asian cinema and fairly graphic and gritty horror. The second segment of this three segment film (one each by a Chinese, a Korean, and a Japanese director) is by far the weakest and oddest. The third segment, directed by Takashi Miike (of The Happiness of the Katikuris and Audition fame) is remarkably understated for one of Miike's work. Subtle and twisting, it is a full movie in a short space and might be unpacked in many interesting way. Miike is one of those to watch to get a sense of the new Japanese cinema and the new Japanese aesthetic.
The segment most worthy of mention, however, is the one directed by Fruit Chan, called "Dumplings." Problem is, that it can't really be discussed without giving away everything and so I'll have to stick to a couple of generalities.
Upon first watching, once again, as with the book discussed previously, I had no idea what to make of it. But I've come to the conclusion that like F. Paul Wilson the road Chan is leading us down here is remarkably pro-life given its Asian origin (not generally a pro-life group of societies--never have been). When I thought about it at length, I decided that "Dumplings" was a modern-day "Modest Proposal" combined with an atomic blast indictment of the society and the people we have become.
Problem is, is what I'm seeing in the film, or am I reading it into the film? Did the author mean for me to come out with this idea, or was he simply playing with an idea and I've made of it something that was the farthest thing from his mind.
I'm not certain it matters ultimately. If some good may be derived from it, then I will take the good. But will I claim that it is good--there's the problem.
Anyway, I don't expect very many of you will see this any how and so my question will probably never be addressed.
And now I'm off to read my way through a Chinese Ghost movie that sounds rather like Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. Title--My Left Eye Sees Ghosts. I can't wait for Linda to Get home so I can stop reading my movies.
Coming up Krzysztof Kieslowski's White, Blue and Red along with The Decalogue, The Gospel According to Matthew and a few others that have been on my list for a while.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:25 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Lady in the Water
It is easy to see why critics deplore the film, the one person harmed in the course of its filming is a critic. And the important point here is not so much that he is a critic as that he is a hubristic know-it-all. Hubris and humanity, the themes of the film.
There's no need to try to outline the plot--it makes no sense outside of the film. And I won't claim that this was the very finest film M. Night Shyamalan has made--although it may be close.
It is a film with a tremendous philosophical appeal, and that may be the flaw that makes it, perhaps a lesser film. Sometimes, the veil is torn away and one gets the "lecture" that has been hiding in some of Shyamalan's other films. This may be what bothers critics, but if so, it seems a case of intellectual laziness.
I will have to watch this film five or six more times before I begin to understand all of the things that I might want to take away from it. But once again Shyamalan introduces his ideas of faith, hope, love, humanity, meaning, fallenness, and a host of others. If you've seen Signs you know the drill--much of it is repeated here. But the oeuvre as a whole is not repetitious.
Recommended for smart teens to adults. Younger children will likely be alternately bored and frightened if the sounds I heard in the theatre are indicative.
In our ongoing debate about censoring and changing films, this is an example of a filmmaker we should support and for whom we should show out in great numbers even when the work may not be the very finest (although, as I said, I found this one quite fine). If we want quality cinema that takes our concerns seriously, then it is high time to shell out the money at the Box Office to light Shyamalan and directors like him have a fair chance at future films.
Go and enjoy.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:12 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Integrity in the Triune
According to Plato the integrity of any given thing is made up of three separate but overlapping properties--truth, beauty, and goodness. Lacking one of these three, an object cannot have integrity in an objective sense. But one of these three overrides the other two--if a beautiful and truthful seeming object lacks goodness, then it is neither beautiful nor truthful. However, an object can lack perceptible beauty and still be good and truthful and hold its integrity. Likewise an object or idea can lack seeming truth (at least truth as we're inclined to recognize it) and still be good and beautiful (and these might be clues to its truth.)
This idea, as poorly articulated as it is here, is important in dealing with "important" works of literature and film that lack one of these dimensions. During our book-group meeting yesterday, we discussed Reading Lolita in Tehran as something worth our attention. And I asked the question, "Why Lolita?"
The problem with Lolita is central and not avoidable. Nabokov writes a well-constructed even beautiful story around an essentially immoral, sinful center. The point is not to condemn Humbert Humbert for his depredations--and, given modern parlance, there is even some implication that Lolita is responsible in some way for her own despoiling. This is repugnant to the sensibilities and renders the novel an aesthetic nightmare, being beautiful and true (within itself) but lacking any core of objective goodness outside of the writing itself.
It is possible to construct good and worthy fiction around essential immoral acts, but it is always necessary to emphasize the objective immorality of the central act for the work to have integrity. I think here of both Anna Karenina and The Scarlet Letter. In Anna Karenina there is the struggle with Anna's adultery and love of Vronsky which ultimately results in tragedy. So, too, with Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter the essential message is not that Hester Prynne's adultery is excusable but that Dimmsdale should have suffered similarly. It is only Hester's nobility of spirit and independence that protects him from being ousted from the community.
But Lolita and works like it--we would do well to warn the world that no matter how lovely the surface, the core is corrupt. We would do well to remember ourselves that Satan may often appear as an Angel of light. But we must balance that impulse with the impulse that judges all things by their appearances, condemning The Scarlet Letter for the same reasons as one might condemn Lolita. The aesthetic and moral impulses that drive the two are completely different.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 12:33 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Ushpizin
Because Linda is away for the summer, I have the opportunity to view films with which she would have very little patience (i.e. Horror films and films you have to read) and I am amply rewarded in this delightful film.
Set in Jerusalem during the feast of Succoth (The Feast of Booths), Ushpizin is the story of Moshe and Mali, two impoverished Chassid who are casting about for a way to properly celebrate Succoth. During the feast it is required that the people of Israel live is succah, or booths, to recall the Exodus from Egypt. Moshe and Mali are too poor to have a succah (or booth). In fact, they are too poor to pay their ordinary rent.
Moshe and Mali pray, and a miracle occurs. A succah becomes available and Moshe is given a gift of $1,000. There are elements of the prayer scenes and the reception of the news scenes that bring to mind Fiddler on the Roof, but they are delightful.
Add to this mix two escaped convicts, one a former friend of Moshe, who arrive as Ushpizin for Succoth. Ushpizin means visitor or "holy visitor." The havoc begins.
Moshe spends part of the money he receives on a citron that is considered the most beautiful ever seen in the city. It cost 1,000 shekels and Moshe buys it as a blessing for his marriage to Mali that it might bring them children.
To cut to the chase, the film is a serious and yet light-hearted look at what it means to be a person of faith and what the trials of a person of faith are all about. While the subject matter is a youngish Jewish couple, the theme is universal and beautifully played out. If you are interested in films that treat the life of faith seriously and present it with respect and you are tolerant of having to read your way through a film, you might find Ushpizin to your liking.
Highly recommended for all viewers.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 12:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 21, 2006
Artistic Integrity
In in this post, Zippy states that if one does not believe that artistic integrity is not finally decided by the artist one is an anti-essentialist.
Well, I disagree with Zippy, not because I am an anti-essentialist, but because I believe we're using one term to mean two different things. I'm not certain I fully understand what Zippy means when he uses the term "artistic integrity," but I'm fairly certain that it is not the same thing I mean. So, in fairness, let me say that when I use the term artistic integrity, I use it to include both the aesthetic dimension of the art (over which the artist is not the final word) and the integral dimension of the art: that is that the final message, meaning, or communication (intention) that the artist intended to convey in the production of the work is, in fact conveyed. And it is over this dimension of the art that the artist is, in fact, the only arbiter. That is not to say that one's understanding or interpretation might not differ from the artist's intent, but that what the artist meant to say in the piece is said in the piece as it stands--the final work is integral to the understanding of the intent. In short, the final version of the work conveys the artist's vision.
It is in this dimension of things that we can enter into a discussion of what it means to change a work in some way. While we might improve it aesthetically, we might completely undermine its integrity because we contravene the artist's intention.
Does undermining the integrity of the art constitute an offense against art? It MAY not, but it always is an offense to the artist and it often becomes an expression of pride (I know better how to say what you intended than you do.). If, indeed, you do know better how to say what the artist is getting at, it would be better to produce a new work of art that does so rather than altering the artists. Thus the difference between artist and ethical editor.
When we claim to know the artist's vision better than the artist (a portion of the claim we make when we say that any given change "improves the work," we arrogantly proclaim that we understand the vision better than the artist.) The other half of the claim of "improvement"--we've improved the aesthetics carries no such onus.
Let's examine a specific case. Let's say I'm watching Saving Private Ryan or Full Metal Jacket and I've decided to eliminate all vulgar language and replace it with "shucks," "darn" or simply to leave silence. We may have made the work more acceptable to some audiences, but we have changed the reality the film reflects. Suddenly we're out of the realm of (perhapd unnecessarily) gritty realism and into the realm of the fairy tale. This clearly violates artistic integrity.
On the other hand, let's say that we change the first Harry Potter movie to have Malfoy refer to someone's "butt" rather than their "ass." Has any irreparable harm been done to the movie or the character? Some would say yes, some no. Personally, I wouldn't make the change, but assuming that it were properly licensed and noted, (some of the language has been changed to make it appropriate for children), I wouldn't get in a huge huff over it either. But I could understand those who might.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 1:13 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Morality and Ethicality
It has been stated by many that the arbitrary changing of a published work (erroneously termed editing) is not an immoral activity. I have demonstrated that it can be. I believe that it often is because it involves theft and deception.
But let's assume for the moment that the given instance is not immoral. I have taken the works of William Shakespeare and I have updated the language, deleted scenes I don't care for, changed around characters, added language to smooth transitions, and given the entire oeuvre a feminist/homosexualist agenda. I then publish the book as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare without any acknowledgment of the changes I have made, my name appears no where on the work, neither as editor nor as interpreter.
The work is in the public domain--there cannot be a question of theft because you cannot steal what belongs to all. One cannot libel the dead, and Shakespeare's reputation is well enough established that this will more likely result in outrage from the literary community than in damage to Shakespeare's reputation.
Still, what is lacking here is ethicality. When one chooses to make changes to a work and publish that work not as one's own--Steven R. redoes David Gopperfield or even David Goldmeadow: A Glancing Blow at Dickens--one has not adhered to the ethics even of the artistic world.
Ethics may be a lesser hurdle than morals. Ethical conduct demands something less of one than truly moral conduct. But the ethics of a situation are such that when one alters the work of another artist (not uses it for a jumping off place) it is meet and just that one puts one's name on it as "Editor." (Again, the more appropriate term here is "redactor" but I bow to the popular ignorance of the difference between the two and to the common usage that tends to conflate them.)
The ethics of the artistic world are simple--if you change a work, acknowledge that you have changed it. And for the most part the egos of the artistic world are such that there's usually a scrambling for credit rather a sly hiding behind anonymity in the production of a change.
However, I like the modern policy in cinema of noting when and how a film has been altered. (The standard disclaimer that "This film has been altered to fit your television screen.) This tells me I'm seeing something less that what the original artist conceived. So, if I'm dissatisfied with it in some way, I have recourse to the original to see if my dissatisfaction is with the revision or with the original. This is ethical conduct--it informs the person who is interested in the art of the production that what he or she is viewing is not the work as it was originally conceived. That is a valuable piece of information. And the placement of these sometimes annoying announcements is an ethical practice. It tells us that there is something awry in what we're viewing. And if we're watching for mere entertainment, then we acknowledge or ignore that and move on. If, however, I am a film student, I now know that this is not how the original was framed and I need to see something other than what is showing on my screen. (That should go without saying, but it is none-the-less good practice and ethical practice to acknowledge the truth of it.)
So, while the alteration of a work of art is not necessarily immoral, I would tend to say the unacknowledged alteration of a work in public domain or even for a licensed work is probably unethical.
This stands apart from the creation of a new work based on an older work. I always think of the classical pairing of Samuel Richardson's barely readable Pamela with the sparkling delight of Henry Fielding's Shamela. I have not yet read it, but The Wind Done Gone might be an amusing or interesting play on Gone with the Wind. And in younger days, I remember howling over Bored of the Rings--I don't know if I would do so now, one is eventually released from the follies of youth because one enters the follies of middle age--but at least they differ in kind if not in number.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:38 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
July 6, 2006
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
In addition to touring south Florida, I'm spending many of my evenings with my good friend watching movies. He had recommended The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and while I had regarded the prospect somewhat dubiously before, the weight of his recommendation was sufficient to convince me that the move might be worth viewing.
It is a well-crafted, interesting, indeed compelling film. While there are very intense moments, and while one might have some small quibbles with the way certain details are handled (for example the new-agey explanation of possession), the film is rock solid and well-acted.
The story centers around the trial of a priest who is accused of negligent homicide (or reckless endangerment, or something of the sort) in the death of a young woman. Most of the story unfolds in the courtroom. There are a few melodramatic scenes here and there, but nothing that is so out of tone with the film as to derail it.
The story told is interesting in a great many ways. It asks questions about the supernatural world that we would be anxious to know the answers to. It explores the reactions of different people to the tale of possession and it ends on a rather nebulous note. So nebulous indeed that one can come to all sorts of conclusions about what the makers of the film were trying to say. Ultimately, moments just before the end credits roll make it fairly clear where they are coming from.
A finely acted, occasionally frightening film. Well worth seeing, but certainly not for children.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:15 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 27, 2006
Salome
Richard Strauss's opera Salome, secondarily derived from Oscar Wilde's play, is an interesting study in contrasts. While not atonal, there are time during which the dissonance of the music is nearly unbearable. At other times, most particularly, famously, and spectactularly in the infamous "Dance of the Seven Veils" the music is lush, late romantic in tone and tenor.
Because of operas like Salome and Elektra Strauss was branded a modernist; however works like Der Rosenkavalier and the symphonic poem Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) betray the late and lush romanticism of his work. Much like Schönberg's Verklarte Nacht but more subtle, more shaded, and more sensuous, Strauss found the heart of his work in the extension of the tradition handed down to him from the German Masters.
Why then Salome? Why this awful dissonance and this musical posturing? Why this subject matter? Well, to use another German term, it may have been part of the Zeitgeist. Aubrey Beardsley and his merry band of decadent Art Deco adherents had been busy redesigning the world of art, fashion, and architecture with a heightened sensuality and eroticism that could stumble over the border of pornography. Beardsley's famous representations of Salome are a case in point, highly stylized and most famously typified by the print of Salome about to kiss the Medusa-like severed head of John the Baptist.
This was the spirit of the time--an awakening, some might say, from the torpor and sleep of Victorian prudery and oppression. Others might describe it as a long slide into the slough of sin. The truth probably lay somewhere between the two. The excesses of Victorian prudery and oppression were well laid to rest, but they were only replaced by the excesses of the decadents for whom too much was never enough.
Enter stage right Salome. It is this dynamic tension, this awakening from slumber that is most carefully recounted in the tonality and dissonance of the work. The erotic and neurotic frenzy of the Salome who falls head-over-heels for John the Baptist to the point where she, deprived of the kisses of his lips that she describes as a "red band across a white tower," she contrives to find a way to finally embrace him and kiss him. Much Freudian can and has been made of all of this; but as Freud has largely been shown to be a product of his time and not particularly useful in understanding human psychology, what would be the point of it?
Strauss captures in the Opera some of the tension of the time. The transition between times is always full of tension and the pull of the sensual against the long-held repression of the Victorian time was enormous. The great gravity of Victorian propriety mostly held and thus, it was possible to be shocked by the performance of the opera in the earliest time. However, the music portrays the tension. The dissonance of the interior cry for liberation balanced against the need for control and repression of the desires. Thus, at the end of the opera, the final words and the last moments, while still belonging to Salome are initiated by Herod's order, "Kill her." And for a few moments of fading, final music there is a frenzy about Salome that recapitulates the action of the opera up until that point and brings it to a final quavering end. But, perhaps, a more reasonable understanding of the dissonance is the cognitive dissonance of the disruption caused in the name of art. Perhaps, one can see built into the treatment of the work, the doubts of Strauss himself both about the content of work and of the direction of society. But, that may be overreaching and without being able to read Strauss's own commentary on the work, if any, unsubstantiated.
This is an opera that is not easy to watch; but it is fascinating. One can almost track the argument within the music. The dance of the veils followed by a long scene in which Salome insists that Herod honor his oath and Herodias careens in wildly, shrieking harpy in the soprano's upper register. Contrast this with an earlier scene in which Salome attempts to seduce John the Baptist, called Iokanaan in the Opera, with songs that first reflect upon his body, "which is the whitest thing in the world" and his hair, "which is darker than the night without a moon in which the stars shine so bright." This aggressive female sexuality is the perceived threat. Herod, to use Browning's phrase, "gave commands/then all smiles stopped together." However, Salome is not an opera with a lot of smiles, even though there are somewhat comic scenes exploring the madness of Herod and the lunacy of his court.
Salome is an opera to be experienced with full knowledge of the context and with an understanding of all of the elements that make it what it is. A reading of Wilde's play of the same name might be informative, but a cursory understanding of the theory of the decadents, most particularly with a notion of the influence of Walter Pater (both Marius the Epicurean and Appreciations, which gave rise to the pervasive theory of beauty among the aesthetes.
The version I was able to view of this opera featured a lovely young woman who needed perhaps a little tempering around the edges of a rather hard voice. However, the opera has its difficulties in that it demands of a woman young enough to play Salome the richest of a voice tempered by long experience of performing operas. When one qualification or another is in doubt, it is often the voice that is given less consideration in order to make the sensuality of Salome come through. So it seems in this DVD; nevertheless, despite some momentary lapses (and there are few), the performance is electrifying and played with just the right neurotic, nay psychotic, energy. An interesting window into the art of a (thankfully) bygone era. We have enough battles of our own, thank you.
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June 18, 2006
After Lucia
I was reminded of this driving home from Mass.
After Lucia Di Lammermoor I intend to put on the complete works of Josh Turner and Johnny Cash. These are men whose singing voices suggest that they actually have the apparatus that is an essential of the virile state. I've heard so many singers and crooners of recent date with voices brittle as lace-cookies, with the depth of a silk hankie, and with the presence of violets among skunk-cabbage. Give me a voice with substance. A Bryn Terfel, even a Pavarotti (whose voice I don't particularly care for prefering Placido Domingo and other lesser-known artists) over what passes for male voices in most of the rock, hip-hop, and yes, I'm sorry to say, even country music that I hear.
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June 8, 2006
Signs of the Times
"It is kind of interesting that faith has joined that list of deadly sins that the MPAA board wants to warn parents to worry about."
A movie given a PG rating not for language, sex, violence, or associated reasons, but because it is "too christian" and thus might offend non-Christian movie goers.
Honestly, it just makes me tired.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:56 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
June 4, 2006
Here is Gnod
Gnod - The global network of dreams
Which gave you Gnook, but has separate engines for both Music and Film.
It also has Flork, which I haven't tried yet because I'm not really certain I care to be discovered by people around the world, at least not at a place called Flork.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:00 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
May 26, 2006
Christmas with the Kranks
Ugh. Tedious beyond the ability of words to express. And sad.
Highly NOT recommended.
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April 22, 2006
Grand Opera--Tosca
Justly famous for the second act soprano aria Vissi d'Arte Tosca is a case in point of grand opera, and allows one to understand clearly the hidden reference of "soap opera."
From start to finish Tosca is melodrama. If one looks too closely at the plot it blows away into a billion pieces. By the end of the piece three major characters and the plot impetus (a relatively minor character) have died-one off-stage and three on-stage. However, this production was helped along by a soprano who had played the role both for the Met and for the San Francisco Opera Company (both redoubtable companies) and by excellent singers in all of the roles, major and minor.
What interests me about the Opera, seeing it for the first time and putting it into context, is the question of Puccini's view of the Church as expressed in the Opera. The first act takes palce entirely within a Church and begins with a Sacristan responding to the bell of the Angelus and ends with a Te Deum which is counterpointed by the villain of the piece Scarpia. The choral Te Deum is, also very discordant and very dark, incorporating into its music some of Scarpia's theme. In addition, just before Floria Tosca jumps from the parapet of the Castel Sant'Angelo at the end, she sings (in a melody reminiscent of the theme of her lover) to Scarpia that she will meet him before God--certainly an odd thing for a murderer/suicide to sing before leaping to her doom. (Samuel's reaction to this climactic scene was priceless, after the firing squad was done, he piped up with , "They shooted him!" I'm sure about half the theatre heard it.)
Tosca is filled with the lyrical, and perhaps occasionally overdone romantic melodies Puccini is famous for. The music is wonderful and contains some oddly "modern" elements in its discord and dissonance. The tenor aria of the final act E lucevan le stelle is another show-stopper with its transcendent melody and its underlying dark tones.
Samuel seemed to enjoy the experience, although he was a bit frightened at the firing squad scene and (fortunately) didn't seem to follow much of the plot line. He did however really go wild at the two major Arias and asked when we would go to the Opera again. So, this makes his third Opera and I'd say that overall the season was a success. I do have to say that of the performances he's seen this year--The Rockettes, Three Operas, and Lord of the Dance it is the last than made the biggest impression with him. And given that he is a somewhat kinetic little guy, that makes good sense.
Any way, I couldn't have been more pleased or impressed with this final show of the season. It certainly rang the curtain down on a resounding note. Orlando Opera may be a small company, but it is one that is well worth the time if you've any interest in Opera at all. I'm sorry it has taken me so long to discover it. Once again I succumb to the waywardness of cultural snobbery.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 29, 2006
Le Nozze de Figaro
I like Opera. I like it very much indeed and, perhaps as a result, I am not an "Opera Snob." I can't tell you the names of all the great divas on the last fifty years. I can't compare the performances of Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi. I probably couldn't even tell you the range of voice in which various parts are sung. I know that I can't articulate the difference between the various types of Soprano (a defect I shall set out to remedy upon completing this entry).
As a result, I am in a wonderful place to enjoy Opera when it is available--performed capably by Amateurs or professionals.
Friday evening we bundled the family into the car and headed downtown (if Orlando can truly be said to have a "Downtown"--in this respect it is much like a former home--Columbus, Ohio) to see Le Nozze de Figaro, perhaps the best-loved of the Mozart operas, and one of the all-time great comic operas.
When we arrived at the place where the presentation was to occurs, I was taken aback. The building was small, dingy, showing typical Florida wear-and-tear. The parking lot very limited and due to road construction no real alternative anywhere.
Upon entering the building nothing of my first impression was changed. This was a building perfectly suited to the offices of the local gendarmerie. Indeed more institutional and less cultural a center would be difficult to find anywhere. In my mind this did not bode well for the performance.
Then there were the programs that announced that tonight's performance in this more "intimate" setting would be sung by the "second-string" singers. Now, the Orlando Opera Company is not what one would call a world-class performing company to start with. Imagine my chagrin at thinking that we would be hearing from the singers-in-training for this company! Well, actually there was more chagrin with where we were than with who would be singing. I've heard very nice productions indeed from College troupes--so I had no doubt that this group, which consisted of people who hoped to make a living with their voices, could be very good indeed--even if they had the inauspicious name of the "Lockheed-Martin Troupe."
If that were not enough in itself, the entrance to the "theatre" was enough to send even the most sanguine of people into fits. We were ushered into a small room sectioned off from the surrounding cinder-block with black curtains suspended from rings on an aluminum runner. The seating area was perfectly flat and filled in the front with "reserved" seating chairs that looked like inexpensive additional seating for a boardroom. The rear consisted of plastic lawn-chairs with tissue-thin cushion set in them. Overall, the layout reminded me of the cafeteria/auditorium I had in elementary school, where everyone sat at the same level and looked up at a very small stage.
The stage was indeed, quite small. But Figaro is a "bedroom" opera requiring no large sets or stage. It can be performed to perfection (as I was to find out) in even the most inauspicious of locations.
Taking our seats, we awaited with something approaching dread, and with a lot of complaining from all around, the commencement of the opera. The "Orchestra" (of perhaps seven people) walked into the theatre and to the pit via a side aisle. The Opera was about to begin.
All the build-up and dread vanished within a minute as a superb baritone started up the opera by measuring the floor of the bedroom for the bed that the Count had given the couple to be married as a wedding gift. Surprise piled upon surprise as each of the performers both sang and acted their parts beautifully.
Le Nozze de Figaro is really an ensemble opera. That is, there are four parts of about equal importance as the opera plays out. Each of these four parts was sung very, very well. Despite this, a couple behind us, who, we had been informed, "had seen performances at La Scala" walked out at intermission. They hadn't time for these amatuerish performances. And that is really a pity for them because they missed out on some real joy to be derived from people who were really enjoying what they were doing, doing particularly well.
After the opera the cast lined up outside in a kind of receiving line, another real pleasure and joy because we were able to express our thanks and appreciation to each person individually. The person who played Figaro commented to Samuel that he had not been able to attend an opera until he was in college. I think everyone was surprised that there could have been a child so young who behaved so well through the entire performance. And Samuel was very well behaved.
Any way, what started as a dismal, disheartening evening turned out to be a gem of a show, one highly memorable for the quality of its singing and for the opportunity to meet the cast. I could only wish for more such opportunity and for a larger, more appreciative audience for opera as a whole.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:41 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
March 3, 2006
Lagaan
Lagaan is another film from India; however, I am uncertain whether it qualifies for Bollywood status as it tends to be far more serious and subdued than many such.
The title is derived from the word Lagaan which means something like "tax", but something more like "tribute." The story is set during the British Raj and features a particularly despicable British Captain who is oppressing the people in one province (state?) in India.
One of the leaders of a farming village, Bhuvan, grows tired of the oppression and ultimately challenges the British to a cricket match. The Captain offers Bhuvan the following: If you win, no lagaan for three years; if you lose, rather than the double lagaan I was going to charge, you must pay triple lagaan.
Just prior to all of this the Captain had informed the village that since he had waived lagaan the previous year, he expected double lagaan this year. One gets the impression that he did this because the local ruler refused to eat meat at his table. Now the Captain knew that the local ruler's religion prohibited the eating of meat, but he nevertheless demanded it. While watching, I thought of the scene in 2 Maccabees with the seven sons of the Jewish Lady.
Any way, we now know that this particular British Captain is evil. What IS nice about the story is that not all of the British are so portrayed. The chief help the village receives as they begin to prepare for the game comes from the sister of the Captain who also, quite bravely, faces up to him several times in the course of the film.
The last hour or so of the film features a cricket match that stretches over three days. On the night before the last day the villagers meet together to pray for success in the game.
Despite the fact that to anyone other than the British and the members of their Commonwealth/erstwhile Empire, Cricket is utterly incomprehensible, the movie is wonderful from start to finish. Beautifully filmed, colorful, and meaningful. Songs occur throughout in English and Hindi. Interestingly, the film is subtitled and features the subtitles even when the characters are speaking English. I suppose it is easier than figuring out when to subtitle.
At any rate, this is one of the more serious films from India I have seen, and it is well produced, exciting, interesting, and gives a most fascinating perspective on the culture and people of India. Highly recommended to anyone interested in recent history and Indian film.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:09 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 21, 2006
The Magic Flute and Das Rheingold
I was not feeling well yesterday, so I stayed at home. In the course of the day I was able to see one full opera and part of another and what a tremendous contrast they were.
The Magic Flute is light, open, airy, and errant nonsense. There are dragons, and bird people, and initiates to the temple of Isis, and a magic flute carved from a thousand year old oak. The music is a Mozartian froth, even its most "chilling" moments are frothy, light, and full of a certain kind of joy. The message of the opera (if it can be said to have one) is utter lunacy, but the thrilling aria, mentioned in a previous post, and the delightful duet between Papageno and Papagena are wonderful entertainment.
Das Rheingold on the other hand is dark, brooding, doomed, and ultimately destructive. I begin to understand why those who have no acquired the taste early on do not care for Wagner. The Romantic Orchestral music is overlain with a truly bizarre variety of operatic snippets. In Rheingold, we have a plot to rival The Magic Flute, a bunch of witless Rhine maidens are guarding a lump of gold, they tease a nasty gnome, and idiotically let him know that the only way to get the gold is to renounce love forever. Well, they tease him enough so that he realizes that love ain't coming anyway, so he promptly renounces it and makes away with their gold, from which he will fashion a ring of power. Scene change--we're now outside Valhalla where we learn that Wotan has traded Freija to the Giants in return for the Giants building the fortress. The Giants come to collect their wages--enter Loge (Loki) who sets about making a real muddle of things. He sets in motion the actions that will end in the destruction of Valhalla at the end of Götterdammerung. The action so far takes place in two scenes of amazing static nature. It probably comprised about an hour and a half of amazing orchestration and truly odd operatic noise hovering above it.
Wagner, unfortunately, carries with him the onus of his own anti-semitism and that vicariously attributed to him by his adoption as the Third Reich's composer laureate. The only real good I can think of off hand is that he managed to alienate Nietzsche, perhaps the single most unlikeable philosopher of Modern Times (though Marx evidently could have given him a real run for the money). Wagner is huge, slow moving, monolithic. He is doing myth and he wants you to be aware of it. The Four Operas of the Ring Cycle approach sixteen hours in length, much of it bombastic, over-the-top tableau singing, despite the fact that toward the end there are some really interesting things going on. From the very beginning the angst is so thick you can cut it with a knife.
So why watch? I don't know--it's rather like the train-wreck of Opera, there is an incredible fascination with watching it unfold in all of its dreariness--the dire inevitability of the fall of the Gods coming at last to its final stages. There's something really satisfying about prophecy fulfilled. In addition, Wagner had an amazingly lush compositional palette, perhaps overly dramatic and ultimately what became known as German music. But the Magic Fire Music, the Ride of the Valkyries, Siegfried's Rhine journey, and other orchestral interludes begin to introduce some of the tonalities and sonorities that would drive both Schönberg and Debussy (in asymptotically opposed directions).
And it was nice to hear German sung in these two ways. In Mozart, German is like any other language, flexible, nimble, lovely in its way. In Wagner, German is like a bludgeon--it is sung so slowly and ponderously that one actually begins to realize that English is a Germanic language in large part--one can begin to understand Wagner's ponderous German. German is not just any other language--it is the language of fate, and doom, and useless gods, and war, and death, and trickery. (Of course it isn't--I'm merely relating the effect of the two operas.) So we have Champagne German and Ultimate-Destruction-of-the-Realm-of-the-Gods German. What an amazing contrast in less than 100 years. (But do keep in mind that Mozart was Austrian, not German--and there has always been a pronounced difference in music, literature, and culture between the two.)
Any way, it was most instructive and a most pleasant way to spend a not-so-pleasant day.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:26 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
February 11, 2006
L'Elisir D'Amore
It is pretentious to try to review Donizetti at this point, and largely ungrateful to try to review a given performance given how few are available to most people. So I won't try. But given that it was Samuel's first "Night at the Opera" and given that I'd asked for prayers that all go smoothly, I thought I'd report in.
First, it was a wonderful evening. It's been a very long time since I've been able to attend the Opera and I can't think when I've enjoyed something so much. I so appreciative of those who love the culture enough to keep trying despite dwindling attendance and skyrocketing costs.
L'elisir D'Amore is a frothy bit of comic opera--at one time a vehicle for the enormous success of Beverly Sills and Luciano Pavarotti. Donizetti is a composer who bridges the gap between the Mozartian Operas and Italian Grand Opera. "L'elisir" is about a woman with two suitors, one of whom is a simple country man, the other a soldier of fortune. A quack doctor comes into town to sell his snake-oil and he is asked by the country man for an Elixir like that that wooed Queen Isolde. Of course the peddler has a supply to hand and generously sells it to the suitor. Chaos ensues and wraps up in classic fashion.
Samuel appeared to have wonderful time for the first half of the Opera and seemed to fight off sleep for the second half, which has some of the truly stirring and wonderful music in the piece. All-in-all, it was a very promising operatic debut for Samuel. I look forward to The Marriage of Figaro. The jury is still out on whether or not he will join us for Tosca. But thank you all for your prayers. Given that the little guy is only seven, he showed heroic virtue and strength in even being able to sit mostly still for it. And, he showed remarkable taste in liking it and enjoying it to some extent.
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February 10, 2006
An Evening with Donizetti
Tonight we will be able to indulge an impulse long denied and we will be attending the Opera. It's a local company with a mixed bag of singers, but it's a frothy piece of Operatic fluff called L'Elisir D'Amore.
Tonight we will be taking Samuel, so please pray for us. I don't know how he'll take to it, if at all and that may present some small problems. I don't actually anticipate it, but better to pray about it than worry about it.
If things go well, he'll be attending at least one other--The Marriage of Figaro. The jury is still out on Tosca, which despite some lovely music may be too long and too adult to have any interest for him whatsoever. But at 7 I'd be surprised if he stays awake for the evening.
Nevertheless, there is no chance to enjoy culture if we don't at least give him the opportunity, and Opera, particularly local companies is an art-form that may soon pass away entirely, and that would be a terrible blow to the richness of our culture.
So, I'll report on that and on a recent book read, possibly as early as tomorrow.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 3:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 8, 2006
A Shared Conversation
Shared betwixt myself and another Opera aficionado--
"Jump, Tosca! Jump! Please put us out of your misery."
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I Probably Shouldn't Like It as Much as I Do
Jesus take the wheel
Take it from my hands
Cause I can't do this all my own
I'm letting go
So give me one more chance
To save me from this road I'm on--from "Jesus Take the Wheel" Carrie Underwood
Jesus, take the wheel! Boy, if only I could bring myself to say it and mean it.
This is one of those songs that probably means a good deal more to those of us with a history of "Jesus speak," a form of communication common among evangelicals and fundamentalists, but nearly unknown outside of Catholic Charismatic circuits. Understand, it is simply a cultural things, like grits at breakfast, or rice, sugar, and butter, or turnip greens with fatback. Not better, not worse, simply a different way of saying the same thing. Utterly alien to most Catholics and "mainline" Protestants. But it feels like home to me.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 5, 2006
Nanny McPhee
What a very pleasant surprise--a surprise with the likes of Emma Thompson, Derek Jacobi, and Angela Lansbury.
The story is adapted from a series of book by Christianna Brand. (I hadn't any idea. Ms. Brand is known to me for a number of fine mysteries including Death in High Heels and Green for Danger.) Very Mary Poppins-like, Nanny McPhee joins the beleaguered Brown family, gets it properly organized in typical Edwardian fashion and then is off again.
What is so very delightful is the way the story incorporates some of the very oldest cinematic cliches in a way that refreshes them and makes them funny once again.
Samuel loved the film as did both Samuel's mother and father. Highly recommended for those who wish to take children to see a film in which family is extolled, supported, and celebrated.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 4:57 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 29, 2006
Hoodwinked
What a very pleasant surprise is to be found in this unassuming little film. Fine fare for the whole family that is neither cringe-inducing, nor overrun with bodily function humor.
Truthfully, the trailer did not do the film justice. I watched it several times at the theater and generally decided that it was "ho-hum." Well, that's easy to do when they show you bits and pieces of a very cleverly scripted, very nicely crafted little mystery.
Loosely based on the infamous "Red-Riding Hood" case, in which the wolves once again were fiercely and unfairly maligned, this story goes way beyond to expose the multiple layers of the tale--and boy is it a tale--no one is completely innocent--nope, not even Granny!
The story starts where the story you know ended and throughy the aegise and intellect of Mr. Flippers, the frog, we eventually learn the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as he strips away the layers of lies and deceptions that form the stories of the four principle participants--Red, the Wolf, Granny, and Mr. Axeman.
Sam enjoyed it, and there were parts that were laugh-out-loud funny for the adults. Cleverly scripted, capably animated, an enjoyable treat for child and adult alike. Don't let the poor showing of the trailers deceive you, Hoodwinked is major family entertainment.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 4:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 9, 2006
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
We all went to see this film yesterday. Samuel and I nearly didn't make it through the very first scene in the film. Linda wasn't far behind. But after that little rough patch everything smoothed out into what was really a very enjoyable film. The acting was decent, the special effects occasionally jarred me out of the story and got me to thinking about the art of film rather than what I was supposed to be focused on. I was also a little surprised by how very little sense the story makes when one sits back and looks at it.
This is where our two great inklings differ so dramatically. I've never been particularly impressed with Lewis's fiction. His forte is that kind of nonfiction story-telling that gets at his more practical points. For example, I think The Screwtape Letters a vastly superior work to most of his fiction (the exception might be That Hideous Strength). Letters to Malcolm:Chiefly on Prayer and The Great Divorce are other examples of using the techniques of fiction to present argument or fact. As I was thinking through the Narnia presentation, I kept finding myself troubled with questions that a person like Tolkien would already have considered in detail. Now, on Tolkien's side, I must say, that I find his non-fiction very donnish and often nearly opaque. His strength was in the full and vivid creation of worlds and races and histories--he truly was a story-teller who had all the strands together because he had spent so much time making the whole.
Lewis and Tolkien have very different purposes, very different means, and very different strengths. But, as much as I liked the film, particularly the icy Queen of Narnia, I found that it made transparent some of the difficulties I always had with Lewis's storytelling.
Be that as it may, I enjoyed the film. Linda was touched by the film. And typical of a seven year-old boy Samuel liked "the fighting." But the point did not completely pass him by and he said that he would much rather be like Peter than like Edmund and, no, mommy wasn't much like the Queen of Narnia. . .
Posted by Steven Riddle at 2:31 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 5, 2006
Museum Review: King Tut
During a recent trip to Naples, we took the opportunity to take our friend and my son to Fort Lauderdale to view the traveling exhibition of Egyptian materials related to King Tut. Most recently this exhibit was in Los Angeles. It will be here in Florida until April or May.
First the good points: this makes a fine exhibition for either the novice or the expert reviewer of Egyptian artifacts. There is relatively little material associated directly with Tut, neither the mummy, the sarcophagus, nor the death mask is present in the exhibition, despite the misleading advertising that suggests the presence of the latter. What we do see are some of the pectorals and jewelry that were within the wrappings on Tut's mummy, some of the materials from the burial chamber and a few canopic jars. This sounds paltry, but believe me, they are worth seeing for their intrinsic interest and for their great beauty.
The remainder of the exhibition covers the Pharoah before Tut who attempted to impose a monotheistic system on the Egyptian people. Tut's reign was viewed as a restoration of the traditional system of worship.
The final rooms of the exhibit recreate the actual burial chamber both in size and in the diagrammatic layout of the burial arrangements. The last room is dedicated to new research on Tut that suggests that he may not have been murdered by his successor. However, I have been advised by people more attuned to the news in this field that the particular theory espoused is a bugbear of the exhibit coordinator and is not to be taken too seriously as objective research.
Now for the downside--the exhibit is poorly managed and poorly run. While there are a limited number of tickets for viewers during each time period, those limited tickets are still too many. Each gallery is overly crowded and movement between parts of the exhibit space is slow and difficult. Often it was hard to get a good look at some of the piece without waiting for five, ten, or more minutes.
We arrived about a half-hour before our entry time and were ushered to a line where we waited until well past our time. We were shown the way to some stair where we climbed and waited for another fifteen or twenty minutes before we went in to see a short context-setting film. Afterwards we entered the exhibit.
The museum really needed more forethought in preparing the exhibition. In addition, the exhibit materials were written not so much to educate the public as to placate specialists in the field with the net result that many of them were nearly incomprehensible to the audience they should thrill most--school-age children. I'm not suggesting that exhibits be written down to that age, but I am suggesting that there are ways to construct exhibits so that all might benefit from the knowledge being bestowed. However, this complaint is not unique to the Tut exhibit.
None of these criticisms should be viewed as in any way suggesting that one should avoid this rare opportunity. As the Islamic fundamentalist world becomes more vehement about the eradication of the non-Muslim past (view the Taliban's horrendous destruction of the Afghan Buddhas) such relics may become more rare, and certainly our opportunities to view them will be curtailed. I cannot recommend heartily enough the value to be derived from attending and enjoying such a wonderful exhibition. Those who live in Florida should make plans to try to see it.
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October 27, 2005
Good Advice
Live Like You Were Dying Lyrics - Tim McGraw
I went skydiving
I went rocky mountain climbing
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu
And I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter
And I gave forgiveness I'd been denyin'
And he said some day I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dyin'
Don't know about 2.7 second on a bull named Fu Man Chu: but for the rest--seems like good advice considering it is the truth. The Anglican Divine Jeremy Taylor long ago pointed out that Holy Living and Holy Dying were inextricably united--one informed the other inevitably. So perhaps if we think toward the end, we can extrapolate backward. There isn't a one of us who facing death will say, "I wish I had worked more. I wish I had taken more business trips." And perhaps we should be more aware of that all along the way.
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October 23, 2005
Koi Mil Gaya
In Hindi, and probably about 15 other languages because dicipherable English phrases occur frequently throughout. Koi Mil Gaya is India's answer to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and ET. Rohit's father is a scientist who is obssessed with communicating with space aliens. He sets up his computer to do so, but dies in an accident. His son, Rohit, is born brain-damaged and Forrest Gump-like, but in the best Hindi-film tradition capable of lapsing into song for any reason or none whatsoever. Jadoo, the alien, whose name means, (I think) magic, comes down from space and during a routine mission is left behind to afect the life of this young man and his friends. Really, take the plot from ET, dump it in the foothills of the Himalaya or some other extremely scenic mountain range in probably Northern India (I think the name of the town is Kuesali) and voila Koi Mil Gaya.
Somewhere along the line in the movie, there is a song that has the title in its lyrics, but I wasn't paying enough attention at the time, so I didn't capture a translation for you. But suffice to say that the film has an innocent, charming presence with enthusiastic, interesting actors and all of the trappings one has come to expect from Bollywood. I think Bollywood films are rapidly becoming a prime contenders for my favorite brand of foreign film--although the Japanese with their alarming disconnects from Western reality will probably remain ascendant. Indian films also show a sharp disconnect from Western Reality, but there is something joyful and ultimately appealing about them.
It's odd, but I've noted the same strain of "fatedness" without resignation in much of the literature that comes out of India. Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance could have been a real downer, but the sheer force of life and joy of the people who have been horribly treated by life makes it a wonderful celebration of life for me. The same is true of any number of other books and stories I have read of recent date. This form of disconnect from Western cynicism and angst, I find very easy to embrace.
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October 22, 2005
The List--SF Films
Seen at both the Anchoress (?) and Siris. As with others, I have bolded the ones I have seen.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!
Akira
Alien
Aliens
Alphaville
Back to the Future
Blade Runner
Brazil
Bride of Frankenstein
Brother From Another Planet
A Clockwork Orange
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Contact
The Damned
Destination Moon
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Delicatessen
Escape From New York
ET: The Extraterrestrial
Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
The Fly (1985 version)
Forbidden Planet
Ghost in the Shell
Gojira/Godzilla
The Incredibles
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
Jurassic Park
Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
The Matrix
Metropolis
On the Beach
Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
Robocop
Sleeper
Solaris (1972 version)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
The Stepford Wives
Superman
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Thing From Another World
Things to Come
Tron
12 Monkeys
28 Days Later
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2001: A Space Odyssey (As with Clockwork Orange, people often make the mistake of calling this a science fiction film--while the subject matter may be, the director makes it his own. This is not SF, it is Kubrick.)
La Voyage Dans la Lune
War of the Worlds (1953 version)
What is that 47, 48 of 50? Akira, and Ghost are both anime that I may get around to. And there are some that I am pretty sure I saw, but I wouldn't be placing on this list.
What might I add? Frankenstein, the Original, and not quite as campy progenitor of them all, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Gattaca, for sheer Space Opera Oddity The Fifth Element, Silent Running, and a slew of B Fifties films.
Later:
Doesn't appear to have been at The Anchoress. Was it perhaps Julie D, or the Little Professor. My head's aspin with things.
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October 15, 2005
Hopkins Set to Music
Gerard Manley Hopkins Poems In Musical Adaptations - Demo - Index
For fans of Gerard Manley Hopkins, an array of his poetry styled in different musical fashions. Pied Beauty as gospel/spiritual. Another as jig. Go and enjoy, I'm sure the artists would appreciate it.
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October 10, 2005
Bollywood Hollywood
Take Pretty Woman add songs in Hindi and a grandma who spends more time quoting Shakespeare (appropriate or not) than speaking, add some Indian Female impersonators and voilà you have Bollywood Hollywood--a spectacular celebration in song and dance.
I really don't know what to make of this film except that it is so internally self-referential that it raises itself to metacinematic proportions. Does anyone know the origin of Bollywood? Are most films from India filmed in Bombay, or are the major film studios in Bombay?
Anyway, this movie was fast-paced, the English of the actors was accented in such a way that it was a little hard to follow (King of like most of Gosford Park. As I said before all of the musical numbers were in Hindi, and they were lovely. I've decided that if this represents some version of Indian "Pop" culture, I very much like it. I like the blend of instruments and voice even if I haven't a clue what they are singing.
Recommended.
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October 9, 2005
E-Music from Banshee
Aliens in This World--Free Opera
Include the following, and a great deal more. Some very interesting materials here.
Handel:
"Hallelujah Chorus" from The Messiah by Handel. 1916.
Excerpt from Israel in Egypt by Handel. 1888. (The earliest known recorded music in existence.)
Herbert:
"Star Light, Star Bright" from Wizard of the Nile by Victor Herbert. Sung by J.W. Myers. 1896.
Leoncavallo:
"Mattinata" by Ruggiero Leoncavallo, the first song composed especially for the gramophone. Sung by Caruso and accompanied by Leoncavallo.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 11:58 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 5, 2005
The Innocents
One of those early 60's films that were so effectively done--much like The Haunting, and it shares the same fault as The Haunting which is that it collapses the ambiguity into the original and leaves no room for the real questions raised by the original work.
The Innocents is The Turn of the Screw without the framing story. Deborah Kerr plays the governess, and does it superbly. The two children are quite good up to the end. I dare not say more but to state that the movie is completely true to the original work except as I've suggested above.
Turn of the Screw is a much more nuanced and productive work than a similar film The Rocking-Horse Winner. (May not be the title of the film, but that's the title of the D. H. Lawrence short story from which it is made. Both films have as their focus children and their "contact" with the supernatural world. The Turn of the Screw raises the question of whether the problem is located in the supernatural world or in the children themselves or in the mind of the governess. Like The Haunting of Hill House which begs the questions as to whether it is really the house that is haunted or the person, so Turn of the Screw offers this very ambiguous choice. Unfortunately the film unnecessarily collapses the choice and answers the question.
Despite this minor shortcoming, the film is beautifully done. Rich, crisp black and white photography that is never muddy or vague. Not a lot of extra "sountrack" music. A very plain, very stark, very beautifully done film. Highly recommended.
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September 28, 2005
Bride and Prejudice
In two words,"See it."
I saw a review on Julie's site after seeing it recommended at Netflix.
A breakthrough film, featuring all that is best in Indian cinema with a western slant that invites us in. There's color and singing and dancing, and a story we all know and can hum along to. Because I am not so concerned with coordination with the original plot line, I think I was able to enjoy this for the real celebration of family and life that it was. (Commenters at Julie's were disturbed by who was whom according to the book.) For those of you not yet acquainted with the original this is a colorful and delightful introduction.
So much so that I am hard pressed as to whether to more highly tout the "cobra dance" or the gospel choir on the beach sequence.
Beautifully filmed, colorful, and uplifting, I can hardly recommend this highly enough to the St. Blog's community. I laughed myself silly at parts and enjoyed the songs and the essential joy that permeated the film.
An enjoyable way to engage other cultures and to get a look at our own through different eyes.
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September 7, 2005
Horror: The Perfect Christian Genre
Thanks to MamaT for the reference!
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August 29, 2005
Brad Paisley
Some time ago TSO waxed enthusiastic about how much he liked Brad Paisley. The hit making the rounds then (and now) was "Alcohol," a song which while interesting failed to provoke interest for me. However, when I discovered that he was also the artist behind "Mud on the Tires," I knew that I needed to give more attention.
I got from the library Mr. Paisley's first album and I have to say that I was really wowed by it. What struck me first of all is the depth of humor in many of the songs. By that I mean that most country songs that are humorous are humorous because of a "catch line." Take for example Toby Keith's current hit "I Ain't As Good as I Once Was." The "humor" in the song depends upon the bending of the phrase "I ain't as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was." Okay, amusing for the first thirty-thousand times you hear it, but not much depth there.
On the other hand, the depth of humor in Mr. Paisley's work is impressive. From the first song, "The Long Sermon" in which we learn that "Nothing tests your faith like a long sermon on a pretty Sunday." To "Me Neither" in which our singer goes to embarrassing lengths to pick up a woman in a bar, using all of his lines and ultimately running out--into another thing that I think really makes the album for me--a relatively long instrumental. Honestly, I don't hear nearly enough of it in Country Music--figured it was a genre thing. But there's a long instrumental tag at the end of this song after he asks the girl he's talking to whether she thinks he ought to end his song, and he answers, "Me neither. . ."
Later there's a completely instrumental track titled "The Nervous Breakdown" and it's tremendous fun--unlike anything I've heard in this genre and most reminiscent of something like "Frankenstein."
In addition to humor, there appears to be enormous depth to Mr. Paisley's work. The usual songs of lost love becomes "Who Needs Pictures." And, there simply isn't anything to compare with "He Didn't Have to Be."
Now I know writing this is like preaching to the choir. If you like country music, you'll already have an opinion. If you don't like country music, you aren't even going to listen to this. So why bother?
I think because of this in the liner notes:
Finally, thanks be to God, for the gift of music and countless blessings. I hope only to do your will and be the person you wnat me to be. I can't do this without you. Thank for my life.
Now, you can't say an artist is great on sentiments like that. But sentiments like that are more likely to make me think the artist great because he recognizes the source of all art.
There are some artists I endure who, in spite of themselves, give me a glimpse of glory beyond them through there performances--Johnny Depp comes to mind. But what a pleasure it is to like an artist with whose sentiments I heartily concur.
And that may be another reason why I've recently turned to country music. I'm simply impressed with the number of artists who include God and Country in song. I'm tired of the relentless tearing down of our great nation and our even greater Lord and Savior. Much of country music offers at lest momentary respite from all of that.
Right now, all of Mr. Paisley's albums sit in my Amazon Wish List.
(Oh, and he not only has an advertisement for the Second Harvest National Foodbank Network, but he sang the version of "In the Garden" that reminded me of what I heard the first time I heard it.)
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Classical Pieces You May Have Missed--1
Der Hölle Rache from The Magic Flute Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
This is one of the great, fascinating and incredibly difficult arias in the repertoire. As a result it is rarely sung well. But when it is, I don't know of any piece of music that can produce the thrilling effect of this one.
The Queen of Night (a baddy if there ever was one) upon finding out of the "betrayal" of an associate hands her daughter a knife and says:
My heart's aflame
with burning fiery vengeance.
Death! Death and despair are
Death and Despair are blazinge,
Burning Free!If you cannot
bring on the pain of death upon Sarastro
Then you are nevermore my child to me.
YOu're nevermore my daught to me. Ah!
My duaghter you cannot be. Ah!
My daught you cannot be to me!
Disowned forever be!
Abandoned you will be!
Destroyed forever be!All that nature dare.
Disowned, abandoned, be destroyed.
All that nature dare. Ah!
All that nature ever dare.
Unless. . . success. . .
Sarastro is demolished!
Hear, hear, hear!
Gods of vengeance,
Hear a mother's prayer!(tr. Daniel Libman)
Okay, not what we'd call a role model for modern mothers. Nevertheless, this is opera and emotions tend to run a bit high in the course of things. (To hear a very fine counterbalance to this song, also listen to Papageno's song a bit later in the piece. A fine duet between two bird cathchers talking about all the children they will welcome into the family.)
Okay, once we get past the drama, what's so great about this piece of music? It is sung by a coloratura soprano--one skilled in a very ornamented and elaborate way of singing. In addition, my guess is that it must have parts that extend to the very highest vocal range of that soprano, because if the voice is good and the soprano hits the notes exactly right, they ring with flute-like tone and cease to sound as though formed by voice at all. The effect is truly astounding. From singing we get the impression that we have embarked on a flute solo. Beautiful doesn't begin to describe the impact of this piece sung well. It is, in fact, an absolute show stopper.
Now, because the piece is so difficult it hasn't found popularization in cartoons (The Barber of Seville, and "Kill da Wabbit" Ride of the Valkyries) or much other popular media. However, if you listen closely during the talent competition in Miss Congeniality the Opera singer sings this aria.
Do yourself a favor and check the disk out from the library. If you can find the performance by Lucia Popp, get it and have a listen. You'll be glad you did.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:01 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 27, 2005
Audition
I watched this because it was sited as one of the 100 best horror films of all time and it was actually fairly close to the top. Brought to you by the same genius that gave us The Happiness of the Katakuris, Audition is another species of salmon altogether. (My review of the former, once at Popcorn Critics is, alas, no longer.)
And frankly, I have to say that after seeing this film I had the same reaction I've had to every post Akira Kurosawa (and some pre-) Japanese film I've ever seen. Huh? What's going on? What does it mean? Why is it repeated three, four, five, six times? How did it end? What did it mean? What was the point?
Japanese films must rely upon a whole context of cultural clues to which I have no access because every time I watch one I am completely mystified. This is no exception. Girl auditions for a film role. Producer pursues girl. Girl is psychotic abused psycho-killer torturer or somesuch. Hack, slash, oops it was all a dream. Or maybe the dream was a dream and all that wasn't a dream was what was real. Paralyzed bodies, talking heads, blood and the end, plinking away on a piano.
I don't know. I suppose I liked some of the tension and suspense. But this isn't for the kiddies. And it isn't for the faint of heart. And it isn't for someone who expects a coherent story line. And it isn't for . . .
Only for crazed Japanese film afficianados. Everyone else can give it a big miss and not have missed a thing.
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August 18, 2005
Miss Marple and the Lesbians
There's so much I want to say in this one entry that I hope everything comes through coherently.
Let me start with a disclaimer. I have surmised that the fewer opinions I have on matters of import, the happier I generally am. I would resolve to have no opinions on any matter, but as that is out of the question (being the second most opinionated person on Earth), I have resolved to confine my opinions to matters of interest in which I can speak with, if not true expertise, at least a modicum of understanding. This would, of course, greatly narrow the scope of my discussion to golden-age mysteries and ME. Given that neither subject would have an enormous audience, today I plan to regale you with tales of Golden Age mysteries.
One of the few mysteries I recall with any sense of detail at all is A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie. I can't really account for why I recall this one, but I suspect that it was the first time I "solved" a mystery before the solution was revealed by the author. A Murder is Announced is by Agatha Christie and it features her detective Miss Marple (if the title hadn't already given this away.
I say I recall this book in some detail. I remembered as I was watching it that one of the victims was named Murgatroyd. Now, I had heard my mother say ten billion times "Heaven to Murgatroyd," and had puzzled over that expression long and hard. It had never occurred to me that Murgatroyd was a person's name. I also remember that the solution of the mystery hinged on the Shepherdess, and for me a seemingly cryptic statement from the one witness who could see anyting. In fact, this is what revealed the whole thing for me--so it wasn't really a fair solution, although, as the statement occurred a good 50 pages before the end and the discussion as to what was going on, I feel vindicated in considering this my first "solved" mystery--and solved on the clues.
A new series has come out recently featuring Miss Marple mysteries. Now, Miss Marple has not had the kind cinematic treatment of Hercule Poirot, etc. Her history starts with the delightful Dame Margaret Rutherford--who was indeed a wonderful cinematic presence but about as far from the essence of Miss Marple as one could get. She did, however, have Dame Agatha's approval. I recall a movie (The Mirror Crack'd) in which Helen Hayes played Miss Marple to the delightful strains of semi-villain Elizabeth Taylor. Finally, Joan Hickson did a very fine job of playing the "fluffy" wool-gathering old lady who is sharp as steel underneath.
The present incarnation is played by Gwendolin McEwan, and I have to say that it is certainly interesting and novel. I would say that McEwan doesn't come anywhere within fifty yards of the character as written by Agatha Christie (that was hit dead-on by Joan Hickson) and yet, as an interpretation of the Christie character, this is certainly acceptable and interesting.
What I find a bit disturbing is the proliferation of sexual antics that seems to bestrew itself across the screen in this most recent set of productions. I've only viewed two so far--Body in the Library and A Murder is Announced. In each of these there was at least one lesbian relationship and any number of adulterous assignations. Now, I probably missed a great deal in my early readings, but I don't think Dame Christie wrote a Lesbian couple into every one of her novels. And with Body in the Library it is this Lesbian "folie a deux" that gives us the denouement.
I really don't have anything against lesbians, on screen or otherwise, but I do have a problem with "reclaiming literature." One can never, with any authority, discuss authorial intention. But I suspect toleration for lesbians was not one of the chief agendas of the Agatha Christie novels, nor do I suspect that the thought of lesbian attachements so frequently crossed Dame Christie's mind.
On the other hand, I can be a seriously inattentive reader, paying attention only to what the author wishes me to look at (hence I'm not particularly good at solving mysteries because I'm always chasing after red herrings) and it is entirely possible that the whole plethora of novels is veritably overrun with lesbians and who knows what.
However, one gets the distinct impression that Miss Marple herself may be lesbian--and while that may be so, it conflicts with my understanding of the novels. Not that that should be any sort of guide or parameter. Nevertheless, it seems odd that watching a random two out of four of these mysteries, I should twice encounter lesbian couples who are integral to the action.
Oh, and Miss Marple is a sharp-tongued acidulous feminist to boot. I honestly don't recall it from the books, and frankly, it puts me off a bit to see it on the screen. Nevertheless, as with the Poirot movies, these are well done, Ms. McEwan is an interesting screen presence, and apart from these quibbles, an acceptable Miss Marple, and the mysteries are true to the books that gave them life (again apart from some of the overt lesbian themes, which may, in fact be present but to which I may be oblivious). Watch for yourself and derive an impression if you are familiar with these books. They are certainly with an hour and a half in comparison to much of the drivel churned out by television and movie producers of the present era.
Anyway, it was good to think back on A Murder is Announced even though I knew the murderer from about two minutes into the show until the end. It was interesting to see even the list Jane Marple produces before coming to the solution of the mystery. These really are, like the Poirot series, faithful to their mystery plot origin.
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August 14, 2005
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
All those of you older than about 40 have already seen it. I became reacquainted with it last week. I had forgotten how lovely, low-key, charming, and heart-felt this film was. In addition, the cinematography is simply stunning.
Do yourself a favor and see this soonest if you have not already.
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August 13, 2005
Request for Information--Wine Associations
Does anyone out there know the origin of the association of white wine with fish and red with beef? I know that nowadays not very many people pay attention to these rules, but they must have had an origin in some sort of gustatory or hygienic protocols. Does anyone have a source for this?
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:13 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 24, 2005
Digital Cameras
Are a blessing or a curse. Personally, I find them a tremendous blessing. I'm able to take pictures of hundreds of different things without worrying about developing them or how they will come out. As a result, I take far more pictures--not necessarily better pictures, though I'm working on that as well.
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July 22, 2005
The Forgotten
This little film has a couple of really nice jolts, an interesting plot that cooks along, and a very heartening "message." I'm not usually keen on such transparent vehicles for a message, but given that I like the message as much as I do, I can forgive this film for it.
The downside is that the acting isn't all that great, but it isn't so terrible as to be intrusive most of the time.
The plot: A woman who has lost her son discovers that little-by-little all the things that remind her of him are vanishing and all the people around her are forgetting him: his oftentimes babysitter, the father of one of her son's friends, her own husband. Is she going insane, or has she been insane all along and has she invented this child as the result of having miscarried a child? The question hovers over the first half of the film.
It is resolved in the seond half very satisfyingly with the ultimate message that nothing stands in the way of a mother's love--nothing. It was one of those movies that touched a biblical strain in me as I thought of the passage, "Though a mother forsake her child, I will not abandon you." If this is the strength and the passion of mere human love, what then is divine love? Also (and this may be me merely projecting) it seemed to me that there was a strong pro-life strain in the film. The ultimate message seemed to be that there is an indissoluble link between a mother and a child--something that would give one pause were one to consider trying to dissolve it.
A good movie, some very strong language from time to time, but otherwise probably okay for all older teens and recommended for all adults.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 11:57 AM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2005
Hotel Rwanda
Perhaps not one of the greatest films ever made, nevertheless a film everyone should see. Intense, but not overwhelming, the story recounts the efforts of one Hutu Hotel manager to save more than 1200 who flee to his Kigali hotel.
The scenes of the real horror in Rwanda are muted, but the tension is constant throughout the film. What I found myself asking again and again as I watched is "Why are we so incapable of recognizing one another as children of God? As children of our mothers, mothers we all love?" In the great slaughter of Rwanda, why could so few stop feeding the flames of fear and ask the questions--what real danger does a three-year-old pose?
Hate is powerful, devastating. Hotel Rwanda shows us that and shows us courage in a time of great despair. We need to keep foremost in our minds that people are people regardless of their skin color. I think about that and recognize that in the Rwandan scheme, my own precious child would have been seen as enemy. And they would not have stopped because of his age. Their goal was to completely eliminate a "tribe" that was an invention of the European rule. These people were not even really separate groups--merely the formerly have and have-nots.
Highly recommended for Adults and children over 14 or so (depending on the child.) One of those films to view and discuss.
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June 17, 2005
Sharkboy and Lava Girl
Okay, given the title you didn't expect much. Unfortunately for adults, you don't get much. What plot there is is utterly incoherent. Even the 3-D is not all that great.
But, as with all the Robert Rodriguez films aimed at children (see Spy Kids) the underlying message is the importance of the family and of staying together and overcoming obstacles in your way to success. Now, whether it was worth wading through the tedium of this film. . .
. . . Oh, but wait. Samuel loved it. He wanted to see it again and again. He loved the action and the effects. He loved the story. So apparently this film wasn't meant for me anyway, and my delight comes from Samuel's delight. I rejoice in his joy and so, were he staying around, we'd probably see it again. As he's on his way with his mother to Grandma's they'll probably go and see something else. (Willy Wonka I expect.) But then, so shall I.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 6, 2005
National Treasure
Loved it.
This is exactly the kind of film I like--a treasure hunt, based in history for a treasure hidden by the Masons. Clue left all over lead the protagonist finally to. . . well, now, that would be telling wouldn't it.
It is this premise that made The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons entertaining and interesting. No, I wasn't interested in the characters. No, the theology was rotten to the core. But it was the challenge of unravelling one after another a series of hidden clues that would reveal when all followed to their conclusion some amazing end result. (Now the end result in The DaVinci Code was idiotic and ill-conceived. As we all know, Mary Magdalene is not the Son of God, and the whole notion of her "divinity" in the book is a silly rip-off of earlier, ill-conceived speculations on divinity.)
But National Treasure (except for its fondness for Masons) has nothing of like alienating potential. The story is literally and figuratively a treasure hunt in which the founding fathers have left a trail of clues as to the location of a fabulous treasure rescued during the first Crusade by those who would become the Knights Templar. Most intruguing is the idea that the first clues to this treasure are encoded on the back of the original Declaration of Independence. (The only problem being that the original was a printed copy, not the manuscirpt copy in the hand of Thomas Jefferson with all of the strikeouts etc. And the "original" was one of multiple printings at the same time. But I suppose we needn't trouble ourselves over that because the Fathers, after they had determined which one would be preserved as the original could easily have done all that is suggested.
Anyway--a fun, fast-paced, exciting film. Recommended.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:27 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Cinderella Man
A while back there was a travelling meme that asked one to name five things that everyone around one was wild about but to which one was rather cool. I never participated because it strained my brain to think of five things. But here's two:
Ron Howard and Tom Hanks.
Ron Howard hasn't produced a thing since EdTV that even remotely interested me. And he goes on to produce progressively less interesting things with each new film. A Simple Mind (as I call it) had me turned off about six minutes into the film. Meeting the protagonist was such an agony of unpleasantness, that I decided I could do without the rest of the film (much to my wife's dismay). So too, I've already decided to forego the elusive pleasures of Cinderella Man. However, I can tell you that two women whose opinion I trust on these matters (while I may not necessarily agree) have both enthusiastically recommended it.
So if watching two people bash each other bloody is your cup of tea, it would seem the Cinderella Man is your tea-party in heaven.
On another front--Russell Crowe--an actor whom I can enjoy at times--is in a very long lull for me. The last two films I really enjoyed were Virtuosity and L. A. Confidential, both horrendously violent. Of recent date we have The Insider (ho hum), Gladiator (repulsive from the very first scene--so ahistorical as to cause an immediate gut-level reaction resulting in the set being turned off), A Simple Mind aka A Beautiful Mind yawn-fest extraordinaire dealing with an unpleasant man's unpleasant life, Master and Commander, which I typified by a dark and soggy Ivory/Merchant wannabe--I found both main characters unattractive and it is only on Talmida's enthusiastic recommendation that I retain any scrap of desire to actually read the books (and Talmida's recommendation is not to be underestimated as she liked both Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds and Mary Doria Russell's magnificent Children of God and (I assume) The Sparrow), and now Cinderella Man. Now, my opinion of these is not to reflect at all upon their worth as films. A great many have enjoyed them tremendously, and I derive from that that they are good, well-made films into which I simply haven't been invited. That's all right--I don't need to be as there is a great deal out in the world of cinema to see. But I do find it something of a trial that I cannot enjoy the opus of an actor whose work I really do like. (Personally, I find the man not in the least admirable. Things like this just add to my opinion of him. But he has legions of devoted fans who turn themselves into pretzels (my wife among them) explaining how the news didn't REALLY report what REALLY REALLY happened and he isn't REALLY all that bad at all, and besides he's misunderstood. I've learned to tune this stream of things out--consistent reportage reveals that the man has serious issues that need to be dealt with long-term. Let us hope that his family does not suffer with them as well.)
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A Series of Unfortunate Events
What can I say? I was amused despite myself. I wanted not to like it. I wanted to be able to pooh-pooh it. But I wasn't able to. It was so darkly amusing and so odd that it was endearing. Meryl Streep's character was particularly amusing, and the children, particularly the youngest were quite endearing.
Not great cinema, but very amusing. Samuel saw it and loved it. His one reaction was, "Count Olaf is worse than Vicki/." (Vicki is the babysitter on The Fairly Oddparents who is constantly plotting to take over the world and make Timmy's life miserable.) As a result, we've promised to change our babysitter from Vicki to the Count Olaf Child-Care Service. Meeting all your needs for unpleasantness since 2004.
Anyway, an amusing little film. I can't get enthusiastically behind a recommendation, because I suspect that enjoyment of such a film is an acquired taste. But for those who have acquired the taste: highly recommended--good light-brained fun.
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May 29, 2005
Madagascar
You're not going looking for great story. You are not going looking for profound resonance for the ages. You aren't going to learn something about human nature.
And it's a good thing.
On the other hand, you're going because a young one in the house sees paranoid penguin commandoes and knows that this is THE film to see. You're going because you want to see how a New York lion fares in Madagascar. You're going (although you may not know it yet) because life among the lemurs is a whole lot of fun punctuated by moments of extreme terror.
And you do after all like to "Move it, move it, you like to move it, move it."
And, if the little ones enjoy it, isn't it worthwhile after all? The answer, I'm looking for, of course is yes.
Recommended--good for an entire family of brainless fun.
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May 23, 2005
Long Black Train and others
I have not been, until recent date, a country music fan. I probably still am not by the standards of the dyed-in-the-wool fan. I probably won't be populating my collection with the greatest hits of Merle Haggard, Travis Tritt, or Tanya Tucker (although given the sea-change in my attitude of recent date, who knows?). However, I have acquired a taste for certain new country music. For example, almost anything by almost any of the women of country music--Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Gretchen Wilson, Julie Roberts, Katrina Elam, Terri Clark, Martina McBride. . .
So far the men still leave me mostly cold--they tend to have high tenor voices that grate on my nerves. But I've found a few that I really like. Tim McGraw (on and off), George Canyon, and most recently Josh Turner. What I like about Josh Turner is the deep, smoky, Johnny-Cash-Like voice, particularly demonstrated on the title track of this album.
"Long Black Train" is called a country-gospel song. Can't say that I really understand what all that means; however, it is compelling and interesting listening. Most particularly the chorus:
'Cause there's victory in the Lord, I say.
Victory in the Lord.
Cling to the Father and his Holy name,
And don't go ridin' on that long black train.
(By the way, if you need lyrics this is the place to go. Be warned, it has an unfortunate propensity for pop-ups, which Firefox puts in their place.)
There is something is this chorus that is just catchy. I can't remember much of the rest of the song, but I find myself humming along with the chorus and even singing it to myself. It's good to have the reminder that "there's victory in Lord." And it's nice for it to have a hook that sticks with you.
On a side note, yesterday I was listening to some Johnny Cash (yes, I know he's classified as country, but I've never really thought of him that way), an album called My Mother's Hymnbook. A song came on that had Samuel suddenly joining in from the back seat. I had never heard it before, but it was another one of those punchy Baptist Hymns that get inside your head and won't fall out. This one was called "Do Lord."
Do Lord, O do Lord, O do remember me,
Do Lord, O do Lord, O do remember me,
Do Lord, O do Lord, O do remember me,
Way beyond the blue.
(If you haven't heard it before you can listen to a rather polka-ized over-droned midi here.)
Well, this was one obvious evidence of where he's been to school. However, it was amazing to hear him say--"Play it again. Play it again." He loved hearing something he knew--and it's a peppy little song with a bright chorus, and because of its simplicity a real hook that gets inside and won't come out. Given today's music, I don't mind so much a few reminders of the Lord getting in there and rattling around in my head. Sure as shootin' few of those OCP hymnal things that stick around five seconds after you've sung it.
And finally, yesterday at Mass (we went to the youth Mass) we sand yet another song that Sam knew by heart.
Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom, pow'r and love
Our God is an awesome God
Not your traditional Latin Mass, but it sent me out of Church on fire and alive. Don't ask me why, but the music lifted me up and brought me into His presence in a way few things have done in a long time. I'll be among those who praise the glories of the diversity available in the Mass. So long as you don't mess with the prayers, I can take in a wide variety of Masses. I've been to a Calypso Mass, a Creole Mass, a Mariachi Mass, an African Drum Mass, and several Asian varieties of the Mass, and each was beautiful in its own right. Now, I'm not sure I'd want a steady diet of any of these--but the Youth Mass at our Church is just fine with me. Late enough in the day that I can actually sing, and giving praise to God at my "peak time" is surely worth the time and energy.
Okay, so enough of my peculiarities in the realm of music. If you haven't heard it, I'd recommend hitting up the local public library or a friend and listening to Josh Turner's wonderful album Long Black Train. I really enjoyed every song on it. And it's nice to hear a country music song mention Florida, even if it is only in terms of a place you want to get away from.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:42 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 18, 2005
On 2001: A Space Odyssey
A couple of days ago TSO expressed disappointment with 2001: A Space Odyssey. As the first movie I saw more than a couple of times in the theatre, 2001 holds a special place for me. But I think it is an important enough film in one filmmaker's opus that perhaps some explanation of what is going on (as I see it) might be in order.
According to the Internet Movie Database Stanley Kubrick, the director of 2001 has a surprisingly sparse but amazingly broad and penetrating film opus consisting of some 16 films, 11 of which could be considered "major." Starting with The Killing in 1956, Kubrick produced film after controversial film. 1957 saw Paths of Glory, an enigmatic statement about war and responsibility. This was followed up by the first "spectacle" in 1960's Spartacus. In 1962 Kubrick brought Lolita to the screen for the first time. Then, in 1964 we get the startling, amusing, but dark comedy Dr. Strangelove.This was followed by the work in question, 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, and immediately (in Later Kubrickian terms) by the stark, frightening, and alluring A Clockwork Orange. 1975 saw the bizarre and slow costume drama Barry Lyndon made from a relatively minor novel by William Thackeray. His opus ends with a progressively less successful threesome of films, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut.
Now, Kubrick appears to have a couple of major obsessions in his opus--one of these is the (mis)use of sexuality, the other is isolation. It is with the latter that 2001: A Space Odyssey deals most; and I think of all of his opus, this film is the most exacting delilneation of the nature of alienation. in his entire opus. If we watch his films, from Colonel Dax and Phillipe Paris in Paths of Glory ("Paths of glory lead but to the grave.") to William and Alice Harford in Eyes Wide Shut we see a string of character--Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, Dave Bowman, Alex the Droog, Jack Torrance, and so on, all of whom are completely alienated from all of those around them. Sometimes, as in 2001, the alienation is dramatically physical, other times it is within the intimacy of the marital relationship. The "repair" of the relationship at the end of Eyes Wide Shut really amounts to a simple seal on the alienation implicit throughout.
Like Orson Welles, Kubrick was a Hollywood outsider. So much so that he made his last couple of films from a studio in Great Britain. He was an outsider in part because he refused to compromise the vision of his films--and that vision is a starkly cool, perhaps even cold and minutely scrutiny of the human condition.
What I like so much about 2001: A Space Odyssey is the way the appeal can grow. From the first time I saw it at a very tender age and was just tremendously excited about the whole science fiction aspect, to my most recent viewing, in which I noted the extraordinary effect of the Ligeti music creating an eerie sort of landscape for the monolith and the tongue-in-cheek use of Strauss waltzes to convey the sense of lightness and freedom that is carefully restrained in microgravity, the film has something for the casual or the careful viewer of almost any age. When you are young you tend not to notice the coldness of Kubrick's view. But when you begin to really investigate the relationship of the Hal 9000 with the astronauts, you begin to see Kubrick's point. Hal and the entire Jupiter Mission spacecraft are human endeavors--human endeavors to achieve a god-like end. As such they "create" an environment and the results of human creation are the direct consequence of the fallenness of human nature. Hal is insane, the ultimate in human calculation and self-protection. And yet the systematic dismantling of Hal the deconstruction of his own creation at the hands of the "god" who created it is startling, sad, and frightening. This is the end of any human endeavor not guided by God. When man's reach exceeds his grasp without a heaven then there is literally hell to pay. The creation of the human mind unaided by grace will always end in destruction. I doubt Kubrick would have expressed the end of his vision in these terms, but the end of the film, which seems so charming and amazing--the birth of the transcendent "Star Child," which makes absolutely no sense at all is left much more vague than the quite direct end of the book, in which the Star Child proceeds to provoke nuclear crisis on Earth by setting off orbiting nuclear stations and satellites. We have seen the works of fallen man and when he is given the power of a god, what can one expect but more of the same. Many saw the end of Kubrick's film as transcendent and hopeful. I think Kubrick was masterful in not going beyond the floating transformed Bowman--in leaving the audience to derive what they can from the end of the film. What I once saw--the promise of transformation and the good that could result, I now see as the terror of transformation and the havoc men will wreak upon the world.
In many ways, Kubrick's films must be "read" as a whole. 2001 does not stand outside the line of his vision, but is the most definitive statement of certain aspects of it. Humanity is untrustworthy, grasping, destructive, and out-of-control. It is hardly surprising that the next film in the opus is perhaps his greatest expression of the destructive potential of humankind set free from any circumscribing bounds. A Clockwork Orange is not necessarily, as many would have it, a polemic against the state rehabilitation of criminals. Rather, I think it is the ultimate statement that fallen man is a criminal who cannot be redeemed by any human means because such redemption would only lead to destruction in some other form.
The greatness of Kubrick's 2001 is not merely a greatness in isolation. It is one facet of Kubrick directorial vision and his vision of humanity, fiercely and plangently illuminated by the experience of physical isolation and the abnormality of circumstances. It is the melding of story, framing of image, music, and each individual element of the film that gives 2001 the deep resonance it has as a film. It is unsurprising that, like most of Kubrick's work, it tends to leave many adult viewers cold. That is precisely what Kubrick was aiming at. If there is any word to describe every element of his major opus, that word would be "cold." Kubrick looks at humanity with a fierce flame that burns with the freezing of catabatic winds.
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May 10, 2005
Calendar Girls
A highly improbable, but true, story of a group of women in England who decide to pose for a calendar. The impetus is the death of one woman's husband from cancer. While undergoing treatment, she was often forced to remain in the inadequate waiting room. She thought that the Woman's Institute for the area should raise the money for a new couch for the room so it would be somewhat more comfortable.
Their previous efforts at fundraising were, shall we say, not terribly successful. One of the women hits upon the idea of the group of them posing nude for a calendar. Now all of these ladies are not, how shall we put it, in the first bloom of youth, although all are blessed with a certain beauty that comes only of age. So we think we've gotten outselves into a female version of The Full Monty. Not so at all--while there are obvious parallels, this story is unique, very amusing, and charming. In fact, the whole set-up for the first calendar shot is extremely funny, as are several other moments in the film.
Recommended for the adults in the house.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:15 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 18, 2005
Art and Artifacts of the Forbidden City
I continue to distill some of the joys of my Dallas trip. I see everything quickly, but it often takes a long time for me to process everything I have seen. I've written a short bit about some of the appalling nonsense one can indulge in at the Dallas Museum of Art, let me now indulge in some high praise for some of the truly wonderful things. Let me start with the special exhibit that I encourage everyone to get down and see.
The exhibition is called "Splendors of China's Forbidden City: The Glorious Reign of Emperor Qianlong." It runs in Dallas through 28 May, so you have a little over a month to get there and see it.
In my wayward youth I acquired a degree in English Literature with a double minor. Part of that double minor was in East Asian History. My particular emphasis was on Japan, but I also favored Song and Tang dynasty China (I also learned before the present Pinyin system of transliteration, which makes no sense to me whatsoever, I always have to run to my conversion chart to see if what I knew as Sung is Song or something else). I never thought much of the Qing dynasty--a bunch of post-Ming upstarts--not even Chinese ruling the glorious empire. It is in this dynasty--the Manchu dynasty that the stereotypical queue worn by the Chinese was developed as a sign of bondage and subservience to the foreign invaders.
However, this exhibition showed how the Manchus attempt to assimilate what was great in Chinese culture and improve upon it. I have seen a great many galleries of Asian art, but I have seen few things as truly splendid as some of those on display in Dallas.
The paintings are rich in color--far richer than the mostly wan and pale (but still lovely works) of Earlier Chinese eras. I thought at first that the paleness might have been an artifact of age, but indeed, it seems that the early Chinese aesthetic was based on these very subtle differences in shade. The Qing paintings, on the other hand, remind me more of Japanese paintings--particularly those of the Ukiyo-e school--vibrant colors and a great deal of action. Examples include a painting of the Emperor on a tiger hunt and some scenes of court life that are more reminiscent of the Japanese High Court paintings than those of China.
Also gorgeous are items such as the intricately carved and decorated Double Dragon throne.
While the Manchus were foreign invaders, they rapidly adapted Chinese customs. The Emperor Qianlong had a great number of wives and there was a ranking system among the wives that hearkens back to the Confucian rules for court Etiquette and societal ordering--The Book of Li or Rites, which intricately prescribes the number, style, and type of jade beads a person of a given rank might wear and the degree of subservience that must be shown depending on the difference in ranks of the people meeting. In an exhibit made up to show a dining room, we see three sets of vessels and utensils--one for the Emperor, one for a wife of the fourth rank and one for a wife of the fifth rank.
Speaking of jade beads, there are a number of really spectacular Jade sculptures that reveal a great deal about Chinese are and jade-work and about the limitations of the medium. The emperor Qianlong ordered a sculpture that is the second largest sculpture ever made from a single piece of jade.
Also fascinating are the intricately worked fabric and clothing. Some of the stitching and the designs are unbelievable and beautiful, and of course some of these clothes were worked in real gold thread.
One of the most poignant exhibits shows a large throne with a small stele on it. The stele is said to capture the spirit of Qianlong still reigning.
If you live in Dallas, and particularly if you have children, you owe it to yourself and your family to go and enjoy this exhibition. The cost includes the price of a recorded guided tour (personally, I hate those things, but a lot of people really seem to get a lot more out of their visits by using them), which is a real bargain considering that most such exhibitions I have been to require a separate fee for the recorded tour. I can heartily recommend this as one of the very best exhibits of Chinese art and artifacts that I have seen outside of museums entirely dedicated to Asian antiquities. Do yourself a favor and take it in if you have the opportunity--and don't forget the little ones. The earlier one starts an appreciation for the great achievements of art and culture, the more likely it is that they will become a permanent and enriching part of any person's life.
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April 13, 2005
A Trip to the Dallas Museum of Art
I never did report on the wonders of the Qing dynasty exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art. And I'm not sure I will at this point, because first I must report on the final hall we looked at in the museum, an example of the "emperor's new clothes" school of art.
Walking down a series of steps we encounter a fluorescent light bulb stuck in a bale of hay, along with several other meaningful and profound statements. My companion's comment on the matter I thought apt (he could say it being a native son), "After all, we are in Texas."
Nothing could have prepared us for the walk through the door into the next gallery which was an exhibition by a single artist an "installation" called, I think, Stations of Dissolution. The first thing that greets you is a large black inset pool or black reflective box that looks like a pool. In this same room there is a kind of brick-lined hole in the wall.
Wandering down the connecting corridor and looking at photographs and sketches on the wall, you emerge into what seems to be a very minimalist living room scene complete with impaled dead stuff fox on the floor--transfixed by large quartz-shaped crystals with remnants of other crystals scattered around. There is a pot-bellied stove and the same brick-lined hole in the wall along with a rocking chair. I also seem to remember a shot-gun--but I wouldn't swear to that.
After the initial surprise of the thing, the only reaction one could muster up is amusement that the creative directors of a museum who would buy and display such rubbish and think it art. Modern art has abandoned all pretense at art. Much of it exists merely to shock a reaction out of an audience. Despite what they think, the primary purpose of art is not necessarily to inspire an emotion. While great art may well do so, it isn't the primary purpose of the endeavor. Nor is its primary purpose selfishly oriented. That is, it isn't about "expressing oneself," at least not exclusively. One must express oneself in a fashion intelligible to other or no expression has taken place. Your whole purpose is undermined. This little exhibition was an exercise in self-undermining. Will I remember it? Probably, but it will take an act of will to recall it so that I can hold it up as an example of what not to do as a creative artist. Just as with experimental novels delivered unbound so that the pages can be shuffled and read in any order, this is a kind of creation doomed to failure, and rightfully so. It was even more risible than the piles of brick and sand and the mirrors covered by pebbles.
(On the other hand, Dallas residents who can afford to do so should certainly hand over the money for the magnificent exhibition of Chinese Artifacts as well as some of the great antiquities available throughout the rest of the building. I'll try to write a bit about the Qing dynasty exhibition (From the Forbidden City) in a day or so.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:23 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 11, 2005
Finding Neverland
A reworking of reality that never manages to convince--it tries so hard to let us feel that a man living the life of a child is perfectly ordinary, respectable even. However, there is a disturbing undercurrent throughout the film.
For one thing, the story sets off on the wrong foot by distorting the reality of Barrie's relationship with the Davis-Llewellyn children. It does this by giving us the family with four (rather than five) sons headed by the mother Sylvia--the father has died of cancer of the jaw before the story begins. In fact, when Barrie took up his relationship with the family the patriarch Arthur was alive and thoroughly disapproving.
The unfortunate circumstances of the deaths of some of the children also raise questions about Barrie's ultimate influence. Michael drowned at Oxford and Peter ended up committing suicide in 1960.
The film sanitizes this story and manipulates us into believing that all of the events portrayed were acceptable and even respectable, that it was what was best for the boys and that living a life of irresponsible pursuit of other people's children with concomitant neglect of one's own family is a reasonable and even loving thing to do.
While beautifully filmed and acted, there are so many disjuncts with reality and with the truly dark things that permeate this story that the film failed for me. Rather than facing some of the difficulties, we are given the romanticized, washed-clean version, in which divorce is just fine so long as it frees one to pursue his or her personal expression.
Perhaps I read the film too closely. As much as I am inclined to really like Johnny Depp, I found this film disconcerting and disturbing. I do not recommend it.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:12 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
April 6, 2005
His Own Words
The Holy Father's special encouragement and pastoral counsel to Artisits:
from Letter to Artists
Pope John Paul II (the Great)It is important to recognize the distinction, but also the connection, between these two aspects of human activity. The distinction is clear. It is one thing for human beings to be the authors of their own acts, with responsibility for their moral value; it is another to be an artist, able, that is, to respond to the demands of art and faithfully to accept art's specific dictates.(2) This is what makes the artist capable of producing objects, but it says nothing as yet of his moral character. We are speaking not of moulding oneself, of forming one's own personality, but simply of actualizing one's productive capacities, giving aesthetic form to ideas conceived in the mind.
The distinction between the moral and artistic aspects is fundamental, but no less important is the connection between them. Each conditions the other in a profound way. In producing a work, artists express themselves to the point where their work becomes a unique disclosure of their own being, of what they are and of how they are what they are. And there are endless examples of this in human history. In shaping a masterpiece, the artist not only summons his work into being, but also in some way reveals his own personality by means of it. For him art offers both a new dimension and an exceptional mode of expression for his spiritual growth. Through his works, the artist speaks to others and communicates with them. The history of art, therefore, is not only a story of works produced but also a story of men and women. Works of art speak of their authors; they enable us to know their inner life, and they reveal the original contribution which artists offer to the history of culture.
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March 22, 2005
Ju-On
As I had guessed when I reviewed The Grudge some days back, Ju-On is infinitely creepier and infinitely less lucid. The conventions of Japanese Cinema, rather like the convention of the Noh play, are not familiar to the Western mind. As a result, things that may make perfect sense to a Japanese audience and may be perfectly clear, are less that clear here.
However, the story in the Japanese version is much, much less straightforward, and much more indirect. In fact, it seems without the structure offered by the American version to be an absolute muddle of a film. We don't know why what is happening is happening. There are subtle hints given about midway through the film, but no explicit treatment as there is in the American film. In a sense this increases greatly the disturbing influence and undercurrents of the film. That what is happening is obscure--that people meet terrible fates for no discernable reason, gives a deeper sense of chaos and darkness to the world-view.
Ju-On is instructive in that it lets us into the extremes of the modern mindset. This is nihilism spelled out. Life is meaningless and ruled by powers and influences that we don't even begin to understand and there is no hope. Those are the disturbing and pervasive elements of Ju-On and The Grudge. The good of this is that it lays bare the pernicious lie that is the subtext of so much that happens in our society--from the pathetic tragedy and blindness that surround the Terri Schiavo case, to our constant desire for longer life distilled from death. A film like this one, while no masterpiece, makes clear what we live out, and the wise amongst us fight against, in our modern absurdist/nihilist world.
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March 14, 2005
The Grudge
Horror films from Japan are wonderful because they tend not to head straight for the gross-out splatter effect but for the atmosphere. The Grudge is an American-sponsored remake of a Japanese film. This remake was directed by the director of the original and keeps its original Japanese location. I suppose the effort was directed at making the film accessible to wider audiences by avoiding the double whammy of "Read-the-film" and bad dubbing.
What I like best about Japanese Horror films, which include the film Ringu from which The Ring was derived, is that they are surreal, atmospheric, and never quite complete. While The Grudge makes better sense than The Ring at the end, you still get the sense of things not quite wrapped up. You don't really know the full back-story, nor do you find out what really happened to precipitate the curse that seems to march on so relentlessly. There is so much that is still vague and mysterious, while not seeming incomplete, and that is what makes this film so satisfying. Unlike The Ring that seemed to end with an end to the curse that some revives itself a la Freddy or Jason, this film makes no pretense of an end and you are given a reasonable explanation of why.
The Japanese sensibility, when relatively untrampled by western influences, will seem rather naturally surreal to a western audience. The Japanese way of thinking and even perhaps perceiving is such that while we can appreciate it, we can have no deep understanding of what all of the currents. Thus, it comes off as disjointed and surreal. Add to that the very complex time-scheme of this movie with its in medias res beginning and multiple cuts forward and back to gradually peel back layers of the story and reveal all of the nuances. There must be seven or eight chronological jumps and juxtapositions through the film creating even a greater sense of disorientation (no pun intended).
Well worthwhile for adults and older teens, much too intense for younger members of the audience. If you want to spend an evening with creeping unease, this is the movie for you.
Recommended.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:09 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Robots
If you can handle the underlying message (which is not laid on too thick) Robots is an utterly delightful and super-fast-paced film that children will enjoy and adults will appreciate. The gags come a mile a minute and include everything from slapstick to verbal and visual humor. It moves much too fast to take in everything the first time you see it.
The plot is slight, but amusing. A young robot grows up to be an inventor. He goes to the big city to meet Big Weld, the benevolent patriarch of the largest inventing firm in the world, his motto You can shine whatever you are made of, representative of his entire approach to business. Of course something has happened and Big Weld has vanished, and nasty, greedy corporate types have take over and instituted a new motto Why be you when you can be new? The film centers around the conflict.
The animation is superior. Done by the team that gave us Ice Age, this is a vastly superior work; however, the trailer and lead-in from a new ice-age film is extremely amusing and functioned as a introductory cartoon as well as a trailer.
If you have kids, go and see it, they will love it. If you do not, go and see it, you will enjoy it. A wonderful, light entertainment.
Highly recommended.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:57 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 9, 2005
Clean Films
Y'all may or may not be aware of a little organization called Clean Films, which takes popular Hollywood movies and reedits them to remove offensive content.
I'm of several minds about this service. First, how do they get away with it? I suppose Hollywood favors anything that makes more money, but I'd be surprised at the director who would release his or her film to be cut by someone else according to their standards. Does anyone have any idea how this arrangement is done?
But on the other hand, what a pleasure it would be to be able to bring a film into the house and know that the whole family could watch it without having to worry about language or nudity or any number of other things that can crop up in films as "mild" as PG.
It does seem an infringement on artist's rights, on the other hand, it is such a fine service to families with young children. A dilemma.
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March 2, 2005
Bright Young Things
I don't know quite what to make of this film. Having heard of its advent, I read Waugh's Vile Bodies and while reading wondered how in the world one would make a movie of it. Like A Handful of Dust the episodic quirkiness of Waugh's writing seemed not to lend itself to filming.
While this is marginally better than A Handful of Dust as a film, I'm not certain it is successful for a variety of reasons. Although there is the hint of the inferno implicit in the introductory scenes, much of Waugh's sharper material has been left out of the movie. The ultimate fate of Agatha, for instance, is completely glossed over. We don't see enough of Mrs. Ape to see what a fraud and a sham she is. And finally, Stephen Fry has somehow crafted from Waugh's rather bleak book a "happy ending," which is in no way really happy for anyone.
I would have to watch the film again. And fortunately, it is extremely watchable--the cinematography is quite fine and there is much too much going on at any moment in the film for me to be certain I have captured it all. But overall, I would say that it was a good attempt at capturing the essence of the book, but it is ultimately subversive of Waugh's intent--a devastating criticism of modernism and of the shallow, empty life of between-the-wars England.
Worth seeing with the caveat that you shouldn't expect to see Waugh here.
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February 26, 2005
Another Testament to My Profound Ignorance
(but, by the Grace of God, I'm recovering.)
Following on posts at Against the Grain, I began to wonder about rock music. I confess a point or more of disagreement with the good Cardinal on the matter--but it was more an off-hand comment about Country Music that spawned this confession.
I have never cared for country music--far too whinyand twangy to my ears. Yes, I liked the occasional song here and there and sometimes I have liked a performer, more for their personality than for their music. However, my feeling about country music is summed up in the nausea I feel every time I hear Billy Ray Cyrus and his "Achy Breaky Heart."
However, another off-hand remark, this time in a conversation with a friend, spawned rethinking. This friend spends a great deal of time listening to the likes of Nine-Inch Nails and Ministry. I have found that I have gone beyond the need for these expressions of rage. However, he said that recently he had been buying a lot of Hank Williams Senior and Patsy Cline. And that got me thinking.
Thinking to the point where I've actually done something--borrowing a Patsy Cline disc from the library. Now, I know you all will find this hard to believe, but I have kept myself deliberately ignorant of the likes of Patsy Cline for much of my life. I heard her name and tossed her in the Loretta Lynn bucket and said, "Not for me."
Well imagine my surprise when I found out that I had tossed her in the wrong bucket. Yes, there's the occasional yodel and the once-in-a-while twang--but Patsy Cline can really sing and she sings honky-tonk bluesy sorts of things that are absolutely gorgeous.
So, I'm happy again to admit my ignorance and to find that as I move forward in life, God works hard on me to round off the rough edges.
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February 21, 2005
Son of the Mask
Yes, I know. I groaned when I saw the preview in the theatres and I asked myself why this was necessary. And when Samuel said he wanted to see it, I said to myself, absolutely not.
Oh, well, so much for resolutions. And thank God for little boys. This is one of those rare films when the trailer really does not do justice to the sheer ingenuity and hilarity of some of the slapstick episodes throughout the film.
I laughed through more than half of it, and I was a grudging attendee. Most particularly amusing were Samuel's reactions to many of the high-energy scenes. But every father who has been left alone with an infant for the first time, every parent who wonders if their children really are out to drive them crazy--this is the film for you.
Naturally the humor was such as to amuse a six year old. Lot's of body fluids, loud noises, and intense swirling action. But the theatre I was in had more than its share of grown-ups and everyone seemed to be laughing themselves silly.
The plot is onion-skin thin, but the main point is about paying attention to those you love. So its got a great many good lessons for children, along with the body fluids, and you won't be bored. If the film is a turn-off, watch your kids and see what they see.
Recommended.
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Because of Winn Dixie
Charming, slight, and very, very interesting to young boys (at least). The story of a girl living with her preacher father in rural Florida. She takes in a stray and learns a great deal about dealing with the strays, the unwanted, and the abandoned in our lives.
The film does seem to suggest that we do well not to rush to judgment on those who are different. Also it teaches that we should not listen to gossip.
The dog is cute and the young female actress is quite a pretty little girl if not yet a top-notch actress. Adults might revel in seeing some favorites that have been missing from the scene too long--Eva Marie Saint and Cicely Tyson--both of whom do a splendid job.
Like the "Litmus Lozenges" featured in the film, it is sweet and sad in about an equal mix, with a happy ending and a goofy dog.
Recommended.
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February 18, 2005
Listening--"Missing. . ."
Listening to John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls, a remarkable Ives-like remembrance of the tragedy of September 11, 2001. There are formless voids like those proposed by Ives in The Unanswered Questions, Reich-like paraphrases, particularly recalling the remarkable completely vocal tape-loop minimalist pieces using phrases from interviews. There are Ligeti-like choral voicings, often indistinguishable in what they are saying. Overall, a haunting piece--remarkable.
"I see buildings. . . water. . . buildings. . . water . . . "
All moving upward through grief to rebirth.
I can't say much for the transmigration of souls (nor for the whippoorwills that wait to snatch them away. But the piece of music is interesting and worthy of your attention.
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January 28, 2005
A Million Dollar Warning
From a friend concerning a movie I have yet to see advertisements for--nevertheless, sometihng for everyone to be aware of:
I don't know about you, but in my neck of the woods we're being inundated with radio (and although I haven't seen any, probably TV) ads for Million Dollar Baby, a Oscar-nominated movie, directed by Clint Eastwood, about a 30-something woman who wants to be a boxer. The trailer and most of the movie reviews make it sound like a female version of Rocky, but it's not, at least not entirely. As I found out yesterday in a column by Debbie Schlussel, the movie has a right to die agenda, an agenda that is being kept well-hidden by its promoters and reviewers. And a column that I found today by Tony Medley made it clear that it's blatantly anti-Catholic in other ways as well.
So I'm passing this information on to you and others so that you're aware of the latent propaganda. At least in the case of Fahrenheit 9/11 you knew what you were getting yourself in for before you paid for the tickets. I'm very disturbed by the fact that this movie seems hell-bent on manipulating people into accepting euthanasia.
My most sincere thanks to the contributor.
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January 27, 2005
The Village
What a silly, albeit engaging and sometimes interesting, piece of hokum this is. I suppose those more knowledgable in film and semiotics have already combed through the frames finding symbol upon symbol and constructing much (á la The Matrix) in the way of religious message and intent from this preposterous and stilted little vignette.
You all may have seen it already--people live in a village deep in the woods apparently some time in the 1800s judging by what's available to them. The woods are filled with creepy red-cloaked beasts that no one in the village has had the courage to stand up to even though they had to come through those self-same woods to establish this village. One of the villagers is attacked and needs medicines from "The Towns" and so an intrepid blind woman is sent out to brave the woods and bring back the medicine.
There's a whole series of things about the colors red and yellow and white, banners and pennants and all sort of rigamarole concerning certain rituals of the townspeople. There are some spooky moments. But largely there are people speaking in a highly ornate and contrived version of English, occasionally sounding utterly ludicrous.
The odd thing about it was that while all of this was true, I did enjoy the film. The director makes a beautiful film and some lasting images even when he is off-target (as he has been in at least two of his four films. Of the first I can say nothing having never seen it.) He tries so hard and his films are so bristling with symbolism and fraught with intended meanings its hard not to admire the effort even when it falls flat.
So, whether you pay attention to the symbols or not, dive into the alternative meanings or not. This is an enjoyable, fun film and worth your time.
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January 13, 2005
Moore and Gibson
Via Verbum Ipsum
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January 6, 2005
Via Mixolydian Mode
Given that it is a very straightforward rendering, it might be improved by simply allowing repeated numbers to lengthen the duration of a note to get more of a sense of rhythm and variation. But an interesting exercise.
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The Day After Tomorrow
Wretched science, wretched excess, wretched Hollywood preaching, wretched plot, wretched characters.
But still and all it was nice to see Los Angeles utterly blown away by super-ultra-gigantic melding tornadic vortices.
Stupid beyond words--showing us how global warming triggers an ice age (Huh?) is six weeks or less.
Not up to the sheer comedic stupidity of that greatest of all idiotic science films Dante's Peak but still, there's enough bad science and bad preaching to provide a few good belly laughs. Somehow, I suspect that wasn't what the filmakers were aiming for, but this one will rate very highly in my hall of shame.
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December 3, 2004
Gaudy Night The Screen Adaptation
The dullness and sheer shrewish repulsiveness of the book is faithfully brought to the screen. So faithfully I was only able to endure the first episode before turning it off. Harriet Vane isn't as odious as those with whom she associates--but what a clutch of harpies.
Now, I know that this was Sayer's version of A Room of One's Own arguing for the possible academic integrity of women studying at a university. But it is an unfortunate venue populated with the Oscar Wilde version of a fox-hunt--"The unspeakable chasing the inedible."
In case you haven't noticed, I'm not a fan of Gaudy Night as Tom noted, I constitute a very small (but vocal) minority of Sayers' fans. On the other hand, I am truly a Sayers' fan and only reluctantly a partisan of Lord Peter Wimsey, who I generally find as apalling as the characters in an Evelyn Waugh novel. (Can't wait to read Black Mischief.)
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December 2, 2004
Follow-up to Vile Bodies
Terry Teachout has a review of the film version in this month's Crisis. While I'm not certain I agree with some of his statements about the book, I am more interested in seeing the film now.
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November 22, 2004
"Absorbent and Yellow and Porous Is He. . . "
The long awaited advent of that Art House film was greeted by yours truly and Son almost on the day of its arrival.
Yes, Spongebob Squarepants:The Movie (Bigger. Better. More Absorbent.) is with us in full cinematic glory, and indeed glorious it is--from the live action pirate beginning to the post credits live action clearing of the theater, every moment is a triumph.
Seriously--it's not for the very young. One woman near me brought her son, who may have been three or four and there were some moments that would have been frightening (especially given the big screen) to one so young. However, if your munchkins are in the 5-whatever age-group, Spongebob provides exactly what they need to be semi-permenantly wound-up.
Except for Ellyn, I've anecdotally notices a tremendous divide on the part of Spongebob, and it showed in the attendees at this theatre--they were overwhelmingly male. Some mothers reluctnatly trudged in to endure the high-pitched voices and the hyperactivity of Spongebob and Patrick, but most of the cause for the attendance was male. Linda despises Spongebob and is constantly lamenting that Samuel can't see Bugs Bunny and friends. But those of us who have come to know and love Spongebob know that the secret is in his kindness and his irrepressible good cheer even in the worst of circumstances.
The Spongebob movies is everything you've come to expect of Spongebob and more--as the advertising line says: Bigger. Better. More Absorbent.
So it you're of a Spongebob mind, grab a kid and run for the nearest theater. If not, you may want to pay the exorbitant rates and become acquainted with the residents of Bikini Bottom because you are missing out on some generally pleasant, exceptionally generous and kind (if somewhat below the average wattage) company.
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November 3, 2004
Monster
I was surprised at how well this film succeeded for me, and how strongly it reinforced my conviction that the death penalty is in nearly all cases unjust. You are well aware that this is the movie for which Charlize Theron (next to Halle Berry definitely in my icongraphic hall of Most Beautiful Women in the World--well there's a few others including (still) Sophia Loren, etc. but that's for antoher post) went plain. But not only did she "go plain," she also demonstrated an amazing acting ability. Who'd have guessed even after such films as The Astronaut's Wife?
In the film Theron plays Aileen Wouros, a down-and-out prostitute who is pushed over the edge and begins to kill the men who solicit her services. Ms. Wouros was a real person who was executed in 2002, an action I protested to the Governor and it consituted the first vigil I maintained. (Although being who I am, I didn't join any large crowd of people doing so. I prefered my vigil in the silence of my home in prayer.)
What struck me in the course of the film was how I was able to sympathize with the plight of this woman who had everything taken from her and was expected to survive, to make it on her own. Don't get me wrong, almost every choice she made was wrong--from the very beginning. However, the film shows the consequences of not reaching out to help people who find themselves in this situation. It shows the consequences of "victimless" crimes such as prostitution. It shows the consequences of our refusal to love even the unlovable, of our insistence upon meeting a set of arbitrary social standards before you are acceptable. The tragic irony of the film is that just when someone is able to reach out and try to help, Wouros has reached the end of the line.
I expected to be horrified by the violence in the film, and in a sense I was, but it was not the violence coming from Wouros, is was the violence directed at her. She is not a likeable person. She is not a person I would want to engage on any level. And yet, it is precisely that kind of person we are called as Christians to pay the most attention to. We are not allowed our preferences in whom we serve. I was reminded of this over and over because part of the story has a very deeply personal significance which I cannot share.
The film touched me and saddened me. I do have to admit that I was so assaulted by the language used that I came very, very close to turning it off on several occasions. But I stayed the course and I'm glad that I did. A superior film on many levels.
Recommended, but language and violence pretty much limits any household viewing.
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October 30, 2004
Jack-In-The-Green
You know, it's good to have reminders from faery-lore and other places that what we see is not necessarily all there is. We need the reminder to the arrogance of science that the empirical is not the end of reality--nor is it even the REALLY important part.
So:
from Songs from the Wood "Jack-in-the-Green"
Jethro TullThe rowan, the oak and the holly tree
Are the charges left for you to groom.
Each blade of grass whispers Jack-In-The-Green.
Oh Jack, please help me through my winter's night.
And we are the berries on the holly tree.
Oh, the mistlethrush is coming, Jack,
Put out the light.
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October 19, 2004
For Don--Tam Lin--Translations with Balladry Notes
Tam-Lin translations of the ballad with some notes on its musical history. I'd love to hear some of these sometime--if you're so inspired.
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July 26, 2004
The XII. Wonders of the World
A little late for his taste, but nevertheless, for Don.
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June 14, 2004
Reviewing Kill Bill Part I
If you care to take a look, I posted some thoughts--not particularly deep, nor particularly informative on this fill over at Popcorn Critics
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June 7, 2004
Uselss Thought of the Day
Is there anything quite so lovely as the first movement of the second Brandenburg Concerto? From earliest times I remember this piece of music affecting me profoundly and giving me a wonderful sense of living in a world intimately connected to its past.
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May 14, 2004
Reviewing Princess Mononoke
See here.
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April 12, 2004
Patty Smith, Arthur Rimbaud, and Jesus
Who'd have thought that the person who penned these immortal lyrics:
Because the Night
Patty SmithTake me now baby here as I am
Hold me close, try and understand
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe
Love is a banquet on which we feed
Come on now try and understand
The way I feel when I'm in your hands
Take my hand come undercover
They can't hurt you now,
Can't hurt you now, can't hurt you nowBecause the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to lust
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us
started her work because of the man who penned this:
from "Le Bateau Ivre"
Arthur RimbaudComme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles,
Je ne me sentais plus tir par les haleurs :
Des Peaux-Rouges criards les avaient pris pour cibles
Les ayant clous nus aux poteaux de couleurs.J'tais insoucieux de tous les quipages,
Porteur de bls flamands et de cotons anglais.
Quand avec mes haleurs ont fini ces tapages
Les Fleuves m'ont laiss descendre o je voulais.Dans les clapotements furieux des mares,
Moi, l'autre hiver, plus sourd que les cerveaux d'enfants,
Je courus ! Et les Pninsules dmarres
N'ont pas subi tohu-bohus plus triomphants.La tempte a bni mes veils maritimes.
Plus lger qu'un bouchon j'ai dans sur les flots
Qu'on appelle rouleurs ternels de victimes,
Dix nuits, sans regretter l'oeil niais des falots !Plus douce qu'aux enfants la chair des pommes sres,
L'eau verte pntra ma coque de sapin
Et des taches de vins bleus et des vomissures
Me lava, dispersant gouvernail et grappin.
"The Drunken Boat" [Le Bateau ivre] (1871)As I was floating down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:
gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets,
nailing them naked to coloured stakes.I cared nothing for all my crews,
carrying Flemish wheat or English cotton.
When, along with my haulers, those uproars stopped,
the Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.Into the ferocious tide-rips, last winter,
more absorbed than the minds of children, I ran!
And the unmoored Peninsulas never
endured more triumphant clamourings.The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.
Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves
which men call the eternal rollers of victims,
for ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights!Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children,
the green water penetrated my pinewood hull
and washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains
and the splashes of vomit, carrying away both rudder and anchor.
And what would either the poet laureate of the punks or the premier French poet claimed by the GLB have to teach us about Jesus?
I wouldn't think they would have much to say. However, as I was listening to an interview this morning on NPR, Ms. Smith had something very thought-provoking to say. She said that she started writing her poetry and doing her work because she wanted to do for others what Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan had done for her. She consciously set about providing for others a role-model. Not for everyone mind, but for a small portion of the population.
It occurred to me, what if every Christian thought that way? What if each of us set about deliberately becoming for others what Jesus is to us? In other words, what might happen if we were to live out our baptismal promises and our Easter gift? We could serve as Jesus served us. We could bring people to knowledge of God. (Mind you all of this through grace, but nevertheless with us as active and willing partiipants.)
Wouldn't that transform the world? Rather than bickering and dickering and criticizing and complaining, what if we set about doing something to change the way things were? What if we helped only one person a day? What if we were of service only to a single person in our whole lives? Still, we would have done part of what we are here to do. Our first vocation is to love God most of all. But after that, we are called to bring others to this same love.
So, what if we were to be like Patty Smith and delibereately set about changing the world through imitating our role model. What might happen if we were to behave as though we had internalized the reality of His resurrection? It is precisely the answer to this question that causes nearly every totalatarian regime to crack down on Christianity. If we were to live our belief rather than just talking it to death, we would change the world in a revolutionary way. A revolution of God's love, not of blood and violence.
Now, that is not to say that we would ever change human nature or solve all of te problems that face us. However, we'd be a lot closer than we are now.
So perhaps we should give just a little thought to letting Jesus be not only our guide but our model. And perhaps we should consider each day how we can reflect just a little bit more of Him and a little bit less of ourselves.
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April 3, 2004
Popcorn Critics Entries
If you enjoy that sort of thing, see Popcorn Critics for my recent reviews of Billabong Odyssey and Le Conte de Monte Cristo.
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March 25, 2004
St. Teresa Benedicta on the Role of Artists
from The Science of the Cross: Introduction
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)But--in contrast to a holy realism--the artist's receptivity to impressions is one that the world views in the light of a particular domain of values too readily at the expense of other values. This results in a particular sort of responsive behaviors. It is characteristic of the artist to transform into image anything that causes an interior stirring and demands to be expressed exteriorly. Image here is not to be restricted to the visual arts; it must be understood to refer to any artistic expression including the poetic and musical. It is simultaneously image (Bild) in which something is presented and structure (Gebilde) as something formed into a complete and all-encompassing world of its own. Every genuine work of art is in addition a symbol (Sinnbild) whether or not this is its creator's intention, be he naturalist or symbolist.
It is a symbol: that is, it comes from that infinite fullness of meaning (Sinn) into which every bit of human knowledge is projected to grasp something positive and speak of it. It does so in such a manner, in fact, that it mysteriously suggests the whole fullness of meaning, which for all human knowledge is inexhaustible. Understood this way, all genuine art is revelation and all artistic creation is sacred service.
Despite this, it is clear that there is a danger in an artitistic inclination, and not only when the artist lacks an understanding of the sacredness of his task. The danger lies in the possibility that in constructing the image, the artist proceeds as though there were no further responsibility than producing it. What is meant here can be demonstrated most clearly by the example of images of the cross. There will sacrcely be a believieng artist who has not felt compelled to portray Christ on the cross or carrying the cross.
But the Crucified One demands from the artist more than a mere portrayal of the image. He demands that the artist, just as every other pesron, follow him: that he both make himself and allow himself to be made into an image of the one who carries the cross and is crucified.
(Note to T.S.--this definitely adds to Mr. Gibson's accomplishment in that the media excoriation is a definitive image of the One scourged. I too have little use for the detractors from the film who see only what they wish to see.)
The other aspect of responsibility for the art is too readily dismissed by modernists and postmodernists. Once the work is created they disavow any reactions or results of the art. We get crucifixes in urine and dung-smeared Madonnas and outrage when such works of "art" are criticized or publically declaimed. We get eminem saying that his lyrics encouraging hatred of women and of homosexuals aren't there to inspire hatred (then, what, pray tell, are they there for, because they certainly don't edify or entertain); we get filmakers who produce films that "tell the truth" (or so much of it as they are capable of seeing) who say they are not responsible for offending, hurting, or inspiring acts of terrorism and hatred. Nonsense. The artist's responsiblity does not stop at the production of the work. This is part of my problem with Stockhausen's comments after 9/11. The artist is also responsible for some interpretations of the work. Stravinsky was not responsible for the battles that broke out over The Rite of Spring but he was responsible for the music that resulted from his work. An artist cannot bear the burden of responsibility for every crackpot interpretation of his work, but as Mr. Gibson once again amply demonstrates, he must in some way answer for it--publicly or before God. Personally, I'd rather face the public than offend my God.
St. Teresa Benedicta goes on to point out another crucial responsibility of the sacred artist and that is to live out the life he is called to. Just as every one of us is called to imitate Christ in His mysteries, so too the artist is called to so. And perhaps an artist is called to do so more publicly because their work is in the realm of the public. That is, when we as individuals think matters less in some very real ways, than what those who have access to the media think and do. Thus, we have a personal, community, and familial responsibility to imitate Christ, but the more public the figure, the greater the burden of responsibility for the proper representation of Christlikeness. This is why so many are hurt and disappointed when Christian artists do patently non-Christian things. We have an example before us presently that needs our constant prayer that the party involved realize the implications of his action and learn to do the right thing rather than buying into the lies of the culture of death.
So the artist's work is a sacred undertaking because it draws our attention to Meaning and the One who is inexhaustible. And also the artist's responsibility is commensurately greater as his work is more popular.
All of this from an introduction to a book about St. John of the Cross and his doctrine. One can readily see why St. Teresa Benedicta is so much lauded and admired for her intelligence and her thought. And The Science of the Cross is her EASY book.
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March 15, 2004
Orson Scott Card on The Passion
I love much of Card's work (Lost Boys being one notable exception). Here's a nice review I picked up on from several places--Curt Jester (?) and Summa Mamas. Enjoy.
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March 5, 2004
The Passion--A Dissenting View
Yes, I saw it.
And I hadn't planned to blog on it. But I feel that I must to help those who are in the same place I am.
I deeply admire Mr. Gibson's devotion and his dedication to bringing this moving icon to life. I think it may serve as a devotional aid to a great many people. He may have blessed millions with his work.
However, I saw the film and was largely unmoved. I can't explain why (except perhaps I didn't associate the person on the screen with the Jesus I know and love.) I had no time to adjust to this person as Jesus, so this never meant for me what it meant for many others.
I was moved three times in the film--the scene where Mary runs to Jesus when He falls, the scene where she kisses Him, and the scenes of Simon the Cyrene.
Now to certain points with which I am in agreement--(1) the violence in the film was not "over the top" brutality, I rather think that it was a good representation of what the whole event might have been like; (2) I cannot see the supposed anti-semitism of the film. There was one particularly bad group of people who were Jewish, the rest of the lot didn't seem at all bad. Even some of the Romans seemed okay.
I know this film was a wonderful devotional exercise for Mr. Gibson. I am certain that it will lift many hearts to God. It lifted my own because I saw how much those who knew Him loved Him. But the depiction of His death did not inspire me to new heights of devotion. But I came out with the strong reassurance that God loves me.
Two points that I must share in the interest of full disclosure: When the devil and its baby-thing were wandering around the scourging scene I had to clap both hands over my mouth to avoid disturbing others with my laughter--it was so gothicky/bad-horror movie stuff. So too with the scene with Gesmas. And that swelling, manipulative, historical-movie/Ben-Hurry soundtrack was a real turn-off. I wonder what the film might have been like without it. It might be interesting to see.
But I don't write this to discourage anyone from going. I think everyone benefits from the experience of one man's intense and loving devotion. Everyone will take from it something different. I took from it God's tear, the rending of his own garments reflecting that of Caiaphas earlier. It was a lovely and powerful image.
So, go and see it. And do not be ashamed if it doesn't completely rock your devotional world. It is, after all, only a movie. And God's love for us and personal communication with us is far more powerful and more real than anything that might play out on a screen. God loves you--intensely, passionately, overwhelmingly. He sheds the same tear over one lost soul as He shed over His own dear Son.
God loves us into Eternity. And this may be one instrument by which He shows you His love.
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February 21, 2004
The Happiness of the Katakuris
is now reviewed at Popcorn Critics Enjoy.
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February 17, 2004
Request for Suggestions
We just signed up with NetFlix. One of the problems with Netflix is that you need to know what it is you want to see. Now I've seen a great many modern films, most of which are not worth the time invested in seeing them. So I'm asking people to suggest lesser know favorites that might be worth the time to watch. From M'Lynn's site I've already garnered one called something like "Graveyard of the Fireflies" or "Funeral of the Fireflies" which is Anime. I know almost nothing about anime and would be interested in hearing from people who have a more extensive knowledge and better appreciation of it.
From a friend here at work a recommendation for a bizarre-sounding little ditty "The Happiness of the Katakuris." I'm also not tremendously well-versed in foreign film. Yes, I've seen the entire Bergman canon and "Babette's Feast," "Run, Lola, Run" and "Red," "White," and "Blue." But any other suggestions?
I'm just looking for titles of things you really liked that weren't out in the public's face. A short summary might also be nice and anything pro-religion/pro-catholic would be delightful.
Thanks for any help you can give.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:54 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
January 8, 2004
Books and Movies
See Don's wonderful post on why he might prefer that movie makers leave the books he loves alone. I disagree, but I understand the reasoning and appreciate it. Good reading, good thoughts.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 1:56 PM | TrackBack
December 22, 2003
On Return of the King
I have read much around St. Blog's on this film and I suppose I do no service writing yet more, and yet I feel impelled.
I don't know what to make of those who say that the film is not a good film or less than art. To my mind, art is that which best invokes and reminds one of the Divine. In some cases that art may not be timeless, but relentlessly grounded in its time--inaccessible to all outside of that time. But for the moment I will put away that discussion.
Let us review the film on a more personal basis. The Holy Spirit spoke to me through the film and stirred to life again some barely smoldering fire that is stirred too rarely. The film, despite some minor flaws, hit me powerfully with the hammer of myth, reminding me for a moment of what it means to be human. I know this is not a helpful review because it is so personal. And yet, I feel that I must say it as so many may have been disturbed by the negative currents prevalent in blogland.
The bottom line--the film made me think of God, thank God, and praise God. Who cares whether that was Jackson's intention or not. There are times when the artist's intention is entirely secondary to the actual effect. There was beauty, nobility, and passion in the film and for me the experience was transcendent. I think this especially remarkable as I did not expect so much after the second film. (I enjoyed the second film somewhat, but I was not transfixed by it.)
So, my word--depending on who you are and how you receive these things, this can be a magnificent, wonderful, stirring, and perhaps even life-changing film. I thank God for such a beautiful Christmas gift this year.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:58 AM | TrackBack
December 18, 2003
St. Linus Review
I have been asked by one of the people associated with the St. Linus Review to announce the existence of this publication. As a poet myself and one who wishes to foster the arts, I duly make this announcement, fully realizing that a great many are already aware of it. I am also aware of the "controversy" swirling around its publication guidelines and understand the reasons behind it. But I also point out that there was a great deal of controversy (of an admittedly very different type) swirling around Mel Gibson's The Passion. I'm not comparing the two artworks, but only pointing out that until the work is produced we cannot know what effect guidelines may or may not have. It is probably good to encourage a young publication and help to foster its growth, contributing either funds or written works to see if it is viable. So, take a look at the guidelines--if you are so inclined, subscribe or submit work, and for the time being, praise God that a new thing is being raised up in the Catholic Arts. Pray that it might contribute mightily to a resurgence of literature of faith, so that once again we might have a strong voice in an arena that we have all but been forced out of.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:07 AM | TrackBack
December 1, 2003
Dedicated Particularly to Erik
I had Erik especially in mind during the week I was in Washington. Events conspired to keep bringing him forward. First, I found a lovely set of typology from Jonathan Edwards, and a few new poems by Edward Taylor--I immediately thought of Erik's fondness for our Puritan forebeings.
Then I went to the West wing of the National Gallery of Art. There they had just opened a sculpture wing featuring some of Degas' sculptures and some studies for larger pieces by Rodin. I love Rodin's method of seizing solidity from the numinous--figures emerge from and sink back into the medium with eerie and wonderful effects. I thought of Erik.
I trotted over to the east wing where there was a fairly large gallery of "Modern Art," including some burgundy, brown, black and white canvases by Rothko. I remember Erik speaking highly of him and really tried to get something out of it, and perhaps succeeded. In addition, even if not there were a few pieces by Constatin Brancusi (whom I love), and Alexander Calder (both mobiles and stabiles--wonderful intricate, moving pieces.) Then there was a series of paintings by a person who I have first heard of from Erik, although I had seen these before. Barnett something, or something akin to that name. It was a series of 14 stations of the Cross so bereft of anything moving, interesting, worthwhile, or exciting that the last time I recall being so repulsed by a work of "religion and devotional art" I was walking through the new chapel of the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, trying to puzzle out what those little squiggles on the floor meant. Anyway, I didn't get a lot out of looking at these largely white canvases--Modrians without the sense of design.
Finally I saw a magnificent painting/sculpture/installation called Zim Zum--the artist was German, and of course I thought of Erik for the mere coincidence of the thing and wondered for a moment what Erik would have made of it.
I crammed all this in between subway stops as I was on my way uptown to see one of St. Blogs' own.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 1:58 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
November 16, 2003
A Salty, Soggy, Merchant-Ivory Mishmash
Saw the interminably titled Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World yesterday. Despite the critics raves, I found it a rather poorly narrated, strung together mish-mash of events. The characters, while finally nicely drawn are not well differentiated, the focus being merely on two. Not being familiar with the books, I found the film a dark, vertiginous swirl of events and utterly unexplicated stuff, that I suppose I was to "get" by my acquaintance with the books. This presents another problem--while I find the books nicely written I haven't been able to penetrate more than two chapters into any of them, finding the characters and the nature of events quite thoroughly unlikable.
So, why then take a turn at the movie? Husbandly duty. My wife loves the books and adores Russell Crowe. (This created a second problem. Mr. Crowe had so many extreme close-ups in the film that I found myself utterly transfixed by a small bump in his brow just over his nose. When his brow was furrowed I found myself seeking it frantically, as though looking for a landmark.)
Well, just consider this the counterweight to all the acclaim you're likely to read in St. Blog's. My wife said she'll go and see it again. I'll stay at home and watch the A&E Hornblower Series.
Coda: In case it wasn't already clear, my wife advises that those who are fans of the books will really love and enjoy the movie. I wish all those fans the most pleasant of experiences. It is very prettily photographed and directed by one of my very favorite directors Peter (Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave) Weir.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 12:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
From New York . . .
Returned from New York where all seemed to go very well. The last time I was there was some thirty years ago when my entire family left for Washington. I remember New York as a dirty, dingy, dark, and dangerous city. The people were cold and distant when they weren't downright rude. This may still be true in part, but it wasn't my experience. Our host very kindly treated us to an evening of theatre (I know you're dying of curiosity--The Producers. Our first choice was Wicked, but the seats were all poor. For the show we saw right front Orchestra aisle, two rows back--spectacular.) After the show we walked back to our hotel--thirteen short blocks away, one of them through Times Square, and I never felt so much as mildly menaced--not true for the time I left--for documentation see Midnight Cowboy. I'm sure there are parts of the city for which this would not hold true, again, not my experience.
Everyone I encountered in my trip was at least pleasant and polite, most were openly friendly and helpful. I can't even begin to say how far this has gone to remove some pernicious misconceptions.
While there, I wad able to take in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and AMNH--as it is known among professionals in the field. I saw two fantastic Vermeers, one of which--"The Allegory of Faith" I spent some time with. There was a nice, if somewhat high-strung and overwrought El Greco exhibit. But the highlight for me was room after room after room of Egyptian antiquities, including, of course, an entire ancient Egyptian Temple. I could probably live in this wing of the museum.
All in all, a very exhausting, exciting, and rewarding trip.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 11:59 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 27, 2003
Recent Reading Raises a Question
As part of a book group I have recently read Henri Nouwen's Return of the Prodigal Son. Not a book I would recommend to everyone--seems to be very good for the depressives among us. However, the genesis of the book raised an interesting question that I thought I would ask of all:
If you had the leisure to spend a week or two weeks really examining and studying any one artwork, which would you choose and why? More importantly, would you spend a week or two examining just that one work? And what might be the good results of taking such time?
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:36 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
October 15, 2003
Nice Review of the Passion
Available at Mr. O'Rama's site
Excerpt:
One scene in the film has now been forever etched in my mind. A brutalized wounded Jesus was soon to fall again, under the weight of the cross. His mother had made her way along the Via Dolorosa. As she ran to him, she flashed back to a memory of Jesus as a child, falling in the dirt road outside of their home. Just as she reached, to protect him from the fall, she was now reaching to touch his wounded adult face. Jesus looked at her with intensely probing and passionately loving eyes (and at all of us through the screen) and said, "Behold, I make all things new."
"Behold, I make all things new." Praise God.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:43 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
September 23, 2003
In the Bag Again
5 works of Art:
Movie: Endless Summer
Book: Grab the shelf of Torgny Lindgren (more later)
Architecture?: Trajan's Column (okay, so it will have to be a big bag--no bigger than the bag that would hold "The Gates of Hell."
Music: Vivaldi: Concerti for Mandolin(s)
Music: Vivaldi: Gloria
That's it for now.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:36 AM | TrackBack
September 15, 2003
Things Keep Trickling In
In the bag got me to thinking about utterly inconsequential things, but it occurred to me that there's a giant tapestry by Joan Miro that hangs in the East Building of the National Gallery and there's the utterly magnificent Carnival of the Harlequin, also by Miro. Even in memory the painting looms and changes with its vaguely biomorphic forms in a tanguy-like space--a celebration in flat-world.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Read the Rules--That Changes EVERYTHING
First five things that spring to mind:
Book: The Holy Bible, The Pentameron
Sculpture: The Gates of Hell--Rodin
Music: Genesis-Foxtrot, Durufle-Requiem
Okay, I think that does it properly. I wouldn't evenly distribute stuff in categories. And these were the things that sprang to mind immediately. I don't think I'd be happy long with my selection. And a surfboard--short board AND long board, and maybe a boogie board. Do these count as works of art or craft? If so they'd replace some of the above.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
From Teachout's Blog
Teachout proposes an interesting little test--here are my five:
PAINTING: Rene Magritte--Castle of the Pyrenees
MUSIC: Maurice Durufle-Requiem
NOVEL: Charles Dickens--Bleak House
FILM: Billy Wilder--Some Like it Hot
POP SONG: The Ventures--Wipeout
These were really, really, really tough, and I'm not sure. I have a feeling they might fluctuate by day--maybe by hour.
Now my usual question--why are you watching movies on a Desert Islant? And is the desert Island Tavarua? And where is the surfboard? Sometimes these tests really are tests of logic. Now if someone said you were going to be stuck in an arctic hovel . . .
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:39 PM | TrackBack
September 12, 2003
Erik's Semiotics Seminar
Erik has written (et seq.) some wonderful posts about the nature and meaning of semiotics. Most interesting in this regard is the suggestion of a semiotic study of music which appeals to me as the motifs in music do tend to be very traceable up to a point. Erik founds the grand tradition of Western Music on Gregorian Chant, to which I make no objection. But I do raise the question of the influences on Chant itself, and the relative lack of a clear means of finding these. But that is irrelevant to his basic point--merely one of those things that I often ponder. Go and read--be informed if you were not already aware, or entertained if you have already grasped semiotic theory.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:31 AM | TrackBack
July 22, 2003
Request for Info
Request for Info
I have a marvelous recording of a song by Gustav Holst, the melody of which I believe is taken from one of the "The Planets." One question--the title under which I have the song is, "I Vow to Thee My Country," But I'm fairly certain that the melody is used for a hymn that may or may not have those words in it? Is anyone familiar with this piece of music and if so, do you know if it has multiple sets of words to go with it (as does the Ode to Joy)?
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:00 AM
June 17, 2003
Arvo Pärt
I have only recently discovered the liturgical and religious music of Pärt and Penderecki. Pärt hails from Estonia, I believe, and even as I write I am listening to a wonderful, mysterious, and moving Magnificat. I read a short musicological sketch that suggested that Pärt experimented for a time with a twelve-tone system á la Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg. From this he developed a distinctive musical style that some have labelled minimalist and others (perhaps Pärt himself) have called the tintinnabuli style. He seems to limit himself to a very restricted range of notes and frequent repetitions. The end result sounds like something between Gregorian Chant and more elaborate Renaissance Polyphony. It isn't strict Chant because there are definite harmonies in the voices, and yet there is something about it, perhaps all voices together with no additional "background" lines against which lines are sung, that suggests Chant at times.
Anyway, if you have not encountered Pärt, I would heartily recommend him as some of the very finest sacred music of recent times. It is in many cases beautiful and mysterious beyond words. There is a blend of the serene and the exalted that transports the listener into another realm.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:42 AM
June 16, 2003
The Matrix Reloaded
I had the opportunity to see The Matrix Reloaded this weekend. While I found it enormously entertaining and quite beautiful, I do wonder what all the buzz is about. I saw nothing particularly Christian in it, nor did I find long patches of dialogue about causality and free-will particularly compelling evidence of a Christian foundation. On the other hand, neither were there any evidences of a strongly antipathetic approach to religion and Christianity. So, for a film-goer looking for amusement, entertainment, and some beauty, the film was a marvel--the fight choreography stunningly beautiful at times, the plot a relentlessly messy tangle of picaresque chess-playing motions that seemed to have no real end in mind (not that that bothers me in the least).
No, that it is a beautiful film is probably undeniable. As to a meaningful film--not for me.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:34 AM
October 17, 2002
I Thought She Had Been Lost Forever
But thanks to the miracles of modern technology and the intrepid attention to trivia of Mr. Rothwell of The Contrarian, you can once again be astounded (if I choose the correct state of being) by the multifaceted talents of the amazing Ms. Florence Foster Jenkins. If you have not heard the Swedish Jackdaw, the Columbian Crow, the Romanian Raven, or whatever nom de chante (or perhaps ignomen chanteuse) she may have had, now is your golden opportunity. Do not miss it!
Posted by Steven Riddle at 2:46 PM
September 8, 2002
Loreena McKennitt
Loreena McKennitt
Mr González very generously responded to my plea for help and then gave me a surprising bonus--a comment to comment upon.
Odd coincidence: I intended to comment in my weblog about some some english translations of "En una noche oscura ... " Perhaps next week... (did you hear the -somewhat 'new-age' but not bad- Loreena McKennit version?) If you know of some good english versions, please tell me.
I love the music of Loreena McKennitt, and while I can't claim to have been with her from the very beginning, I started loving her when I heard the fantastic song, "All Soul's Night" from The Visit while listening to my local classical music station. Loreena does vaguely Enya-like stuff--but the emphasis seems more Celtic than New Age--though I suppose the two are so closely allied in most aspects that they are difficult to separate.
What I particularly like about Loreena McKennitt's albums is that each one has one "Narrative Poem" set to music. On The Visit we have "The Lady of Shalott," on The Book of Secrets we have "The Highwayman," and on The Mask and the Mirror we have two: "The Dark Night of the Soul" and "The Bonny Swans." Actually "The Bonny Swans" is an old song, so the lyrics have entered the world of poetry by the back door.
The music is that lovely, largely minor key Celtic-themed material played largely on traditional instruments and Ms. McKennitt's voice is a beautiful accompaniment. I cannot say enough good about her, even though I have not of recent date picked up her albums. I will have to remedy that as soon as I have a chance.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:47 AM
August 18, 2002
The Moral Lessons of Baby Jane
Sometimes cinema gets it right--more often in the past than in the present. I was writing this morning and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? happened to be the television. Whatever you may think of the movie, it is a powerful demonstration, in miniature, of what happens when we are determined to have our own way in things.
Every major character in this movie is manipulative. They push and attempt to control each other. Baby Jane has complete control over her sister Blanche who has manipulated the accident that confined her in a wheel chair--an attempt gone wrong to murder or injure Baby Jane, whose youthful success destroyed Blanche's childhood. Disagreement builds on disagreement, resentment on resentment. "Build on" is the wrong verb. "Erodes the foundation" is probably better.
The entire house of humanity is built on such sand--bitterness, resentment, revenge. We hold petty grudges and we allow them to simmer long enough to become obsessions and hallmarks of our lives. If we drop our masks of civility for a moment, we could not look in the mirror for the horrors we are.
Jesus Christ is the one way to root out these evils. There is no other way. We have the choice of lives that devolve into progressively more vile schemes of vengence and "getting mine back," or ascending with Jesus Christ as our help and mainstay. Most of us choose a path that alternates between these two strains--but how much better off we would be if we could clear our eyes and minds for just a moment and see where the one path leads. How much better if we would sense our own frustrations, aggravations, hurts, and pains, and give them over to our yoke-mate, the great Burden-bearer. Jesus died so that we would not have to carry these weights and so that others would not have to suffer because we were crushed to the ground under them. Wouldn't it be best if we would let Him do what He came to do, so that we would be free to be human?
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:36 AM
August 2, 2002
Art and God
In a comment to a post on the Catholic Novel Dylan comments:
TS O'Rama has raised the question of whether loyalty to art & loyalty to God is a zero-sum game. We can't serve them both with equal fervour. Hmm. I know what he's getting at: we can't make art equal in valence to God, but I don't think it's a zero-sum game. Neither does (if we can judge from his Letter to Artists) Papa.
No, it isn't a zero-sum game because, if one approaches the whole thing correctly one serves God through one's art. It isn't as though one is loyal to one's art in opposition to God--after all, beauty comes from God. The properly aligned Christian artist regards his art as a gift given and returned to God. God expects artists to use their talents to better humankind. (I direct your attention to the parable of the three servants and the "talents"). Art can become an object of worship, but a proper orientation toward art views it as a means of expressing relationship with the Creator. I do not "worship" a Monet for the art, but I am brought a "momentary taste of being from the well amid the waste" in the medium of the Creator-inspired piece of art. Thus "Impression Sunrise" isn't about a canvas but about the supreme artistic vision given by God to one of his creatures to convey to the whole world.
I look at examples like C. S. Lewis and other writers who dedicated much of their writing to the exaltation of the Creator. This is what Art is about. Art is a medium, not an end. It's products are humanly made, often divinely infused creations. They are, at their best, participations with the Creator God in the act of creation.
As a result, works that are not overtly Christian can be read by Christians to their own great profit. For example, the Drayton Sonnet I placed here at the beginning of the day is not overtly Christian, but it can be read by Christians in a way that brings them closer to God. This is because Art is a good given by the Creator for the benefit of His creation. It is good inasmuch as it reveals Him to those who are looking. It is worthwhile inasmuch as it improves the devotional life of those who look upon it.
No, properly construed art is not an end, but it is a means of serving the Creator.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:22 PM
July 31, 2002
In Honor of the
In Honor of the Good Lady Mentioned Below
Spoiler warning: yes, for those who have not read it nor heard Loreena McKennit's magnificent rendition, I'm giving away the climax of the poem:
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
There, now don't you want to go and read the whole thing? Try here. I send you to the top of the Tennyson portion so you can choose the 1832 OR the 1842 version--what excitement!
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:29 PM