Links.Wnstn

"IF I had to issue a one-sentence manifesto for film criticism, it would be this: Any movie worth..."

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:49:45 -0600

“IF I had to issue a one-sentence manifesto for film criticism, it would be this: Any movie worth seeing is worth arguing about, and any movie worth arguing about is worth seeing.”

- A.O. Scott on the furor surrounding critical response to Inception.

"If Arcade Fire’s ragtag debut, Funeral, found its ecstatic force by celebrating the elusive..."

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:15:33 -0600

“If Arcade Fire’s ragtag debut, Funeral, found its ecstatic force by celebrating the elusive comforts of community (hence four songs with the word neighborhood in the title), and 2007’s aggrieved, galvanizing Neon Bible powered forth in opposition to the hollow sparkle of church, state, and celebrity, then the harder, denser The Suburbs burns on behalf of the belief that modern culture is missing its heart — and to give up the search is to send one’s soul to oblivion.
Or, in Suburbs speak, to the Sprawl, where everything is connected but nothing ever touches.”

- Spin’s review of the new Arcade Fire album “The Suburbs.” I’m pretty sure this is my most anticipated album of the year. I hope hope hope that they keep pumping out incredible albums.

Where everything is connected but nothing ever touches. That’s it.

"People hear me whine about this and they say: Our case is different; we need to have a system that..."

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:25:58 -0600

“People hear me whine about this and they say: Our case is different; we need to have a system that sends out seven thousand “todo” emails per day. And I grieve for the spirit of Work, killed by her evil child, Workflow.”

- Real Editors Ship

An increase in small-farm raids

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:37:06 -0600

This is infuriating. Bureaucratic measures being taken to stop local farmers from meeting a growing demand for real food.

What’s behind all these raids? They seem to stem from increasing concern at both the state and federal level about the spread of private food groups that have sprung up around the country in recent years — food clubs and buying groups to provide specialized local products that are generally unavailable in groceries, like grass-fed meats, pastured eggs, fermented foods, and, in some cases, raw dairy products. Because they are private and limited to consumers who sign up for membership, these groups generally avoid obtaining retail and public health licenses required of retailers that sell to the general public.

In late 2008 and early 2009, the representatives of state agriculture agencies in Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois met via phone conferences with representatives of the FDA to map a plan for targeting raw-milk buying clubs in the Midwest. The meetings came to light after Max Kane, the owner of a Wisconsin buying club who was subpoenaed by Wisconsin authorities for the names of his customers and suppliers, obtained email accounts of the sessions via a Freedom of Information request to Wisconsin’s Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection department. (Kane has since been prosecuted by Wisconsin authorities for contempt of court for failing to give up the names; his case is under appeal after he was found guilty last December.)

Later in the article we see this about how well our judicial system protects our rights as citizens:

While the U.S. Constitution’s fourth amendment suggests judges should exercise tight controls over search warrants (“no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause…”), Kennedy observes, “I haven’t seen an agency turned down yet” over the last four years in requests for search warrants connected with raw milk and other food production and distribution.

The article goes on to list 5 steps that can be taken to prepare for a raid, since the targets cannot resist them outright.

Variations on Normal.

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:37:00 -0600

Variations on Normal.

"They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to have faith in their Redeemer."

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:26:29 -0600

“They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to have faith in their Redeemer.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche. via (via merlin)

There are many Christians who have doubts about their faith for this same reason. For shame.

Michael Kimmelman has a great essay in the NYT about the current show at the National Gallery in...

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:11:43 -0600

Michael Kimmelman has a great essay in the NYT about the current show at the National Gallery in London called “Close Examinations: Fakes, Mistakes, and Discoveries” about art sleuthing and the science of finding out whether a work is genuine or not. At first glance, he says, the exhibit almost seems too academic, but look closer and you’ll see:

It’s one of those gems, which, amid the hard science, stumbles onto squishier truths about what we are really looking for when we look at art. Out to instruct us in the chemistry of painting, it ends up suggesting how elusive art remains despite all the gadgets that we devise to master it.

Along the way it riffs on the mistaken-identity theme: a picture given in good faith by the City of Nuremberg to Charles I in 1636 as a work by Dürer that’s proved to be a copy; a copy of a Veronese that, after grime is removed, emerges as the genuine article. And there are forgeries, art’s whodunits, pandering to our basest instinct for knocking experts off pedestals. People love fakes because fakes play into the populist suspicion that much art is really just a scam, a suspicion encouraged by the fancy names wrongly attached to and insane prices often paid for the stuff.

Read it all the way to the end. Great essay.

"I always said, “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work."

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:57:40 -0600

“I always said, “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.””

- -Chuck Close

(Who, as revealed in the recent Radiolab podcast found here, is face blind. As is Oliver Sacks. Who knew?!)

One of the few things I agree on with the existing tea parties is that the Republicans and...

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:22:54 -0600

One of the few things I agree on with the existing tea parties is that the Republicans and Democrats have made themselves hopeless hostages of political money and bargained away their legitimacy. In line with my general belief that American life must downscale or die, I’m not wholly persuaded that federalism can survive in any case - but assuming it will lumber on for a while anyway, the two major parties cannot retain their monopoly on power. Indeed, it is in the natural order of things that this country must periodically endure a realignment of political ideas and political power. This tends to occur during moments of cultural convulsion, and that is exactly the moment we are in as the sun sets on the fossil fuel based industrial extravaganza and we enter a crisis of intense resource austerity.

-James Howard Kunstler “My Tea Party”

Old Trains! (via Coudal)

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:33:19 -0600

Old Trains! (via Coudal)

"So where does this leave us? By my count there are about three declarative statements in this entire..."

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 15:24:28 -0600

“So where does this leave us? By my count there are about three declarative statements in this entire piece that are not categorically inaccurate. The rest is a seething tissue of factual errors, self-negating examples, glaring elisions, logical inconsistencies, specious industrial analysis, mystifying rhetorical constructions and basic grammatical errors. It speaks for itself.”

- Hating the Player, Losing the Game - a critical analysis of Armond White’s absurd review of Toy Story 3. (also where the previous quote was found)

"No one should trust any critic who does not take the art form he is writing about seriously enough..."

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 15:20:19 -0600

“No one should trust any critic who does not take the art form he is writing about seriously enough to write a decent paragraph. I simply do not trust the observations of people who write sloppily or in illiterate hyperbole.”

- Pauline Kael

Why are science and religion at such odds with each other, and...

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 12:48:50 -0600

Why are science and religion at such odds with each other, and when did we ever start to believe they are opposed? Jon Stewart and author Marilynne Robinson have a great discussion about this topic. I just requested her book at the library, I can’t wait to read it.

viafrank: (…) But there are times when a critic truly...

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 19:43:21 -0600

viafrank:

(…)

But there are times when a critic truly risks something. And that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. Last night I experienced something new. An extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core.

(…)

Consider for a moment that this touching little rumination by Anton Ego, feared food critic in Ratatouille, about the critic’s relationship to the artist. It is from an animated film. A cartoon, if you will.

Animated movies can tackle deep, complex issues, but to tackle something so abstract as the pathos and jubilation of a critic, and offer up that meditation as a way to give closure to a plot arch is something I think can only be done by the most skillful of hands (no matter the medium: animation or otherwise). Pixar is celebrated at large for the quality of its films, but very rarely appreciated in this capacity. And, Brad Bird’s ability to offer depth through the integration of abstract issues gives his films, whether The Incredibles, Ratatouille, or The Iron Giant, a sense of profundity that is sorely lacking in many mass-market American films these days, even those non-animated movies made for us “grown-ups.”

I wrote something much longer-winded but similar in foundation recently, you can read it here. Whether or not you read my post it is always good to be mindful of what Frank is saying.

Thanks to this post, I was pointed back to a song that, once lodged in my head, repeats for a few...

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:43:00 -0600

Thanks to this post, I was pointed back to a song that, once lodged in my head, repeats for a few weeks and always makes me something of a better person.

There are songs that I like, songs that I love, songs that get stuck in my head, but I think Joe Henry’s song “Our Song” is something else entirely. It is evocative poetry and challenging philosophy wrapped in a beautiful melody. It is, in a word, Good. A work of art that I will hold close for many years, each time wondering if I actually understand the wisdom that is so well captured in Henry’s lyrics. (click through to the post to listen to the song)

He’s just like us - I wanna tell him -
And our needs are small enough
Something to slow a heavy door
Something to help us raise one up

And this was my country
This was my song
Somewhere in the middle there
Though it started badly and it’s ending wrong

Well this was God’s country
This frightful and this angry land
But if it’s His will the worst of it might still
Somehow make me a better man

Bill Murray and Robert Duvall. Exciting.

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 12:16:12 -0600

Bill Murray and Robert Duvall. Exciting.

"I prefer to live in a universe full of inexhaustible mysteries, and to belong to a species destined..."

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:06:57 -0600

“I prefer to live in a universe full of inexhaustible mysteries, and to belong to a species destined for inexhaustible intellectual growth.”

- Errol Morris, in Part 5 of “The Anosognosic’s Dilemma”.

Architecture

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 07:19:50 -0600

“Huge, drab buildings suddenly started to pop up like mushrooms all over the place. It was if nobody had created them, as if they multiplied by themselves. Sometimes, when we visit other cities and countries, we ask ourselves where the beauty of the olden days has gone. In some places we get the impression that all buildings have been designed by structural glass manufacturers”; all the roads by asphalt companies; and all the parks by lawn mower firms. It seems as though the architects sign on the dotted line but are excluded from the decision-making process. We ask ourselves why everything has to be planned in one go and built at top speed right up to the last minute. In our opinion, things only work if they are allowed to evolve — and that requires time. Perhaps it would be practical to oblige all architects and clients to live for a time in the buildings they construct. If you don’t like a painting, you can take it off the wall, or put it away, or even burn it — but architecture stays standing for at least fifty years and it is impossible to ignore its presence. We should and must do it better.”

From “A World without a Manual” - quote found here.

This is an awesome photo.

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 10:31:08 -0600

This is an awesome photo.

An abandoned palace in New York, just a few blocks from City...

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 07:22:18 -0600

An abandoned palace in New York, just a few blocks from City Hall.