Sunday, August 23, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Lady Hamilton
- in a letter to Nelson, shortly after the news of victory at the battle of the Nile, send from her house in Naples:
"My dress from head to foot is alla Nelson. Ask Hoste. Even my shawl is in Blue with gold anchors all over. My earrings are Nelson's anchors; in in short, we are be-Nelsoned all over."
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Nuke Them All
"Formed by Buster Bennett, the man behind Antisocial and Fonteyn the man behind Computer Blue, London's first future-disco night!"
Monday, June 1, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Pierrot Le Fou
Ferdinand: Why do you look so sad?
Marianne: Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings
In the Nude
"The animal [can] be looked at, no doubt, but also - something that philosophy perhaps forgets, perhaps this being calculated forgetting itself - it can look at me. It has a point of view regarding me. The point of view of the absolute other. And nothing will have ever done more to make me think through this absolute alterity of the neighbor than those moments where I see myself naked under the gaze of my cat."
- Derrida, 2002: 280, (in the bathroom with his cat)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
"Sad Panda"
"Reader Claire Jackson took this picture of the Sad Panda last Saturday, standing near the bull at Bowling Green. "He was taking pictures with tourists," she told us. "He seemed sad because the tourists were more interested in having their picture taken with the bull's testicles than with him." Reader Jen Kipley saw him in the same spot at about 11:30 this morning, and he was feeling no better. She reports he was "dejectedly covering his ears, as if to push out the sounds of the world around him." Existential. Apparently, this is his usual spot. Could it be that Sad Panda is thephysical manifestation of the bear market?"
New York Times
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Dirty Roman Blonds
aPoppaea, second wife of Emperor Nero, kept 500 lactating she-asses to bathe in. Allegedly persuaded Nero into murdering his mother and his wife in order to make her his legit second wife.
Messalina, wife of Emperor Claudius, wore her blond wig to the brothel.
Lily Allen - Not Fair (HD)
 | Lily Allen - Not Fair (HD) Mar 20, 2009 - 03:51 |
MOMA article on director Agnes Varda
INFLUENTIAL FRENCH FILMMAKER AGNES VARDA RECEIVES FIRST MAJOR NEW YORK
RETROSPECTIVE
A Visit by the Filmmaker and Several New York Premieres- Including a Number of Rare Short Films-Highlight Program of Thirty-One Works
Agnès Varda
October 3-31, 1997
The exhilarating work of French filmmaker Agnès Varda is the subject of a major retrospective to be held from October 3 to October 31 at The Museum of Modern Art. Varda, now in her fifth decade as a filmmaker, will introduce the opening night screenings, launching a thirty-one-film program that includes all her feature-length and short works. The series opens with the world premiere of a newly struck print of Le bonheur (1964), Varda's exploration of the complexities beneath the surface of domestic life that won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival; and Vagabond (1985), one of the director's most powerful films, which stars Sandrine Bonnaire and which won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Born in Brussels in 1928, Varda was the official photographer for Paris's Théâtre National Populaire before her Left Bank colleagues persuaded the then twenty-six-year-old, who had seen relatively few films, to make her first feature, La pointe courte (1954). The work was a financial failure but a critical success, and is today considered by many to be one of the authentic ancestors of the Nouvelle Vague. Following La pointe courte, Varda made three visually arresting short films about places in France that held special meaning for her: the French Riviera, Chambord, and
Paris's Left Bank. But it was her next feature, Cleo from Five to Seven (1961), that brought her international acclaim. In the film, which follows the life of a young woman who is anxiously awaiting reports from her doctor, Varda's signature elements can be clearly discerned: namely, a tendency to inflect narrative with documentary reality, a photographer's keen and practiced eye, and a deep interest in the everyday life of women.
A critical feminist, Varda regards her filmmaking as artisanal work, equivalent to cloth weaving and hand sewing, and has established her own atelier, ciné-tamaris, to make her films. She has traveled widely in her professional work, blending social and personal histories and documentary with more or less fictional narratives to create intriguing films in France, Iran, and Cuba.Varda has also made several films in the United States. In the 1960s she made a short work about a relative in San Francisco, Uncle Yanco (1967); a political documentary, Black Panthers (1968), shot in Oakland; and a lively riff on Hollywood "un"-reality, Lion's Love (1969), starring, among others, Warhol superstar Viva and the
writers of Hair, Jim Raddo and Jerome Ragni. Varda returned to Los
Angeles a decade later to make Mur Murs (1980), about the city's street murals, and Documenteur (1981), a tale of a single mother looking for work and adequate housing.
Page 1of 2MoMA | press | Releases | 1997 | Influential French Filmmaker Agnes Varda Receives Fir...
2/25/2009http://www.moma.org/about_moma/press/1997/varda_retro_09_15_97.html
The director's other acclaimed features include The Creatures (1965), starring Catherine Deneuve and Michel Piccoli; One Sings, the Other Doesn't (1976), chronicling the friendship of two women over the course of fifteen years; Jane B. by Agnes V. (1987), a portrait of the actress Jane Birkin; and Kung Fu Master (1987), a love story about an older woman, played by Jane Birkin, and an adolescent, played by Varda's son, Mathieu Demy.
In the early nineties Varda made three films about her husband, the
celebrated French filmmaker Jacques Demy, to whom she was married in 1962. The first, Jacquot de Nantes (1990), explores Demy's childhood. After his death in 1990, Varda completed two documentaries, The Young Girls of Rochefort-25 Years Later (1992) and The World of Jacques Demy (1993), both loving and exuberant portraits.
Her most recent film, A Hundred and One Nights, made for the centennial of cinema in 1996, is enlivened by cameos by numerous European film stars, including the late Marcello Mastroianni.
Agnès Varda is organized by Larry Kardish, Curator and Coordinator of Film Exhibitions, Department of Film and Video, and presented in
cooperation with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.
No. 57
©1998 The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Page 2of 2MoMA | press | Releases | 1997 | Influential French Filmmaker Agnes Varda Receives Fir...
Great Girl Flats
directed by Agney Varda. This clip from "Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962) Part 4/9 (HD)" features the ultimate in beautiful girl's apartments. Followed swiftly by Lola's in Jaques Demy's 1961 film, 'Lola'. Number three is Emma Peel's of The Avengers fame. I would love a life size dummy pinned against my front door to practice fencing with, and a red grand piano... | |
| © 2009 YouTube, LLC 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066 |
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Current Playlist
(on shuffle)
1. I'm Loving Nothing - The Impressions
2. I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight - Richard & Linda Thompson
3. The Cutter - Echo & The Bunnymen
4. True True - U-Roy
5. Blue Flower - Mazzy Star
6. April Skies - The Jesus & Mary Chain
7. I Found You - Gene Clark
8. The Chain - Fleetwood Mac
9. Older Guys - The Flying Burrito Brothers
10. Old Shoes and Leggins - Uncle Eck Dunford
11. A Pair of Brown Eyes - The Pogues
12. Dear Miss Lonely Hearts - Phil Lynott
John Muir living
"Early one morning in the middle of Indian Summer, while the glacier meadows were still crisp with frost crystals, I set out from the foot of the Mount Lyell on my down to Yosemite Vally to replenish my exhausted store of bread and tea."
John Muir, 'The Mountains of California'.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Thomas Paine
from The Crisis, 1776
"Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the miseries of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man."
Friday, May 8, 2009
: "Performance (1970)" & "The Servant (1963)" clips
Nic Roeg & Donald Cammell A diametrically opposed act from Tony of 'The Servant', James Fox delivers a terrifying, but equally confused London gangster. | |
 Joseph Losey superbly directs Pinter's restrained script, and Douglas Solcombe's cinematography is formidably good. It's exquisitely sexy without every being explicit (except for the shot of the tap, perhaps). © 2009 YouTube, LLC 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066 |
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Friedrich Engels
from The Guardian, G2, 29.04.09., p. 16.
"It is absolutely essential that you get out of boring Brussels for once and come to Paris, and I for my part have a great desire to go carousing with you." Friedrich Engles wrote to Karl Marx in 1846. "If I had an income of 5000 francs I would do nothing but work and amuse myself with women until I went to pieces. If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn't be worth living. But so long as there are grisettes [prostitutes], well and good!"
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
International Baroque
'View of a European Pavilion at the Garden of Perfect Clarity', by Yuanming Yuan, from Beijing and created in 1781-6.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Dan Fox on 'A Serious Business'
Dan Fox's article 'A Serious Business', is a witty and believable plunge at the awkward question 'what does it mean to be a professional artist?' It's a question worth writing about again, because of the current pandemonium surrounding the credit crunch. Fox identifies the misconception that national bankruptcy will allow for a new, and naïve arcadia of artistic practice, free from the fetid world of media frenzied, consumer friendly art elite.
Young artists, i.e. my pals, who have and haven't been to art school, I think, are faced with a difficult choice. To survive as a practicing artist, you either have to align yourself with the uber rich patron, or the trust fund of a public art gallery. Neither is wrong, only both methods of upkeep perpetuate the museum establishment, and the non-threatening consumer radicalism that I think has over dominated the contemporary art market of late. The choice isn't even a new one, but I think the current economic climate has shoved it back in the limelight.
Brands such as 'authenticity' have become awkward, and I would argue invalid. But it still holds a fascination for artists and critics alike. It's no big secret that many artists, that produce important works, come from bourgeois backgrounds which allow them to survive. Although YBA's broke the barrier on this front, they are now the middle aged British artists, with no iconic and outspoken group having risen above the white noise of the media frenzy to take their place.
Unfortunately the price of a garret is only on the up, and it makes you wonder how this will change not only the type of artwork produced, but also accessed on a mass scale by the art viewing public. Will Gilbert and George's 'professionalism' or the more uncouth tradition of hustling for patronage by Windam Lewis dominate the way artists remain artists in the next few years.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
AESOP IN THE CITY by Yoni Brenner
(from the New Yorker, shouts & murmurs, 2007)
The Fox and the Goat
A fox is offered free tickets from Cindy in P.R. She drops them off after lunch, and the fox is dismayed to find that they are for an experimental Swedish dance company called Leøtåård. He takes the tickets to the goat in the next cubicle. "Leøtåård?" says the goat. "I've never heard of them." "I saw them last week," coos the fox. "The Scandinavian Alvin Ailey. I'll give them to you for ten bucks." And so, while the goat spends the evening in a dank underground space off Avenue C, the fox goes to Ollie's and spends the ten dollars on lo mein. Sure enough, the performance is awful and the goat gets a massive strobe-light headache. Still, inexplicably, he puts his name on the e-mail list.
Moral: Always check the Web site.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Booka Shade "Movements"
Just missed seeing them live in London, owing to the fact I arrived at the venue too late.I caught the final 10 minuets. Can't say I'm not a little dissapointed - but at least there was still great music on afterwards. And vibrating speakers in the floor, which I think is a terrific boon.
Protests, Twitter and Eastern Europe
"MOSCOW - A crowd of more than 10, 000 young Moldovans materialized seemingly out of nowhere on Tuesday to protest against Moldova's Communist leadership, ransacking government buildings and clashing with the police...
The protesters created their own searchable tag on Twitter, rallying Moldovans to join and propelling events in this small former Soviet state onto a Twitter list of newly popular topics, so people around the world could keep track.''
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
"Brown's spending plans like 'addict returning to the drug', says archbishop
Brown's spending plans like 'addict returning to the drug', says archbishop
Rowan Williams condemns prime minister's response to 'reality check' of recession
Jo Adetunji and agencies
Thursday December 18 2008
guardian.co.uk
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, today condemned the prime minister's response to the economic crisis, describing his efforts to boost spending in a downturn as like "the addict returning to the drug".Williams said the credit crunch had been a "reality check" in a climate of unsustainable greed, and it should be used to provoke a fundamental rethink of the pursuit of wealth. It demonstrated that the country had been "going in the wrong direction" by relying on financial speculation rather than "making things", he said.
It was "a reminder that what I think some people have called fairy gold is just that ? that sooner or later you have to ask: 'What are we making or what are we assembling or accumulating wealth for?'."
The criticism is wounding because Gordon Brown has prided himself on the consensus he believes he has gathered worldwide for a "fiscal stimulus" to prop up the economy and boost confidence in the downturn, including a temporary cut of 2.5% in VAT. Downing Street made clear its irritation over the remarks while trying to avoid a slanging match with the archbishop.
Asked in an interview with Radio 4's Today programme whether spending was the right way to tackle the downturn, the archbishop said: "It seems a little bit like the addict returning to the drug. When the Bible uses the word 'repentance', it doesn't just mean beating your breast, it means getting a new perspective, and that is perhaps what we are shrinking away from."
He added: "It is about what is sustainable in the long term and if this is going to drive us back into the same spin, I do not think that is going to help us."
People should not "spend to save the economy", but instead spend for "human reasons", for their own needs, Williams said.
The credit crunch showed that British society had "accepted the message that it's possible to have an endless spiral of accumulating wealth that has nothing to do with producing anything", Wiliams said. Instead there should be "some very tough questions internationally about what sort of regulation is feasible internationally at a time when, clearly, an unregulated financial world doesn't make sense".
And he added: "I think there are some huge moral lessons to be learnt about the nature of accumulating wealth ? a lot of people are waiting to hear an acknowledgement of some responsibility for irresponsible behaviour."
Williams acknowledged it was "suicidally silly" for him to get involved in the debate. "I am not an economist by any stretch of the imagination. But I want to ask where these moral questions are in the economic discourse."
The prime minister, responding to the remarks, said that as the son of a church minister he always listened to senior church figures. He said he backed the archbishop's call for action against reckless bankers, but it would be irresponsible of him not to intervene when Britons were suffering.
"I think the archbishop would also agree with me that every time someone becomes unemployed or loses their home or a small business fails it is our duty to act and we should not walk by on the other side when people are facing problems," he said.
"That's the reason why our fiscal policy is designed to give real help to families and businesses and to give them that help now."
The Conservatives refused to be drawn into the row. "We're just not getting involved with it," said a party spokesman.
The comments came after Williams had used an interview with the New Statesman to say he would be relaxed about the disestablishment of the church. Today, he said he did not support it at the moment. But he added: "I see the case for it, and I certainly don't think that the church would be destroyed by disestablishment, I believe the church exists because of God, not because of the state."
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2009
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Sunday, March 1, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
"Hot Lips Trimble"
The nation is in a lather over captain for this year's Corpus Christi, Oxford, finalists Gail Trimble. What a phenomenon!
'If form is any guide, when Corpus Christi take on Manchester University in the final, Trimble, 26, will wipe the floor with them, ruthlessly amassing starters-for-ten and cowing the competition with what contestant described as a form of "intellectual blitzkrieg". '
Men have labeled her 'hot lips Trimble', women have dismissed her performance as a 'cocky smirk'. The 'female Stephen Fry', believes 'I don't think I would have been treated in the same way were I were a man. Part of it has to do with the fact that I am the captain, who is always giving the answers.'
Saturday, February 21, 2009
'Celine and Julie go boating'
This is a terrible film. Having looked forward for many months to watching this film, which makes so many top ten lists and has stills reproduced everywhere, I am disappointed. It is self-indulgent and then some not just from the revoltingly flaccid direction but also the performance of the women themselves. Constantly giggling and self-consciously gawping in cute wonder at the camera they prance and preen through the film with fay and unendearing mannerisms that are enough to make you want to wash your hands of the seventies for good.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Asta Nielsen
is my new favourite actress. Famous for her performance in the silent film of Hamlet (1921), directed by Svend Gade. She has style and talent, a combination that is still as refreshing as it is rare.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Car Drag Horror
This 'bizarre event' is the stuff of nightmares. I can't imagine it making a Bourn film it's so horrible. I chose the New York Post article about it, not because I'm a fan of the paper, but the way they write is terrifying.
"...dragged by the unwitting driver of a second vehicle along three highways in Queens and Brooklyn, leaving a 20-mile trail of gore."
Berlin 7th - 10th February
8th February
1. Neue National Galerie: Mies van der Roher building, Paul Klee exhibition
2. Alte National Galerie: German Romantics, Caspar David Fridrich
3. Pergamon Museum: Pergamon alter piece, Ishtar gate, Market gate of Miletus, Babylonian processional street
4. Altes Museum: bust of Nefertiti
5. Berliner Dom (Cathedral)
6.Unter den Linden: long street between Brandenburg Gate and the Museumsinsel
7. Film by Dante Lam, part of the Berlinale, screened at Cubix near Alexanderplatz
8. Visit the Reichstag, go up the Dome by Norman Foster, have dinner at the Reichstag restaurant
9th February
1. Bauhaus Museum
2. Cafe Einstein for lunch
3. Jewish Museum: Daniel Libeskind building, and the Holocaust tower
4. Check Point Charlie
5. Gestapo HQ 'topographia des terrors'
6. Missing Building by Christian Boltanski, opposite the Jewish School
7. Walk around Alackaescher Hofe
8. Alexanderplatz
9. Kino International on Karl Marx Allee. Saw Michael Winterbottom's documentary of Naomi Klein's book 'The Shock Doctrine'
10. Afterparty for Revolution FIlms at the Newton Bar
11. Lutter & Wenger for supper
12. 'Barbe Bleu' by Catherine Breillat at Potsdammer Platz, Sony Centre
10th February
1. Brecht's House
2. Hamburger Bahnhof contemporary art museum
3. Hitler's Bunker, near Wilheln Straise
4. Fragments of the Berlin wall
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