The Naked City (Jules Dassin, 1948)
Help! (Richard Lester, 1965)
Skin Deep (Blake Edwards, 1989)
Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944)
The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli, 1953)
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (Vincente Minnelli, 1970)
Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)
42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)
Did you know that the Museum of Modern Art has a blog? And that, although this may be hard to fathom, it’s actually been pretty great so far? Most museum blogs (looking at you MASS MoCA) are not very well put together or thought out, so it’s nice to see one of the more important institutions putting in a little of the ol’ college try, and succeeding (so far).
Which brings me to a post by Charles Silver, Curator, Departnment of Film. His short essay on two lesser-known D.W. Griffith films playing at the museum, Judith of Bethulia and The Avenging Conscience, dives into some nice historical work on the actress in both films, Blance Sweet (pictured above). I’d say it’s worth checking out, the blog and the films, especially for those silent film skeptics (I know a few of you are out there).
Spiegel Online published an interview with the legendary man of many minds Umberto Eco (who seems, as he grows in age, to more and more resemble the Dunkin Donuts Guy). The subject of said discussion is on a newly curated exhibition by Eco, at the Louvre, containing works around the theme “The Infinity of Lists.” But toward the bottom of the page, he has some interesting things to say about internet and the education system:
Education should return to the way it was in the workshops of the Renaissance. There, the masters may not necessarily have been able to explain to their students why a painting was good in theoretical terms, but they did so in more practical ways. Look, this is what your finger can look like, and this is what it has to look like. Look, this is a good mixing of colors. The same approach should be used in school when dealing with the Internet. The teacher should say: “Choose any old subject, whether it be German history or the life of ants. Search 25 different Web pages and, by comparing them, try to figure out which one has good information.” If 10 pages describe the same thing, it can be a sign that the information printed there is correct. But it can also be a sign that some sites merely copied the others’ mistakes.
While Eco, I believe, is implying this idea should be pushed in a primary school setting, it’s something that, unfortunately, prevails within online (and print, at times) journalism and needs to be discussed. Writers are constantly dragging their feet over the lack of copy-editors problem online journalism faces, but what about the damning lack of fact-checkers? Even then, you see so many half-truths passed around so often as fact that you start to get the idea that it doesn’t matter anymore, that fact-checkers seem unable, or unwilling, to unwind the web of nonsense that has been spewed to get at the real information needed.
I’ve been a busy bee, so only a small update of readings abound with great pleasures, greater laughs, and snark of the highest order. Guaranteed to waste your time!
I reviewed the Urs Fischer exhibition, currently at the New Museum, on the Creative Contact Blog. Please go read it. That’s all.
Vice has decided, in their latest issue, to review all albums from the year 1994. With hilarious results.
My favorite line, from the review of Cruise Yourself:
Like anybody who goes to Girls Against Boys shows drinks anything other than warm beer out of plastic cups.
[Photo: Ghosts VI, Sam Taylor-Wood, 2008]
I seem less polarized by the work of David Thomson as others. I remember, after a recent poll on important film texts, the mention of David Thomson causing a few writers to become up-in-arms.He’s an interesting figure for me: one’s whose prose is always above-par, but whose ideas can often be weak or unintelligible. When he does make sense, though, he can be an illuminating writer on film who is also enjoyable to read. A growing rarity, unfortunately. I’m particularly fond of his book The Whole Equation, and can even excuse the gross obsession with Nicole Kidman in light of the more fascinating sections of the work. His Biographical Dictionary of Film, while flawed and shoddy in places, is often fun to pick up and flip through, randomly, landing on an entry and receiving a similar pleasure as prodding your ultra-conservative grandfather about what’s wrong with America.
Somebody over at Netflix is reading my mind.
When it’s late at night, and I’m deciding what film to watch before I pass out, I can never decide. Comedy or drama? Well, I say to myself, comedy seems like the obvious choice. You don’t want to fall asleep with ominous tones permeating your dreams. But them you arrive at the decision of all decisions — the hardest one, no doubt, you will make all day. What type of comedy?
Late night comedy, of course! Thank you Netflix, for providing an easily accessible category in the instant viewing section of your site. Now, how to choose between Private Resort, H.O.T.S, or Hardbodies 2?
Two musical memories have been shaping my night quite nicely, each provided by a friend this past weekend. The first, while sitting in a record-strewn living room, littered with the occasional empty pack of Pall Mal’s and can of the cheapest beer the local gas station sells, was friend numero uno trying, as he has been for a few weeks over the phone, to convince me how — seriously — the first two albums by the vomit inducing Goo Goo Dolls were worth not only listening to, but owning a copy. I, of course, disagreed without needing to hear a single note. After a beer, we compromised with the promise of both albums on a single CDR, requiring me not to empty my already short pockets.
On my drive to meet friend numero dos, and without any of my usual musical companionship, I begrudgingly inserted the fresh CDR which laid bare on my passenger seat. I was told to skip to a particular track, a cover of Prince’s “I’ll Never Take The Place Of Your Man,” one of the many masterpieces off of Sign ‘O’ The Times, transformed here into a late-period Replacements jam, and a particularly great one at that. I soon discovered, driving east on the Long Island Expressway, that the entire collection was, basically, the same thing. This is not a criticism, rather an expression of praise. At any time, on most days of the week, I’m down for Replacements jams, whether sung by Paul Westerburg or some dirty kids from Buffalo, New York, who would later in the decade astronomically wuss out on the promise laid out so beautifully here.
So my night was going well. In the rain, at a strangers house, in a town whose name I made no effort of remembering, I heard somebody utter the name Harbour Sounds. When I was a wee teenager, on trips with my grandmother, I would always make a visit to the local record store — which was now being spoken about fondly in the past tense, as it closed a few years ago. This was a period when I was convinced cassettes were better than compact discs (for monetary issues, obviously, but was still ahead of the indie curve by about 13-15 years) and remember, quite passionately, buying Fugazi albums and listening to them late into the night on my Sony Walkman, for days, sometimes week. I remember listening to it on the bus, watching the kids I wished I was hanging out with sneak into woods to kiss girls and smoke cigarettes they stole from their parents. I played ice hockey at the time, and used In On The Kill Taker to “pump me up,” as they used to say, before a big game. I was never very good at ice hockey. Maybe because I had those fucking basslines stuck in my head the whole game.
As I returned home in the wee hours of our sabbath, with the quiet of my bedroom surrounding me and the sleep I so desperately needed drifting away, I frantically decided I needed to dig up my Fugazi albums, which I now own on compact disc. Immediately, I inserted them one by one into my computer and loaded them onto my iPod. I was never convinced on those damn coasters.
(Image: Richard Tuttle, Walking On Air, 12, 2008)
