February 2012
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Will be tweeting along to the Oscars. As long as... →
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January 2012
19 posts
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Roberto Bolaño - The Consummate Exile
By its very nature, the life of an exile — and Bolaño may be remembered as the consummate exile — is fraught with jarring shifts that play havoc with memory. What’s interesting is that he embraced his sense of displacement as if it were the ultimate source of strength. He seemed less interested in his (and his characters’) past, in verifiable dates and events aired out for analysis, than he was...
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dear anyone who has read Pulphead by John Jeremiah...
kelsfjord:
I very very much want to discuss that second-to-last essay, “Violence of the Lambs.”
Or, at least, share a mental fistbump over how awesome its ending was.
It’s online in full, here. But oh god, that image. They went very literal with that.
Cheers for the link - that was a good read. Not sure what to make of it all. Love the last two paragraphs - his ranting on the fourth page...
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84th Academy Awards Nominations Announced « the... →
iamsambell:
oldfilmsflicker:
These are the categories they announced live, the rest will be added as soon as they’re released.
Best Picture: The Artist The Descendants Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close The Help Hugo Midnight in Paris Moneyball The Tree of Life War Horse
Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist Alexander Payne – The Descendants Martin Scorsese – Hugo Woody Allen...
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The Beat Generation
Allen Ginsberg came to Rosset’s party, with his digusting black straggly beard, a white T-shirt beneath a dark, double-breasted suit, and tennis shoes. With him there was a whole crowd of beatniks who were even more bearded and filthy. They have all moved from San Francisco to New York, including Kerouac, who did not come tonight, however.
Arrabal’s Adventure
The beatniks naturally...
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“Literature brushes past these literary creatures and kisses them on the lips,...”
– Labyrinth - Roberto Bolaño available at The New Yorker here.
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“He was something of an anachronism: a great novelist who was not a great writer.”
– The Book Bench: In the Labyrinth: A User’s Guide to Bolaño : The New Yorker
Totally wanna beat this dude upppp! Intellectually and with my fists!
(via aliciakennedy)
It gets worse:
“The Third Reich” should join that shelf marked “For Completists Only,” on which also sit “Antwerp,”...
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Beloved Street Art →
This very easily made my morning.
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Top 10 Films of 2011
A note about how these were picked: essentially they’re films I saw in the cinema in 2011 and which weren’t rereleases (otherwise both Apocalypse Now and Days of Heaven would be sitting very near the top of the list). Considering I watch a lot of films at Film Unit and that we get films later than most cinemas, I may be including stuff that was technically released in 2010 (I haven’t...
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BAFTA Nominations Are In →
iamsambell:
crhappenstance:
BAFTA Nominations Are In
BEST FILM THE ARTIST Thomas Langmann THE DESCENDANTS Jim Burke, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor DRIVE Marc Platt, Adam Siegel THE HELP Brunson Green, Chris Columbus, Michael Barnathan TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Robyn Slovo
OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM MY WEEK WITH MARILYN Simon Curtis, David Parfitt, Harvey...
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9. A Monkey (Antwerp)
To name is to praise, said the girl (eighteen, a poet, long hair). The hour of the ambulance parked in the alley. The medic stubbed out his cigarette on his shoe, then lumbered forward like a bear. I wish those miserable people in the windows would turn out the lights and go to sleep. Who was the first human being to look out a window?
Finally got round to buying Antwerp - it lasted about an...
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2012 Reading List
A continuation of a trend started last year - here I keep a somewhat ordered list of books I have read this year. Last year I aimed for 50 but only managed 38 - that then is the target to beat.
Surface Detail - Iain M Banks
Antwerp - Roberto Bolaño
Hermit In Paris - Italo Calvino
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
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December 2011
10 posts
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“Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and...”
– Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22 (via hitch-22)
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“Cuenta la historia oficial que Vasco Núñez de Balboa fue el primer hombre que...”
– Eduardo Galeano, Espejos: una historia casi universal.
“The official history tells that Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first man who saw, from a summit in Panama, the two oceans. Those who already lived there, where they blind?
Who were the first to give names to corn and potatoes and tomatoes and...
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“And so this was how it would go: talk about books and politics, then he dozed...”
– - from Ian McEwan’s “Christopher Hitchens, Consummate Writer, Brilliant Friend” in the NYT
(via Hal Espen)
Also this:
Talking and dozing were all very well, but Christopher had only a few days to produce 3,000 words on Ian Ker’s biography of Chesterton.
Whenever people talk of...
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excerpt from one of Christopher Hitchens last...
Richard Dawkins: I've always been very suspicious of the left-right dimension in politics.
Christopher Hitchens: Yes; it's broken down with me.
Richard Dawkins: It's astonishing how much traction the left-right continuum [has] . . . If you know what someone thinks about the death penalty or abortion, then you generally know what they think about everything else. But you clearly break that rule.
Christopher Hitchens: I have one consistency, which is [being] against the totalitarian - on the left and on the right. The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes. And the origins of that are theocratic, obviously. The beginning of that is the idea that there is a supreme leader, or infallible pope, or a chief rabbi, or whatever, who can ventriloquise the divine and tell us what to do.
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Calvino on the importance of the frame in...
Both in art and literature, the function of the frame is fundamental. It is the frame that marks the boundary between the picture and what is outside. It allows the picture to exist, isolating it from the rest; but at the same time, it recalls - and somehow stands for - everything that remains out of the picture. I might venture a definition: we consider poetic a production in which each...
nthword asked: Have you been able to find a copy of "The Temple of Iconoclasts?"
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Watchuntitledfilmblog:
Trent Reznor - “Immigrant Song” (Feat. Karen O) [Dir. David Fincher]
So fucking cool.
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“…more tender and erotic than Cormac McCarthy…”
– This is from the jacket copy of Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s The Mirror in the Well, put out by Dalkey. You can use it, though, to describe LITERALLY ANYTHING. (via mcnallyjackson)
This has probably made my day.
November 2011
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“To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five...”
– Why Iceland Should Be in the News, But Is Not This whole article floored me. Part of me is afraid we’re too busy allowing the media to let us focus on idiocy and political bickering to wrest our government and economy away from the special interests. Looks like I’ll have to do some research on...
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“BioShock itself, I comment, felt like a critique of objectivism: it was, after...”
– Telegraph’s great interview with Ken Levine on Bioshock: Infinite, still my most eagerly anticipated game.
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Chronicle of a Death Foretold
For yeas we couldn’t talk about anything else. Our daily conduct, dominated then by so many linear habits, had suddenly begun to spin around a single common anxiety. The cocks of dawn would catch us trying to give order to the chain of many chance events that had made absurdity possible, and it was obvious that we weren’t doing it from an urge to clear up mysteries but because none of...
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CITIES & THE DEAD: 4
What makes Argia different from other cities is that it has earth instead of air. The streets are completely filled with dirt, clay packs the rooms to the ceiling, on every stair another stairway is set in negative, over the roogs of the houses hang layers of rocky terrain like skies with clouds. We do not know if the inhabitants can move about the city, widening the worm tunnels and the crevices...
October 2011
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“Remember, too, that in literature you always lose, but the difference, the...”
– Roberto Bolaño from Between Parentheses (trans. by Natasha Wimmer)
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Watchshortformblog:
thepoliticalnotebook:
Watch the #OccupyWallStreet protests on the Brooklyn Bridge live. According to Evan Fleischer, the arrest count is 24 and probably going to increase.
Follow tweeters like Evan Fleischer (who also is curating on Tumblr), Ryan Devereaux, Allison Kilkenny, Brian Stelter, and Adbusters.
The protests are fascinating because of the focus on naming the people...
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September 2011
8 posts
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