MetaFilter posts by matteo.
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"George earns a $1 some days usually 75 cents. Some of the others say they earn a $1 when they work all day. At times they start at 7 a.m. and work all day until midnight".
Lewis Hine (1874 -1940), a New York City schoolteacher and photographer, felt so strongly about the abuse of children as workers that he quit his teaching job and became an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee. Hine traveled around the country photographing the working conditions of children in all types of industries. He photographed children in coal mines, in meatpacking houses, in textile mills, and in canneries. He took pictures of children working in the streets as shoe shiners, newsboys, and hawkers. In many instances he tricked his way into factories to take the pictures that factory managers did not want the public to see. He was careful to document every photograph with precise facts and figures. Hine's original photo captions are here. More inside.
posted on Mar-2-05 at 3:12 PM
Supersized in the NFL Analyzing data from the 2003-2004 season, researchers say "more than a quarter of NFL players had a body mass index that qualified them as class 2 obesity" -- equivalent to a 6-foot man weighing between 260 and 300 pounds. Even those players weren't the biggest ones: the study counted more than 60 players -- 3 percent -- with body mass indexes placing them into class 3 obesity, with individual weights approaching 400 pounds. "I don't know what's going on in the minds of coaches", said lead researcher Dr. Joyce Harp, an assistant professor of nutrition and medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Players' growing girth "is a major concern," said Dr. Arthur Roberts, a former NFL quarterback and retired heart surgeon (.pdf file) whose Living Heart Foundation works with the players' union to evaluate heart-related health risks faced by current and retired players. More inside.
posted on Mar-1-05 at 2:08 PM
"... Giordano Bruno might have been a pantheist. A pantheist believes that God is everywhere, even in that speck of a fly you see there. You can imagine how satisfying that is—being everywhere is like being nowhere. Well, for Hegel it wasn’t God but the State that had to be everywhere; therefore, he was a Fascist.” “But didn’t he live more than a hundred years ago?” “So? Joan of Arc, also a Fascist of the highest order. Fascists have always existed. Since the age of . . . since the age of God. Take God—a Fascist.” Umberto Eco in the New Yorker
posted on Feb-28-05 at 11:06 AM
Galileo's compass (with sound). Galileo Galilei's compass resembles a calculator. In Le Operazioni del Compasso Geometrico e Militare (Padua, 1606), Galileo describes over 40 operations that can be carried out with this instrument. Try using the compass yourself.
posted on Feb-25-05 at 1:18 PM
Sarah Roberts vs. Boston In 1848, five-year-old Sarah Roberts was barred from the local primary school because she was black. Her father sued the City (.pdf file). The lawsuit was part of an organized effort by the African-American community to end racially segregated schools. The book "Sarah's Long Walk: The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America" tells the story of the case of Roberts v. City of Boston, that remains a little-known landmark in the civil rights movement.
posted on Feb-24-05 at 1:08 PM
"You can fool everybody, but landie dearie me, you can't fool a cat. They seem to know who's not right". The psychoanalyst calmly explains to his patient that her idea that she is turning into a member of the cat family is a fantasy; she silences him with fang and talon. Val Lewton made his name as a producer with the horror film Cat People, produced for RKO on a minuscule budget and directed by Jacques Tourneur. The star? French actress Simone Simon, who died today in Paris aged 93. More inside.
posted on Feb-23-05 at 12:02 PM
The Grammarian. Miss Gould, as she was known to everyone at the New Yorker, died last week, at the age of eighty-seven. She worked at the magazine for fifty-four years, most of them as its Grammarian (a title invented for her). A typical “Gould proof” was filled with the lightly pencilled tracery of her objections, suggestions, and abbreviated queries: “emph?” “ind.,” “mean this?”. Writes David Remnick: "She confronted the galley proofs of writers as various as Joseph Mitchell, J. D. Salinger, Janet Flanner--well, everyone, really.". More inside.
posted on Feb-22-05 at 11:15 AM
Pico's Brain. The "Discourse on the Dignity of Man" (1486) by Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) is considered the "Manifesto of the Renaissance" and a key text of Renaissance Humanism. The Discourse merits attention today precisely on account of its affirmation that human nature, which is in itself indeterminate and weak, comes alive and obtains its identity through the plurality of human cultures, each representing customs that, though distinct, are essentially identical. Hence the possibility of harmony and grounds for "peace" among cultures. The Pico Project makes accessible a complete resource for the reading and interpretation of the Discourse within its own context, from an initial encounter through direct contact with the original text, presented here in its first printed edition (Bologna 1496) of which there exist no extant manuscripts. Of course, Pico was also a Kabbalistic scholar (Umberto Eco is not a fan of Pico's kabbalistic work .pdf file). More inside.
posted on Feb-19-05 at 11:02 AM
Touch Me I'm Sick. Photographer Charles Peterson helped America see grunge from the inside out. His dramatic black-and-white images portrayed the energy of the music being performed in crowded basements and dingy dive bars featuring such bands as Nirvana, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Hole, Black Flag, Fugazi, and Sonic Youth, among others. "Touch Me I’m Sick: Rock ‘n’ Roll Photographs by Charles Peterson" will be on view at the Chrysler Museum of Art through May 1. More inside.
posted on Feb-18-05 at 10:23 AM
A Tale of Two Chinas, by photographer James Whitlow Delano. Whole swaths of cities have vanished, to be transformed with developments that have quickly made them look more like Houston, Qatar, or Singapore than the ancient China of our mind's eye. The old hutong, or alleyways, of Beijing that once formed a mosaic of passageways and the siheyuan, or walled courtyard houses, have been largely razed. The old brick rowhouses of Shanghai, are now being leveled and replaced by modern high-rises. Traditional marketplaces, residential neighborhoods, streets where medicine shops or bookstores bunched together, are now either gone or have been rouged up as tourist destinations, part of a new synthetic, virtual version of China's incredible past. The energy fueling this transformation bespeaks a powerful but often blind, unquestioning faith in an inchoate idea of progress that takes one's breath away, often literally. (Unrestrained growth has left China with the dubious honor of having 9 of the 10 most polluted cities in the world). Delano's new book is "Empire: Impressions from China". More inside.
posted on Feb-17-05 at 10:02 AM
For lovers of the hard-boiled crime story, life began with the black bird. It's a tale of greed and a wisecracking gumshoe. The femme fatale is a liar. The object of the hero's search is a statuette of a falcon. Published exactly 75 years ago on Valentine's Day, Dashiell Hammett's private-eye novel "The Maltese Falcon"' immediately won critical acclaim. And when it was made into a 1941 movie starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre (and directed by a rookie), Hammett's story found a worldwide audience and his hero, Sam Spade, became a household name. Now, three-quarters of a century later, that's still the case. More inside.
posted on Feb-14-05 at 9:48 AM
"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you". Murakami Haruki writes about love, earthquakes and -- in his new novel "Kafka on the Shore" -- mackerel raining from the sky. He is so famous in Japan that he was forced to flee the country, and now the rest of the globe (.pdf file) is fast catching on to his singular vision. More inside.
posted on Feb-9-05 at 4:32 PM
'Falling in love with the truth'. On Dec. 10, 1956, exactly one month after Soviet troops crushed the last hopes of the Hungarian Revolution, 13-year-old Sylvia Plachy lay hidden in a farm cart that was carrying her toward the Austrian border. That night, Plachy and her parents escaped, finally making their way to the United States. The family settled in Queens, New York, where the teenager grew up to become one of the most incisive photographers of her generation. Many of the photographs will be displayed this spring at the Rose Gallery in Los Angeles, and are on view now at New York's Hunter Fox Gallery, where Plachy (scroll down) recently talked about the book and her career. Her pictures "have to do with what memory looks like,' she explains. "How you remember things. Not so much how they are, but how they get translated." Oh, she's Adrien Brody's mom and she uses a Holga.
posted on Feb-8-05 at 1:39 PM
Call her Madame. Among the old-timers, the story went like this: a woman known to everyone as Madame came to California from Kentucky with her children and her husband. But once they were in the Gold Rush State, her husband left her. Desperate to find work, she introduced herself to a movie director named D. W. Griffith. He not only cast her in his movie, but the two became friends for life. And with this woman, called Madame Sul-Te-Wan, what we now call Black Hollywood began -- as a new book by historian Donald Bogle explains. (more inside)
posted on Feb-7-05 at 1:31 PM
"His voice was otherworldly — you couldn't believe the sound". Everyone who ever heard Klaus Nomi's voice had the same comment: "It can't be real." You hear that response throughout "The Nomi Song," the documentary about the obscure German-born artist who was a fixture on the New York music scene in the late '70s-early '80s, and a legitimate pop star in Europe. He was also a mystery, even to those who knew him. The film primarily covers the years between his 1978 New York club debut - which was captured on film - and his AIDS-related death in 1983 at age 39. Nomi never had an album officially released in the U.S. but was wildly popular among New York clubgoers as well as in France and his native Germany. More inside.
posted on Feb-3-05 at 9:21 AM
Stand Up, Speak Up -- Against Racism (and for Nike) A new campaign against the ugly, very present problem of racism in the game of soccer, with soccer stars like Thierry Henry and Rio Ferdinand. An elegant (if more than a bit tame and unimaginative) new ad by Wieden+Kennedy. The campaign aims to encourage fans to wear interlocked black-and-white wristbands as a symbol of their stand against racism, which can be bought for €2, or £1.50 in the UK. In every Nike store near you. (more inside)
posted on Feb-1-05 at 12:33 PM
"Rose . . . is as close to us as family". Rose Mary Woods, who died Saturday at 87, was Richard Nixon's private secretary. In 1973 Woods was transcribing secretly recorded audiotapes of Oval Office conversations , working on a June 20, 1972, tape of a conversation between President Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, that might have shed light on whether Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in three days earlier. While she was performing her duties (.rtf file), she said, the phone rang. As she reached for it, she said she inadvertently struck the erase key on the tape recorder and kept her foot on the machine's pedal, forwarding the tape. More inside.
posted on Jan-24-05 at 12:46 PM
The Death of Yesterday Twenty years ago, an everyday virus destroyed Clive Wearing's brain. Now, all he can remember is music -- and his wife. Here, Deborah Wearing tells how their enduring love has become the one constant in a marriage without memory.
posted on Jan-23-05 at 12:10 PM
From muse to master Lee Miller started out as a Vogue model, but by 1930 she had moved behind the lens to take piercing photographs -- culminating in her rage-fuelled portraits of Nazi kitsch. The "Lee Miller: Portraits" exhibit is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from February 3 until May 30. More inside.
posted on Jan-22-05 at 9:40 AM
Mona Kuhn: (NSFW) Photographs. An interview with the artist is here, other images are here. Kuhn is among the photographers whose work is on display now at the Photo L.A. art exposition (Santa Monica Civic Auditorium). Again, her images (nudes, non-graphic) and most of this post's links are generally not safe for work. This one, instead, is SFW
posted on Jan-21-05 at 8:16 AM
Creating Bush's God Talk by Michael Gerson, Bush's chief speechwriter. According to University of Washington professor David Domke, author of "God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the War on Terror", here's how Bush's God-Talk Is Different ("When Bush speaks of God, he positions himself as a prophetic spokesperson rather than a petitioning supplicant".) Bonus: "On What Did They Solemnly Swear? Which president opened his inaugural Bible at random in haste? Which didn't swear at all?". Test your knowledge of presidential inaugural Bible use with this quiz. And: Prayers of the Presidents -- From George Washington to George W. Bush, a sampling of personal and public prayers of America's presidents.
posted on Jan-20-05 at 5:04 AM
The world's largest passenger plane. The new Airbus "superjumbo" has a 262-foot wingspan, a tail as tall as a seven-story building and it cost $13 billion to develop. In a three-class cabin layout, the A380 will carry 555 passengers -- 33% more than the plane it is designed to displace, Boeing's veteran 747, Sir Norman Foster's favorite piece of modern architecture. The A380 has 49% more floor space. How the plane's extra space is used will be left up to airlines. Low-cost carriers could operate the A380 with a single economy-class configuration accommodating as many as 800 passengers. Virgin company chief Richard Branson said his airline, which has ordered six A380s, will offer private double beds for first-class passengers and casinos. Airbus trailed Boeing Co. until 2003, when it delivered more planes than its U.S. rival for the first time -- a feat it matched last year. Boeing will unveil next year the much smaller, new 7E7 -- with 200 to 250 seats.
posted on Jan-18-05 at 2:06 PM
I envy the Japanese for the enormous clarity that pervades their work. It is never dull and never seems to have been made in haste. Their work is as simple as breathing and they draw a figure with a few well chosen lines with the same ease, as effortless as buttoning up one's waistcoat..... --Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 24 September, 1888 The term "Japonisme" came up in France in the seventies of the 19th century to describe the craze for Japanese culture and art. Van Gogh, like so many other Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, was one of the admirers (and collectors) of Japanese art. He defined himself as “a simple worshipper of the eternal Buddha”, and the most peculiar among his many self-portraits is "Self-Portrait as Buddhist Monk" (see a comparison here and here), painted in 1888 and dedicated to Paul Gauguin. More inside.
posted on Jan-17-05 at 1:49 PM
Into the realm of Henry Darger When Henry Darger died in Chicago on April 13, 1973, he was a destitute man whose final days were spent at a home for the elderly. Now, 30 years later, Darger ranks among the greatest outsider artists America has ever seen. Found in the astounding clutter of Darger's one-room apartment was a 15,000-page fantasy epic, bound by hand in 15 volumes, titled "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion." Along with this were three separate volumes filled with 300 drawings, including 87 multi-sheet horizontal panels, some 12 feet long with drawings on both sides. The discovery of Darger's NSFW work spawned numerous books, a play, a British rock band (the Vivian Girls), and an excellent y2karl MetaFilter post. And now there's also Jessica Yu's documentary "In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger," a portrait of the reclusive artist that has been shortlisted for the upcoming Academy Award nominations. Again, Darger's art can be disturbing and must be considered not safe for work (more inside)
posted on Jan-14-05 at 9:36 AM
The stomach of Paris. Finally, after months of deliberation, Paris city hall awarded the task of reworking the site of Les Halles to French architect David Mangin: the winner has a vision of a Barcelona Ramblas-style walkway integrating Les Halles with the surrounding cityscape. Among the losers, Rem Koolhaas. The Les Halles site was first built in 1135 when King Louis VI moved the market there from the nearby Place de la Greve. The site was endowed in the 1850s with the huge metal halls for which it became famous; but in the 1970's the old market moved to the outskirts of the city. Then-mayor Jacques Chirac ordered the redevelopment of Les Halles -- it was supposed to re-emerge as a bustling tourist attraction. Instead that project gave birth to an architectural WTF? of a gigantic disaster. Unpopular and difficult to maintain to boot. (warning: the words in italic link to a French-language page)
posted on Dec-15-04 at 9:17 AM
"When one is in prison, the most important thing is the door". The precise coordination of every element of filmmaking -- camera distance, sound, theme, narrative, motion, color, human action -- so that it functions with rhythmic clarity: that is the cinema of Robert Bresson, who died five years ago aged 98. A "Christian atheist" by his own description, he made only 13 films (and a short) and created a cinema of paradox, in which "the denial of emotion creates emotionally overwhelming works, the withholding of information makes for narrative density, and attention to 'the surface of the work' produces inexhaustible depth". Paul Schrader, the most famous among Bresson scholars, wrote that "Bresson has seemed like God himself; distant, beyond communication. Now, like God, Bresson is dead". More inside.
posted on Dec-13-04 at 10:30 AM
When the fighting stops. In World War II, for every American soldier killed in combat, there were three wounded on the battlefield, according to the U.S. Army Medical Command. In Korea, the ratio of killed-to-wounded was one to four. The ratio was the same for Vietnam. In Iraq, the ratio is one to 12. Those combat survivors -- along with thousands more service members in Iraq and Afghanistan who are injured or who fall ill off the battlefield -- will add to the growing demand for services from an already struggling federal Veterans Affairs Department. More inside.
posted on Dec-5-04 at 1:47 PM
Here is the story of Hsuan Tsang / A Buddhist monk, he went from Xian to southern India / And back--on horseback, on camel-back, on elephant-back, and on foot. / Ten thousand miles... / Mountains and deserts, / In search of the Truth... Traversing rivers and deserts, scaling mountains and passing through desolate lands with no traces of human habitation, 7th century Chinese monk Hsuan Tsang made his journey in 627 AD from Changan to India for religious purposes. His detailed travel journal is believed to be among the earliest reliable sources of information about distant countries whose terrain and customs had been known, at that time, in only the sketchiest way. He travelled over land mostly on foot and horseback along the Silk Road, west towards India. The Buddhist scholar’s pilgrimage (627-645 AD) contributed enormously to the cultural flow between East and West Asia. His "Hsi Yu Ki" or "Records of the Western World" is considered the most valuable book source for the study of ancient Indian history and culture. Italian explorer Marco Polo, whose travel writings fired the imagination of Europeans for centuries, was believed to have used Hsuan Tsang’s travelogue as a guide during his travels in the 13th century. More than 1,300 years after Hsuan Tsang’s historical journey, Taiwanese magazine Rhythms Monthly embarked on a project to retrace Hsuan Tsang’s 19-year pilgrimage through a road that, today, belongs to 11 different countries. more inside
posted on Nov-30-04 at 5:20 PM
The heroes who saved Britain. They died in millions, the victims of wars waged by man against his fellow man. In huge numbers, they were deployed alongside the military in the theatres of conflict, in the deserts, the seas and the sky. They carried troops, ferried supplies and even secrets. On the home front, they rescued victims trapped in the rubble of bombed buildings. Their names? Rifleman Kahn, Mary of Exeter, Buster, Simon, Olga, Regal, Upstart, and millions of others. This contribution has finally been acknowledged in London with a £1m memorial, dedicated to the animals who served in war. It is the first such permanent tribute to the plethora of species that served in the military; horses, dogs, cats, monkeys, bears, pigeons, mules, even the humble glow-worm. The sculpture was placed at Brook Gate, Park Lane. Among those present, Buster the Army dog, who served with honor in Iraq.
posted on Nov-25-04 at 6:53 AM
Born-again liberal Christians. Do you think that mainline denominations are hemorraging members? Wrong. Fundamentalist Christianity is the way of the future and all US Evangelicals worship the same political party? Not so fast, buddy. Many scholars and theologians think that it's time for liberals to take Christianity back. Oregon State's Marcus J Borg, for example, argues that Christianity "still makes sense and is the most viable religious option for millions". He contends the earlier paradigm, based upon a punitive God, simply doesn't work anymore for too many people. It is an argument for an alternative to the literalist and exclusivist tradition that has dominated Western Christianity in the modern era. According to Borg, "So different are these two views of Christianity that they almost produce two different religions, both using the same Bible and language. A time of two paradigms is virtually a tale of two Christianities." There is, for example, an alternative view to the Resurrection Narrative not as report of an actual, physical event but as means for Jesus' early followers to express the miracle of his continuing spiritual presence among them, after his execution. It is in short an 'emerging paradigm which has been developing for over a hundred years and has recently become a major grass-roots movement within mainline denominations'. Just don't be afraid to ask questions. Not even about the dogs beneath the Cross. More inside.
posted on Nov-19-04 at 8:08 PM
"We will come and kill you in your beds, cut your throats, and wipe you from the face of the earth... if Alexander the Great were alive today he would grind you gypsy dogs into the dust, dig your dead from their graves". Since Oliver Stone chose to make his first foray into historical epics with a biopic of Alexander (based on the biography by the Oxford academic Robin Lane Fox), rivers of blood have been spilt -- figuratively at least -- in a propaganda battle between Greek and Macedonian nationalists over who has the right to claim the all-conquering hero as their own. The movie also deals with Alexander's omnivorous sexuality, in particular his fondness for eunuchs. With such treacherous ground to negotiate, and amid thunderous lobbying from both sides, Stone has chosen a middle course (like giving Alexander and the men of the Macedonian phalanxes Irish accents, while the Greeks speak clipped English RP).
posted on Nov-18-04 at 7:20 PM
Poems from the precipice. Sylvia Plath's late poems were published posthumously in a collection edited by her husband, Ted Hughes. As a new facsimile edition of the original manuscript is published, their daughter Frieda defends Hughes against criticism that he interfered with Plath's legacy. (more inside)
posted on Nov-16-04 at 8:21 AM
Spiritual Woodworker. Furniture designer George Nakashima's (1904-1990) exquisite creations merged traditional woodworking techniques with innovative design, resulting in (very expensive) work that demonstrates a high level of craftsmanship coupled with a reinterpretation of modernist design. Nakashima also prided himself on being the "world's first hippie", Hindu Catholic and Japanese druid (.pdf file). The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles pays tribute to this great artist with a unique exhibit. More inside.
posted on Nov-13-04 at 10:21 AM
“The real glory of war is surviving.” One of Hollywood's biggest crimes of the last quarter-century is being set right this week with the release of "The Big Red One: The Reconstruction", a beautifully restored version of Samuel Fuller's butchered 1980 masterpiece. The stunning new version restores some 15 scenes and more than 40 minutes of footage to Fuller's grittily autobiographical film about his World War II stint as a GI with the Army's First Infantry Division. Filmed in Israel, the film stars Lee Marvin in his greatest performance. The cut version of the film flopped, and Fuller went to his grave in 1997 bemoaning the fate of "The Big Red One," telling every journalist he met that he dreamed of seeing his original vision up on the big screen. Richard Schickel, critic and documentary filmmaker, printed 70,000 feet of film from negatives stored in a vault in Kansas City and supervised the editing according to Fuller's original shooting script. "What they released in 1980 wasn't a bad movie," Schickel said. "What the studio wanted was a gung-ho war movie. What we've added is the real Sam stuff: the boredom, the absurdity of an ordinary soldier caught up in a vast war". More inside.
posted on Nov-12-04 at 9:57 AM
YELLOW PERIL "Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man." Sax Rohmer's tales of the sinister Dr. Fu Manchu and his arch enemy Sir Denis Nayland Smith of the British Secret Service (the nephew of Sherlock Holmes whose name is also invoked in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow), have fascinated readers and cinemagoers alike for the best part of the twentieth century. Two things make Fu Manchu all the more monstrous a villain: his proximity to the West, and his intellect. His base is in Limehouse, the Chinese area of London. So by allowing him to live in the country, England is vulnerable to his insidious plans (and so becomes a validation of strict immigration policy). His intellect comes from Western learning, and it is often emphasized that he has been educated in a University. So we see the evil Asian as using the West's own knowledge against it. It is up to Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie to stop Fu Manchu's plans in each story. As Smith remarks in The Hand of Fu Manchu, "the swamping of the white world by Yellow hordes may be the price of our failure." (more inside)
posted on Nov-10-04 at 5:44 PM
Discovering Japan. As a perennial outsider at loose in Japan, writer Donald Richie captures the joyous freedom of being foreign. The foreign observer is likely to be happy only if he sees his foreignness as an adventure, and recognizes that he has given up a sense of belonging for a sense of freedom, traded the luxury of being understood for that of being permanently interested. Richie, the philosopher-king of expats in Asia for the past half-century, arrived in Tokyo in 1947 as a typist with the U.S. government and never really left, writing dozens of books , on Japanese movies, temples, history and fashion, while enjoying himself as an actor, musician, filmmaker and painter. The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 is a monument to the pleasures of displacement. Richie watchers can observe, more intimately than ever, a man who is generally happiest observing. More inside.
posted on Nov-9-04 at 5:28 PM
Detailing the impossible. Louis Feuillade made more than 800 films covering almost every contemporary genre: historical drama, comedy, realist drama, melodrama, religious films. However, he was most famous, or infamous, for his crime serials: Fantômas (1913-14), Les Vampires, Judex (1916), La Nouvelle Mission de Judex (1917), Tih-Minh (1918) and Barrabas (1919). Critics panned his crime films, often savagely, because the preoccupation of French critics and film-makers in the 1910s and 20s was to elevate cinema -– and, ironically, back then the French saw their own films as lacking the artistry and sophistication of American ones, by Griffith or DeMille – to the level of art. It was years before Feuillade's films escaped the label of aesthetic backwardness. Now, critics have realized that what Feuillade has done is to offer us an alternative cinematic mode to Griffiths', one that continues in updated variants throughout cinema. It is predicated on a principle of uncertainty, that questions our understanding of the real. It is as fluid and elusive a tradition as a cat burglar, dressed in black on a night-time rooftop.
posted on Nov-8-04 at 5:15 PM
Irredentos. The sun beats down insufferably on the rust coloured landscape, stretching for mile after mile under a cobalt blue sky. In the distance, a convoy of rented farm trucks packed with thousands of penitents kicks up a serpentine cloud of dust that rises and then dissipates over the land. Through the dry air comes a jingling of chimes and a clicking of rosaries, a shuffling of processions, and with eyes heavenward, a ceaseless chanting of invocations. This is a holy and sun-scorched land, the Backlands of Brazil's northeast - the Sertão. Some believe Jesus is buried here. Christian Cravo, the photographer, is Mario Cravo Neto's son.
posted on Nov-7-04 at 5:08 PM
Memento Mori. The Aztecs made war almost tenderly, wielding wooden swords that were edged with bits of obsidian or flint and, in face-to-face combat, endeavoring not to kill their enemies but, commonly by striking at their legs, to disable and capture them. Later, the captives—thousands of them for a rededication of the Great Temple at Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City) in 1478—were led to high platforms, where priests tore out and displayed their still-beating hearts. An especially respected prisoner might be allowed to fight for his life against Aztec warriors, at the last, with clubs and a sword, but his sword was edged with feathers. “The Aztec Empire,” at the Guggenheim in New York, is advertised as the most comprehensive exhibition of Aztec art ever mounted outside Mexico. More inside.
posted on Nov-6-04 at 4:48 PM
Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back The tattoo is of a great, blue mushroom cloud, and in the cloud, etched ghost-like, is the face of our daughter, Rae. Her lips are drawn tight, eyes are closed and there are stitches deeply pulled to simulate the lashes. When I move fast and hard they rip slightly and Rae cries bloody tears. That’s one reason for the martial arts. The hard practice of them helps me to tear the stitches so my daughter can cry. Tears are the only thing I can give her. East Texas writer Joe R Lansdale has written horror, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, suspense, westerns, "men's adventure," and just about every other kind of writing you can think of. On his website (see main link) Lansdale makes a story available for free every week to his readers. Lansdale also wrote a novella featuring an aging Elvis Presley who teams up with a delusional, African American John F. Kennedy to battle an ancient Egyptian mummy with a predilection for anal soul-rape. It made it to the big screen, too: Bubba Ho-Tep. With Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. More inside.
posted on Nov-5-04 at 12:17 PM
Blast Maps. The threat of nuclear terrorism is not limited to New York City or Washington, DC. While New York is widely seen as the most likely target, it is clear that Al Qaeda is not only capable but also interested in mounting attacks on other American cities. Imagine the consequences of a 10-kiloton weapon exploding in San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte, or any other city Americans call home. From the epicenter of the blast to a distance of approximately one-third mile, every structure will be destroyed and no one would be left alive. A second circle of destruction extending three-quarters of a mile from ground zero would leave buildings looking like the Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City. A third circle reaching out 1 mile would be ravaged by fires and radiation. Harvard professor Graham Allison's website lets you visualize these consequences in the city of your choice. Just enter a zip code. More inside.
posted on Nov-4-04 at 8:59 AM
It all comes down do one question: Must France stay in Algeria? “If the answer is yes,” he says, “then you must accept the consequences.” Gillo Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers", now out on a Criterion dvd, is a film of quiet, overwhelming power. The mix of subjective and documentary techniques holds the viewer's trust so authoritatively that many scenes come close to sneaking out of the mental "movies I saw" box to mix with the viewer's own memories. No matter how complicated or fragmented the action becomes, Pontecorvo gets the pace, tone and rhythm exactly right, filling the screen with eloquent details. (Last year, Pontecorvo's masterpiece was discussed here, too. More inside)
posted on Nov-3-04 at 8:21 AM
The Ladder is a website devoted to the writer Henry James (1843-1916). It comprises electronic editions of a selection of James’s works and also * a textual note on the source and any amendments required during editing * annotations of the text explaining such things as references to real persons and places, references to other fiction by James, or in in his notebboks * a summary and a detailed (chapter by chapter) synopsis of the plot, so you can easily find passages you remember, by what happens * a bibliography including original publications, subsequent reprints Interestingly enough, lately more than a few writers seem to have a bit of James-mania: in June, Colm Tóibín published "The Master", a portrait of James recovering from his humiliating failure as a playwright. Now comes "Author, Author", by David Lodge, which is about James' humiliating failure as a playwright as well. These in turn arrive on the heels of Emma Tennant's "Felony", a novel about James' near-romance with Constance Fenimore Woolson, and Alan Hollinghurst's "The Line of Beauty", a BookerPrize-winning novel in which James plays an important off-the-stage role.
posted on Nov-1-04 at 10:11 AM
Cultural Revolution When Nike founder Phil Knight first traveled to China in 1980, before Beijing could even ship to U.S. ports, the country was just emerging from the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. By the mid-'80s, Knight had moved much of his production to China from South Korea and Taiwan. But he saw China as more than a workshop. "There are 2 billion feet out there," former Nike executives recall his saying. "Go get them!". The Chinese responded (the goal was "to hook kids into Nike early and hold them for life"): sales through the 1990s picked up 60% a year. Here's how Phil Knight did it. Print page for main link here
posted on Oct-29-04 at 7:42 AM
In search of lost time It was Jack Kerouac who first defined Robert Frank's genius, who found in it some echo of his own vision of a vast, broken-down, but still epic, America, peopled with restless and lonely dreamers. 'Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice,' wrote Kerouac in his now famous introduction to Frank's collection The Americans , 'with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America on to film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world'. Frank's exhibition, Storylines, opens this week at the Tate Modern in London.
posted on Oct-27-04 at 6:44 AM
Himmler's Crusade: The True Story of the 1938 Nazi Expedition to Tibet. In 1935, the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler founded an organisation called Ancestral Heritage , to uncover the hidden past of the Aryan race he and his Führer regarded as the noblest and most vital force in human history. One of the scientific missions Himmler sponsored was a multitasked expedition to Tibet under the leadership of ornithologist Ernst Schäfer, an expert on rare Tibetan birds who liked to smear the blood of exotic kills on his face. Schäfer recruited an anthropologist to measure noses and skulls and to make face-masks; a geographer who specialised in the earth's geomagnetism; and a botanist who was also handy with a film camera. They managed to con their way into Tibet, past the British. The expedition is at the basis of a masterful story by Jim Shepard, the author of Love and Hydrogen (full text). More inside.
posted on Oct-25-04 at 11:16 AM
Devil and the deep blue sea. A devil-worshipping non-commissioned officer in the Royal Navy has become the first registered Satanist in the British Armed Forces. Chris Cranmer, a naval technician serving on the Type 22 frigate Cumberland, has been officially recognised as a Satanist by the ship's captain. That allows him to perform Satanic rituals aboard and permits him to have a funeral carried out by the Church of Satan should he be killed in action. A spokesman for the Royal Navy insisted that Mr Cranmer's unconventional beliefs would not cause problems on board ship. "We are an equal opportunities employer and we don't stop anybody from having their own religious values". Followers of the Church of Satan live by the Nine Satanic Statements, which include Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek”
posted on Oct-24-04 at 7:17 AM
A Walk in the Woods. Farewell to the original Cold War warrior: Paul Nitze, the college professor's son who went to Hotchkiss and Harvard and worked as investment banker before going to Washington in 1940, where he quickly became one of the chief architects of American policy towards the Soviet Union. His doctrine of "strategic stability" became its cornerstone for half a century (Nitze held key government posts in Washington, from the era of Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan's, when he was the White House's guru on arms control). By the end of 1949, Nitze had become director of the State Department's policy planning staff, helping to devise the role of Nato, deciding to press ahead with the manufacture of the H-bomb, and producing National Security Council document 68, the document at the heart of the Cold War: in it, Nitze called for a drastic expansion of the U.S. military budget. The paper also expanded containment’s scope beyond the defense of major centers of industrial power to encompass the entire world. (NSC-68 was a top secret paper, written in April 1950 and declassified in the 70's, called "United States Objectives and Programs for National Security"). More inside.
posted on Oct-22-04 at 11:23 AM
INCREDIBLE, UNSTOPPABLE TITAN OF TERROR! He's attacked other monsters and terrorized Japan for decades. Now Godzilla is confronting academics who want to wrestle with his legacy. The University of Kansas plans to pay homage to the giant lizard later this month, organizing a three-day scholarly conference for the 50th anniversary of his first film. Planners want to provoke discussion of globalization, Japanese pop culture and Japanese-American relations after World War II. "I would like people to take Godzilla more seriously," said Bill Tsutsui, a history professor at the University of Kansas and author of the book "Godzilla on My Mind". (more inside)
posted on Oct-19-04 at 11:05 AM
My Heart vs the Real World "He's a normal kid. He's a good kid. He's a real normal kid. And we get him to do the drums and we take him for tryouts and we do everything we can to keep his life as normal as we can make it. We've never lollypopped him. You know, mollycoddled or – we let him try everything. 'Cause if we didn't it would be a big crutch for him. We don't want that to happen. Like I said, we waited – we wanted to have another child right away. We wanted three, we always did. We were scared to death after him. To have another one, to have another baby. What if the third one, you know – what if it were Cheryl and I? Our genes? -- The father of Grant Skowkron, Fifteen years old, Single Ventricle, Transposition of the Major Vessels, M.V. Prolapse, Implanted Pacemaker. Photographer Max S. Gerber has had a pacemaker implanted because of his bradycardia. In his website, he tells the story of ten other heart patients -- all of them kids -- with his images, and with their parents' words.
posted on Oct-18-04 at 8:27 AM
posted on Mar-2-05 at 3:12 PM
Supersized in the NFL Analyzing data from the 2003-2004 season, researchers say "more than a quarter of NFL players had a body mass index that qualified them as class 2 obesity" -- equivalent to a 6-foot man weighing between 260 and 300 pounds. Even those players weren't the biggest ones: the study counted more than 60 players -- 3 percent -- with body mass indexes placing them into class 3 obesity, with individual weights approaching 400 pounds. "I don't know what's going on in the minds of coaches", said lead researcher Dr. Joyce Harp, an assistant professor of nutrition and medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Players' growing girth "is a major concern," said Dr. Arthur Roberts, a former NFL quarterback and retired heart surgeon (.pdf file) whose Living Heart Foundation works with the players' union to evaluate heart-related health risks faced by current and retired players. More inside.
posted on Mar-1-05 at 2:08 PM
"... Giordano Bruno might have been a pantheist. A pantheist believes that God is everywhere, even in that speck of a fly you see there. You can imagine how satisfying that is—being everywhere is like being nowhere. Well, for Hegel it wasn’t God but the State that had to be everywhere; therefore, he was a Fascist.” “But didn’t he live more than a hundred years ago?” “So? Joan of Arc, also a Fascist of the highest order. Fascists have always existed. Since the age of . . . since the age of God. Take God—a Fascist.” Umberto Eco in the New Yorker
posted on Feb-28-05 at 11:06 AM
Galileo's compass (with sound). Galileo Galilei's compass resembles a calculator. In Le Operazioni del Compasso Geometrico e Militare (Padua, 1606), Galileo describes over 40 operations that can be carried out with this instrument. Try using the compass yourself.
posted on Feb-25-05 at 1:18 PM
Sarah Roberts vs. Boston In 1848, five-year-old Sarah Roberts was barred from the local primary school because she was black. Her father sued the City (.pdf file). The lawsuit was part of an organized effort by the African-American community to end racially segregated schools. The book "Sarah's Long Walk: The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America" tells the story of the case of Roberts v. City of Boston, that remains a little-known landmark in the civil rights movement.
posted on Feb-24-05 at 1:08 PM
"You can fool everybody, but landie dearie me, you can't fool a cat. They seem to know who's not right". The psychoanalyst calmly explains to his patient that her idea that she is turning into a member of the cat family is a fantasy; she silences him with fang and talon. Val Lewton made his name as a producer with the horror film Cat People, produced for RKO on a minuscule budget and directed by Jacques Tourneur. The star? French actress Simone Simon, who died today in Paris aged 93. More inside.
posted on Feb-23-05 at 12:02 PM
The Grammarian. Miss Gould, as she was known to everyone at the New Yorker, died last week, at the age of eighty-seven. She worked at the magazine for fifty-four years, most of them as its Grammarian (a title invented for her). A typical “Gould proof” was filled with the lightly pencilled tracery of her objections, suggestions, and abbreviated queries: “emph?” “ind.,” “mean this?”. Writes David Remnick: "She confronted the galley proofs of writers as various as Joseph Mitchell, J. D. Salinger, Janet Flanner--well, everyone, really.". More inside.
posted on Feb-22-05 at 11:15 AM
Pico's Brain. The "Discourse on the Dignity of Man" (1486) by Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) is considered the "Manifesto of the Renaissance" and a key text of Renaissance Humanism. The Discourse merits attention today precisely on account of its affirmation that human nature, which is in itself indeterminate and weak, comes alive and obtains its identity through the plurality of human cultures, each representing customs that, though distinct, are essentially identical. Hence the possibility of harmony and grounds for "peace" among cultures. The Pico Project makes accessible a complete resource for the reading and interpretation of the Discourse within its own context, from an initial encounter through direct contact with the original text, presented here in its first printed edition (Bologna 1496) of which there exist no extant manuscripts. Of course, Pico was also a Kabbalistic scholar (Umberto Eco is not a fan of Pico's kabbalistic work .pdf file). More inside.
posted on Feb-19-05 at 11:02 AM
Touch Me I'm Sick. Photographer Charles Peterson helped America see grunge from the inside out. His dramatic black-and-white images portrayed the energy of the music being performed in crowded basements and dingy dive bars featuring such bands as Nirvana, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Hole, Black Flag, Fugazi, and Sonic Youth, among others. "Touch Me I’m Sick: Rock ‘n’ Roll Photographs by Charles Peterson" will be on view at the Chrysler Museum of Art through May 1. More inside.
posted on Feb-18-05 at 10:23 AM
A Tale of Two Chinas, by photographer James Whitlow Delano. Whole swaths of cities have vanished, to be transformed with developments that have quickly made them look more like Houston, Qatar, or Singapore than the ancient China of our mind's eye. The old hutong, or alleyways, of Beijing that once formed a mosaic of passageways and the siheyuan, or walled courtyard houses, have been largely razed. The old brick rowhouses of Shanghai, are now being leveled and replaced by modern high-rises. Traditional marketplaces, residential neighborhoods, streets where medicine shops or bookstores bunched together, are now either gone or have been rouged up as tourist destinations, part of a new synthetic, virtual version of China's incredible past. The energy fueling this transformation bespeaks a powerful but often blind, unquestioning faith in an inchoate idea of progress that takes one's breath away, often literally. (Unrestrained growth has left China with the dubious honor of having 9 of the 10 most polluted cities in the world). Delano's new book is "Empire: Impressions from China". More inside.
posted on Feb-17-05 at 10:02 AM
For lovers of the hard-boiled crime story, life began with the black bird. It's a tale of greed and a wisecracking gumshoe. The femme fatale is a liar. The object of the hero's search is a statuette of a falcon. Published exactly 75 years ago on Valentine's Day, Dashiell Hammett's private-eye novel "The Maltese Falcon"' immediately won critical acclaim. And when it was made into a 1941 movie starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre (and directed by a rookie), Hammett's story found a worldwide audience and his hero, Sam Spade, became a household name. Now, three-quarters of a century later, that's still the case. More inside.
posted on Feb-14-05 at 9:48 AM
"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you". Murakami Haruki writes about love, earthquakes and -- in his new novel "Kafka on the Shore" -- mackerel raining from the sky. He is so famous in Japan that he was forced to flee the country, and now the rest of the globe (.pdf file) is fast catching on to his singular vision. More inside.
posted on Feb-9-05 at 4:32 PM
'Falling in love with the truth'. On Dec. 10, 1956, exactly one month after Soviet troops crushed the last hopes of the Hungarian Revolution, 13-year-old Sylvia Plachy lay hidden in a farm cart that was carrying her toward the Austrian border. That night, Plachy and her parents escaped, finally making their way to the United States. The family settled in Queens, New York, where the teenager grew up to become one of the most incisive photographers of her generation. Many of the photographs will be displayed this spring at the Rose Gallery in Los Angeles, and are on view now at New York's Hunter Fox Gallery, where Plachy (scroll down) recently talked about the book and her career. Her pictures "have to do with what memory looks like,' she explains. "How you remember things. Not so much how they are, but how they get translated." Oh, she's Adrien Brody's mom and she uses a Holga.
posted on Feb-8-05 at 1:39 PM
Call her Madame. Among the old-timers, the story went like this: a woman known to everyone as Madame came to California from Kentucky with her children and her husband. But once they were in the Gold Rush State, her husband left her. Desperate to find work, she introduced herself to a movie director named D. W. Griffith. He not only cast her in his movie, but the two became friends for life. And with this woman, called Madame Sul-Te-Wan, what we now call Black Hollywood began -- as a new book by historian Donald Bogle explains. (more inside)
posted on Feb-7-05 at 1:31 PM
"His voice was otherworldly — you couldn't believe the sound". Everyone who ever heard Klaus Nomi's voice had the same comment: "It can't be real." You hear that response throughout "The Nomi Song," the documentary about the obscure German-born artist who was a fixture on the New York music scene in the late '70s-early '80s, and a legitimate pop star in Europe. He was also a mystery, even to those who knew him. The film primarily covers the years between his 1978 New York club debut - which was captured on film - and his AIDS-related death in 1983 at age 39. Nomi never had an album officially released in the U.S. but was wildly popular among New York clubgoers as well as in France and his native Germany. More inside.
posted on Feb-3-05 at 9:21 AM
Stand Up, Speak Up -- Against Racism (and for Nike) A new campaign against the ugly, very present problem of racism in the game of soccer, with soccer stars like Thierry Henry and Rio Ferdinand. An elegant (if more than a bit tame and unimaginative) new ad by Wieden+Kennedy. The campaign aims to encourage fans to wear interlocked black-and-white wristbands as a symbol of their stand against racism, which can be bought for €2, or £1.50 in the UK. In every Nike store near you. (more inside)
posted on Feb-1-05 at 12:33 PM
"Rose . . . is as close to us as family". Rose Mary Woods, who died Saturday at 87, was Richard Nixon's private secretary. In 1973 Woods was transcribing secretly recorded audiotapes of Oval Office conversations , working on a June 20, 1972, tape of a conversation between President Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, that might have shed light on whether Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in three days earlier. While she was performing her duties (.rtf file), she said, the phone rang. As she reached for it, she said she inadvertently struck the erase key on the tape recorder and kept her foot on the machine's pedal, forwarding the tape. More inside.
posted on Jan-24-05 at 12:46 PM
The Death of Yesterday Twenty years ago, an everyday virus destroyed Clive Wearing's brain. Now, all he can remember is music -- and his wife. Here, Deborah Wearing tells how their enduring love has become the one constant in a marriage without memory.
posted on Jan-23-05 at 12:10 PM
From muse to master Lee Miller started out as a Vogue model, but by 1930 she had moved behind the lens to take piercing photographs -- culminating in her rage-fuelled portraits of Nazi kitsch. The "Lee Miller: Portraits" exhibit is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from February 3 until May 30. More inside.
posted on Jan-22-05 at 9:40 AM
Mona Kuhn: (NSFW) Photographs. An interview with the artist is here, other images are here. Kuhn is among the photographers whose work is on display now at the Photo L.A. art exposition (Santa Monica Civic Auditorium). Again, her images (nudes, non-graphic) and most of this post's links are generally not safe for work. This one, instead, is SFW
posted on Jan-21-05 at 8:16 AM
Creating Bush's God Talk by Michael Gerson, Bush's chief speechwriter. According to University of Washington professor David Domke, author of "God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the War on Terror", here's how Bush's God-Talk Is Different ("When Bush speaks of God, he positions himself as a prophetic spokesperson rather than a petitioning supplicant".) Bonus: "On What Did They Solemnly Swear? Which president opened his inaugural Bible at random in haste? Which didn't swear at all?". Test your knowledge of presidential inaugural Bible use with this quiz. And: Prayers of the Presidents -- From George Washington to George W. Bush, a sampling of personal and public prayers of America's presidents.
posted on Jan-20-05 at 5:04 AM
The world's largest passenger plane. The new Airbus "superjumbo" has a 262-foot wingspan, a tail as tall as a seven-story building and it cost $13 billion to develop. In a three-class cabin layout, the A380 will carry 555 passengers -- 33% more than the plane it is designed to displace, Boeing's veteran 747, Sir Norman Foster's favorite piece of modern architecture. The A380 has 49% more floor space. How the plane's extra space is used will be left up to airlines. Low-cost carriers could operate the A380 with a single economy-class configuration accommodating as many as 800 passengers. Virgin company chief Richard Branson said his airline, which has ordered six A380s, will offer private double beds for first-class passengers and casinos. Airbus trailed Boeing Co. until 2003, when it delivered more planes than its U.S. rival for the first time -- a feat it matched last year. Boeing will unveil next year the much smaller, new 7E7 -- with 200 to 250 seats.
posted on Jan-18-05 at 2:06 PM
I envy the Japanese for the enormous clarity that pervades their work. It is never dull and never seems to have been made in haste. Their work is as simple as breathing and they draw a figure with a few well chosen lines with the same ease, as effortless as buttoning up one's waistcoat..... --Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 24 September, 1888 The term "Japonisme" came up in France in the seventies of the 19th century to describe the craze for Japanese culture and art. Van Gogh, like so many other Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, was one of the admirers (and collectors) of Japanese art. He defined himself as “a simple worshipper of the eternal Buddha”, and the most peculiar among his many self-portraits is "Self-Portrait as Buddhist Monk" (see a comparison here and here), painted in 1888 and dedicated to Paul Gauguin. More inside.
posted on Jan-17-05 at 1:49 PM
Into the realm of Henry Darger When Henry Darger died in Chicago on April 13, 1973, he was a destitute man whose final days were spent at a home for the elderly. Now, 30 years later, Darger ranks among the greatest outsider artists America has ever seen. Found in the astounding clutter of Darger's one-room apartment was a 15,000-page fantasy epic, bound by hand in 15 volumes, titled "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion." Along with this were three separate volumes filled with 300 drawings, including 87 multi-sheet horizontal panels, some 12 feet long with drawings on both sides. The discovery of Darger's NSFW work spawned numerous books, a play, a British rock band (the Vivian Girls), and an excellent y2karl MetaFilter post. And now there's also Jessica Yu's documentary "In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger," a portrait of the reclusive artist that has been shortlisted for the upcoming Academy Award nominations. Again, Darger's art can be disturbing and must be considered not safe for work (more inside)
posted on Jan-14-05 at 9:36 AM
The stomach of Paris. Finally, after months of deliberation, Paris city hall awarded the task of reworking the site of Les Halles to French architect David Mangin: the winner has a vision of a Barcelona Ramblas-style walkway integrating Les Halles with the surrounding cityscape. Among the losers, Rem Koolhaas. The Les Halles site was first built in 1135 when King Louis VI moved the market there from the nearby Place de la Greve. The site was endowed in the 1850s with the huge metal halls for which it became famous; but in the 1970's the old market moved to the outskirts of the city. Then-mayor Jacques Chirac ordered the redevelopment of Les Halles -- it was supposed to re-emerge as a bustling tourist attraction. Instead that project gave birth to an architectural WTF? of a gigantic disaster. Unpopular and difficult to maintain to boot. (warning: the words in italic link to a French-language page)
posted on Dec-15-04 at 9:17 AM
"When one is in prison, the most important thing is the door". The precise coordination of every element of filmmaking -- camera distance, sound, theme, narrative, motion, color, human action -- so that it functions with rhythmic clarity: that is the cinema of Robert Bresson, who died five years ago aged 98. A "Christian atheist" by his own description, he made only 13 films (and a short) and created a cinema of paradox, in which "the denial of emotion creates emotionally overwhelming works, the withholding of information makes for narrative density, and attention to 'the surface of the work' produces inexhaustible depth". Paul Schrader, the most famous among Bresson scholars, wrote that "Bresson has seemed like God himself; distant, beyond communication. Now, like God, Bresson is dead". More inside.
posted on Dec-13-04 at 10:30 AM
When the fighting stops. In World War II, for every American soldier killed in combat, there were three wounded on the battlefield, according to the U.S. Army Medical Command. In Korea, the ratio of killed-to-wounded was one to four. The ratio was the same for Vietnam. In Iraq, the ratio is one to 12. Those combat survivors -- along with thousands more service members in Iraq and Afghanistan who are injured or who fall ill off the battlefield -- will add to the growing demand for services from an already struggling federal Veterans Affairs Department. More inside.
posted on Dec-5-04 at 1:47 PM
Here is the story of Hsuan Tsang / A Buddhist monk, he went from Xian to southern India / And back--on horseback, on camel-back, on elephant-back, and on foot. / Ten thousand miles... / Mountains and deserts, / In search of the Truth... Traversing rivers and deserts, scaling mountains and passing through desolate lands with no traces of human habitation, 7th century Chinese monk Hsuan Tsang made his journey in 627 AD from Changan to India for religious purposes. His detailed travel journal is believed to be among the earliest reliable sources of information about distant countries whose terrain and customs had been known, at that time, in only the sketchiest way. He travelled over land mostly on foot and horseback along the Silk Road, west towards India. The Buddhist scholar’s pilgrimage (627-645 AD) contributed enormously to the cultural flow between East and West Asia. His "Hsi Yu Ki" or "Records of the Western World" is considered the most valuable book source for the study of ancient Indian history and culture. Italian explorer Marco Polo, whose travel writings fired the imagination of Europeans for centuries, was believed to have used Hsuan Tsang’s travelogue as a guide during his travels in the 13th century. More than 1,300 years after Hsuan Tsang’s historical journey, Taiwanese magazine Rhythms Monthly embarked on a project to retrace Hsuan Tsang’s 19-year pilgrimage through a road that, today, belongs to 11 different countries. more inside
posted on Nov-30-04 at 5:20 PM
The heroes who saved Britain. They died in millions, the victims of wars waged by man against his fellow man. In huge numbers, they were deployed alongside the military in the theatres of conflict, in the deserts, the seas and the sky. They carried troops, ferried supplies and even secrets. On the home front, they rescued victims trapped in the rubble of bombed buildings. Their names? Rifleman Kahn, Mary of Exeter, Buster, Simon, Olga, Regal, Upstart, and millions of others. This contribution has finally been acknowledged in London with a £1m memorial, dedicated to the animals who served in war. It is the first such permanent tribute to the plethora of species that served in the military; horses, dogs, cats, monkeys, bears, pigeons, mules, even the humble glow-worm. The sculpture was placed at Brook Gate, Park Lane. Among those present, Buster the Army dog, who served with honor in Iraq.
posted on Nov-25-04 at 6:53 AM
Born-again liberal Christians. Do you think that mainline denominations are hemorraging members? Wrong. Fundamentalist Christianity is the way of the future and all US Evangelicals worship the same political party? Not so fast, buddy. Many scholars and theologians think that it's time for liberals to take Christianity back. Oregon State's Marcus J Borg, for example, argues that Christianity "still makes sense and is the most viable religious option for millions". He contends the earlier paradigm, based upon a punitive God, simply doesn't work anymore for too many people. It is an argument for an alternative to the literalist and exclusivist tradition that has dominated Western Christianity in the modern era. According to Borg, "So different are these two views of Christianity that they almost produce two different religions, both using the same Bible and language. A time of two paradigms is virtually a tale of two Christianities." There is, for example, an alternative view to the Resurrection Narrative not as report of an actual, physical event but as means for Jesus' early followers to express the miracle of his continuing spiritual presence among them, after his execution. It is in short an 'emerging paradigm which has been developing for over a hundred years and has recently become a major grass-roots movement within mainline denominations'. Just don't be afraid to ask questions. Not even about the dogs beneath the Cross. More inside.
posted on Nov-19-04 at 8:08 PM
"We will come and kill you in your beds, cut your throats, and wipe you from the face of the earth... if Alexander the Great were alive today he would grind you gypsy dogs into the dust, dig your dead from their graves". Since Oliver Stone chose to make his first foray into historical epics with a biopic of Alexander (based on the biography by the Oxford academic Robin Lane Fox), rivers of blood have been spilt -- figuratively at least -- in a propaganda battle between Greek and Macedonian nationalists over who has the right to claim the all-conquering hero as their own. The movie also deals with Alexander's omnivorous sexuality, in particular his fondness for eunuchs. With such treacherous ground to negotiate, and amid thunderous lobbying from both sides, Stone has chosen a middle course (like giving Alexander and the men of the Macedonian phalanxes Irish accents, while the Greeks speak clipped English RP).
posted on Nov-18-04 at 7:20 PM
Poems from the precipice. Sylvia Plath's late poems were published posthumously in a collection edited by her husband, Ted Hughes. As a new facsimile edition of the original manuscript is published, their daughter Frieda defends Hughes against criticism that he interfered with Plath's legacy. (more inside)
posted on Nov-16-04 at 8:21 AM
Spiritual Woodworker. Furniture designer George Nakashima's (1904-1990) exquisite creations merged traditional woodworking techniques with innovative design, resulting in (very expensive) work that demonstrates a high level of craftsmanship coupled with a reinterpretation of modernist design. Nakashima also prided himself on being the "world's first hippie", Hindu Catholic and Japanese druid (.pdf file). The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles pays tribute to this great artist with a unique exhibit. More inside.
posted on Nov-13-04 at 10:21 AM
“The real glory of war is surviving.” One of Hollywood's biggest crimes of the last quarter-century is being set right this week with the release of "The Big Red One: The Reconstruction", a beautifully restored version of Samuel Fuller's butchered 1980 masterpiece. The stunning new version restores some 15 scenes and more than 40 minutes of footage to Fuller's grittily autobiographical film about his World War II stint as a GI with the Army's First Infantry Division. Filmed in Israel, the film stars Lee Marvin in his greatest performance. The cut version of the film flopped, and Fuller went to his grave in 1997 bemoaning the fate of "The Big Red One," telling every journalist he met that he dreamed of seeing his original vision up on the big screen. Richard Schickel, critic and documentary filmmaker, printed 70,000 feet of film from negatives stored in a vault in Kansas City and supervised the editing according to Fuller's original shooting script. "What they released in 1980 wasn't a bad movie," Schickel said. "What the studio wanted was a gung-ho war movie. What we've added is the real Sam stuff: the boredom, the absurdity of an ordinary soldier caught up in a vast war". More inside.
posted on Nov-12-04 at 9:57 AM
YELLOW PERIL "Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man." Sax Rohmer's tales of the sinister Dr. Fu Manchu and his arch enemy Sir Denis Nayland Smith of the British Secret Service (the nephew of Sherlock Holmes whose name is also invoked in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow), have fascinated readers and cinemagoers alike for the best part of the twentieth century. Two things make Fu Manchu all the more monstrous a villain: his proximity to the West, and his intellect. His base is in Limehouse, the Chinese area of London. So by allowing him to live in the country, England is vulnerable to his insidious plans (and so becomes a validation of strict immigration policy). His intellect comes from Western learning, and it is often emphasized that he has been educated in a University. So we see the evil Asian as using the West's own knowledge against it. It is up to Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie to stop Fu Manchu's plans in each story. As Smith remarks in The Hand of Fu Manchu, "the swamping of the white world by Yellow hordes may be the price of our failure." (more inside)
posted on Nov-10-04 at 5:44 PM
Discovering Japan. As a perennial outsider at loose in Japan, writer Donald Richie captures the joyous freedom of being foreign. The foreign observer is likely to be happy only if he sees his foreignness as an adventure, and recognizes that he has given up a sense of belonging for a sense of freedom, traded the luxury of being understood for that of being permanently interested. Richie, the philosopher-king of expats in Asia for the past half-century, arrived in Tokyo in 1947 as a typist with the U.S. government and never really left, writing dozens of books , on Japanese movies, temples, history and fashion, while enjoying himself as an actor, musician, filmmaker and painter. The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 is a monument to the pleasures of displacement. Richie watchers can observe, more intimately than ever, a man who is generally happiest observing. More inside.
posted on Nov-9-04 at 5:28 PM
Detailing the impossible. Louis Feuillade made more than 800 films covering almost every contemporary genre: historical drama, comedy, realist drama, melodrama, religious films. However, he was most famous, or infamous, for his crime serials: Fantômas (1913-14), Les Vampires, Judex (1916), La Nouvelle Mission de Judex (1917), Tih-Minh (1918) and Barrabas (1919). Critics panned his crime films, often savagely, because the preoccupation of French critics and film-makers in the 1910s and 20s was to elevate cinema -– and, ironically, back then the French saw their own films as lacking the artistry and sophistication of American ones, by Griffith or DeMille – to the level of art. It was years before Feuillade's films escaped the label of aesthetic backwardness. Now, critics have realized that what Feuillade has done is to offer us an alternative cinematic mode to Griffiths', one that continues in updated variants throughout cinema. It is predicated on a principle of uncertainty, that questions our understanding of the real. It is as fluid and elusive a tradition as a cat burglar, dressed in black on a night-time rooftop.
posted on Nov-8-04 at 5:15 PM
Irredentos. The sun beats down insufferably on the rust coloured landscape, stretching for mile after mile under a cobalt blue sky. In the distance, a convoy of rented farm trucks packed with thousands of penitents kicks up a serpentine cloud of dust that rises and then dissipates over the land. Through the dry air comes a jingling of chimes and a clicking of rosaries, a shuffling of processions, and with eyes heavenward, a ceaseless chanting of invocations. This is a holy and sun-scorched land, the Backlands of Brazil's northeast - the Sertão. Some believe Jesus is buried here. Christian Cravo, the photographer, is Mario Cravo Neto's son.
posted on Nov-7-04 at 5:08 PM
Memento Mori. The Aztecs made war almost tenderly, wielding wooden swords that were edged with bits of obsidian or flint and, in face-to-face combat, endeavoring not to kill their enemies but, commonly by striking at their legs, to disable and capture them. Later, the captives—thousands of them for a rededication of the Great Temple at Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City) in 1478—were led to high platforms, where priests tore out and displayed their still-beating hearts. An especially respected prisoner might be allowed to fight for his life against Aztec warriors, at the last, with clubs and a sword, but his sword was edged with feathers. “The Aztec Empire,” at the Guggenheim in New York, is advertised as the most comprehensive exhibition of Aztec art ever mounted outside Mexico. More inside.
posted on Nov-6-04 at 4:48 PM
Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back The tattoo is of a great, blue mushroom cloud, and in the cloud, etched ghost-like, is the face of our daughter, Rae. Her lips are drawn tight, eyes are closed and there are stitches deeply pulled to simulate the lashes. When I move fast and hard they rip slightly and Rae cries bloody tears. That’s one reason for the martial arts. The hard practice of them helps me to tear the stitches so my daughter can cry. Tears are the only thing I can give her. East Texas writer Joe R Lansdale has written horror, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, suspense, westerns, "men's adventure," and just about every other kind of writing you can think of. On his website (see main link) Lansdale makes a story available for free every week to his readers. Lansdale also wrote a novella featuring an aging Elvis Presley who teams up with a delusional, African American John F. Kennedy to battle an ancient Egyptian mummy with a predilection for anal soul-rape. It made it to the big screen, too: Bubba Ho-Tep. With Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. More inside.
posted on Nov-5-04 at 12:17 PM
Blast Maps. The threat of nuclear terrorism is not limited to New York City or Washington, DC. While New York is widely seen as the most likely target, it is clear that Al Qaeda is not only capable but also interested in mounting attacks on other American cities. Imagine the consequences of a 10-kiloton weapon exploding in San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte, or any other city Americans call home. From the epicenter of the blast to a distance of approximately one-third mile, every structure will be destroyed and no one would be left alive. A second circle of destruction extending three-quarters of a mile from ground zero would leave buildings looking like the Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City. A third circle reaching out 1 mile would be ravaged by fires and radiation. Harvard professor Graham Allison's website lets you visualize these consequences in the city of your choice. Just enter a zip code. More inside.
posted on Nov-4-04 at 8:59 AM
It all comes down do one question: Must France stay in Algeria? “If the answer is yes,” he says, “then you must accept the consequences.” Gillo Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers", now out on a Criterion dvd, is a film of quiet, overwhelming power. The mix of subjective and documentary techniques holds the viewer's trust so authoritatively that many scenes come close to sneaking out of the mental "movies I saw" box to mix with the viewer's own memories. No matter how complicated or fragmented the action becomes, Pontecorvo gets the pace, tone and rhythm exactly right, filling the screen with eloquent details. (Last year, Pontecorvo's masterpiece was discussed here, too. More inside)
posted on Nov-3-04 at 8:21 AM
The Ladder is a website devoted to the writer Henry James (1843-1916). It comprises electronic editions of a selection of James’s works and also * a textual note on the source and any amendments required during editing * annotations of the text explaining such things as references to real persons and places, references to other fiction by James, or in in his notebboks * a summary and a detailed (chapter by chapter) synopsis of the plot, so you can easily find passages you remember, by what happens * a bibliography including original publications, subsequent reprints Interestingly enough, lately more than a few writers seem to have a bit of James-mania: in June, Colm Tóibín published "The Master", a portrait of James recovering from his humiliating failure as a playwright. Now comes "Author, Author", by David Lodge, which is about James' humiliating failure as a playwright as well. These in turn arrive on the heels of Emma Tennant's "Felony", a novel about James' near-romance with Constance Fenimore Woolson, and Alan Hollinghurst's "The Line of Beauty", a BookerPrize-winning novel in which James plays an important off-the-stage role.
posted on Nov-1-04 at 10:11 AM
Cultural Revolution When Nike founder Phil Knight first traveled to China in 1980, before Beijing could even ship to U.S. ports, the country was just emerging from the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. By the mid-'80s, Knight had moved much of his production to China from South Korea and Taiwan. But he saw China as more than a workshop. "There are 2 billion feet out there," former Nike executives recall his saying. "Go get them!". The Chinese responded (the goal was "to hook kids into Nike early and hold them for life"): sales through the 1990s picked up 60% a year. Here's how Phil Knight did it. Print page for main link here
posted on Oct-29-04 at 7:42 AM
In search of lost time It was Jack Kerouac who first defined Robert Frank's genius, who found in it some echo of his own vision of a vast, broken-down, but still epic, America, peopled with restless and lonely dreamers. 'Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice,' wrote Kerouac in his now famous introduction to Frank's collection The Americans , 'with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America on to film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world'. Frank's exhibition, Storylines, opens this week at the Tate Modern in London.
posted on Oct-27-04 at 6:44 AM
Himmler's Crusade: The True Story of the 1938 Nazi Expedition to Tibet. In 1935, the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler founded an organisation called Ancestral Heritage , to uncover the hidden past of the Aryan race he and his Führer regarded as the noblest and most vital force in human history. One of the scientific missions Himmler sponsored was a multitasked expedition to Tibet under the leadership of ornithologist Ernst Schäfer, an expert on rare Tibetan birds who liked to smear the blood of exotic kills on his face. Schäfer recruited an anthropologist to measure noses and skulls and to make face-masks; a geographer who specialised in the earth's geomagnetism; and a botanist who was also handy with a film camera. They managed to con their way into Tibet, past the British. The expedition is at the basis of a masterful story by Jim Shepard, the author of Love and Hydrogen (full text). More inside.
posted on Oct-25-04 at 11:16 AM
Devil and the deep blue sea. A devil-worshipping non-commissioned officer in the Royal Navy has become the first registered Satanist in the British Armed Forces. Chris Cranmer, a naval technician serving on the Type 22 frigate Cumberland, has been officially recognised as a Satanist by the ship's captain. That allows him to perform Satanic rituals aboard and permits him to have a funeral carried out by the Church of Satan should he be killed in action. A spokesman for the Royal Navy insisted that Mr Cranmer's unconventional beliefs would not cause problems on board ship. "We are an equal opportunities employer and we don't stop anybody from having their own religious values". Followers of the Church of Satan live by the Nine Satanic Statements, which include Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek”
posted on Oct-24-04 at 7:17 AM
A Walk in the Woods. Farewell to the original Cold War warrior: Paul Nitze, the college professor's son who went to Hotchkiss and Harvard and worked as investment banker before going to Washington in 1940, where he quickly became one of the chief architects of American policy towards the Soviet Union. His doctrine of "strategic stability" became its cornerstone for half a century (Nitze held key government posts in Washington, from the era of Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan's, when he was the White House's guru on arms control). By the end of 1949, Nitze had become director of the State Department's policy planning staff, helping to devise the role of Nato, deciding to press ahead with the manufacture of the H-bomb, and producing National Security Council document 68, the document at the heart of the Cold War: in it, Nitze called for a drastic expansion of the U.S. military budget. The paper also expanded containment’s scope beyond the defense of major centers of industrial power to encompass the entire world. (NSC-68 was a top secret paper, written in April 1950 and declassified in the 70's, called "United States Objectives and Programs for National Security"). More inside.
posted on Oct-22-04 at 11:23 AM
INCREDIBLE, UNSTOPPABLE TITAN OF TERROR! He's attacked other monsters and terrorized Japan for decades. Now Godzilla is confronting academics who want to wrestle with his legacy. The University of Kansas plans to pay homage to the giant lizard later this month, organizing a three-day scholarly conference for the 50th anniversary of his first film. Planners want to provoke discussion of globalization, Japanese pop culture and Japanese-American relations after World War II. "I would like people to take Godzilla more seriously," said Bill Tsutsui, a history professor at the University of Kansas and author of the book "Godzilla on My Mind". (more inside)
posted on Oct-19-04 at 11:05 AM
My Heart vs the Real World "He's a normal kid. He's a good kid. He's a real normal kid. And we get him to do the drums and we take him for tryouts and we do everything we can to keep his life as normal as we can make it. We've never lollypopped him. You know, mollycoddled or – we let him try everything. 'Cause if we didn't it would be a big crutch for him. We don't want that to happen. Like I said, we waited – we wanted to have another child right away. We wanted three, we always did. We were scared to death after him. To have another one, to have another baby. What if the third one, you know – what if it were Cheryl and I? Our genes? -- The father of Grant Skowkron, Fifteen years old, Single Ventricle, Transposition of the Major Vessels, M.V. Prolapse, Implanted Pacemaker. Photographer Max S. Gerber has had a pacemaker implanted because of his bradycardia. In his website, he tells the story of ten other heart patients -- all of them kids -- with his images, and with their parents' words.
posted on Oct-18-04 at 8:27 AM
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