A decade on, the Coen brothers' woefully underrated
O Brother, Where Art Thou? [alt] is remembered for
a lot of things: its sun-drenched, sepia-rich
cinematography (a pioneer of
digital color grading), its
whimsical humor,
fluid vernacular, and
many subtle references to Homer's
Odyssey. But one part of its legacy truly stands out:
the music.
Assembled by
T-Bone Burnett, the soundtrack is a cornucopia of American folk music, exhibiting everything from
cheery ballads and
angelic hymns to
wistful blues and
chain-gang anthems. Woven into the plot of the film through radio and live performances, the songs lent the story a
heartfelt, homespun feel that echoed its cultural heritage,
a paean and uchronia of the Old South.
Though the multiplatinum album was recently
reissued, the movie's medley is best heard via famed documentarian
D. A. Pennebaker's
Down from the Mountain, an
extraordinary yet
intimate concert film focused on a night of live music by the soundtrack's stars (among them
Gillian Welch,
Emmylou Harris,
Chris Thomas King, bluegrass legend
Dr. Ralph Stanley) and wryly hosted by
John Hartford, an accomplished
fiddler,
riverboat captain, and
raconteur whose struggle with terminal cancer made this his last major performance. The film is free in its entirety on
Hulu and
YouTube -- click inside for individual clips, song links, and breakdowns of
the set list's fascinating history.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 22, 2011 -
107 comments
"Almost everything I do is based on other texts anyway. Without plagiarism, there would be no literature. I'm a rewrite man." The poet Christoper Logue has died, aged 85. Logue had a varied career, at various points serving in the British Army (and being arrested for espionage after a drunken threat to sell secrets), writing pornography under the
nom de plume Count Palmiro de Vicarion, recording
George Martin-produced, "
heroically daft" jazz recitals of the poems of Pablo Neruda (
YT) and regularly contributing to the British satirical magazine
Private Eye, where he edited
Pseuds' Corner, while finding the time to be arrested again, for civil disobedience as part of Bertrand Russell's
Committee of 100.
[more inside]
posted by running order squabble fest
on Dec 4, 2011 -
14 comments
Humanities and the Liberal Arts is the personal website of former Middlebury classics professor
William Harris who passed away in 2009.
In his retirement he crafted a wonderful site full of essays,
music,
sculpture,
poetry and his thoughts on anything from
education to
technology. But the heart of the website for me is, unsurprisingly,
his essays on ancient Latin and Greek literature some of whom are book-length works. Here are a few examples:
Purple color in Homer,
complete fragments of Heraclitus,
how to read Homer and Vergil,
a discussion of a recently unearthed poem by Sappho,
Plato and mathematics,
Propertius' war poems, and finally, especially close to my heart, his commentaries on the poetry of Catullus, for example on
Ipsithilla,
Odi et amo,
Attis poem as dramatic dance performance and
a couple of very dirty poems (even by Catullus' standard). That's just a taste of the riches found on Harris' site, which has been around nearly as long as the world wide web has existed.
posted by Kattullus
on Sep 30, 2011 -
18 comments
A short history of New York City's sirens. In the first years of the twenty-first century, New York City police officers had six different siren noises at their fingertips to alternate and overdub as they attempted to bore through stagnant traffic. The “Yelp” is a high-pitched, rapidly oscillating, jumpy sound that suggests a small dog with large teeth has hold of your thigh and is not about to let go ..... . From
Cabinet Magazine.
posted by Rumple
on Aug 26, 2011 -
28 comments
A Cyclops' cave the wanderers brave
And find much milk & cheese
But as they eat, foul death they meet
For them doth Cyclops seize.
From
The Young Folks' Ulysses [PDF], by H. Lovecraft, poet, aged seven. One of the "freely available editions of obscure, outlandish and otherwise outré works of semi-fine literature" from
the electric publishing wing of
kobek.com.
posted by Iridic
on Mar 28, 2011 -
8 comments
Homer Simpson in CSS "...I stayed with the idea in mind that more complex designs could be made using the Verdana font and absolute positioning in CSS, thus generating vector drawings directly embedded in the code html."
[via]
posted by mewithoutyou
on Apr 30, 2008 -
52 comments
The Bushiad and The Idyossey. "Narrative epic poems of 24 chapters each,
The Bushiad and
The Idyossey use satire and irony to cover events during nine months from December 2002 through September 2003, and were inspired by events as they occurred. Homer would recognize the tale." But where's
Hercubush?
posted by homunculus
on Apr 4, 2004 -
8 comments
Highway Ulysses is a new play premiering at Boston's
American Repertory Theatre. Playwright/composer
Rinde Eckert and ART artistic director/Sam Shepherd's regular director
Robert Woodruff have collaborated on an envigorating new play with music about a Vietnam vet on a road trip to find his son that parallels Homer's
Odyssey. The ART's website is similarly informative and engaging as it points out the frightening timeliness of
The Odyssey in the current world. (more inside)
posted by pxe2000
on Mar 17, 2003 -
8 comments
