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
Rabbi Rami Shapiro is a self-described holy rascal, with an
often sarcastic twitter feed. His blog,
Beyond Religion, has covered a wide variety of issues, both spiritual and political, from
descriptions of God,
the relationship between religion and science, the reality of
Christian law, and the
role of women in Israel.
In today's post, he defines and defends the role of myth in religion:
“Myth” is not the same as “falsehood.” Myth is a narrative structure used to convey some of the deepest truths we humans can glean. Myths are not believed in but unpacked and lived."
posted by JustKeepSwimming
on Dec 7, 2010 -
35 comments
Way Down Under The Ground. The
tale of
Orpheus's journey through the Underworld has been retold so many times, on
stage, in
film. Tennessee Williams saw it as
Orpheus Descending.
Neil Gaiman took the myth on in the
pages of
Sandman. Today, we have
Hadestown, a new album from
Anais Mitchell. Mitchell recorded "Hades & Persephone" for a
previous release, but
Hadestown is a fully-realized
folk opera, five years in the
making, a collaborative effort featuring contributions from
Greg Brown,
Ani Difranco,
The Haden Tripletts and Justin Vernon (the voice of
Bon Iver).
[more inside]
posted by grabbingsand
on Mar 9, 2010 -
18 comments
What do you mean by the "trauma myth"?
The title refers to the fact that although sexual abuse is usually portrayed by professionals and the media as a traumatic experience for the victims when it happens — meaning frightening, overwhelming, painful — it rarely is. Most victims do not understand they are being victimized, because they are too young to understand sex, the perpetrators are almost always people they know and trust, and violence or penetration rarely occurs. "Confusion" is the most frequently reported word when victims are asked to describe what the experience was like. Confusion is a far cry from trauma.
NYTimes: "
Abusing Not Only Children, but Also Science"
posted by andoatnp
on Feb 5, 2010 -
140 comments
CSI Myths: The Shaky Science Behind Forensics Forensic science was not developed by scientists. It was mostly created by cops, who were guided by little more than common sense. And as hundreds of criminal cases begin to unravel, many established forensic practices are coming under fire.
posted by Pragmatica
on Jul 27, 2009 -
125 comments
In
Tennyson´s epic poem
Idylls of the King, Lyonesse is the place where the final, epoch-shattering battle between
Mordred and
King Arthur takes place. In the older
Arthurian romances, Lyonesse is the
birthplace of Sir Tristan, and it is supposed to have bordered
Cornwall in the southwest of England. No historical evidence of Lyonnesse has been found, and the academic consensus seems to be that the
French author of the Prose
Tristan got his British geography catastrophically wrong, and that he really meant
Lothian in Scotland.
There
are,
however,
those who
believe that Lyonesse was a real realm which once reached from the
Scilly Islands to
Land´s End. The people of
Penzance and southwestern Cornwall certainly seem fond of stories about
sunken lands,
church bells in the deep, and
drowned forests. According to
family legend, the ancestor of the local
Trevelyan family was a sole survivor who rode across the causeway to Cornwall as Lyonesse crumbled into the sea behind him.
posted by the_unutterable
on Sep 27, 2008 -
14 comments
"
Women and children, first," is a familiar cultural refrain, with its popular roots in the gallant sacrifice made by the male contingent aboard the doomed
Titanic. Their sacrifice has inspired
poetry,
sculpture,
male social clubs, and, of course,
cinema. Yet, this sacrifice of near-mythic scale
was in some respects a myth, with
survival statistics skewing well in favor of men of higher social and economic class than children (and, to a lesser extent, women) of lower status.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Aug 25, 2008 -
70 comments
In an intriguing blog entry the mysterious jasminembla muses about the man in the moon, and his relationship with thorns, linking finally to a most remarkable collection of sourced and footnoted Victorian
Moon Lore authored by a Rev. Timothy Harley, 1885. In the "
Man in the Moon" section, we learn that, indeed, the man in the moon has been traditionally linked with thorns, variously being exiled to the moon for stealing a bundle of brambles, strewing brambles on the path to church to hinder the pious, or cutting wood on the Sabbath, among other infractions - and that this folktale has existed since at least 1157, when an English abbot asks, in Latin, "
Do you not know what the people call the rustic in the moon who carries the thorns? Whence one vulgarly speaking says,
"The Rustic in the moon /
Whose burden weighs him down /
This changeless truth reveals /
He profits not who steals."
Furthermore, no less a personage than Shakespeare has mentioned the thorny situation of the poor man in the moon... and most interesting, perhaps, the rather convincing theory that the bramble-burdened man in the moon may very well be an older "Jack" of Jack and Jill fame, who did not steal, but was stolen by the moon, along with his sister.
[more inside]
posted by taz
on Jun 26, 2008 -
19 comments
The Devil's Tramping Ground is a barren circle in the forest in North Carolina. As a result of nothing having grown within the circle for at least the last hundred years, it has become the subject of some of that state's oldest legends. John Harden, a journalist, newspaper editor and author said of that place
"... the story is that the Devil goes there to walk in circles as he thinks up new means of causing trouble for humanity. There sometimes during the dark of night, the Majesty of the Underworld of Evil silently tramps around that bare circle; thinking, plotting, and planning against good, and in behalf of wrong. So far as is known, no person has ever spent the night there to disprove this is what happens.". No person until you came along and played
this neat interactive flash movie, that is.
posted by Effigy2000
on May 29, 2008 -
21 comments
World Tales : See folk tales, myths and legends from around the world, brought to life by twenty Australian animators.
posted by dhruva
on Jan 2, 2007 -
7 comments
Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies.
Stabbed in the Back !
posted by y2karl
on Jul 15, 2006 -
36 comments
The truth about Kitty Genovese. They say she was the woman stabbed to death before 38 witnesses who did nothing. They "didn't want to get involved." To many, her name rings synonymous with "public apathy" and the "
bystander effect." Unfortunately, the details - and the meat - of her case are largely misunderstood. None of that, however, diminishes the tragedy of her death, not only for her family and friends, but also for
her lover.
posted by Sticherbeast
on Jun 5, 2006 -
41 comments
"A Helpful Hand" - Penn & Teller call
Bullshit! on the "bestselling book in the world," the Holy Bible.
(link is to entire episode approx 29mins - *language, flash)
posted by hypersloth
on Dec 14, 2005 -
120 comments
ESA astronaut, Pedro Duque writes "I am writing these notes in the Soyuz with a cheap ballpoint pen. Why is that important? As it happens, I've been working in space programmes for seventeen years, eleven of these as an astronaut, and I've always believed, because that is what I've always been told, that normal ballpoint pens don't work in space... and here I am, it doesn't stop working and it doesn't 'spit' or anything. Sometimes being too cautious keeps you from trying, and therefore things are built more complex than necessary." From
Snopes: Fisher spent over one million dollars in trying to perfect the ball point pen before he made his first successful
pressurized pens in 1965, which NASA uses.
[via GearBits]
posted by riffola
on Nov 4, 2003 -
23 comments
