Katrina Victims Help

What a sentence: They closed the city down.

CNN page listing organizations that will help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

One-quarter of the population of New Orleans was living below the poverty level.

Raft of the Medusa

Rich Icarus

So what's next on the Netflix Queue but Scorsese's answer to Altman's Vincent and Theo. That's how it felt anyway — a movie by Scorsese that showed how a troubled creative person can be portrayed in the movies, even if van Gogh and Howard Hughes aren't exactly in the same league.

Scorsese's film about American eccentric Howard Hughes, an obsessive tinkerer — if he were poor he would be called a mental case — is satisfying. Scorsese infuses empathy into the story of Hughes' sad decline, producing a beautifully mounted, if conventional movie. Where Altman lazily strung together one downer of a scene after another in Vincent and Theo, Scorsese imaginatively enters into the world of Hughes, an act which is really a gift of love. We get a sense of a man whose dreams and ambitions burst all normal constraints, who had the resources and self confidence to act on those yearnings, rather than wasting his life in further accumulation; we end up feeling neither condescendingly sorry for Hughes, nor cackling with the easy scorn directed at poor little rich boys, but rather we feel compassion for Hughes and his horrific outcome.

So many scenes in the movie had that rare chemistry, where director and actors hit some indefinable sweet spot — Scorsese and actors nearly emitted a chime they were so right on; DiCaprio was great, as were the female leads. Scorsese so loves, and is a scholar of movies, that he can make you root for a man, who at the time, was one of the richest men in the world.

Vincent and Theo and Bob

From the first clunking piano notes and the tinkly “modern music” that pursues you through the movie, the kind of music that is designed to gain attention by irritation, you know Robert Altman's Vincent and Theo is doomed.

Tim Roth slobs himself up, making van Gogh a repellant creature. Roth thinks the mental problems van Gogh suffered could be best expressed as leering coarseness. Altman stated, on an interview segment on the DVD, that van Gogh couldn't “make anything up” — that he had no imagination, but had to have “the thing in front of him”. This is a curious example of blindness from someone dealing in a visual medium. If Altman thinks van Gogh's work replicates, as conventional realism, he has a real problem. His lack of understanding of the way imagination can express itself through figuration betrays the cluelessness of the entertainment industry as a whole, because Altman is about as sophisticated as it gets in popular media. To give you an idea of the dissociation of this director from his material: the movie was populated with art student's copies of van Gogh's paintings which Altman said were fine, because his camera always was moving, so you “wouldn't notice”. You don't have to know much about art to know these crummy copies were just that. Altman was sliming van Gogh and his audience in one swell foop.

Altman's take on van Gogh's great letters, an impressive group of documents expressing the struggles in creating art and the bond between brothers in what amounted to a shared enterprise, is reduced in Altman's mind to pleading for money. Altman said in a Fresh Air interview that van Gogh was a parasite who only thought about himself. An interesting remark considering…

Altman's son — who works for him as a production designer — said that wherever his father is when making a movie, “he is always the star, no matter who is on the set”. This was supposed to be a compliment — not a revelation of narcissistic self-regard.

The passion and interior density of van Gogh's work, in which his soul is made manifest, is an artistic and human triumph. Altman's movie had nice costumes.

Restoration

Subotica Synagogue in Subotica, Serbia/Montenegro it appears will be restored but an airport in Finland may not survive the chopping block.

What do they have in common? An organization is trying to save these historic structures. Their choices are interestingly varied and admirable. They even want to save Shackleton's hut.

Sheehan

A great discussion at Lehrer about Cindy Sheehan:

TOM OLIPHANT: …the phenomenon has gone beyond Mrs. Sheehan…because of what she evoked as an American reaction not to the war itself but to President Bush's problems in talking about the war, in explaining what's going on and telling us how much it's going to cost and telling us what's going to happen next. There is a disconnect in the dialogue between the government and the people on the war…

BILL KRISTOL: I think the left has found a new weapon to oppose the president and the war, and that weapon is martyrdom, and they are using the death of a soldier in this case and the mother's grief over that death to try to, obviously, rally support, as Mrs. Sheehan has made perfectly clear to get the troops out of Iraq. Her complaint isn't that we aren't grieving enough over these young men and women who have died; it's that President Bush isn't following her preferred policy alternative…Are we going to now pull out competing mothers, competing widows?…it's just grotesque…

Oliphant is right that Bush has been incapable of speaking with depth and insight about the war in Iraq. It is his biggest failure and it could destroy the good he might have done. But Kristol is right as well in talking about the push for surrender in the swarming support around Cindy Sheehan.

Dancing Matt

The story of dancing Matt was covered on a TV show today — and produced one of the funnier lines of the week as well. Matt on his travels recorded his dances for his family, and it made Matt a net star.

When he was asked what kind of dance it is, Matt said: “It's not a dance. It's just what my body does.” As Jerry Seinfeld's mom said: “how could you not like this boy?”. (Matt's 28.)

The Quicktime “small” movie (13MB) link.

Matt's movie is inexplicably larger than itself. Something about the joyful meaninglessness of things — the absurdity and energy and pointlessness of our transitory existence; dancing our little dance and traveling on. Something like that.

Big Fish

The DVD commentary/interview running the full length of Tim Burton's movie Big Fish is worth listening to. Burton has an eccentric gift, melding the gothic with warmth and a knowing sensibility. Big Fish is about the lies we choose to live with and how they interweave with our present reality — the quotidian modified by filtered memory. If not a great film, it was worth seeing. And again, the commentary was worth the price of admission: Burton is very accessible to an interviewer who is informed and curious — a great combination. Burton noted that he never got as close to his father as he had wished — we always remain most mysterious to those closest to us.

The World Is Watching

The heartbreaking scene of Israeli settlers being removed by, what amounts to their brothers and sisters in the army, provides a living example of the nobility of a democratic society doing what is so difficult, with restraint and intelligence.

Sharon understands the demographic imperative of removing the settlers — he is doing the only thing he can do. The settlers, in angry despair, see their homes and their ancient heritage taken from them, given to people who harassed and killed them. Palestinian society is often sentimentalized by media outlets, even though murder is the option of choice in that society; despite the rage of the settlers, the whole process of removal is being done with deep feeling, and decent human consideration; the one act of terror by an Israeli was immediately labeled as such by the leader of a free society, and condemned — a model that should be emulated and celebrated, and whose absence in Palestinian society should be universally deplored. Take a look at the press given this signal event, initiated and implemented by a society of institutions and laws — is this Israeli act being presented with the affirmation it deserves?

I'm Watching As Fast As I Can

The Netflix Queue marches on:

Well, we saw the Wachowski's 1996 Bound and it was really hip. When movies pander to coolness they are sure to be yesterday's newspaper as far any lasting value or honorable claim to your attention. It had its moments, it was well mounted, the performances were all good, but the dark story needed more layered irony, less glistening surface; the sensibility of the movie had a fascistic undertow. Actually, it seemed close to a rip-off of Friedkin's excellent 1985 movie To Live and Die in L.A.

Signs was a movie I looked forward to because I liked M. Night Shyamalan when I heard him on Howard Stern and I really enjoyed The Sixth Sense and I love the ET sci-fi movie genre. I was rooting for the silly thing. When I listened to Night's commentary on the DVD he seemed to have no inkling that the movie had foundered — it was a joyless ride. Even Mel Gibson of the cow-like stare who nevertheless usually turns in a workmanlike performance was flattened, sunken in the miasma. So self-referring and self-congratulatory is the Hollywood community that everyone who spoke on the commentary — as has been the case in most DVD commentaries — was grrreat and an artist, a real artist, and so good and yet, who knows how it happens, most movies are stinkers.

Altman's 2003 movie The Company was so enjoyable. Somehow Altman's films don't have scenes; rather they flow directly into your memory as something experienced. A film about a dance company could not have been better suited to Altman's talents — he said on the commentary that it was an experience like making Nashville, a more complex, richly textured triumph. Altman has some sort of energy that makes people feel comfortable and work at their best, so all the technical aspects from the look to the sound to the cutting seemed fully rounded, complete, successful. How a man who seems just below the surface to be touchy and defensive can at the same time, in his work, be so convivial and relaxed, is a paradigm for the transformative in art. The Joffrey of Chicago had some excellent pieces on display — I was particularly taken by the broken lighting, which seemed just perfect. Although there were inevitable dead spots in a movie like this, which is a strange meld of documentary and fiction, viewed impressionistically, at a distance, with no true story line, my only real disappointment with the movie was that the piece with the dancers appearing on a shadow screen was so starkly, elegantly beautiful I would have loved to have seen the whole piece. Bob knows how to leave them wanting more…

Common Sense

It would be easy to dismiss this op-ed by John Horgan as Reader's Digest Cream of Wheat. In many ways Horgan's attempt to affirm common sense speaks to our time better than elaborate theories or involved panaceas. The problem of our time, which is daily acted out in the shouts of the marginal members of mainstream religious communities and the marginalia of many other ideological groups — is a yearning for the normative — some firm footing in what seems right and real.

Horgan's article traces the path that led to the normalization of the irrational. The world of quantum physics and Einstein's relativity made it seem that common sense wasn't an adequate standard for determining the truth. Somehow this became: if it makes sense, it can't be true; if it doesn't make sense, it must be true.

This through-the-looking glass “absurdity must be good” paradigm applies to the art world as well. I sometimes wonder if people in the art world actually look at the work they are discussing with any honest visual attention. If there is any real emotional or intellectual connection with the work; rather it seems art is esteemed in its similarity to other work, its pre-approved status via resume, its having been shown in a status venue, or having been “written about” in a publication putatively about art but more often about reputation (aka the marketplace). I don't mean a connection with the intended meanings and the following discussion about the work. I mean with the work itself. It's just common sense to look at art and see what is there: does it have anything like the mystery and ambiguity of life? Is there a true energy in the work and a scope to the artist's vision? Simple common sense.

Naipaul

V.S. Naipaul has some interesting things to say:

We must stop fooling ourselves about what we are witnessing…People [in England] talk about those people who were picked up by the Americans as 'lads,' 'our lads,' as though they were people playing cricket or marbles…It's glib, nonsensical talk from people who don't understand that holy war for Muslims is a religious war, and a religious war is something you never stop fighting.

Naipaul isn't interested in dire predictions of an America in the throes of a coruscating devolution:

That's a romantic idea…A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying… . It's a university idea. People cook it up at universities and do a lot of lectures about it. It has no substance…

Naipaul in his Nobel acceptance speech said “I have no system, literary or political, I have no guiding political idea.” That's because V.S. Naipaul is an artist.

Photo Services

In a recent issue of Macworld Ben Long did a review of photo services. He concluded that mpix was the best. I tried them — the results were beautiful, particularly the pearlescent sheen you can order as an extra; but it was expensive and took a long time as well. On the other hand, winkflash is my pick. Fast, excellent quality, no hassle, beautifully done transparently implemented site, not to mention extremely reasonable pricing. I process my photos before uploading, and have mostly reproductions of my paintings done; for those purposes, with no imaging algorithms applied (or desired), they are easily the best — I've tried at least six of the better known services; winkflash didn't even pay me to say this which they really should don't you think?

At Long Last

Muslims living in the west are beginning to see that the attempt to destroy democracies in the name of their religion might impact them. In a discussion at Lehrer you can sense an unease, a subtextual self-interest. Still, whatever the motives — which are never pure in human behavior — this discussion was long overdue, startling in its honesty and self-awareness.

ASRA NOMANI: …[hate] is imported into America and this what is we have to face…we have this ideological hatred spewing into America, into communities in England. I mean, right here I have a text … distributed at my mosque in West Virginia, that … says that women can be beaten. And then we have sermons downloaded from Saudi Arabia that say that we should not be friends with the Jews and the Christians…

An articulate Muslim student on the panel spoke with precision and great emotional force:

SHADI HAMID: …I think that our national Islamic organizations, even after 9/11, failed to effectively condemn terrorism and fight extremism within our on communities. For example, I mean, I think it's interesting how you've had all these suicide bombings almost daily in Iraq and Israel and of course we had 9/11. But how come this condemnation, this very forceful condemnation that we mention after the London bombings, why did it take so long, why did we have to take three, four years for Muslim organizations to get together and issue a fatwa? What happened the last three years? And let me just emphasize one specific point is that for too long there has been a double standard. We're very quick to condemn bombings in America, in Britain. But when it comes to say a Hamas suicide bomber blowing himself up and killing innocent Israelis in cafes and pizzerias, I have not seen an effective Muslim response regarding that. There's been a lot of equivocation. And I think the problem is when a lot Muslims argue that the immortality and illegality of these killings is contingent upon certain political considerations, say the occupation in Israel, we enter a very dangerous slippery slope. We have to condemn all suicide bombings, any time innocent civilians are killed, whether it's Jews, Arabs, Israelis, Christians, it has to be one response that we will not tolerate it. It is un-Islamic, immoral, and inhumane.

This young man is a model of fair mindedness and decency — a true beacon of hope. His comments have the unmistakable power conferred by the truth.

That's Jarrell Not Jor-el

A 1999 article about Randall Jarrell by Michael Wood in the NYRB had many Jarrell quotes worth pulling:

• I die or live by accident alone
• Permanence is what we all want when we can love and be loved; Change is what we want when we cannot.
• An artist is not supposed to know what he is doing
• A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great.
• [Critics are] “the bane of our age, because our age so fantastically overestimates their importance and so willingly forsakes the works they are writing about for them.”