Culture
Edward Yang
I was sad to hear that Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang 楊德昌 died so young. I’d only seen one of his films, Yi yi (”A One and a Two”), but it ranks amongst the best Taiwanese films, moreover Yang was still quite young at 59, having died after a seven year long battle with cancer.
Interestingly, most […]
SiCKO
Here is a quote from FOX News:
Filmmaker Michael Moore’s brilliant and uplifting new documentary, “Sicko,” deals with the failings of the U.S. healthcare system, both real and perceived. But this time around, the controversial documentarian seems to be letting the subject matter do the talking, and in the process shows a new maturity.
And here […]
NotCot
If you like cool, wacky, funny, clever design ideas look no further than the NotCot blog. I’ve already downloaded this great clock screensaver. The blood pillow is fun. Juno doesn’t need the dog sex toys, but maybe your dog does? Lots more at notcot.org!
(Via Ze Frank)
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Kurt Vonnegut
Why is it that so many Vonnegut remembrances describe the same experience?
If you read Kurt Vonnegut when you were young — read all there was of him, book after book as fast as you could the way so many of us did…
That includes Peter Sagal, whose comments I liked better than those in the […]
ze
I know I’m not the only one who will miss Ze, as he ends his one year video blog which rocked the interweb.
I think the secret to Ze’s success is that he is a great teacher. He taught his audience how to participate and how to be creative. Here is an interview he did with […]
Bhojpuri
It is already old news, having been reported in the BBC over a year ago, but I just learned that Hindi movies are on the way out. With is focus on big budget (”multi crore“) spectaculars aimed at the transnational Indian audience (NRIs), Bollywood seems to have lost its way with viewers in India’s heartland. […]
XMas & (C)han(n)uk(k)a(h)
One of my students asked why Christmas was spelled X-mas? Here is what Wikipedia has to say:
The word “Christ” and its compounds, including “Christmas”, have been abbreviated for at least the past 1,000 years, long before the modern “Xmas” was commonly used. “Christ” was often written as “XP” or “Xt”; there are references in the […]
Aura
In his classical work, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin wrote that modern technology would free art from its “aura”:
for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced […]
American Poets
I love this poem by Paul Blackburn which Language Hat found in an online poetry journal called Jacket. It seems to capture the essence of certain strands of American poetry. It is quite long, but here is a taste:
Techniques of juxtaposition.
[…]
Bond, Gay Bond
The latest addition to the Bond franchise has one of the best beginnings and one of the worst endings of any Bond film. Fortunately the film doesn’t jump the shark till about three quarters of the way through, so it still offers plenty of bang for your buck.
What really struck me, however, were the opening […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
