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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. Techniques of speech rhythms, sometimes very intense, sometimes developed slowly, as one would [...]
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 [...]
Speaking of the Guardian … a piece in the Observer discuses how Walt Disney was a raving McCarthyite: Disney had a ferocious temper, especially against people he saw as left-wing. He testified enthusiastically before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and detailed what he saw as communist plots to take over Hollywood. He branded some former [...]
Want to create your own radio station, one which plays music you like? Pandora is amazingly simple to use: you enter the name of an artist whose music you like and it starts playing additional music similar to the one you listed. You can add more artists to the same “station” or you can create [...]
I’ve been working way too hard lately, so I gave myself a mental mini-vacation by watching the entire two season run of Samurai Champloo (混沌武士, サムライチャンプルー). Samurai Champloo is by Shinichiro Watanabe who made my previous favorite anime TV series, Cowboy Bebop (see here). Wikipedia explains the name: Its name comes from the Okinawan word [...]
I think a lot of the reason why we enjoy reading blogs so much is that what other people are reading, thinking, doing always seems more interesting than what we are doing ourselves. This Nancy comic from 1953 captures that feeling nicely: (Found here.) {Reading, Nancy, Blogs}
I’ve begun spending more and more time thinking about the implications of “fan fiction.” My graduate assistant last year told me she practiced English by reading Harry Potter fan fiction online. One of the larger sub-genres of fan fiction is called “slash” and refers to the homoerotic relationship between Kirk and Spock on Star Trek [...]