There was a day when a story like “Architectural Team Is Chosen for Trade Center Memorial” would be frontpage news.
And there was a day when an LMDC statement like “[Building the memorial]’ would also likely require removal of some remnants of the former W.T.C.'” would set off alarm bells all over, seeing as how there are very few actual remnants left.
And there was a day when a lengthy article in the Times castigating Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum as a theme park of facile, emotionally manipulative kitsch–and a functional failure as a museum–would ignite a firestorm of debate.
That day is not today.
[Michael Kimmelman casts his critique as a cautionary tale for New York; but like belated credulous investigative journalism about WMD claims, this stuff would’ve been nice to hear before we got lured into Libeskind’s quagmire.]
Author: greg
You know that guy?
At that graduate writing lecture? The one on the front row of the auditorium, with the grimy totebags stuffed with sheafs of paper? The old dude, who kept asking about, didn’t you ever notice in Shakespeare’s Titus how…? and how Nabokov subconciously cribbed then referenced some German short story in both Lolita AND Pale Fire? The one who then pulls out some sweat-curled manuscript he’s been writing in his paperback-stuffed rent stabilized apartment on 108th st, where he’s figured out his Grand Unification Theory of Literature, if only you’ll read it, you’ll see that it’s…
No, the other one, the one who keeps talking about Skull & Bones? Yeah, yeah, that’s him.
Well, he has a 10,000-word column in the New York Observer. No, seriously. Like every week.
Bloghdad.com/File_Sharing
[via kottke] Soldiers in Iraq: fighting to protect our–and their–right to share music and buy bootlegged DVD’s.
Also noted: Troops greet each other with, “Who’s your Baghdaddy?” No mention made of Hajji. Ancient “Stairway to Heaven” still inexplicably popular.
Line the reporter, Thom Shanker, is most pleased to see make the editor’s cut: “Let it be recorded: Soldiers assigned to civilization’s cradle will rock.”
Related: Psyops playlists for Saddam, Noriega, Branch Davidians
Musc4ArchBJ4Now
Still damp from that Prada encounter Sunday, Herbert Muschamp barely has time to come up for air before resuming the position he knows so well: kissing Diller & Scofidio’s ass. Is this really fit to print?
13Musc gets worked up by the high colonic of glass and plasma screens D+S have planned for Lincoln Center’s West 65th St conduit, but he ignores the real news.
Apparently, Diller+Scofidio went all HotPR4Third; the firm is now called Diller + Scofidio + Renfro. [italics mine; you never know with these design types.]
That’s right, the expert on the “problematization of media spectacle in public space,”– and hot teen actor–Brad Renfro has joined the firm. No wonder Herb is swooning and lilting so hard.
Related:
Brad Pitt to study architecture with Frank Gehry. [via towleroad]
Brad Pitt’s top 3 architects: [greg.org, 10/02]
Miuccia, Silvio. Silvio, Miuccia.
WTF? Herbert Muschamp in today’s NYT Magazine: “[Miuccia Prada] has made the world safe for people with overdeveloped inner lives. [I guess, by selling bagsful of $480 polo shirts to armies of style-free mooks and molls from Manhasset.
[And by commissioning some hapless fop to recreate–and gut of all meaning beyond hip association through sheer and empty aestheticization–an actually controversial and culture-changing documentary by Pier Paolo Pasolini, which had already just been remade a couple of years before by some Italian TV producer.]”
Hook, Line and Sinker
I usually confine my viewing of OLN, the Outdoor Life Network, to pen-to-pen coverage of the Professional Bull Riders Tour.
But then, like a shiny object dancing before me, on-the-set production details for OLN’s Fishing With Roland Martin appeared on Josh Marshall’s Talkingpointsmemo:
On Saturday, Bush and his father were to go fishing at the ranch’s bass pond with a crew from the Outdoor Life Network’s “Fishing with Roland Martin.”
The White House approached the network about coming to film Bush, who is eager to cultivate an image as a sportsman with the millions of voters who hunt and fish. The crew was to bring its own boat for the shoot on the small pond. [emphasis added for ironic effect]
I’d imagine Roland & Co. would need at least a month’s leadtime to put such a shoot together. Coincidentally, it’s been just over a month since White House producers–and sportsman voters–heard a report on NPR where “the hook-and-bullet crowd” voice opposition to the Bush administration’s environmental policies. Roland’s crew is joined this weekend by the NRA and conservative/moderate conservation groups mentioned in the story.
Although manmade, Bush’s bass pond was not actually excavated for the shoot. The CSMonitor even mentions it in a WH Press Office-stocked feature on Bush’s Crawford ranch:
A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll shows that 55 percent of Americans believe four weeks is too long for a president to be away from Washington. Keenly aware of the image of a slough-off president – the Washington Post calculates that Bush has spent 42 percent of his presidency at vacation spots or en route – the White House refers to this as a “working” vacation. The president has planned about two trips a week to spread the gospel of “heartland values.” Last week, much of his time was taken up with the televised announcement of his stem-cell decision.
Still, there’s no doubt the president is enjoying considerable down time. He’s gone on long, early morning walks with his wife, golfed with friends at a nearby course in Waco, fished, and jogged through canyons on his land – where he’s also building a nature walk. [emphasis added]
The date of that article: August 14, 2001.
Somewhere in Washington, A Jew is Drinking Water
— and crying, because we bought the last bottle of Kosher for Passover Coke at the Safeway.
Why? Because on Saturday morning, while all the Jews slept in their beds–with their appliances turned off–NPR broadcast a story about the little batch of Coke made with actual sugar instead of the Archer Daniels-Midland-preferred corn syrup [note: creepy link], and, in a fit of manufactured nostalgia, all the goys in town emptied the shelves of this sacred beverage.
Speaking of Hard Work
A Wednesday night visit to the West 46th Street spa supported both the guidebooks and the women’s accounts. Face down on a massage table, a reporter found it hard to even notice whose hands were at work.
But when asked in Spanish, the masseuse said her name was Rosa, she was 19 and from Ecuador, and she had lived and worked there for a year and a half, seven days a week, for $300. That day, she had started at 10 a.m., and said she might finish at 2 a.m.
“It’s hard,” she said.—Women Complain of Hellish Life at Upscale Spa, by Nina Bernstein, NYT
WTC Memorial Gets Back to Business
David Dunlap reports in the NYT that the city’s powers that be are moving in on the WTC Memorial site: Some of the biggest development-savvy architecture firms are vying for the role of associate architect on the WTC Memorial. [Gothamist has links to the firms’ corporate sites.]
Meanwhile, the LMDC announced a 24-person advisory committee for the Memorial Center, the 65,000SF underground space which will house artifacts from the attacks. Included on the committee is Lowery Stokes Sims of the Studio Museum in Harlem, a Memorial juror; the head of the Landmarks Commission; Tom Eccles, head of the Public Arts Fund; and Raymond Gastil, of the Van Alen Institute.
Andrew Sarris, Anti-American Communist Roader
Andrew Sarris writes a highly satisfied review of Dogville, but only after an extensive apologia for Von Trier and apologetic justification for deciding to see it in the first place.
Did everyone used to have to equivocate so much for not hating movies by socialists?
greg.org housekeeping with kinja
The Japanese word for neighborhood is kinjo, which transliterates as “place nearby.” Did Nick and Meg and co. have this in mind when they launched Kinja? Who knows?
I’m trying out Kinja Digests as maps to online neighborhoods where my site and my attentions can be found: film and filmmaking weblogs and the mutually admiring community of (mostly New York) weblogs who introduce me to much of my news.
Seven Wives’ Granola
It is well known that polygamists were big fans of healthful eating. Thus, this recipe from the Seven Wives’ Inn in St. George, Utah* for the most excellent granola I’ve ever had:
8 c. old fashioned oats
1.5 c brown sugar
1 c almonds (or more, to taste)
1 c raw cashews (or more, to taste)
1 c coconut
1 c sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, or a mixture of both
1.5 c wheatgerm
0.5 c water
0.5 c vegetable oil
0.5 c honey
0.5 c creamy peanut butter
2 t vanilla
1-1.5 c raisins or craisins (optional)
Directions: Stir to blend: oats, sugar, nuts, seeds, coconut, wheatgerm. Combine water, oil, honey and pb in saucepan; bring to boil, stirring until pb is dissolved. Pour over oat mixture, stir to coat thoroughly. Place in a single layer on 2- sprayed 10×15 pans. Bake at 200F for 60-70 min. Cool. Stir in vanilla and raisins. Store in airtight container or freeze for longer term storage (e.g. Second Coming, Apocalypse, etc.).
* In southern Utah, locals call the readily identifiable polygamists on the street or in the store by the vaguely pejorative “polygs.”
Reading Quentin, my New Bestest Friend
After a night of hanging out with The Man, and sipping from the firehose of his conversation (hey, whatever it takes to get the movie made, right? ahem.), it’s no surprise at all that there are fansites dedicated to picking apart the film references in Quentin Tarantino’s own movies. Now there’s a festival, too: The Kill Bill Connection at London’s ICA.
The Guardian‘s Steve Rose is at first fascinated, then typically put off by QT’s virtuosic-bordering-on-pathologic quoting, but his look at Kill Bill-ism makes for interesting reading nonetheless.
[update: With barely any overlap–and a lot less judgmentalism–David Kehr charts some of Tarantino’s references in the NYT, in case you can’t fit reading a UK newspaper into your shedule (sic). ]
Che Sera…Sera
[via GreenCine] Terrence Malick’s on-again, off-again, on-again-next-year biopic, Che is on again, only it’s now Steven Soderbergh’s Che.
Muy bien.
Blessed are the Filmmakers
OK, one more post about Mel’s mammon from heaven, The Passion:
The Guardian reports on the miracle of Matera: Gibson raised the Italian hilltop town from the economic dead when he chose it as the main location for filming.
And Blessed are The Extras, for they shall obtain EU60-90/day
Not only were 600 of “the swarthiest” locals picked as extras in the film, but the town has been born again as a Christian tourist site. Antonio Foschino documents the local production of The Passion on his website, Sassiweb.it–The gregorio.org of Matera, he provides a Passion Package Tour; book early.
At least until high season starts, the town’s hotel maid won’t charge you a euro to tell about helping Gibson convert the minibar in his suite into a prayer altar. But at the site of the crucifixion scene [above], enterprising craftsmen are already stockpiling hand-carved Matera/Golgotha paperweights, the perfect complement to those Nativity Stone crosses you bought from Ricardo Montalban. [While supplies last. Supplies of rocks in Italy.]
Did Gibson’s inspiration for shooting in Matera come from Richard Gere, who made King David there, or from the last Christ movie to be shot in town, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s [ who the Guardian gleefully calls “a gay, Communist atheist,”] Gospel According to Matthew? Who knows? But Mel did describe his reaction the town had on him: “The first time I saw it,” he said, “I just went crazy, because it was so perfect.”
Amen, brother.