Grr. Sometimes I don’t know which is worse: the cloying, dishonest schmaltzfest of a master plan put forward for the WTC site by Pataki’s democracy organ grinder monkey Danny Libeskind, or the de facto plan that eviscerated it, the one that’s actually being built under political cover of Libeskind’s handiwork.
Then, I read about a 9/11 memorial he built in Padua, Italy, which uses the same bogus, headbanging numerological symbolism to beat its message into visitors heads–in this case, the debunked email spasm that claimed Nostradamus predicted the 9/11 attacks–and I feel relief that that opportunistic little Minstrel of Death won’t leave a fingerprint on my city. [via archinect]
Proulx on Lee’s Brokeback Mountain: Happy As A Ranch Hand In Love. Er…
Annie Proulx has seen “Brokeback Mountain” twice: once, when the characters and story originally made their way from her head to her short story in the New Yorker. Then again, when Ang Lee’s film rose up before her on the screen. She’s as happy as a woman can be about doomed gay cowboy love.
The Village Voice’s Jessica Winters has an account of the story’s translation from the page to the screen:
In transcribing a 10,000-word story onto a celluloid canvas, Brokeback Mountain takes the opportunity to enlarge and embellish upon Proulx’s glancing details and grace notes, or as [co-screenwriter Larry] McMurtry puts it, “We milked it for every single sentence, every single phrase we could.” Proulx adds, “Usually, screenwriters work with novels, and that means whittling and chopping and squeezing it down into 90 minutes or whatever approved movie length.”
Madonna: What I Really Want To Do Is Tell Everyone What To Do
Presumably because he was made to by his editors, Andrew Pulver momentarily entertains the notion that a film directed by Madonna would somehow not be an utterly self-absorbed, epically unwatchable trainwreck:
She certainly has the strength of will to become a film-maker, too. [Jonas] Akerlund is the credited director of [the widely panned as sycophantic] You’re the Next Best Thing, but you can’t imagine a single edit got in without Madonna’s approval. And she knows the worth of a good photographer and art director, which is half the battle of film-making.
What I really want to do is not have to see or hear about another Madonna-related film project ever again.
Can Madonna beat Guy at his own game? [guardian]
2005-12-05, This Week In The New Yorker
Issue of 2005-12-05
Posted 2005-11-28
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT/ FLOOR WAR/ Hendrik Hertzberg on the war over the war in Congress.
BEIJING POSTCARD/ POPPY, SHOPPING/ Peter Hessler traces the steps of Old Bush.
VISITING DIGNITARIES/ GIBBONS/ Nick Paumgarten meets the lead guitarist of ZZ Top.
TEXTURE DEPT./ WALING/ Ben McGrath attends a meeting of the Corduroy Appreciation Club.
MOONLIGHTING DEPT./ MOB APPEAL/ Lauren Collins on a best-selling prosecutor.
POSTSCRIPT/ CECILLE SHAWN/ Remembering the wife of the late New Yorker editor William Shawn.
ANNALS OF NATIONAL SECURITY/ Seymour M. Hersh/ Up in the Air/ Bush’s intransigence and the coming air war.
SHOUTS & MURMURS/ Bruce McCall/ Getting Started
FICTION/ Alice Munro/ “Wentlock Edge”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS/ Adam Kirsch/ Strange Fits of Passion/ Wordsworth’s revolution.
BOOKS/ Louis Menand/ Everybody’s an Expert/ Putting predictions to the test.
THE THEATRE/ John Lahr/ Bleak House/ A child’s fantasy life and a failed inventor Off Broadway.
THE ART WORLD/ Peter Schjeldahl/ In the Mood/ New works by Gerhard Richter.
MUSICAL EVENTS/ Alex Ross/ The Evangelist/ David Robertson lifts up the St. Louis Symphony.
THE CURRENT CINEMA/ David Denby/ Company Man/ “Syriana.”
FROM THE ARCHIVE
DAYTON, TENNESSEE/ Marquis James/ A Summary/ A 1925 report on the Scopes monkey trial, in which a teacher stood accused of teaching evolution in school.
This Thanksgiving Dinner Was Brought To You By…
Mama Stamberg’s cranberry relish was what finally woke us up. Attributions are a vital ingredient to that get added after a recipe is passed along, often without the original chef’s knowledge.
We’ve been eating Val’s rolls at family gatherings for as long as I’ve been on solid foods, but once when my mother mentioned them to Val’s granddaughter–who then asked Val–Val said she wondered if she’d ever made such rolls. She doubted it.
Winifred’s granddaughter, meanwhile, called on Wednesday to ask my mother a recipe question. My mother–whose tenure as the food editor of the local paper followed and was dwarfed by Winifred’s–said, oh, you should have her bring something. Her cranberry relish. It’s Susan Stanberg’s recipe, but she gave it to me years ago. Within five minutes, Winifred called my mom to find out what her own cranberry relish recipe was, because she’d just been asked to bring it. When they’re passed along, recipes get marked and remembered by the recipient, and every taste ever after is a one-way mnemonic trigger of the connection.
Also on the table:
[Mandate of] Heavens To Murgatroid
White House Productions ordered up this backdrop for use at GWB’s hotel press conference.
As the camera angle in the BBC screenshot above shows, the “China” & “Beijing” characters are perfectly placed to flank GWB’s talking head (in the TV camera’s frame).
The trompe l’oeil gates and knockers–they’re copied from The Temple of Heaven–complete the backdrop, and provide an exit “backstage.”
According to wikipedia, the Emperor would visit the Temple of Heaven each winter to make elaborate ceremonial offerings. “It was widely held that the smallest of mistakes would constitute a bad omen for the whole nation in the coming year.” Fortunately, no one believes that kind of superstitious mumbo jumbo anymore…
No exit, stage right.
And in other Sforzian news…Dateline – Ulan Bator:
To see what a barebones Sforzian Backdrop set-up consists of, check out this wide shot of GWB on stage in Mongolia [addressing the Mongolian parliament who, it turns out, meet in the auditorium at Ulan Bator High]: one head-on and two profile backdrops, and then 2-3 setups from the side and below–note the panels in the foreground next to the podium and the little planter/flag thingies below that. I wonder if that pendant hanging above center stage gets into those photos from below?
Also, Mongolian Dutch photographer Iwan Baan was on hand the official photographer for the Mongolian president during Bush’s visit, and his images capture a lot of the backstage activity that is normally invisible in the work of the wire service journalists.
Some highlights: a Mongolian TV crew’s ancient 35mm Arriflex 35BL camera; knots of cameramen perched on the ridge to get wide shots–as if the Mongolian landscape demanded anything less; the Secret Service-issue Porta-potty, surrounded by Mongolian horsemen; the meticulous set dressing, presumably Mongolian-driven symbols of hospitality–the wrapped candy showed up here as well; and the suspicious glances of security agents toward the random Baan, who gets pretty close in to Rice. [Rice & Baan. heh.] The whole thing looks like a visit to the set of a Kurosawa film. I’m thinking Ran, Kagemusha, or Dersu Uzala.
[update: thanks to Iwan for the corrections, and to Chris for ID’ing the Mongolian crew’s camera: “heavy as shit and none too quiet, either,” he points out.]
On Making Movies With No Money, Or Less
The schedule for each of the 19 days of shooting was determined by which sector of the city had power at any given moment. Editing took place on machinery cobbled together from a bombed out TV station, and the film was smuggled out to the Venice film festival and German TV by a couple of blondes carrying “a car full of Walt Disney cartoons.”
How to make a film without money, while being bombed [pdf, makezine via boingboing]
Meanwhile, in other, suddenly much less dire-sounding filmmaking news, the NY Times resports that fledging filmmakers who’ve spent between $0 and $1 million on their projects, only to find no commercial success, are variously moving back in with their parents, working dayjobs in the industry, or looking forward to attending high school. Go figure.
Join a Revolution. Make Movies. Go Broke. [nyt]
I’m A Sucker For A Good Tracking Shot
Like this music video, “Motorcycle,” from The Rumble Strips, which involves a roundabout, some bikes, a delivery lorry [sic], one light, and a guy who sounds a lot like Lloyd Cole.
“Motorcycle,” directed by Harry Dwyer [rumblestrips.co.uk via waxy]
From The Mixed Up Files Of Ms. Nikke Finke
Mike Ovitz can fight his own battles–although he’s been nothing but genial to me, I don’t doubt he can be a pretty scrappy guy. But Nikki Finke’s LA Weekly article on Hollywood-style dealmaking supposedly poisoning the art world is such a raw-yet-feeble Ovitz takedown attempt, I can’t see why it even exists.
And that’s even before you notice that the story’s so old, a veritable reportorial time capsule. The most recent anecdotes are from the early 1990’s. Julian Schnabel–get this!–has a movie about Basquiat. Up-and-coming dealer Mary Boone has revitalized SoHo’s gallery scene. One interviewee, Leo Castelli, actually died in 1999. Rather than even update the story or provide any la plus ca change context, it reads like Finke handed in an old floppy disk she found while cleaning out a storage unit in the Valley, and her editors published whatever killed story or chapter of an abandoned book happened to be on it. What’s next? Finke’s incisive report whether Waterworld‘s production turmoil will threaten Kevin Costner’s status as Hollywood’s sexiest leading man?
Lest you think the cluelessness is confined to alt-freebies on the West Coast, Artforum linked to Finke’s story with a headline and a blurb so inaccurate [“For Hollywood Moguls, Collecting Is Increasingly De Rigueur”] it’s obvious they didn’t even read the piece.
Blame Ovitz: When Art Started Imitating Hollywood [laweekly via artforum]
Beck Programs Sony Robots To Do White Guy Shuffle
If the Washington Post, of all “can’t dance” papers says someone “break-danced and jigged in a manner so lifelike they seemed like hip-hop aliens from the planet Funk,” you’re right to be wary. And yet we were seduced, at least for a couple of days.
the underdelivery: the video for “Hell Yes” on beck.com
the oversell: Beck Gets World’s Only ‘Dream Robots’ Dancing To ‘Hell Yes’ [mtv.com]
qrio robot home site [sony.co.jp]
Gorillaz “Live” Performances
Using 19th century illusionist technology known more formally as “smoke and mirrors,” Gorillaz performed live and simultaneously last week at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Lisbon and at the Manchester (UK) Opera House.
The Times of London has a bit of the “how’d they do that?”
Gorillaz ape a Victorian parlour trick for a bit of stage presence [timesonline.co.uk via core77]
So far, Gorillaz Live Shows covers just the 2000-2001 appearances [gorillaz-unofficial.com]
Monkey Business
In attempting to “remove the clutter” that normally accompanies such “major tent-pole movies,” Universal has pared down the marketing and product licensing partnerships for Peter Jackson’s King Kong to the barebones minimum.
Here’s the list. If you start reading now, you may finish before a second Collector’s Edition 3-version DVD pack comes out [which may include never-before-seen outtakes from the original Peter Jackson’s Production Diaries 2-disc set.]
King Kong – Business Monkey [kokogiak via waxy]
So A Gate And A Floating Island Walk Into A Bar
There are some posters, and some beer, and the gas for the motorboat had to cost a pretty penny, but that’s about it. Compared to the expensive (and purportedly expensive) public art it skewered, The Gate that chased Robert Smithson’s Floating Island up the East River a couple of months ago cost nothing. Now the Gate and the boat, and a documentary about the project will go on exhibit 11/18 at Redhead, the gallery of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
The artists–who still remain unnamed–intended their project to ask and answer the questions, “Is public art still possible? Can a cheap stunt pack a punch? Does art make enough room to laugh at itself? Yes. When money steps aside and lets the work do the talking.”
A Cheap Publicity Stunt, 11/18-12/22, at Redhead [lmcc.net via greg.org reader chandra]
Previously: Water, Gate. The Gates Bill
You Have <36H To See The Following:
The Sound Of One Hand Bidding
What with the hazmat crew required to neutralize the thousands of gallons of formaldehyde and the efforts to stabilize the rotting, soaked corpse, moving Damien Hirst’s shark costs an estimated $100,000.
Meanwhile, Mark Fletcher and Tobias Meyer ended up donating a John Bock sculpture to the Carnegie rather than keep replacing the fresh melons in it.
[Maybe they should have become Buddhists. When I was a missionary in Japan, old ladies were always offering us the fruit offerings–pyramids of oranges and melons, usually–from their butsudans, the black lacquer, gilt-edged, in-home shrines where they prayed to their departed family members.]
“These works become like devotional objects. It’s like caring for your altarpiece,” said Amy Cappellazzo, Tobias Meyer’s Christie’s counterpart.
Ephemeral Art, Eternal Vigilance [nyt]
Previously: how contemporary art is like a renaissance tapestry