Dear Time's Waste's Fortune

I like it.

Has anyone seen Madonna lately?

My first thought on seeing this image of Lady Gaga a few days ago: 'Oh no, she's done it now: she's eaten Madonna.'

Update Sept 27: No, Madge is alive and well and making bone-headed Obama jokes...

Kinsley on Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand

All anyone really needs to read about this election.

Update, October 1: OMFG.

Maybe contemporary film isn't so bad

An artist relative o' mine who lives on a small Pacific Island that mostly only gets Hollywood blockbusters/Oscar winners on (pirated) dvd asked me to burn him a few dvds of relatively good recent stuff to take back with him, i.e., that he'd otherwise be unlikely to see.

I wanted to cram in 2 movies per (single-layer) dvd (so no epics), and, since I had only a fairly crappy burner program, I couldn't use any movie files with soft subtitles.

Here's the eight films (four pairs) I came up with:

1. (Untitled) (2009)
2. A Serious Man (2009)
3. Moon (2009)
4. Following (1998)
5. Fantastic Mr Fox (2009)
6. Winter's Bone (2010)
7. Let The Right One In (2008)
8. In Bruges (2008)

All except Following are from 2008-2010, and I was struck by what an attractive group of films that is. I know that they only scratch the surface of the period, but it's still somewhat heartening to be able to so easily come up with such a convincing bunch of (at the very least) superior entertainments. Maybe film's currently in better shape than I thought.

Yes's Tales From Topographic Oceans

God help me, I'm really enjoying listening to Yes's prog monsterpiece, Tales From Topographic Oceans. Reading Dave Weigel's wonderful Prog Spring series (re-)lit the fuse for me: it's great stuff, really, so long as you just relax into it. I've listened to a lot of trance/dance mixtapes over the last few years and they've lost their power for me (either to interest or relax). Right now, Yes is hitting the sweet spot for me that that other stuff used to.

You can listen to the whole album on youtube here.

End Credits Audio from (Untitled) (2009): David Lang's Stick Figure

The climax of Jonathan Parker's (Untitled) (2009) is, in many ways, its end credits. There we hear the first straightforwardly gorgeous piece of music in the film (although possibly only the prior ninety minutes of thonk-bonk contemporary music has allowed us to hear it as gorgeous and not monotonous): just over half of David Lang's Stick Figure (the Fourth Movement of his Child (2001)) performed by the Italian contemporary music ensemble, Sentieri Selvaggi (a 2003 recording that's available on iTunes, Amazon, etc. at an incredibly reasonable price). One way of interpreting the piece in context is as the finished version of the last piece of noodling that we hear from the composer within the film, Adrian Jacobs (Adam Goldberg).

(Untitled) (2009) is a pretty good film with its own uniquely equivocal mood and tone, and a standout performance from (should-be-a-star) Marley Shelton as downtown NYC gallery owner, Madeleine Gray. Definitely worth checking out (esp. if you've ever dabbled in art-walks, gallery-hopping, and the like).

Passion Pit's Little Secrets

OK, so I'm two years late discovering this slice of Time-to-Pretend-style awesomeness.