Red Right Blog |
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Rants, Rates, Slags, Slates. Manic-depressive posts from Red Wright-Hand. Because there are thousands of worthless blogs out there and who am I not to add to their number?
Total US troop deaths in Iraq to date (09/01/07) since 03/20/03: 3739
From 05/02/03 through 06/28/04: 718 Myeloma (etc.) Blogs
Adventures of Cancer Girl Browse
Arts & Letters Daily
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Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Now this is what I'm looking for: photographs "credited to an unnamed U.S. soldier who served in Iraq." Thanks to Moorish Girl for the link. "Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman), a hunter of monster to the leash of the Vatican of aim nineteenth century, fights against Dracula, Frankenstein, the man lupo and other creatures orrende, because it must... Ok, I admit it: I have not understood the weft. Perhaps indeed, I have understood it and is nonexistent. However it is, we put it therefore: there is a tizio that it kills the monster." That, my friends, is just the beginning of an Italian-language sneak-review of the forthcoming Van Helsing as Babelfished into English. Full-text available here on Aint-it-Cool-News talkback. Tuesday, April 27, 2004
DON'T STOP NOW: A big Hollywood-action-movie "Nooooooooooooo!!!" from yours truly and certain other rock fans as well. Hmmm, just as the Pixies re-unite, Guided By Voices disbands, like some vast re-alignment of the musical cosmos. Sigh. I know, there were always some who said the band has really just been a Robert Pollard solo project ever since 1997, and yet....looks like I'll finally have time to catch up on their back catalog now. Friday, April 23, 2004
In line with my previous post: has anyone managed to log on to The Memory Hole? At all? I've been trying since last night and haven't made it yet. Presumably due to extra-heavy traffic, and not because the site's been taken down. Thursday, April 22, 2004
CALLING ALL IRAQ-BASED CORRESPONDENTS: Yeah, I really mean it. If you're a soldier (of any army) serving or having served in the present Iraq conflict, an Iraqi citizen, a reporter/media-person covering events therein, or you just happened to pass through Iraq sometime in the past year...Red Right Blog wants to hear from you. Please direct all news and stories to my attention...nothing will be reprinted without your prior stated permission. Thanks! (And yeah I know I'm really exaggerating the extent of my readership, but I figure this is worth a try.) The 13th Philadelphia Film Festival concluded last night, and out of its "nearly 250 films from 43 countries" I managed to see exactly six, these being, in descending order of appreciation: Memories of Murder, Super Size Me, Control Room, A Tale of Two Sisters, Orwell Rolls in his Grave and The Other America. Memories of Murder offered long, airy takes suggesting Visconti with attention defi -- oops, that's a professional movie critic talking. In my unprofessional way, though, I hope Memories of Murder, a deserved smash hit in its native South Korea last year, gets US distribution; it scarcely goes astray in its depiction of "backwards" policemen attempting to catch a particularly cunning serial murderer; avoids exploitation at all times; manages to sustain sympathetic interest in its characters while dramatizing their deplorable faults; somehow adds gallows humor to the mix without spoiling the overall tone. Super Size Me and Control Room, both documentaries, will be in (some) American theaters very soon; the former uses boisterous Michael Moore-style techniques (with varied results) to get at the behemoth of McDonald's and its behemothization of human bodies, the latter gives you a fly-on-the-wall look at the "notorious" Arab-language al-Jazeera network as the Iraq War commenced in March 2003, including plenty of footage you will never see on American network TV. (Major flaw: we don't really learn much about al-Jazeera's origins and background, nor why a number of Arab governments have banned it.) A Tale of Two Sisters...hmmm, well, the terrific web site captures the movie's atmosphere pretty damn well, so log on, kill the lights, pump up the sound and get scared. Unfortunately, what we got onscreen looked great but devolved into yet another post-Sixth Sense mishegotcha (TM) [yes, I've trademarked that word, don't even think of using it yourself], which is a fool-the-audience-routine that doesn't make any sense, not to mention throws characterization out the window. The last two films: good intentions often pave the road to tedium. Orwell's been getting some "festival buzz" but is awfully repetitive, bumpy, and needs more work. And the director of The Other America, based on this and previous work of his I've seen, should be seeking a career in social work, not moviemaking. Saturday, April 17, 2004
Who knows what goes on inside the brain of a professional movie critic? I suppose that press deadlines make anyone's mind do strange things. In his April 16 qualified-rave review of Kill Bill Vol. 2, Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times writes: "[The movie] offers long, airy takes that suggest Visconti with attention deficit disorder; in other words it's the narrative style that Sergio Leone employed in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." Allow some time for the absurdity of that sentence to sink in; a fraction of a second ought to be enough. Mitchell could have swapped the directors' names and made about as much sense; if the movie is in the style of Leone (you wish, Tarantino!), then why not say so? And really, does "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" appear to be the product of ADD? It's more like the film where Leone began to seriously advance his particular technique of slow extended takes combined with highly effective cross-cutting, that is, editing for maximum dramatic effect, and not randomly like some hyper video-weaned child (we'll call him "Quentin," just for the sake of argument). Sheesh. But that's not the only metamorphosis Mitchell is up to; earlier in his review Mitchell also lets slip that "if Dusty Springfield had been an actress, she would have been [Uma] Thurman." Maybe so. And I suppose if Uma Thurman were a singer, she'd be Dusty Springfield. See how easy it is? And what's this? Among Tarantino's many (many, many, many and obvious, obvious, obvious) influences, Mitchell cites "all the Shogun Assassin movies." Except guess what? There's only one Shogun Assassin movie (called, believe it or not, Shogun Assassin); it happens to consist of footage culled, for American distribution, from a series of six Japanese films generally entitled Lone Wolf and Baby Cub. So what Mitchell really meant was "all the Lone Wolf and Baby Cub movies," which are, thank god, beginning to be released on DVD, and boy are they ever good...far superior to anything Tarantino's attempted, at least in the "lightning samurai sword" department. If Billie Holliday had been an actress, she'd be Halle Berry? If Perry Como had been an actor, he'd be David Duchovny? Once I get the hang of it, my resume's off to the Times. Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Highlights from one of last night's reality-based prime-time programs (all text verbatim): "One of my hardest parts of my job is to console the family members who've lost their lives....You know, I just — I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet.... [Saddam Hussein] was a threat because he funded suiciders....[I]t's incumbent upon us to learn from lessons or mistakes and leave behind a better foundation for presidents to deal with the threats we face. This is the war that other presidents will be facing as we head into the 21st Century." Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Heard the one about the First Unitarian Church of Kennebunkport, ME? No? Well, while you're pondering the acronymic possibilities of that fine institution, allow me to briefly relate last night's (Apr 12) goings-on in the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia PA, where The Fall played to a robust and appreciative audience. I'm guessing about 250 people came out to see the band on a miserable night of cold spring rain, in the downstairs auditorium of the hip church (very popular spot for indie/small-label groups). Opening act The Thieves wasn't bad, a sort of early-goth/post-punk outfit with a squonky synth not unlike early Pere Ubu. The Fall took over after 10 pm, leading off with Boxoctosis, MES being helped up on stage eventually (to cheers) and into a chair behind a card table where he remained put. I can't imagine anyone undertaking an extensive overseas tour shortly after suffering a broken hip (and femur?) but Smith is doing it, and I have to say it suits him. No longer subjected to its leader's usual on-stage perambulations and knob-fiddlings, the band put forth an uninterrupted evening of tight, amped-up hypno-repetitive music, one number leaping right into the next. The Love/Mod Mock medley was a standout--and what a pleasure to hear Middle Mass again! Smith happily alternated between the two mics available to his reach, declaiming energetically in high style. He even cracked wise in a few asides, something I've never witnessed before (this was my 8th Fall gig, thanks very much)-- saying "Welcome to the guitar shop" early on and comparing himself to Gollum much later. Eleanor has two keyboards now, a korg and the cheap casio-thing, but I couldn't hear any difference between them (poor sound mix?) Encore consisted of Dr. Buck's Letter and Big New Prinz, with Smith declining to trouble himself with resuming the stage, only his voice coming seance-style as the band played on, much to the apparent consternation of concertgoers further back in the room and unable to tell what was going on. A manic fan was allowed to take the stage with mic and sing wildly during the obligatory "He! Is! Not! Appreciated!" moments. Band grinning. Exeunt. Sunday, April 11, 2004
LONG TRILOGY, LONG POST: I finished Sugar Street, the last volume of Naguib Mahfouz’ Cairo Trilogy, yesterday morning, and I suppose my opinion of the complete work remains essentially the same as expressed here on April 1st. To get the most negative statement out of the way: if this trilogy had been written exactly the same way about an American family in a large American city, I doubt very much that I would have read it through to the end. The effect is as of staring through the various windows (front, back and bedroom) of a representative Cairo family from 1917 through 1944 (approx. from the end of one World War to another) with all the fun and boredom that entails. No denying that, due to its sheer length, the trilogy conveys a sense of the grinding passage of time over decades, the wreckage it makes of bodies and hopes. But, as stated before, Mahfouz is not much of a tale-teller, preferring instead to marinate us in the often very slow simmer of daily events and thoughts as they occur in the lives of his characters, many of whom lose their charm (so far as I'm concerned) over the three novels. Take Yasin, the oldest of the five al-Jawad children: the comic aspects of his non-stop philandering and lying really start to curdle after a while, until he’s seen as just a fat lazy selfish predictable slob…and then we just keep on seeing him and seeing him. Likewise Kamal, the youngest son and impotent intellectual: if the author intended to portray the boring sterility of a neurotic life given over entirely to intellectual pursuits, well, dear reader, he succeeds to a big fat fault. I was thoroughly sick of Kamal and his insanely self-involved brooding (especially on the subject of love), of which the less said the better. There’s a statement Mahfouz never heard of...: he does everything to a fault, doesn’t know how to make a point succinctly, doesn’t when to move on artistically. Of course, people don’t change, of course people settle into patterns of self-defeating behavior, but that’s no reason to bury the reader under the sands of this observation in chapter after redundant chapter. And would it kill us to have a little more drama? (I know, I know, I'm a hopeless Westerner.) Even the outbreak of WW2, significant parts of which were fought in Egypt, seems to become just one more thing for the characters to talk about endlessly…okay, there’s that one dramatic air-raid scene leading to the death of a major character, but…that wasn’t enough. I don’t need Gen. Rommel to personally drive a tank onto the scene, but I couldn’t help remembering War and Peace, which as I recall managed to present a truly huge cast of interestingly vivid characters over its epic length, and managed to blend the historic and personal aspects of early 19th-century Russian society. I couldn’t help remembering Sentimental Education, Flaubert’s unsurpassed novel of French generational history, whose young hero, passing into middle age, experiences romantic anguish, gradual disenchantment with life, and extinction of boyish ideals, all conveyed in meticulous language in just slightly over (can it be?) 400 pages. Oh yeah, the sexism thing too, and wondering how much of it is Mahfouz’s observation of Arabic life and how much of it is simply his own: the short shrift given to female characters, though they’re seen to grow more independent as time moves on. Touches I did like very much: Mutawalli al-Samad, the ancient street-sheikh, not remembering who the deceased elder al-Jawad was as the funeral procession passes by; it's a great and truly sad depiction of how everyone passes out of mind eventually…the “future in abeyance” tableau of Sugar Street's conclusion, as two opposed brothers of the youngest generation, a Communist and an Islamic fundamentalist, are detained in prison, while their uncles (Yasin and Kamal) shop for characteristic clothing: baby clothes for Yasin’s impending grandchild, a new black tie for Kamal to wear for the impending funeral of his and Yasin’s dying mother. And, of course, learning the adjective Cairene. So, in the end: three novels (or one really huge one) affording more pleasure for having been read than they did while actually being read. I hear good things about Tayeb Salih.... Here’s a link to some good introductory material on Mahfouz. Friday, April 09, 2004
From this week's issue of The Onion: Frank Zappa Fan Thinks You Just Haven't Heard The Right Album NEDERLAND, CO—In spite of your insistence that you are not into Frank Zappa, avid fan Roger Von Lee believes that you would change your mind if you heard the right album. "You're prejudiced, because the only Zappa you know is 'Valley Girl' and 'Don't Eat The Yellow Snow,'" Von Lee told you Tuesday. "Seriously, you need to check out Hot Rats or Absolutely Free. Zappa and the Mothers were at their peak, and Zappa's jazz-rock fusion experiments predate Bitches Brew. That'll totally convince you that Zappa's the shit." Von Lee added that if those two don't get under your skin, he can recommend another 15 to 20 albums that will for sure. Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Unbelievably, The Fall are embarking on a new extensive tour of North America this spring (beginning this night in Baltimore, MD, as a matter of fact), despite having played the US just last summer, and double-despite Mark E. Smith's broken hip, making him, of course, The Broken Hip Priest. I expect to be seeing them the night of April 12th; details as they bubble up-ah. Tuesday, April 06, 2004
A pleasure to note that "Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths," The Toledo Blade's extraordinary series of articles on Vietnam War atrocities committed in 1967 by Tiger Force, an "elite fighting unit" of the U.S. Army, received the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. The articles originally appeared in October of 2003, and are now online, along with additional media material (photos, sound files) unavailable in print. President Bush and his big firm stance on the transfer of sovereignty in Iraq. As others are noting, it's some pretty highly qualified firmness. Friday, April 02, 2004
Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab broke up? And they're still recording and touring together? How does that work? PS: I still really miss Mary Hansen. Thursday, April 01, 2004
On a tenuously related note: since February I've been slowly reading through The Cairo Trilogy, a vast, sprawling, rambling and at times frustratingly-pokey family epic by Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. The trilogy is comprised of the novels Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street (all named after actual Cairo throughfares) and since I expect to finish Palace of Desire tonight, I will here officially proclaim myself 2/3s of the way through the whole work. For a long time I'd heard this trilogy described as one of the premier examples of Arabic literature, so I've been reading it carefully, and right now I'm giving it a grade of B. There isn't a single character or event that rings false, and quite a lot about daily life (c. early-20th century) and even more about nightlife in a crowded Arabic city is revealed to a benighted Westerner such as myself, in particular the interpenetration of Qu'ranic scripture in everyday thought and speech. On the other hand, Mahfouz is not much of a storyteller, with events simply unfolding without any grand narrative structure (is this the essence of Middle Eastern art? Is this the point?), and, worse, he is often gaseous in the extreme: a young man's interminable monologues about unrequited love take up much of Palace of Desire, and brother, was I happy when he finally decided to get drunk and visit a hooker instead (on p. 348, if you're interested). And the English translation...hoo boy! This book has GOT to sound better in Arabic than it does thanks to William Hutchins and Lorne & Olive Kenny: "The closest he could come to identifying his beloved was through attribution to it of some divine names, like truth, the joy of life, and the light of knowledge. It seemed his journey would be long. His lover appeared to have boarded the train of Auguste Comte and passed by the station of theology, where the password was 'Yes, Mother.'" And this is after he's been laid... HOWEVER: The same character (in the same chapter!) gets off one of the best observations in the entire Trilogy (so far) and here it is: "Be careful not to mock youthful dreams, for that's a symptom of senility. People affected by this disease term their sarcasm 'wisdom.'" Yes! It's true! And so I look forward to seeing the Trilogy to its end. More than 4000 US military casualties to date in Iraq, figures which of course do not include US civilian deaths, and that's no April Fools joke. Does anyone really expect any significant withdrawal of US forces in June? |
