http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:38:37 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/08/26/153837.php Emily JonesThe official website of the upcoming film production of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been launched. The site has a production notes blog, though entries to this point have been sparse. There's also a photo gallery, so far containing all of a less-than-impressive three photographs, though fans may want to stay tuned to see how the site develops.The film, starring Mos Def, Martin Freeman, and Sam Rockwell in the lead roles of Ford Prefect, Arthur Dent and Zaphod Beeblebrox respectively, is expected for realease in the summer of 2005. In the meantime, a teaser trailer can be viewed here. Video19108@blogcritics.org Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:38:37 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/08/23/180031.php Emily JonesIt looks as though one version of Edvard Munch's famous painting, The Scream, has been stolen from the Munch Gallery in Oslo, Norway during a rare daylight armed robbery. One of four versions, it has been valued at somewhere between 60 million to 75 million dollars. Authorities have yet to apprehend any suspects and the artwork was apparently not insured against theft. This is the second time a version of this painting has been stolen, the first being in 1994. Culture18982@blogcritics.org Mon, 23 Aug 2004 18:00:31 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/01/17/125931.php Emily JonesThe 1994 compilation of poetry, essays and excerpts from novels entitled Drinking, Smoking & Screwing: Great Writers On Good Times is worth the investment even if you've read every last entry, if only for the fabulous introduction by Bob Sacochis alone. "I should like to elbow aside the established pieties," he toasts "and raise my martini glass in salute to the mortal arts of pleasure." In an age where temperance Nazis seem to pervade every avenue of sinful gratification, it's something of a relief to come across a book devoted entirely to the celebration of vice.We have Spalding Gray recounting his days at Emerson College, noting his fright for urinating when girls were around for fear they judged penis side by "the sound of the flow". Then there's an excerpt from Charles Bukowski's fabulous novel Women, where his recurring hero, Henry Chinaski, actually consults a doctor to learn the cost of having a limb amputated so that he might claim the title of "greatest one-legged poet in the world". There are portions of the originally scandalous works like Vladamir Nabokov's Lolita and Anaïs Nin's Henry and June. In Fran Lebowitz's superb essay from Social Studies, she remarks on the suffusion of anti-smoking legislation: "I do not like after-shave lotion, adults who roller-skate, children who speak French, or anyone who is unduly tan. I do not, however, go around enacting legislation and putting up signs." That was in 1981. She had no idea what lay ahead. Today, even uttering the words "When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes ... Shut Them" could result in possible arrest. The prudes of moral authority are running the show, and they're doing their damndest to see to it that we don't have any fun.In "The Vocabulary of the Drinking Chamber", H.L. Mencken wonders on the origin of barkeep-speak, noting "Highball is listed in nearly all the dictionaries published since 1930, but not one of them attempts its etymology. Nor does any of them try to unravel the mystery of cocktail." I myself have no idea why a cocktail is called a cocktail, and to be honest, it had never occurred to me before to ask the question. Now it will nag me to the end of my life. I've never been to Paris, but if Henry Miller's description from Tropic of Cancer is anything to go by, I have nothing to regret. "Paris is like a whore," he writes. "From a distance she seems ravishing, you can't wait until you have her in your arms. And five minutes later you feel empty, disgusted with yourself. You feel tricked."Of course, no compilation such as this is complete without the likes of Dorothy Parker, Tom Robbins, Sam Shepard, and Anne Sexton, all of whom you will find included, along with many others. Each excerpt offers a glimpse at moral depravity that manages to justify indulgences as a God-given right. We should not regard the low brow "drinkers, smokers, and [beep]ers", as Sacochis has called them, as cultural measuring sticks or role models for children, but as he concluded in his introduction "they take the joy and sometimes the pain of living to the very edge and shout back instructions, dire caveats, titillating weather reports ... without them, the world might be simple and clean, but it wouldn't be deliciously, fascinatingly, pathetically human, would it?"Indeed, it would not. Cheers. Books11806@blogcritics.org Sat, 17 Jan 2004 12:59:31 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/01/17/111550.php Emily JonesIf you're anything like me, you've spent a great deal of time wondering what the world was like through the eyes of a cold and unfeeling pet dog. Okay, so hopefully most of you aren't anything like me, but that doesn't mean you should skip the 1989 French black humor film Baxter (pronounced bax-TEARRRRR).Baxter is a bull terrier who longs to be liberated from the shackles of his pound dwelling and experience life among les humains. We fascinate him; he is intrigued by our smells, our habits, and our desires. Most unfortunate for his various owners throughout the film, he also holds these traits in utter contempt, finally to the end of at least one character. His first owner is an elderly woman, Madame Deville, who is gifted Baxter by her daughter. Both owner and pet take an immediate disliking to one another. Despite the woman's gradual fondness of the dog, the feeling is never mutual, as Baxter spends his days gazing through a window, wishing instead to live with his owner's amorous newlywed neighbors. He loves their active nature, and finds the various noises they make in the dark arousing "certain desires". This longing eventually urges him to take action, though Baxter is benevolent in his hatred, first issuing a warning in the form of a shove down the staircase. Madame Deville, however, does not take heed, and for this, to no regret on the part of our hero, pays the ultimate price. Baxter's wish has come true, ushering in les jours heureux ("the happy days").But the happiness does not last long. Baxter notices a change in his new, young female owner. Suddenly, she seems to smell like two people. His worst fears are realized when the couple returns home after an absence of several days with what he refers to as "the Creature". "I've never seen anything so weak and mindless," he thinks upon first sight. "It was damp, toothless, almost hairless. I thought they were ashamed of it, that they were apologizing. But when I looked at them, they seemed happy." Jealous that he is no longer the center of attention, he devises a nefarious plot to drown the Creature in a back yard fountain, failing in his all-too-early warning bark. Despondent in the near loss of their child, the couple find themselves unable to care for their pet, and Baxter falls under the ownership of a boy whom he considers un humain qui me ressemble ("a human like me").This is where the film goes from odd to perverse. The young boy appears to have an obsession with the final days of Hitler, which turns out in reality to be a school-aged crush on Eva Braun. He recounts the final hours in History's Most Famous Bunker to a female classmate, dead puppies and all, noting "If it weren't for Hitler, it would be a great love story". Despite Baxter's appreciation for the boy's detached worldview and his boot camp-style drill training, his relationship with his owner again turns sour, and our protagonist eventually ends up where his journey began - at the pound.Baxter is indeed life through the eyes of a disturbed dog, though manages to address a number complexities, from adultery, parenthood, loneliness, old age, and young love. All of les humains are in one way or another connected, with the events of their lives intertwined by one another's actions. The humor is dark, the context is wicked, but the truth of the human condition all too real. Needless to say, which is why I'm saying it, this film is not for the easily offended. Video11802@blogcritics.org Sat, 17 Jan 2004 11:15:50 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/01/04/165153.php Emily JonesHaving invested three full months in reading Stephen Dorril's massive work, MI6, I'm finding myself incapable of remarking more than "this book sucks". Hardly a scholastic critique, and a completely unfair one, considering the author's commendable research efforts, but there are a few points that certainly diminish it's apparent ambition to be considered the definitive source on British intelligenceOriginally published in 2000, MI6 promises to take its readers "inside the covert world of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service", a deceptive boast, considering that it consists entirely of information that is a matter of public record. The British government itself, which had attempted to halt the book's publication, was surprised at the amount of material Dorril was able to gather without delving too deep into the secrecy of the SIS.To say that it "sucks" isn't to suggest that anyone interested in the covert world of security force operations should dismiss the book. As earlier mentioned, Dorril has compiled a massive amount of information for his readers. Therein, however, lies its greatest fault in terms of readability. There is such an exhausting list of names, places, dates and events, even the most conscientious student of the spying underworld would become confused. With 62 pages alone of reference notes and, mercifully, an index of acronyms, at least one of the three months spent reading the material was devoted to flipping back and forth for clarification or explanation. In other words, it seems more encyclopedic than academic.While much of the analysis shouldn't be described as obsolete, it can reasonably be considered out-of-date. Dorril approaches the subject in seven parts: from World War II, the Cold War years, the Soviet Empire and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the post-Cold War era, focusing on the specific methods employed by the MI6 in each region in the context of historical circumstance. Many of Dorril's arguments are based on the challenges facing the SIS in the post-Cold War era, when today's security forces are, as reality would unfortunately have it, no longer operating in this capacity. It's a post-9/11 age now, which would render assertions such as the following irrelevant:There is a temptation to fall into the same trap that snared the West in the seventies - the belief that there is an all-embracing Islamic fundamentalist conspiracy behind Middle East terrorism. The official view is that such a conspiracy does not exist. During the summer of 1993 British Intelligence prepared for the Foreign Office a paper, 'Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East', which looked at the reason for the proliferation of fundamentalist political groupings, some with an international following, and the idea that there is a possibility of 'contagion', with their leaders meeting in Europe, South-East Asia, Khartoum and Tehran. The anonymous author reported that 'the coincidental rise of fundamentalism across North Africa and the Levant has certain common factors. But the main causes are internal. It breeds on failure to resolve economic and social problems, corruption in government and the bankruptcy of political ideologies - Communism, Nasserism, Baathism, etc. It is prevalent in the overcrowded cities plagued by poverty and unemployment.'Indeed fundamentalist leaders were meeting in European cities and attending flight schools both there and in the United States. Given that we now know that most of the 9/11 hijackers were from comfortable backgrounds who scarcely suffered the plagues of poverty and unemployment, not only makes the statement irrelevant, it makes it just plain wrong.Finally, Dorril is most definitely presenting his material with an agenda. Far from a balanced perspective, he seems to blame the lengthy Cold War squarely on not only the failures of the MI6, but the whole of Western intelligence. "While Soviet policies appeared to be aggressive and to be based on an offensive strategy" writes Dorril, "Stalin was actually engaged in a defensive foreign policy which required the reining in of all the communist parties worldwide in order to retain control of their activities." He cites an instance where Stalin, on the fears of a member of the French Communist Party, refuses to take an interest in France succumbing to US influence, instead choosing to focus Soviet efforts in Eastern Europe, as a lack of evidence of Stalin's global ambitions. As any student of history knows, things are rarely that cut and dry, and any academic who expects to be taken seriously should not allow their interpretation of any event, especially one as huge as the Cold War, be so easily shaped by their political leanings.For these few shortcomings, if you've got the interest, and indeed, the patience, as well as the ability to recognize Dorril's politically-charged conclusions, MI6 is an excellent resource for information about the names, events and circumstances that shaped the enterprise of Her Majesty's Secret Service. Ian Fleming would be jealous. Books11432@blogcritics.org Sun, 4 Jan 2004 16:51:53 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/10/17/215212.php Emily JonesLast March, blogger Steven Den Beste was the victim of plagiarism. Blogs seem to be an easy target for plagiarism; there are thousands of them and the internet is a very big place, which I'll bet looks really inviting to those who would otherwise not dare if they thought getting away with it wasn't going to be easy.Now it has happened to me.It was ages ago that I signed up for the mailing list of the "Ulster Protestant Movement For Justice". Over time, I've grown increasingly disgusted with the UPMJ, as their agenda seems to be more motivated by anti-Catholic and anti-Irish bigotry than any real interest in "justice" for anyone in Northern Ireland (note: this is merely my own personal judgement. Feel free to follow the link and decide for yourself). This is not to say that I don't think the Protestants of Ulster deserve justice; it's just that Unionism, and especially Loyalism, are not without their deadly bad apples, and I don't trust anybody who would spend as much energy obsessing over keeping a tally on the number of times that members of Sinn Fein have farted in church (disclaimer: the UPMJ don't literally do this, though in my eyes, they nearly might as well), without even addressing the shortcomings within their own communities.This is why I delete ninety-nine percent of their dispatches from my inbox. Today, I had some extra time and thought I'd check in with the UPMJ to see what the circus was offering these days. Aside from the usual "the Protestants of Ulster are the Most Oppressed People on Earth" introduction (suggestion to the UPMJ: check and see if sinnfeinwatch.com hasn't been parked. It would be perfect for you), there was an article from an Emily Barrett calling herself a "28 yo Retail Executive from Florida" - Vero Beach, even - chiding Americans who supported Sinn Fein and the IRA. I agreed with nearly all of it, even if I would re-write a few things different and change the tone here and there if I had the chance today.That's because I wrote it myself, over one year ago (second post from the top).I've written a letter to a Mr. Tim Anderson, who seems to be the fellow navigating this mailing list, curious about his friend Ms. Barrett. I'd really like to give him and the UPMJ the benefit of the doubt, the first reason being that I can't allow myself to believe that somebody could actually be stupid enough to steal the work of a person on their mailing list and then send it to them in a newsletter. The second being that it's not impossible that somebody sent this to them as their own and they published it in good faith against their own knowledge, in spite of the fact that "Emily Barrett" claims to be a longtime friend of Mr. Anderson in her introduction. In either case, it speaks volumes as to the character of the members of the UPMJ.As I've promised on my own site, if you would like me to forward you the original newsletter, either drop a note in the comments section or e-mail me at bamacritter - at - earthlink.net and I will be happy to oblige. Sci/Tech9292@blogcritics.org Fri, 17 Oct 2003 21:52:12 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/28/225714.php Emily JonesIt's been 25 years since the release of Stiff Little Fingers' debut masterpiece Inflammable Material. It feels like half as many years since the last time I sat down and listened to great music that made me want to break stuff, but this past weekend I did. I'm older and less agile now, so I didn't break stuff after listening to Material, but this is more because I've awkwardly grown comfortable with being a part of "the Establishment" and the only stuff available for breaking were the things I've paid for myself and treasure in my adult appreciation of materialism and ownership. It's funny how we age, but can't seem to let go of the passions of our misguided youth.Stiff Little Fingers amazed me and defined my youth in a way that only the Clash had done before. Never mind the Sex Pistols, these guys don't suck. More important, they weren't about Vivian Westwood's latest collection of crap, they were about revolution and anger and breaking stuff. They were a band from a city that gave the world nothing but bad news and heartbreak. They were punk rock. With the love of John Peel, they gave us raw disillusionment, a weird pity, and really great songs. More important, they gave me the strangest sense of hope. From the angry "Suspect Device" ("They take away our freedom/In the name of liberty/Why can't they all just clear out/Why can't they let us be" - Patriot Act II comes modernly to mind, but let's leave the politics out of this), to the tuneful "Bits of Kids", Stiff Little fingers has remained a staple in the upkeep of an old lady who's grown tired of following the silliness of the pop culture world.My best boys from Belfast were accused of selling out as early as 1982, with the release of Now Then I've never thought much of critics who readily shout "sell-out!" at the first sign of success. There is, after all, a difference between growing up and selling out, and Stiff Little Fingers can't fairly be accused of the latter. There are only so many ways that you can say "f*** authority" in two-and-a-half minute intervals, and any artist who fails to recognize this runs the risk of boring their audience. Despite a few of my more hardcore comrades, back in the day, scornfully re-christening the band "Limp Little Whingers", I never felt the melodic catch of songs like "Good for Nothing" and "Stands To Reason" suggested a compromise of artistic integrity as much as they did the growth and progress of an ever-changing band. I certainly wasn't going to stop listening because they refused to record "78 RPM" over and over and over again; in fact, I would have if they did.Now the heroes of my adolescence are recording a new album, their first of the 21st Century, if I can be a bigger cliché. I've followed Stiff Little Fingers since the first moment that "Suspect Device" made me want to break stuff, start a revolution, and...break more stuff. As of the last reports from their website, they've yet to acquire a US distributor for their most recent album, slated for an August release in Europe. A note to They Who Distribute These Things in America: I'd buy it. Lots of my friends would buy it. And those who wouldn't buy it, well, we'd go to their houses and...break stuff. Or at least the angst-filled adolescent who hasn't left the building would like to think we would, but knows that we won't. Don't let that discourage you. Music5693@blogcritics.org Wed, 28 May 2003 22:57:14 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/16/001827.php Emily JonesSlated for a mid-fall release, the upcoming film Ted and Sylvia is set to portray the turbulent yet brief marriage of poets Ted Hughes and Silvia Plath. Likely to stir up a decades-old debate tarred by extreme feminism, irrelevant issues of artistic merit, and the question of culpability for Plath's tragic death at the age of thirty, it's sure to be a buzz on the poetry geek circuit.The romance of Plath and Hughes has perhaps become more legendary than even the poems that made their names worthy of recognition; it has become the stuff of myth, speculation, and even scholastics. Odd as it may seem - after all, aren't most literary types and modern pop icons notorious for leading badly managed lives? - There are camps divided, and like passers-by twisting their necks to gape at a terrible auto wreck, parties otherwise not involved personally with either poet that have most definitely taken sides.A precis of the relationship would read something like the following: bright American poet girl meets bright British poet boy while studying in England. They dig each other, hook up, get married, and squeeze out a couple of ankle-biters. As fate, or at the very least as gluttony would have it, bright British poet boy turns out to be one hell of a cheating man. Now, add to that equation the fact that bright American poet girl happens to be hopelessly plagued with incurable depression, and you've got a tragedy waiting to be written. Mr. Hughes, either unable to harness the burden of his bride's unfortunate condition, or unwilling to take his wedding vows with serious due value, ditches bright American poet girl for presumably lower-maintenance other-girl. Bright American poet girl, emotionally unequipped to deal with such a loss, cranks up the oven gas and takes one to many whiffs on purpose. According to the feminists, it's Ted Hughes's fault. According to everybody else, Sylvia Plath was a fatal figure haunted by her own emotional demons who was destined for such a mournful end. According to me, The Bell Jar made it all too clear that Sylvia Plath was hugely ill-equipped to deal with even the slightest of life's struggles. Her work is stunning in its painful honesty to this point. Meanwhile, Ted Hughes has had to all but grow the very horns of the Devil from his own head to live down his reputation as Plath's lone executioner. The man is a gifted poet whose work has been dismissed by unfair critics on this single point, while Plath has been trivialized as a ridiculous icon of women as the inevitable prey of a callous man, unable to forge our own destiny without our penis-of-choice standing by our side. Might I suggest that both points of view were wrong?Ted Hughes, obsessively guarded and private when it came to the issue of his marriage with Sylvia Plath, bore all in 1998's The Birthday Letters. This was a intense and exposed work where the man dared an attempt to exorcise a certain bad memory that, while only occupying a sum of six years, had haunted him for the most of his life. The fact that so many junkies of this sad and very personal saga felt that they were actually owed an explanation by Hughes, or that they deserved an insight into his deepest feelings over such a private matter is repulsive. The hyper-critical response is worthy of no more than contempt, if not very real vomit.When Ted and Sylvia is released, no doubt the critics will bloom again in full. I just hope the film-makers have the sense to realize that neither one of these folks are around to defend themselves against bad attacks against their character these days. I hope that the saga that might be interpreted as typical soap opera fodder is treated with equal decency on the part of both of their memories. Only their readers can decide. Too bad most of the have an agenda. Video5345@blogcritics.org Fri, 16 May 2003 00:18:27 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/04/21/215045.php Emily JonesLaunched in November of 2002 by Kevin Spacey and Dana Brunetti, I've been spending more hours than might be healthy with TriggerStreet.comFor those of you not familiar with this booming phenomena, the site serves as a source for amateur and hopeful screenwriters and filmmakers to submit their material for both peer and professional review. However, I feel it's only decent to offer fair warning before posting the link by stealing one of the taglines from the film Waiting for Guffman: there's a good reason why some talent remains undiscovered.There are also bad reasons why some talent remains undiscovered. In an industry plagued by nepotism, favoritism, bottomlineativism, and any other nasty "ism" you can think of (er...some of them clearly invented by this author), TriggerStreet offers a venue to fledgling writers and directors to showcase their work - not to be mistaken for "talent" - in return for another "ism": criticism. With a mix of short films and screenplays, members indicate their preferences from a variety of genres and are then given review "assignments" pooled from recent submissions. These submissions range from truly talented, to could-be-good-with-a-little-bit-of-polish, to downright (insert colorful obscenity here) atrocious.The good thing about TriggerStreet, though, is that you don't have to be related to Francis Ford Coppola to have people genuinely interested in film take a look at your work. Sure, some of them are just schmuck movie geeks like me, but the site has also run short films by established Hollywood figures like the late Ted Demme and and the long-adored Martin Scorsese, and even boasts a "film festival" several times a year with celebrity judges along the lines of Danny DeVito, Tim Burton, and Cameron Crowe, critiquing TriggerStreet's top picks. While there's some genuine rubbish just a mouse click away, there's more often than not a surprising amount of inspired, refreshing, and truly imaginative new material from folks whose hard efforts might not have seen the light of day otherwise. And the light of day is getting more bright; TriggerStreet has had just a little over 900 new members this week alone.Best of all, it's free. If you're a sucker for the underdog, and you love new and experimental film, or if you just want to be a part of what's next, visit TriggerStreet.com. Sci/Tech4763@blogcritics.org Mon, 21 Apr 2003 21:50:45 EDT