Tim Burton’s re fashioning of Alice in Wonderland continues a fabulous string of delightfully subversive “children’s films”. Like Wall-E and Where the Wild Things Are, the directors of these entertainments are tackling the philosophical issues of our current age. First let me state that many of the reviewers who have taken Burton to task for making “a Disney movie, not a Burton movie” don’t know what they are talking about. Didn’t they ever go to see Fantasiain the 60’s or 70’s in a slightly altered consciousness? Alice is far more psychedelic (thanks to the 3D) than Fantasia and much more fun.
Burton’s trope is Shakespearean–In a world gone mad, only the fool speaks truth to power. Like the Bard’s wonderful fools, Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter is part Lord Buckley and part Hunter Thompson. He both flatters and then confronts the Red Queen, brilliantly played by Helena Bonham Carter as if she were Karl Rove in drag. Burton has also been criticized for making Alice (played by the Australian Mia Wasikowska) 19 and on her second trip down the Rabbit Hole. But this is really quite a brilliant shift because, as any parent knows it is at that point that a young woman can evolve from a shrinking violet to the Joan of Arc in armor character ready to slay the Jabberwocky that Alice becomes.
I usually teach for about five hours on Mondays (an undergraduate lecture and a graduate seminar), so today is a true holiday for me. Some here are some random thoughts over morning coffee.
This community rocks! As both rhbee and Amber commented, the discussion on copyright over the last three days was one of the most enlightened and civil dialogues on the subject I have seen anywhere. A new poster GB, started off worrying that all the “heavyweights” would tear him a new one and soon discovered that is not our way. Somehow the talk here is too smart for trolls. I’m humble enough to know it’s got more to do with the community than the organizer.
We’ve been through this movie before.E.J.Dionne makes the trenchant point this morning that a Republican party out of power has only one response. 2010 is just a replay of the 1994 Republican playbook.
Consider, first, that Clinton, like Obama, started out as a unifier who disdained ideological quarrels and saw himself as a problem-solver. There is not a dime’s worth of difference between Clinton’s war on “the brain-dead politics of both parties” and Obama’s insistence that “there is not a liberal America and a conservative America, there is the United States of America.” Both sought to occupy the middle ground of American politics. Both believed that they could win over Republicans. Both were sure they could govern differently… Continue reading ‘President's Day Musings’
Our erstwhile correspondent, T Bone Burnett and his colleagues Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal continue their award season hot streak with three Oscar Nominations for Crazy Heart.
This is one of those stories that reaffirms our faith in creativity and learning to make good stories for a price.
Apple’s stock is down almost 4% this morning in a classic “buy on the rumor, sell on the news” trader’s strategy. I’m happy to buy some of those day trader’s $199 stock. Anyone who doubts the utility of this device is just not thinking very clearly. I can say with some confidence that it is going to revolutionize academic publishing as well as the way journalism is delivered. Most of us who write books about the media are constrained by our ability to explicate a passage about say, Citizen Kane, by the inclusion of a still picture from the film. The ability to include a 30 second clip of the part of the movie you are critiquing is going to change the nature of most non-fiction E Books.
In a couple of years, the I Pad will be the device students bring to college.
WTF? A dead guy, a second rate country pop singer, a band that was a smash 40 years ago and a granny that sings Broadway Standards. Now obviously the list of most illegally downloaded songs would look pretty different, but this actual hits in the real music economy doesn’t speak very highly of our current era of musical innovation.
Our correspondent Alex Bowles sent me this astonishing piece of imaginative creation of the role of architecture and art in the modernist era by Alex Roman. He is the Magritte of the 21st Century. As soon as you hit play click the button on the right that says HD . The put it on full screen and turn the sound up.
Our correspondent Alex Bowles sent me this astonishing piece of imaginative creation of the role of architecture and art in the modernist era by Alex Roman. He is the Magritte of the 21st Century. As soon as you hit play click the button on the right that says HD . The put it on full screen and turn the sound up.
As a recording business, Jazz has had a very hard time in the last few years. Sure, the Wynton Marsalis or Pat Metheny still have recording contracts, but for many jazz musicians it’s almost impossible to get a record made. Enter Artist Share, a fan-funded site that allows artists to raise enough to pay for a decent recording studio and market an album. It harkens back to some of the cooperative models we have been talking about.
And guess what? Three of the Grammy nominations in the jazz category including Gerald Clayton’s Piano improvs,Two Shade,went to Artist Share funded projects. If there’s a will, there’s a way.
Alice Waters, the chef at Chez Panisse in Berkeley and the doyenne of the California local food movement sent me this link to Maira Kalman’s latest art/food blog. It’s wonderful.
Since we have a bunch of guitar players and even a guitar maker on this blog, I thought everyone might appreciate a New Yorker piece about Robert Earl Keen visiting the Mandolin Brothers guitar store in New York. You should read the whole piece but the ending probably feels familiar to a few of you.
Finally, Jay handed Keen a Martin 000-45, one of only two hundred and sixty-five ever made, from 1930. Keen strummed it once, cocked his head, and then asked for a pick.
“You know what I said about some guitars just having songs in them?” he said. “This is one of them.” Keen’s fingers moved over the strings, but the rest of him seemed to float toward the ceiling.
“How much?” he asked, when he’d finished playing.
“Sixty-five thousand.”
“Damn, I always go for the most expensive guitar in the place, and after that nothing else sounds as good.”
Jay said the guitar was on hold for someone else, but “I could notify you if he doesn’t want it.”
“Yeah, right. Maybe you could also notify my banker.”
“Certainly,” Jay said. “And your wife. I’m good with wives. Do you want to call her now?” Jay pointed toward the phone in the next room. But Keen knew better than to follow him there.
or 
still have recording contracts, but for many jazz musicians it’s almost impossible to get a record made. 
,went to Artist Share funded projects. If there’s a will, there’s a way.
