Dogtooth

I don't get to the cinema as often as I'd like these days and when I do it often seems to be to see a revival (admittedly these are always pretty wonderful though they often feel like the "safe" option) or to squint in disbelief at the colossally empty and exceptionally loud spectacle of "Avatar."  Then I see a film like "Dogtooth" and my faith that magical films are still being made is reaffirmed.  This Greek film is easily the best film made in recent years that I've seen.  It is potent and disturbing matter; four people walked out of the screening my friends and I attended.  But I think great art does divide people into strong camps.  I'd recommend this film to anyone old enough to see it, but with the caveat that it is not for the faint of heart or the delicate of sensibility.  It is a strange, surreal meditation on family life with echoes of Bunuel and Tarkovsky in its sun-infused tension and hushed intensity. This is a family that we would like to view from a distance, to judge, but, remarkably, the director, Yorgos Lanthimos, and his ensemble of extraordinary performers allow us to draw close to the characters. They win us with their innocence. It is a playful film that depicts a terrifying form of familial fascism.  It operates on so many levels of meaning it dizzies analysis.  The awe and wonder of childhood are perverted and distorted in this odd remaking of the outside world.  It is the sweetest nightmare and I don't think I will ever forget it.

The goddess returns

PJ's back and she's looking outside herself, reinventing herself artistically yet again. The clip of her performing has her being watched by none other than Gordon Brown. The song? "Let England shake." Perfect.

It's happening again

Terror returns to Moscow. As do conspiracy theories.

The Animal Who Cannot Sleep

Another excellent post from what is swiftly becoming a favourite blog of mine. I'd never heard of this Cioran fellow before, but any friend of Beckett is likely worth attending to.

"Kick" Reinvented

Record Club: INXS "Guns In The Sky" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

This promises to be wonderful from this footage ...

Sleep violence

I've been fascinated by this phenomenon for some time. Another wonderful posting on The New York Times's All-Nighters blog. The bit about the guy accidentally killing his mother-in-law seems a little suspicious.

Philippe Jusforgues

I came across this guy's work in ROOMS magazine. His images are creepy, surprising, and devilishly funny. Check out his website here.

Why we need REM

Insomnia may allow me to get more done, but, according to this fascinating New York Times blog post, those dreams I'm missing could prove very useful creatively ... I dream of sleep.

"Preacher Warns" by Charles Simic

This peaceful world of ours is ready for destruction—

And still the sun shines, the sparrows come

Each morning to the bakery for crumbs.

Next door, two men deliver a bed for a pair of newlyweds

And stop to admire a bicycle chained to a parking meter.

Its owner is making lunch for his ailing grandmother.

He heats the soup and serves it to her in a bowl.

The windows are open, there’s a warm breeze.

The young trees on our street are delirious to have leaves.

Italian opera is on the radio, the volume too high.

Brevi e tristi giorni visse, a baritone sings.

Everyone up and down our block can hear him.

Something about the days that remain for us to enjoy

Being few and sad. Not today, Maestro Verdi!

At the hairdresser’s a girl leaps out of a chair,

Her blond hair bouncing off her bare shoulders

As she runs out the door in her high heels.

“I must be off,” says the handsome boy to his grandmother.

His bicycle is where he left it.

He rides it casually through the heavy traffic

His white shirttails fluttering behind him

Long after everyone else has come to a sudden stop.

Gorbachev on Perestroika 25 years later

Fascinating Op-Ed in the NYT.

A Celebration of Light

We have to remember something very important about what theatre and opera are about: a celebration of light, that's what it is. The only plays in Greece, when there was a lot of light in the middle of the night, were when they would burn these big pieces of wood in pyres so they could illuminate the theatre. People would gather around these bonfires - you know how hypnotic fires are - and there was a communal, collective connection ... In Japan, the first Noh plays were the opportunity to put light in the middle of a night. The idea of theatre is first of all to bring people in a dark room and do the festival of light. Of course the fire of these theatres was replaced by technology, by electricity, but people still come to the theatre to sit around the fire.

--- Robert Lepage

Kathryn Bigelow

I thought "Near Dark" and "Strange Days" were fantastic when I saw them. Now, clearly, it's time I saw "The Hurt Locker." Manohla Dargis here writes about the incredible scarcity of female directors and the bias implicit in the films that women are expected to make and like.

Composers on education

A fascinating look at composers leading workshops and reflecting on their craft and the impact of music in education. Featuring a friend and collaborator of mine, Simon Katan.

Engaging with Sound from Sound and Music on Vimeo.

Corey Haim

I think it's pretty safe to say that "Lost Boys" would be a hard film to sit through for me these days. To put it mildly, the work of Joel Schumacher has not aged well as I've grown older. But I fondly remember Haim's performance. It was so insouciant, electric, and cocky. I can't believe he's gone, but then it's sad to admit that for the longest time I didn't know where he was.

The Guardian has put together a little tribute for him here.

Beck Recruits St. Vincent, Liars, and Os Mutantes for Next Record Club

This is exciting ...

Beck Recruits St. Vincent, Liars, and Os Mutantes for Next Record Club

Good review of a great album

The Quietus take on Liars' "Sisterworld."

ODing with the AC

This looks promising.

Tron is back!

Check out the trailer. Music by Daft Punk! Jeff Bridges! Finally putting CGI to good use! Nostalgia in 3D! I can taste it.

Tanztheater Wuppertal's "Kontakthof"

Got tickets to see this. Pina Bausch's company at The Barbican.

Can't wait.

Liars interview

Liars

He's flown

As devastating as the news of Mark Linkous's death is, he has left us with so much beauty. I like to imagine he has found peace. This is a stunning music video of "It's a Wondeful Life" by Sparklehorse. It's directed by the masterful film maker Guy Maddin.

Mathematics in literature

Click here for a fascinating examination of how Lewis Carroll may have been inspired by maths when writing about Alice's adventures on the other side of the rabbit hole.

Phenomenology

The real has to be described, not constructed or formed. Which means that I cannot put perception into the same syntheses represented by judgements, acts or predications. My field of perception is constantly filled with a play of colours, noises and fleeting tactile sensations which I cannot relate precisely to the context of my perceived world, yet which I immediately 'place' in the world, without ever confusing them with my daydreams. Equally constantly I weave dreams round things. I imagine people and things whose presence is not incompatible with the context, yet who are not in fact involved in it: they are ahead of reality, in the realm of the imaginary. If the reality of my perception were based solely on the intrinsic coherence of 'representations,' it ought to be forever hesitant and being wrapped up in my conjectures on probabilities. I ought to be ceaselessly taking apart misleading syntheses, and reinstating in reality stray phenomena which I had excluded in the first place. But this does not happen. The real is a closely woven fabric. It does not await our judgement before incorporating the most surprising phenomena, or before rejecting the most plausible figments of our imagination.

--- Maurice Merleau-Ponty

The Beauty of the Urban Blightmare

Liars' new record "Sisterworld" is streaming here.

It is ragged, jagged, nauseated, alienated, angry, and pretty.

It acts slowly. A few listens in and its intoxicating poison works its magic.

John Guare on Writing

This is from the preface to the Dramatists Play Service edition of Six Degrees of Separation:

A writer learns his or her life as a writer is entrusted to work being done in a room, a studio, an atelier not at the top of a stair but hidden somewhere within the mind. Why the hell is the place that is most truly us the place that is most inaccessible? And a writer grows to hate that room and its gnawing presence and its inaccessibility. A writer's life becomes a history of the trek of how he or she returns to that room down a path as trustworthy as mercury. The writer strews the path with booze and drugs or lies and resentments and fear of abandonment and despair and jealousy and self-loathing and hatred that we have lost the way to that path which is most us. Because the inhabitants of that room demand attention when they are ready or else they will drive us mad. You didn't try hard enough to find me. You didn't structure your life in the right way to hear us when we called. But you have to go on living.

A Covers Record To Look Forward To?

I'll admit I was hardly enthusiastic about the idea of Peter Gabriel's new album of covers. But this piece in the New York Times has me intrigued.

Delicious Alec Empire mix

Atari Teenage Riot has left me with some fond memories. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this fantastic mix by Alec Empire while traveling the internet highway.

The Functionality of Depression

A fascinating look at current scientific thinking about depression and its possible benefits.

Climate Change

We ignore Gore at our peril.

Scissor

The new Liars video is creepy and effective until it is ruined by CGI. It's a shame really because for a music video it has a good sense of pace and mounting tension. The stone rain just fails to communicate weight and threat, mainly because it looks fake. The song rocks, though.

You've got to love this guy

"[Art] lets you kind of control physiology and the secretions that take place within the body.”

--- Jeff Koons in The NY Times

In praise of Maria Casares

I saw Bresson's "Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne" yesterday and it made a terrific impression on me, but my feelings about it were mixed. His style as a director seemed to be pulling away from the melodramatic dialogue by Cocteau. It is well worth seeing, though, if only for Maria Casares. She has figured in two of my favourite films ("Les Enfants du Paradis" and "Orphee") and she is sublime here. Early in the film, she falsely confesses that she no longer loves her partner, and when he responds that he has fallen out of love with her, the suppression of her pain is wrenching. This star dazzles with singular brightness.

Will it be a Singing Blond or a Horny Devil?

Beer tasting!

"Zebra"

"Zebra"

This is a gorgeous song. The simplicity of the video serves it well.

Gender and killers

Though this piece is absurdly dismissive of Marina Abromavic, one of my favourite artists (I saw the 2002 work described by the writer when it was exhibited in NYC and it remains one of the most powerful performances I've ever witnessed), it is worth reading for its examination of the relationship between gender and cultural depictions of violence.

Free the killer whales

The loss of this trainer is tragic, but the message is clear.

Joseph Stack and terrorism

Was Stack a terrorist? I think so but perhaps branding him one will help his cause ...

Take a look at Robert Wright's insightful blog posting on the subject.

America, this is madness

In Virginia, the General Assembly approved a bill last week that allows people to carry concealed weapons in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, and the House of Delegates voted to repeal a 17-year-old ban on buying more than one handgun a month. The actions came less than three years after the shootings at Virginia Tech that claimed 33 lives and prompted a major national push for increased gun control.

--- NY Times

We could all learn something from a former Soviet political dissident

A very interesting experience: you learn yourself, you understand yourself. Once you understand yourself to that degree, it's much easier to understand other people ... Some people cannot stand solitary confinement at all. I've known people go completely mad. Some would feel that their personality disintegrates. After some observations, I understood why that happens - some people define themselves only in relation to others. I'm not like that. When they are deprived of this point of reference, they go bonkers, just lose their personality. For me it was never like that - I never defined myself in relation to other people - and therefore it was kind of fun for me. It was a very interesting experience! You become a bit exalted - but if you control it to some extent, it's OK. And that allows you an enormous degree of concentration. Things come naturally when you learn how to play with your subconscious.

--- Vladimir Bukovsky

An antidote to Monday

This is a delicious mix of African music put together by the ever adventurous mind of one Fitz Gitler. Chase the commencement of the week blues away with radiant, sunny tunes.

Prezzo is No-go

Well, I suppose blogs are for ravings and rantings. So here is some bile. In between teaching classes today, I was famished and sat down in a Prezzo across from Euston Station. The waiter had been somewhat ambivalent showing me to my table. He slapped a menu down and off he went. I thought nothing of this, I've certainly encountered worse. I sent a text, had a long look at the menu, decided I'd like a salad, and then looked at a programme to an awful show I'd recently seen. After a while, I realized that, considering the restaurant had morgue-like levels of activity, it was quite surprising that no one had come to offer me a drink let alone take notice of my closed menu that signaled that I'd like to maybe order some day soon. I saw what looked like the entire staff of the restaurant huddled around a table. There wasn't the slightest indication of a thought in my direction from the huddle. Pressed for time, I got up, threw on my coat and dramatically wound my scarf around my neck as I grabbed my back pack. No reaction from the herd. So out the door I went and Prezzo is now a no-go. I guess this is what their website means by "relaxed" service. It would appear I am not alone in my feelings from a glance at london-eating.co.uk.

Borealis Festival

I only got to see one performance at this festival at Kings Place, but listening to this broadcast on BBC 3 is making me realize just how much I missed. A ridiculously loud and savage noise band named MoHa!, a clarinettist on a skateboard ... the list goes on. Have a listen to the broadcast.

My friend Simon's piece "les escaliers mecaniques" is the one I saw. It is extraordinary and well worth checking out properly (just ignore my trembling cinematography). My buddy Filippos did the movement direction. See it here.