- Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse (31)
- Gerry Mulligan (20)
- Robert Rodriguez (16)
- Jacques Brel (14)
- Phoenix (6)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
7 Plays
Angus and Julia Stone - and the boys
New song featured on TheirSpace. I’m smitten.
The Schrödinger’s Cat paradox
Schrödinger’s dead-and-alive cat makes a cameo appearance in A Serious Man.
Word of the day: Dybbuk
In Jewish folklore, a dybbuk is a malicious spirit in search of a body to possess. In A Serious Man’s pre-credit Yiddish fable, an old rabbi is mistaken for a dybbuk and gets stabbed with an ice pick. Harsh.
A Serious Man (2009) by the Coen brothers
A Serious Man is the Coen brothers’ Jew movie. It’s also a brilliant and unsettling dark comedy and hands down my favourite Coen flick of the noughties. I love the opening yiddish folk tale, I love the ominous ending, and I love everything in between.
Some of my favourite bits include a troublesome Korean student (and his dad), three rabbis, the weird neighbour coming back from a hunt, Uncle Arthur’s breakdown by the pool, Larry’s nightmares, Danny’s trippy bar mitzvah, the goy’s teeth story, Sy Ableman’s assholy pep talks and more.
47 Plays
Broken Social Scene - Stars and Sons
Il divo (2008) by Paolo Sorrentino (via nevver)
The Once And Future Blonde urges me to see this film. Looking at this trailer, I’m in. It makes great use of Cassius’s Toop Toop; I also love how the tag lines synch with the images. Now added on my to-download list.
Cold Souls (2009) by Sophie Barthes
Meh…Lots of good ideas that all went to waste. Too bad as I’m sure a half decent screenwriter could have come up with a meatier and more engaging script.
A few things I liked: a soulless Giamatti doing Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, Giamatti’s great chemistry with Dina Korzun (their five-second bit on “frivolity” is pitch perfect), and, most importantly, Dina Korzun herself.
41 Plays
Broken Social Scene - Lover’s Spit (feat. Feist)
All these people drinking lover’s spit
Swallowing words while giving head
Ok, so one wouldn’t know how romantic this song really is judging by the lyrics I’ve just plucked out. I do like the other version as well, but Feist’s voice takes the song to a higher level I think.
The White Ribbon (2009) by Michael Haneke
I knew this Haneke film was going to be particularly good (it won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes festival after all) but I didn’t expect to be blown away like this. This is so far and by far my favourite film this year.
The White Ribbon details the disturbing events that unfold in a small Austrian village just before the outbreak of World War I. Shot in beautifully crisp black and white, the film is eerie, perverse, full of repression, perversion, malice, violence and brutality…You know, the usual Haneke stuff. But in the midst of all that, it’s got a rather touching romance between the school teacher, who narrates the film, and a young nanny. Ironically, their love story is where you can find genuine innocence, while at the same time Haneke asks us to focus on the corrupted innocence of the children of the village.
More importantly, the White Ribbon is utterly absorbing. Of course, in the end, Haneke offers no answers, nor easy solutions. The ending left me left me a tad frustrated but it felt right. I need to watch this again.
Alyssa by David Knight
I went to check out this year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery (the one in London, that is). The first prize went to the swimmer, but, personally, I only had eyes for David Knight’s Alyssa. Must be the freckles.
262 Plays
Arthur Russell - This is How We Walk on the Moon
(via britticisms: swansandwolves)
[The Escapist] was strapped to a bizarre multiple guillotine that would have sliced him like a hard-boiled egg while the Führer himself smugly looked on. Naturally, patiently, indomitably, he had worked his way loose of his riveted steel bonds and hurled himself at the throat of the dictator. At this point, an entire Wehrmacht division had come between the Escapist’s fingers and that gravely desired larynx. Over the course of the next eighteen pages, in panels that crowded, jostled, piled one on top of the other, and threatened to burst the margins of the page, the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, and the Escapist had duked it out. One the very last page, in a transcendent moment in the history of wishful figments, the Escapist had captured Adolf Hitler and dragged him before a world tribunal. Head finally bowed in defeat and shame, Hitler was sentenced to die for his crimes against humanity. The war was over; a universal era of peace was declared, the imprisoned and persecuted peoples of Europe […] were free.
Judith Beheading Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653)
Artemisia Gentileschi was one of the first women artists to achieve recognition in the male-dominated world of post-Renaissance art and the first woman to paint major historical and religious scenes blah blah snore blah, but, really, what’s rather fascinating about her is that she got raped by painter Agostino Tassi, her then mentor, and when Tassi was taken to court for the rape, she was subjected to physical torture to prove the veracity of her testimony. Wow.
Now, knowing all that, it’s no wonder she got obsessed with the depiction of the slaying of Holofernes (she churned out many versions of that same scene, I believe). Clearly, painting can be cathartic.
