Posts

Showing posts from December, 2013

National Lampoon's European Socialist Vacation

Image
When C4SS Media made this video , they obviously forgot to include this background image:

The Court Intellectual Mindset, In Fifteen Words

Image
"Most intellectuals are attracted to power, but none with less ambivalence than Arthur Schlesinger Jr."   Posted with Blogsy

A candle in the cold and the dark: 17 years without Carl Sagan

Sorry to not have a more substantial post, but I thought I'd check in with the blogosphere on the 17th anniversary of Carl Sagan's passing.  It's been a long seven years since the 10th anniversary blogathon (yet Sagan would have only just turned 79!), and the Internet is a very different place, but I am thinking about how to revive something like the blogathon on an ongoing basis.

go see Suspiria at the Museum of the Moving Image

Must-see film screening of the YEAR : Dario Argento's horror classic Suspiria at the Museum of the Moving Image tomorrow . Yes, it gets shown all the time at revival theaters.  But there is no movie that more demands to be experienced in the very best possible visual and sound quality, deservedly celebrated for both its gorgeous cinematography and stunning soundtrack.  I've even been to a screening where the theater had the truly unenviable dilemma of putting the film either on a screen with sound-system problems, or one with better sound but markedly worse visual quality.  And this is almost the Platonic ideal of a presentation: in the Museum's gigantic main theater with the most impeccable revival screening environment in New York, in not only a 35mm print in an era when that is becoming increasingly rare, but an "imported 35mm print of uncut UK version"!

the opening sentence of an upcoming book review

"In 1975, two leftists, one of whom had been a top GOP insider, anarcho-capitalist, and a founder of the American libertarian movement, collaborated on a book published by a leading Washington, D.C. left-wing think tank and the Unitarian Universalist Association advocating decentralization of political and economic power from the federal, state and city levels to local neighborhoods — hopefully facilitated by the passage of a Republican senator's bill to divert 75% of income tax revenue to them."

Santa Claus Conquers the Gray Lady

Image
Little-known fact: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians received a positive review in The New York Times praising Pia Zadora's "appealing" performance. No, really. Posted with Blogsy