Did you know that you can watch/listen to
c-span for free online (c-span 1, 2, 3 and radio)? They also have lots of stuff archived, including hearings, speeches and even lengthy, in-depth shows on American writers
here. C-Span radio will be broadcasting from the DNC from 1-11 pacific time with no interruptions and no commentary.
Another great (i.e. hilarious and depressing) Jon Stewart transcript from a bit on a recent Daily Show re: Edwards/Kerry talking points. Almost makes me wish I had cable TV...
An exciting trio of music related books arrived in the mail today. The new Derek Bailey biography by Ben Watson is surprisingly thick and has a slightly odd smell. I just think it’s amazing that such a thing as a Bailey biography even exists (now if only he could make it back out to the west coast for some shows - or if I could save up enough dough to fly over to the UK). I also got David Toop’s surprisingly slim 260 page new volume -
Haunted Weather - should be an interesting read as it looks to cover a lot of ground, briefly flipping pages I see mentions of John Zorn, Akio Suzuki, Morton Feldman, Christian Marclay, Evan Parker, Brian Eno, Markus Popp, Derek Bailey (again), Fennesz etc. Not surprisingly, about like an issue of The Wire. Finally I’ve already started in on Jan Swafford’s biography of Charles Ives. Very hefty and from the mid-90s, I’ve been looking forward to its arrival as I’ve found myself listening to a lot of Ives recently and I want to know more than you get out of the liner notes.
It was another shut-in style weekend - reading books and watching DVDs - it’s just about all I want to do in this town anymore - especially now that the summer too hot has arrived.
So let’s see, I finished up Graham Greene’s
The Power and The Glory, only the second of his many books I’ve read, but I enjoyed it very much - this one read like a catholic Kafka, if that makes sense. I also raced through and enjoyed Ingmar Bergman’s autobiographical and somewhat cryptic
The Magic Lantern. It’s constant unexplained forward and backward shifts through time were occasionally confusing, but perhaps the less straight-forward approach helped to keep the story moving along and interesting - although ultimately I found the book a little lighter than I was expecting.
I’ve been going through a slight phase of not watching movies, a phase which seems to have ended this week for who knows what reason. I’ve watched two Carl Dreyer masterpieces,
Ordet and
Gertrude, and also Yasuharu Hasebe’s
Bloody Territories, a decent yakuza film from 1969 just released in a perfect DVD from HVE. Earlier in the week I enjoyed (more than I thought I would) watching both Kurosawa’s and Renoir’s versions of Gorky’s
The Lower Depths. To see both back to back actually made each more interesting - comparing and contrasting the different approaches each took - and being surprised by how little each version had in common. I also watched Kurosawa’s
Stray Dog again - still great - though I was slightly disappointed that Criterion wasn’t able to find a nicer print to make their DVD from - as it was still pretty beat up looking (despite their claims of restored image). Anyhow - that’s a lot of movie watching for one week! And tonight I’ve got René Clair’s
À Nous la Liberté set to go.
UBUWEB has posted a pdf of a series of
lengthy Stan Brakhage lectures on filmmakers George Méliès, D.W. Griffith, Carl Theodore Dreyer and Sergei Eisenstein from 1970 and 71. It's seventy-six pages well worth printing out - and it's free.
The lastest monthly issue of the ever more essential review zine,
Paris Transatlantic, has been posted. It's a fantastic resource for seriously considered opinions on new music, as good as anything you could buy on the newstands.
