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As is customary on MSNBC when some D-list celebrity explodes in public, Rita Cosby was wheeled out of the freezer to bemoan the loss of Anna Nicole Smith and interview a legion of experts in skank mortality, while endless loops of the late Playmate's fat ass ran in the background, preempting just about everything else. Over on CNN, Smith's "tragic and untimely" death will, of course, provide the content of Larry King's nightly morgue parade and just about every other program for the rest of the night - and perhaps for the next several days. Only Fox News, ironically, has disrupted the "all Anna Nicole all the time" pattern in order to bring us pressing fascist propaganda. Wasn't Irving Lewis Libby on trial or something? Weren't we watching the Democratic majority roll over to take the Bush administration's surge up the ass? Wasn't Iran releasing flying monkeys over America's heartland while developing a deadly death ray? Can someone wake me when the news resumes? 
Vicki Lynn Hogan Marshall
November 28, 1967 – February 8, 2007
the world is a poorer, if quieter, place...Tags: duly noted, mourn not the dead
humour:  bored
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 Robert Anton Wilson
author, anarchist, faux psychologist, theorist in search of a conspiracy, total head
January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007Wilson's last blog entry:SATURDAY, JANUARY 6, 2007
Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night
Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.
Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.
RAW
(typed from his bedside at his fnord by the sea) |
Tags: bibliophilia, duly noted, mourn not the dead
humour:  content
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 Robert Bernard Altman
February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006Acording to Wikipedia, Robert Altman was an American film director known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his work with an Academy Honorary Award.
His films MASH and Nashville have been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. |
I can pay Robert Altman no better tribute than to remember some of his work. His films are intellectually stimulating, visually stunning, intricately constructed, sometimes deeply moving - and frequently hilarious. He worked in a wide variety of genres, usually gently deconstructing them in the process, brought some amazing scripts to dynamic life, and got some terrific performances from actors as varied as Cissy Spacek, Helen Mirren, Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, Matthew Modine, Lily Tomlin, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. When I did a countdown of my top fifty films here last year, Altman was one of the few directors that made the list twice - and he would appear several more times in my top 100. His better films are some of the best in American cinema - MASH, Nashville, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, A Wedding, The Player, Short Cuts, Gosford Park - and a number of his less acclaimed films are no less brilliant - the chillingly nihilistic Quintet, the wryly elusive 3 Women, Altman's personal favorite, Brewster McCloud,, the searing portrait of Richard Nixon, Secret Honor, the wistful comedy Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean - Cookie's Fortune, The Long Goodbye, H.E.A.L.T.H., The Gingerbread Man - and more. Even his least successful efforts - Popeye, Images, Prairie Home Companion, Prêt-à-Porter - are still more interesting than the best work of many other directors. My memories of having seen most of his films are quite vivid. I have clear recollections of where and when I first saw them, with whom, and much of the discussion that followed. I also remember the pleasure of numerous repeat viewings of his films - mostly on video and DVD - and how many of them became cultural reference points in conversation. I can trace the beginnings of several friendships, at least in part, to discussions of Altman's work - sometimes mutual admiration, sometimes heated argument, but seldom without passion. And I have to admit that a few of his films had an important influence on some of my theater work - and much of my criticism. He was not only one of our best film-makers, but also one of our best social critics. In my countdown of best films ever, Altman's first mention (at #32) was for...
Gosford Park (2001)
 Sadly, many people saw this film as little more than an English country house whodunit - which wholly misses the point. Robert Altman is one of our best directors - and this is one of his best films. Using multiple characters and storylines, which has almost become an Altman trademark, he uses the murder mystery idiom to dissect - indeed, autopsy - the British class system, at the same time examining social justice, the abuse of wealth, the question of inheritance and entitlement, and the power structures of marriage. And it's a decent parody of the English country house whodunit. The cast is practically a who's who of English thespianism - Alan Bates, Derek Jacobi, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, Emily Watson, Clive Owen, Charles Dance, Kristin Scott Thomas, Stephen Fry, Richard E. Grant, Jeremy Northram, etc., etc., etc. The script is intricate, witty, and multi-layered, the design is impeccable, the research into the running of a country house is impressive and seamlessly integrated into the plot, and the resolution of the mystery itself is extremely satisfying. Altman's direction is incredible. He manages to follow and develop more than two dozen characters with a clarity, precision, and coherence that is staggering - though it is so dense with interlocking relationships and nuance that it could take several viewings to piece it all together. He has only bettered his achievement here once - but we'll get to that later...
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And we did - with the film that came in at Number One:
Nashville (1975)
 Robert Altman's epic study of American culture has all the hallmarks that have come to be associated with his films: the large ensemble cast, the free-flowing narrative, the overlapping dialogue, the constant motion of the camera, the layers of sound, the well-observed comic details, the seemingly unmediated realism. The film follows twenty-four characters - civic leaders, political frontmen, singing stars and their managers, reporters, fans, aspiring amateurs, housewives, retirees, drifters - over the course of five days in Nashville, leading up to a political rally by a third party presidential candidate. The cast works extremely well together as a whole, but several performers stand out: Lily Tomlin, Henry Gibson, Barbara Harris, Keenan Wynn, Keith Carradine, and Geraldine Chaplin are all terrific - and Ronnee Blakley is heart-breakingly brilliant. While the film involves itself in their agendas and aspirations, its real subject is he mingling of pop culture and politics. That the film centers around a political campaign - and various entertainment industry characters' involvement in it - is no accident. Nashville is full of cameras and microphines, intercoms, television screens, telephones, and speakers: this is a nation playing itself back, a culture in which self-image accounts for everything, where all experience is mediated. But Altman operates in the space between the culture and its image of itself - his focus is on the frailty of experience rather than its packaging and preservation, the banality of the content before its marketing, the humanity that lies beneath the glossy surface. And running through it all is a yearning for the authentic and the sincere - the yearning that may lead to the unexpected act of violence that ultimately brings all the threads together. Nashville is one of those consummate films that unites high and low culture as well as the visual, auditory, and literary arts. It is also one of the last of a dying breed. With increasingly fewer exceptions, the cinema since the mid-seventies has seen the ascendancy of formulaic commercial movie-making, homogenized films made to live up to their marketing, recycled product with little depth and no integrity. The B-movies of the seventies have become the blockbusters of the 21st century - just with bigger budgets. Nashville is a relic from a time when movies were alive.
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One of Hollywood's original - and most studious - mavericks, Altman always played by his own rules. The results were uneven, but, at his best, he could not be bettered. He will be sorely missed. Requiescat in pace, magister.Tags: mourn not the dead, movie madness
humour:  désolé
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I just finished watching President Bush's Fifth Anniversary Address. I don't believe I have ever loathed another human being so much in my life. Beyond that, I cannot express my feelings about the man or his administration without resorting to a lot of profanity. I lost a family member on September 11, 2001; my partner, Sean, lost two - firefighters and a bond trader who worked in the WTC. To me, the September 11 attack was - and remains - extremely personal. Prior to the president's address, Keith Olbermann delivered a Special Comment on Countdown, which is well worth reading in its entirety. It was more eloquent than I'm capable of being right now - and far more eloquent than President Bush's rationalization for his illegal war-mongering: Of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast - of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds - none of us could have predicted this.
Five years later this space is still empty. Five years later there is no memorial to the dead. Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals. Five years later this country's wound is still open. Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked. Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op. It is beyond shameful. |
For most of the day today, I just felt empty and sad, the shock of the events of September 11, 2001, having long since mellowed into a sense of loss. Having listened to President Bush's pathetic excuse-making for failed policy after failed policy, I am now just enraged. Today should have been a memorial day - a time for reflection. Instead, we were given the same fatuous party politcal broadcast we've had to endure for five years now. Olbermann, again, puts it better than I could: How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you - or those around you - ever "spin" 9/11?
Just as the terrorists have succeeded - are still succeeding - as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero. So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans. |
I have a deep sense of loss and grief over those innocents who died in the attacks, admiration and respect for those who sacrificed their lives in rescue attempts on September 11, and profound regard for the men and women who have been giving their lives since, even in the misguided adventures of a dangerous and deluded executive. But I have nothing but contempt for the administration that has done nothing but exploit all those lives lost. God bless America - and may God forgive the cowardly, criminal Bush administration. I can't. Tags: mourn not the dead, political rant
humour:  enraged
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