tomartin
fun free stuff
Get the below mentioned CD and join the film club to receive yet more free stuff such as movie tickets and more free CDs. Your welcome.
landmark music ... and it's free
This CD was being handed out at Sundance. It's pretty good. definitely worth the price. It also contains a link to the Landmark Film Club. There are a lot of things being sold/promoted at Sundance.
so long, jack paar
Tom Shales wrote this when Jack Paar first went into the hospital. Paar died this morning.
webmonkey wishlist
I have long enjoyed the articles and tutorials from the webmonkeys but this is a whole nother thing. Maybe the funnest collection of links in one place that I have ever seen.
sundance winner
PARK CITY, Utah (Reuters) - The Sundance Film Festival reinforced its brand of feisty independence on Saturday by awarding top honors to two movies that largely had been left off the list of must see films this year, drama "Primer" and documentary "DIG!."
" Sundance is the United States' top film festival for independent movies, and many of titles winning attention and awards here will headline marquees at art-house cinemas throughout 2004.
"Primer," about two guys who invent a time travel machine that alters their lives forever, was given the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for best film drama, and "DIG!," which chronicles the rivalry of two rock band musicians, was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary.
Accepting the award onstage, "Primer" writer/director Shane Carruth said he was "stunned" and thanked "a cast that doubled as the crew" on the ultra-low budget, $7,000, movie......."
Sounds interesting. I wonder if it was paid for with a credit card. $7,000 is a common limit.
maybe too much information
This chart seems to indicate that Lost in Translation is the best movie of last year with Return of the Kings being the second best movie of the year. It compiles a large group of film criticism and list making and tries to interpret and combine the information into a single list of the years top films. Fascinating.
beside the museum
"Experience Music Project (EMP) will debut Bob Dylan's American Journey, 1956-1966, an extensive, first-ever exhibit dedicated to exploring a critical and transformational ten-year period in this American music legend's career. Few performers have reached the status of Bob Dylan - a multi-generational force; his name evokes images and memories of the folk revival, social protest, and the development of rock music as an art form......"
This also mentions the Scorsese documenters.
a new old bob dylan album
A recording of a famous early all acoustic concert. This drops in late march.
a very funny movie
I don't know when I have enjoyed a movie this much. Genuinely funny. Brilliant dialogue. Unsurpassed comic performances. Preston Sturges at the height of his powers. I tried to imagine myself sometime in the thirties in a suit and a hat, smoking a cigarette and seeing this with two other movies, a few news reels and some cartoons.
The comic power of this film is near-miraculous.
the mood at sundance
The Waxman article is credited with creating the mood at Sundance this year. A tough look at Miramax and Sundance.
more notes on sundance
Form the NY Times:
"Whatever the criticisms, Sundance still offers some of the best movies to be seen all year; new talent can be and is discovered here. With rare exceptions, the movies are no longer made for $15,000 on someone's credit cards, but more often than not they manage to shame Hollywood with their innovation and substance."
spalding gray is missing
This is a sad bit of information. Gray was my favorite stage manager in the PBS version of Our Town. He played it the way Thornton Wilder directed it - simply, almost blankly.
greetings from sundance
It's crazy, fun, disappointing. It is very difficult to get into movies. Very cold. It's not snowing but it is cold.
The WBC panel was excellent.
I am in an email center off Main St. There are several people getting email, using cell phones to call people who sent them email and people writing email. I am blogging. Fascinating. Not my best entry but I will catch up and give a fuller report when I get home.
books i'm reading and cd's i'm listening to
There are two jazz cd's I bought myself for Christmas that are completely astonishing - namely: Miles Davis' 'Birth of the Cool' and Theolonius Monks' 'Monk'. Maybe two of the top ten jazz albums of all time.
There is a Starbuck's compilation cd that I have which is pretty good called 'Songs of the Spirit'. There is one song by Alison Krauss called 'In the Palm of Your Hand' that is excrutiatingly beautiful. Krauss' voice is otherworldly.
There is a certain type of book that I find very enjoyable to read. Pascal's 'Pensees' is one of them. Smart people writing books that aren't quite finished and maybe aren't intended to be read. 'Papers and Journals: A Selection by Soren Kierkegaard is one of those books. I'm really enjoying it --
And finally, I'm still reading 'Everything and More' by David Foster Wallace.
also blogging sundance
I'm being driven to Sundance by someone renowned for their roadtripping. It will be a whirlwind tour of the festival but I will try to get as much posted as possible.
There is a ten hour drive to Park City and I hope to hit the ground running. It's too late to get tickets so I'm going to hit what I can when I can. The only event I have scheduled is a Writer's Boot Camp panel discussion on Sunday morning.
The attached link is for a site from someone who has been posting and writing about Sundance related items since early December. It looks like a pretty good center of festival info. It links the official site.
My goal is to see five movies.
fear and loathing at the sundance film festival
I'm going to Sundance. I will be there from Saturday through Monday. This is a pretty good article/introduction to the festival. I will be reporting from the road.
some thoughts on the current political scene
From the inimitable Ann Coulter:
"Then about a month ago, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a poll showing that people who regularly attend religious services supported Bush 63 percent to 37 percent, and those who never attend religious services opposed him 62
percent to 38 percent. When you exclude blacks (as they do in Vermont), who are overwhelmingly Baptist and overwhelmingly Democratic, and rerun the numbers, basically any white person who believes in God is a Republican.
The only Democrats who go to church regularly are the ones who plan to run for president someday and are preparing in advance to fake a belief in God...."
ballad of a thin man... bob dylan
Drummer Mickey Jones was on tour with Bob Dylan during the tumultuous 1966 acoustic to electric transition tour and was running an 8mm camera. The trailer looks pretty good. It has several performances and alot of backstage stuff. A significant moment in music history captured on film.
another lost posting
And totally not my fault this time. While posting it simply timed out and disappeared. I'm not sure if that was Blogger's fault or aol's. I know it wasn't my fault. Here's the link but in your own mind you'll need to notch up the brilliance of this posting.
This is an article which asks, why does the administration want to portray itself as kind of dumb? I too ask that question. Are they trying to be underestimated by political opponents so as to catch them unprepared?
the onion interview with mort sahl
Q&A with the groundbreaking comedian Mort Sahl. Is he a Republican? I think he is. He says his favorite comedian is Jonathan Winters.
playlist at the hayden planetarium
When I was a younger man they'd show laser shows at the planetarium to the music of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. This is an updating of that sort of presentation. There is something so interesting to me about the combining of music on a playlist. It's an art.
Boards of Canada / "Julie and Candy"
David Bowie / "Heroes"
The Flaming Lips / "Do You Realize?"
Moby / "Into the Blue" and "We Are All Made of Stars"
Queens of the Stone Age / "First It Giveth"
Radiohead / "Everything in Its Right Place"
Stereolab / "Metronomic Underground"
U2 / "Elevation"
further adventures in dadaism
Here are the instructions for a the surealist game exquisite corpse. A group of people do a certain thing and well, read the instructions......
There is a literery magazine by that name edited by the poet Andrei Codrescu, who wrote one of my favorite lines from a poem ever: "Through a small whole in the boring report/ God watches us faking it."
the connectors
This is a great article from Wired. It highlights people who have a unique ability to build and maintain human networks. Joi Ito and Clay Sharkey have websites that I frequently read. It also talks about the old adage:"It's not what you know, it's who you know" . Not so. Your close friends know the same people you know. It's your acquaintances who hook you up. I was interested in the techniques that were used to build and maintain networks.
pictures from mars
Hey we're on Mars! And they've sent pictures!
that franz kafka
This quote is annoying me:
The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival.
- Franz Kafka, "Parables"
social computing in student populations
This is a great article from a great website. I'm interested in the number of people/students with strong active web presences who do not own any hardware:
"Shortly after I sold my company (I was the Chief Technology Officer of a Web design firm in Manhattan's Silicon Alley), Hunter College hired me to teach classes in Web design and uses of the Internet. One of the first things I did while setting up my lab was to drag an old computer into the hall outside my office, connect it to the Internet, and give students unfettered access to it. My thought was to bring the students into the present -- little did I know that they would show me the future."
Check out the several articles about the web and it's use.
new media literacy
From MIT Tech Review:
"...Frankly, the rhetoric of the media literacy movement has so turned me off that I have only recently become active in writing and speaking on this topic. Too often, media literacy advocates depict kids as victims. We are told that advertising is "killing us softly," that we are "amusing ourselves to death," and that the only real alternative is to "unplug the plug-in drug" (to quote a few phrases often bandied about). These approaches emerged from an era dominated by top-down broadcast media. Increasingly, kids are demonstrating the capacity to use media to their own ends and adult authorities are holding them accountable for their practices. Schools are suspending students for things they post on their Web sites; the recording industry is suing kids and their parents for the music they download. The problem of media power hasn't disappeared, but it operates very differently in an age of participatory media. The new media literacy education needs to be about empowerment and responsibility.
Throughout the 1990s, we fought to wire the classrooms. Educators now must give kids the skills they need to fully participate in cyberspace—not just technical training, but also cultural and social skills (including traditional literacy)....."
This seems to confirm my theory about how to deal with kids - create strong, high, well guarded walls and allow maximum freedom within those walls.
Kids also seem to learn a great deal of skills from their computer use. Partiularly writing skills from online chatting.
