Leonard Richardson's Blog, page 12
December 3, 2016
November Book Roundup
It works like Film Roundup, but with less detail. At one point I pledged less detail on Film Roundup and it hasn't really worked, but here I'm serious. I'm just going to mention the books I read that I liked or that I need to remember I read. I'm reading most of these books on NYPL's SimplyE reader, and since libraries don't keep track of which books you read, this is a great way of remembering what I've read.
Carnegie by Peter Krass. Read for work research. The true story of a poor radical who became a rich reactionary who convinced himself he was still a radical.
The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner. A history of Bell Labs that does a good job explaining the relationship between the Labs and the AT&T monopoly. It's always awkward to see UNIX called a programming language. I don't think this impeaches the overall accuracy of the book, but there are probably similar technical errors I couldn't catch.
Speer: Hitler's Architect by Martin Kitchen. A well-deserved hit job on a man who successfully cultivated an image as The Guy Who Didn't Know. It's petty of me but I really liked the architectural criticism aspect of the hit job, which always ended with Kitchen mentioning that the site of Speer's Eternal Palace of the Volk (or whatever) now holds a parking garage (or whatever).
Exploding the Phone by Phil Lapsley. The Idea Factory reminded me that I'd checked out this book a long time ago and wasn't able to finish it before my DRM license expired. It's the same story as The Idea Factory, where the phone system is a big time-share computer, but from the perspective of the computer's unauthorized users.
Comic trade paperbacks! Sumana and Leonard agree: Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 3 is the best! Leonard agrees: Gwenpool Vol. 1 is fourth wall fun. It got a little gory but not as bad as your average Deadpool. I'm assuming there's a connection between the two? But it didn't actually happen in the book. I don't think I'm ever going to like low fantasy but Rat Queens volumes 2 and 3 are pretty nice.
November 2, 2016
October "Film" Roundup
stuff with a few other things mixed in. Kieslowski is Sumana's favorite director, whereas I had seen
one of his films. Tons of new stuff, many new favorites, some
duds... it's all in a Film Roundup's work!
Film (1965): Or as Wikipedia calls it, "Film (film)". I make the decision on a case-by-case basis whether to review shorts, so don't look for consistency. Instead, look for post-Sunset Boulevard Buster Keaton doing Samuel Beckett's version of a Buster Keaton movie. Like Dali/the Marx Brothers, it's a conceptually satisfying matchup (the great surrealists! the great existentialists!) but one that's spoiled by a lack of mutual admiration. Groucho didn't like Dali's screenplay for Giraffes on Horseback Salad, and he was correct--it sounds like a disaster. Beckett had tried to get Keaton as Lucky for the American production of Waiting for Godot (and it's even possible Waiting for Godot was inspired by a Keaton short) but Keaton turned down the part because he didn't 'get it'.
Film isn't a disaster and it even has some really good gags, but if you don't 'get' Waiting for Godot you certainly won't 'get' this movie, even if you're the star.
The Double Life of Veronique (1991): I saw Blind Chance
(1987) a couple years ago, and it was pretty decent, so although this
movie disappointed me I didn't write off Kieslowski's entire oeuvre
because of it. It starts off pretty good, and then the romance subplot
kicks in and both Sumana and I lost interest. On the plus side, I
believe this is the first film I've seen that shows a Minitel
terminal. (It doesn't get used.)
Safety Not Guaranteed (2012): A fun date movie. Good laughs, good
chemistry between the weirdo characters, is okay with leaving a couple
things unexplained. Recommended.
The Scar (1976) and Short Working Day (1981):
Although I'm not impressed by Kieslowski's storytelling when it comes
to romantic love, when it comes to talking about work, I think he's
right up there with Billy Wilder. These are awesome socialist-noir
films about the impossible job of being a middle manager in a planned
economy. Their protagonists are forever squeezed between the Workers
and the Party, unable to make anyone happy. Maybe it's all a
metaphor for filmmaking or something slight like that, but the sheer
number of films Kieslowski made about work makes me think he finds it
really interesting. I'm gonna give Short Working Day the nod,
because it's shorter and has more action. But they're both good.
Shin Godzilla (2016): First, I gotta say I did not like this
Godzilla design. Did not like how dinosaur-like it was. I say: classic
Godzilla all the way, 90s Godzilla an acceptable substitute. Also
mystified by this movie's attempt to retcon "Godzilla" as an English
word. But whatever. Like all the Godzilla films that aren't completely
silly, this one's about the humans, not the monster, and it's solid.
A long time ago I suggested that the The West Wing should do
an annual Halloween episode: a noncanonical story about an alien
invasion or zombie attack. Well, here it is! This is a
Godzilla movie done as an episode of Veep. Lots of
walk-and-talk, lots of government incompetence on display. It was kind
of corny but definitely closer to the original Godzilla than to
the silly stuff in its emotional resonance.
I saw this subtitled, and although I prefer subtitles in general, I
gotta say a dub might be better here. There are a gazillion charaters
in this movie and each is introduced with a caption giving their name,
organization, and position within the organization. Some of these
people are only in the movie for one shot! The same thing happens for
every military unit we see, each distinct piece of hardware
fruitlessly deployed against Godzilla, etc. So you have to read all
that, and keep it separate from the dialogue subtitles that are
on screen at the same time.
Dekalog (1989): This is a famous series of ten made-for-TV
movies, roughly modelled after the (Catholic version of the) Ten
Commandments. Its IMDB rating is a near-unbeatable 9.1, meaning if it were classified in the movie list it would be the third highest-rated movie ever. But it's classified as a TV show, so it's tied for 19th place with True Detective. I'm gonna say
we saw half of the Dekalog: we saw 1, 2, 9, 10, and A Short Film About
Killing (a.k.a. "5: The Extended Cut"). A lot of them show how a
miracle can ruin your life—a pretty solid concept.
None of the Dekalog films we saw were "bad", but IMO the Dekalog films dealing with romantic love (2 and 9) are
merely "pretty good", whereas the ones that deal with other emotions (1, 5, 10)
are some of the best filmmaking I've ever seen. There's a lot
of talk about A Short Film About Killing, and it is quite the
punch in the gut, but I want to put in a good word for Dekalog 10
("Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Stuff").
Going in to the 9-10 double feature, I was thinking "Do we really
need two films about coveting different things?" But I
was wrong: we do! A flim about coveting your neighbor's wife is a
romantic-love movie, which we've established I don't think Kieslowski
does very well. Whereas coveting your neighbor's stuff... it's not a
work movie, but it's close, and Kieslowski nails it.
We had some fun coming up with the previews they must have run on
Polish TV when Dekalog was airing. "A ten night television
event!" "You'll cry, you'll cry some more!" But Dekalog 10 has a different emotional arc than the other films in the series. It's about two brothers whose
lives are almost ruined by a miracle, but because they
fundamentally love and trust each other, they make it through the
Kieslowski gauntlet with only minor damage. I guess you
gotta end the series on a happy note.
Tampopo (1985): Saw this movie with Ashley Blewer (it's one
of her faves) and absolutely loved it. So fun and good-hearted. Starts
with a cool fourth-wall-breaking intro of the sort you used to see in
American movies in the 1950s. One of the best of the year for me.
Caution: this movie is not for faithful readers of
doestheturtledie.com and doestheoysterdie.com. The turtle scene was
pretty rough for me (real turtle, fer sure) and doesn't do anything for the film as a whole. I created my own "Phantom Edit" by closing my eyes when it became clear the turtle was gonna get it.
Three Colors: Blue, White, Red (1993-1994): Gonna cover the
trilogy as one item because I want to publish this entry and move on. All three
films are really solid. The ending of Red was cheesy in the
same way as the ending of Blind Chance, so points off for
that. I'm going to give the prize to Blue, even though
White is a comedy with the actors from Dekalog 10
playing brothers again! As always, it comes down to Kieslowski's treatment of romance. It seems superficial and kind of petty in White. Whereas his treatment of the aftermath of spousal death (Blue) brings nightmares to vivid life and his exploration of telecommunication and surveillance (Red) seems downright hip for 1994.
October 6, 2016
Reviews Of Old Science Fiction Anthologies: 1972
Just finished Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1972 Annual World's Best SF, an old SF anthology with one of those funky 1970s Yves Tanguy-esque cover paintings, obtained, I believe, through Jed Hartman. While it's fresh in my mind I wanted to take note of my favorite stories from the book. If nothing else, it's sometimes useful for me to go back and remember stories that I really liked.As you'd expect from a year's-best anthology all the stories in this book are pretty good by 1972 standards. I'd say the champion is probably "Real-Time World" by Christopher Priest, which is weird in a way I found really interesting. Has a PKD-like plot but written in a different style. Honorable mention to Joanna Russ's "Gleepsite", which is weird in almost the same way, and a lot shorter. R. A. Lafferty's "All Pieces of A River Shore" was my favorite story in the book all the way up to the last paragraph, which enraged me to the point that I've bumped it down to third place.
Runners-up: Paul Anderson's "A Little Knowledge" was slight but really fun to read. Larry Niven's "The Fourth Profession" (Hugo nominee!) combined the superb inventiveness characteristic of the very best SF with a very 1972 conception of the range of acceptable human behavior. The introduction to "The Fourth Profession" mentioned it was originally published in a Samuel Delany anthology series called Quark, which looks like it's got a lot of good stuff.
Now that I've started writing all this down, I'll conclude by mentioning that I recently read the September/October 2011 F&SF and my favorite story was "Aisle 1047", Jon Armstrong's goofy story of brand warfare.
July 10, 2016
Film roundup Special #2
At the time, my hatred for Armageddon focused mainly on the many, many plot holes and scientific errors in the film. But that's a pretty superficial way to look at a movie. Silent Running has huge plot holes and it's a great sci-fi movie. When I saw Armageddon was showing at the museum, I knew I had to watch it again, eighteen years later, with more mature eyes, to try and see deep into the horror.
Well, it's still bad, and the plot holes and scientific errors are still at the core of its badness. The fundamental problem—pointed out by Ben Affleck during the filming of the movie—is that it would be easier to train astronauts to operate a drill than to train oil rig workers to operate in microgravity. This movie is two and a half hours long, and a lot of that time is devoted to making excuses for why, no, it makes more sense to bring in the oil rig workers.
A big part of this work is establishing that there will be normal Earth gravity throughout this movie. This is because it's 1998 and they can't shoot the whole film on a wire like Gravity, and the sets are too large to pull an Apollo 13. But this technological limitation also makes the plot semi-possible, because Earth gravity negates most of the skill differential between a trained astronaut and a trained oil rig operator.
The one good twist in this movie makes all this unsavory exposition pay off. It's about two hours in and, after seeing one space scene after another clearly shot in Earth gravity, you've forgotten that these people are supposed to be on an asteroid and not on a cheap sound stage. Then a character remembers that, despite appearances, the story has them in a low-gravity environment, and they can exploit this fact to get out of a tight spot. Eureka!
Another big part of the necessary work is introducing four more characters to a cast that's already got way too many characters, because not even Michael Bay can convince an audience that experience on an oil rig translates to skill in piloting space shuttles. So they have to bring in some astronauts after all. It's okay, though, these are the pilots, so they're Air Force jocks, not loathsome NASA nerds.
'Cause this movie hates nerds. Our heroes are nice people, by blockbuster standards, but they're all jocks, except for Rockhound, the creepy Steve Buscemi nerd, and Truman, who was a jock before a tragic accident left him settling for nerddom. I'm sure there's a good movie somewhere that hates nerds, but a) filmmaking is a technically sophisticated activity that demands precision, so on some level all directors are nerds, and b) it's a circle-squaring operation to celebrate a twentieth-century space program while hating on the nerds who build the hardware and keep everything running. In the far future when spacecraft are toys, like muscle cars, you can do it, but not in 1998. I mean, we tried it! NASA was on board and everything. A ton of money was poured into the concept. And we ended up with Armageddon. I see Interstellar (2015) as an attempt to fix this problem, but it swings too far in the other direction and veers into uncritical nerd worship.
The action scenes in Armageddon are illegible. There's a lot of hardware on screen but the effects haven't aged well. The cuts are too fast and there are too many characters. (For much of the movie the characters are split into two groups that don't interact but are filmed on the same sets!) That's why most of the action scenes are accompanied by frequent cuts to a map or readout, or accompanied by shouted measurements, just so we can understand what the hell is going on. It's like hearing "rising tension... rising tension!... moment of maximum tension!... whew, everything's fine!".
So, it's a bad movie, but the world is full of bad movies. What's special about this one? Something dark and horrifying about Armageddon's badness made me willing to watch it again—something I rarely do even to good movies—to figure out why exactly I hate it. Then I read the little flier they hand out at museum showings, and it clicked into place.
Here's the essay the museum chose for Armageddon. It's by Jeanine Basinger, who taught film to Michael Bay at Wesleyan. Just as Armageddon spends a lot of time trying to convince you that its plan is a good idea, this essay spends a lot of time trying to convince you that Michael Bay is a smart guy. His prize-winning student film "told its story clearly, but in a highly nonverbal manner. Bay was ahead of his age group, but he was also ahead of his time. He still is."
[Armageddon] is never confusing, never boring, and never less than a brilliant mixture of what movies are supposed to do: tell a good story, depict characters through active events, invoke an emotional response, and entertain simply and directly, without pretense.
That was written in 1999. Now it's 2016 and according to IMDB trivia many of the participants in Armageddon have backed off or disowned it. Ben Affleck mocks the movie in his DVD commentary. Michael Bay has called Armageddon his worst film, although I don't know if he did this before or after Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Billy Bob Thornton, Armageddon's most stalwart defender, is quoted as saying "It's not THAT bad..."
When reading that essay I was transported back, not to 1998, but to 2004. Because that essay reads like a National Review article from a Yale history professor who taught George W. Bush. That's the missing key. Armageddon is uniquely horrible because it serves as a prophetic microcosm of the forthcoming Bush administration.
It begins with the Twin Towers being destroyed. An incoherent response is carried out in a laughably incompetent way. The poindexters who think they know better than the tough-talking action hero get their comeuppance. After a brief period of triumphant flag-waving, the whole thing turns out to have been a huge disaster, and everyone involved backs away from it or pretends it didn't happen. The result is used as an object lesson in how not to do things. The best available defenses are "It's not THAT bad..." and "simply and directly, without pretense."
Michael Bay is absolutely a smart guy, but you don't have to be stupid to make a bad movie. I do think Armageddon belongs in the Criterion collection, but it should be experienced the way I've experienced it: initial, superficial hatred; followed by the realization that something can be an obvious disaster in the making, and happen anyway, to cheers and applause; then the sad hollow satisfaction of being proven right.
Because I'm all about celebrating the cinema, I'll close with the good things about Armageddon. The initial narration and the first scene are pretty exciting—Gravity ripped them off, so you know they're good. One joke made me laugh (Rockhound's parting shot to the loan shark). And finally, Steve Buscemi couldn't save the movie Armageddon, but when the actual 9/11 happened the former firefighter went back to his Little Italy firehouse and put in several days of volunteer work. The guy's a mensch.
June 19, 2016
Paris Pictures: Versailles
Ch��teau Versailles, a short train trip from Paris. Versailles is a
small commuter city whose major attraction is the residence (and occasional prison) of kings; sort of if
New Rochelle used to be the capital of the United States.
There are four parts to the Versailles experience and it all depends
on how much you want to pay and how far you're willing to walk. We
paid full price and walked all day, we saw it all, and I'm here to
tell you that the best thing is right at the end. I would not have
chosen to go to Versailles, but I'm glad Sumana suggested it as our
day trip.
Let's start at the Ch��teau proper. This was... a big palace with
a lot of history. You get in a big line, which goes through a metal
detector and then shuffles as a single unit through one extravagant
room after another. It's not what the original architects had in mind
but it does instill the intended sense of being dutiful and oppressed.
I took lots of pictures of this stage, but afterwards I realized 5000
other people had taken the same photos that day, so I won't show most
of them. I will show the big Hall of Mirrors, which was really
intimidating back when mirrors were an advanced technology, but which
now kind of feels like a tinpot dictator showing you his Hall of
Integrated Circuits.
"Yeah, it's all on one chip, no big deal."
There was a big gallery of paintings of French military victories,
from which I took this dyptich I call "Leonard's Two Moods":
In a sop to the non-bloodthirsty, the gallery of military prowess was balanced by a
hall of statues honoring humanists and statesmen who "spread the glory
of French civilization without drawing the sword." They were able
to get some big names, like Descartes (left).
In the many Versailles gift shops we learned that
Frédéric Lenormand wrote a series of mystery novels
staring Voltaire, including Le diable s'habille en Voltaire
(The Devil Wears Voltaire), which according to the back-cover
copy is the book that finally delivers the long-promised
Voltaire-Satan grudge match! I don't read French well enough to read a
historical-fiction novel, but I'd love to see some translations of
these.
There's a restaurant (a branch of Angelina, a famous Paris
hot-chocolate joint) in the main Ch��teau. Their croque monsieur was
the only bad food I ate between the time I got off the plane at De
Gaulle and the time I got back on the plane a week later. Generally
museum restaurants are not great, so not too surprising. However the
hot chocolate was excellent! And it's hard to beat the ambience; it
called to mind a Ken MacLeod quote about how "our children giggle and
eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers."
Speaking of which, let's move on to part two of the Versailles
Journey, the gardens! This is a park about twice the size of Central
Park, all done in the perfect shaved-trees geometric format that seems kinda
creepy to me but it's just the way the French do parks. We took some
establishing shots for Sumana's mom just so she could see we made it.
This part of Versailles is free, so if you're a cheapskate
and just want to have a day in the park, this is for you. It's also
the part of Versailles with the most replay value. Lots of kids
running around eating ice-cream. You can rent a bike or a boat.
Near the entrance you see this fountain full of statues of frogs,
and statues of people being turned into frogs. There's an implied
threat that the king might himself turn you into a frog. (He had the legal right to do this, though it was rarely exercised.)
A lot of the gardens operate on the hedge-maze principle. You leave
the beaten path, wander around in the trees and eventually stumble
into a fountain or statue grouping. Unfortunately, although you're
free to wander through the mazes, the fountains and whatnot are all
caged behind gates, so you can't get a good look at them! Kind of
spoils the fun.
You can't really see it in that picture, but the latticework on
that gate says "XIIII XIIII XIIII XIIII".
A lot of people call it a day after seeing the main chateau and a
bit of the gardens, but we pressed on! We took in the Grand Trianon,
the palace that Louis XIV had built to get away from it all. This
was the exact reason he'd had Versailles built, but when
you're the king, truly "getting away from it all" would require
delegating important decisions to someone else, and Louis XIV was
not the delegating type, so he brought "it all" with him wherever he
went. If he'd lived longer he would have probably built another
palace even further away.
Because of this history the Grand Trianon made for a disappointing
sequel to the Ch��teau. It is a little more informal, though; you get to see Louis's
man-cave, where he would bro down for some billiards.
While
you're over here you can check out the Petit Trianon, originally
built for Madame de Pompadour but later occupied by Marie
Antoinette, of unhelpful-suggestion fame. This is still more
informal, a little closer to something a modern person might be able
to live in. And if you're undeterred by the fact that it's now well
into the afternoon and you've been walking all day, you can step
outside the Petit Trianon into the Queen's Hamlet. And this is where it gets freaky.
I had of course heard that Marie Antoinette had "dressed up as a
milkmaid", but there were a lot of slanders going around about ol'
Marie, so a) I wasn't sure this had
really happened, and b) I'd assumed it had maybe
happened once, at the sort of party you see nowadays where
frat boys dress like they're homeless.
Well, I'm here to tell you that it didn't happen once. It happened
all the friggin' time, and the Queen's Hamlet is where
it happened.
The backyard of the Petit Trianon is pretty normal, with winding paths through a
natural-looking constructed environment. Trees, bridges, a theater,
a "temple of Love"; what the French would consider an English-style
park. Then you enter the Hamlet, a working replica of a farming
village. 
You know in
Constellation Games where Tetsuo Milk creates the Ip Shkoy
Replica Village with its convenience store and printing press, then
goes around pretending to be all the inhabitants? It's like that, but it happened for real, in the 1700s, and it wasn't even the first time someone had done this. It was a fad!
There's a barn-type building with chickens and other farm animals.
There's a little pond with its own fairy-tale lighthouse.
There's a mill that doesn't do anything.
There are many other single-use buildings--a dairy, a "boudoir" whose only purpose seems to be to let Marie have a conversation in private, etc.
Over the centuries the Hamlet has fallen into disrepair and been
restored with modern techniques. Here's the main house, which we
couldn't enter because it's undergoing renovation. That's right,
we're restoring the replica farmhouse to recreate the effect of the
original replica.
And it works! It's clearly fake, but the part of my brain that likes this sort of thing doesn't care. Even with tourists and kids running around, the Hamlet
is a nice relaxing place to be. There's something deeply appealing
about these tidy replicas of rural life. It reminds me of watching
Peter Jackson's Hobbiton. Sumana called it the "Pinterest mom" look.
In general we found the French attitude towards Marie Antoinette
confusing. The Versailles gift shop was full of kitsch indicating a
demand for the pomp and decadence of pre-revolutionary
France, and the doomed queen in particular. But most tourists, having gotten
within a mile of her really nice Minecraft base, were not
willing to walk out here, to what, in our opinion, is the highlight of the park.
So we asked a French friend about history's final judgement
on Marie Antoinette, and he thought about it a long time and said,
"Well... she wasn't French." 'Nuff said!
June 1, 2016
Mad May Beyond Film Roundup
And now, the latest candidates for addition to that big list, though I set up the toolchain before I wrote these reviews, so none of 'em are on there:
A Beautiful Planet (2016): A 3D IMAX film shot on the International Space Station. It was edutainment aimed at the casual viewer (someone sitting in the theater hadn't known there was an International Space Station, and I hope they came out of the theater feeling better about humanity), but I didn't come to be edutained, I came to recapture the thrill I got from Gravity (2013)! And... it's fine as long as you don't compare it to a fictional experience like Gravity. It's a cinema verite documentary about life on a space station. There's a cool Blair Witch-esque scene filmed during a spacewalk, and lots of microgravity shots. The astronauts are competent and nothing goes wrong. This was in and out of theaters like a flash, and I do think it benefits greatly from the IMAX treatment, but to simulate the experience at home, check out Sunita Williams's 2014 tour of the ISS. Oh, according to the website if you're in Columbus, Ohio it's still showing until June 10.
Rien a Declarer (2010): Seen with Sumana at her recommendation. A mismatched-cop comedy about the collapse of nationalism in the face of the European Union. It was pretty fun, had some Hot Fuzz moments, but it's no Hot Fuzz. There seemed to be jokes surrounding the fact that Beno��t Poelvoorde's character is extremely racist, but I couldn't make them out; maybe the joke is that no Belgian could be that racist? But it seems quite possible! His extreme nationalism is comical, but why shouldn't it be paired with racism?
Mad Max (1979) This isn't Mad Max, it's.... no, hold on. This is Mad Max, but it's not what I want from the series. It's a kinda generic exploitation flick with cool car stunts. According to IMDB trivia, the canonical explanation for why this movie isn't like the others, is that there was a nuclear war two weeks after the events of Mad Max. The real reason is "no money", a problem I'm sympathetic to. But if you're allowed to say "two weeks later there was a nuclear war", a whole lotta movies could be the prequel to The Road Warrior. For instance, what if The Jerk (1979) was secretly the first Mad Max movie? All you'd need to do is change the footage at the beginning of The Road Warrior to show Navin Johnson being shot at in a gas station. Much more satisfying.
Speaking of which, Memorial Day weekend was Mad Max weekend at the museum, so I also saw...
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981): This is more like it. Cool worldbuilding, clever eyeball kicks, exciting chase scenes. I was not a big fan of the feckless community of refinery operators, but I did like how even though Max is central to the movie he's only a supporting character in their overall story. It creates a western-style loneliness that is used to excellent effect in Fury Road, and of course in...
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985): This one I'd seen before, a long time ago, and I thought it was really stupid. And... it is stupid, but it's also very fun. This is the one where the series comes into its own as an anthology that shows different approaches to post-apocalyptic worldbuilding. Probably the most realistic entry in the series, not that we're going for realism.
Thunderdome also gets points from me for not having a "villain" per se. Auntie Entity is coded as the villain, but by Mad Max standards she's pretty chill. Max blows up her city, and she stands on the rubble and shouts "We will rebuild!" and everyone's still with her. That's the kind of popular support Immortan Joe can only dream of.
So... I guess from most perspectives I like this one better than The Road Warrior. The action scenes are a lot better in The Road Warrior, though, and that's really the heart of the series. Fury Road remains the best entry, because it combines the super-dense worldbuilding of Thunderdome with the nonstop action of Road Warrior.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971): One of the truths of genre fiction is that if you set out to deconstruct or destroy a genre, it is likely you will simply produce an example of it. Thus it is in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Robert Altman's "anti-western" and the first Altman film I've seen. It's a very good western, full of loneliness and corruption and sad little schemes brought low.
It was quite entertaining to watch Rene Auberjonois effectively play Quark. On the other hand, this has one of the cruellest scenes I've ever seen in a movie. Not that it's more violent or sadistic than other movie scenes, in fact it's a really good scene. Just... what a mean thing to do to a minor character I didn't realize I cared about until this scene started.
May 17, 2016
Paris Pictures: Mus��e des Arts et M��tiers
just means I can procrastinate by putting up pictures from
our Paris trip. Today I'd like to introduce you to the Mus��e des Arts et
M��tiers, a museum not found in either of our guidebooks but
recommended by every French person we talked to. You know how The
Da Vinci Code starts in the Louvre? Well, Foucault's
Pendulum isn't having any of that mainstream nonsense--it starts
off in Arts et M��tiers, a museum of Science
and Invention with none of that postmodern self-reflection seen
in museums whose exhibits were updated after, say, 1995.
That's probably why it's not in the guidebooks; it's kind of
old-fashioned and disjointed. You'll walk through a bunch of
exhibits that don't seem to have changed since the 1960s, and then
suddenly jump forward in museum time to the electronics age (mid-1990s I'd say). You
check out some cool old computers and awkard "interactive" exhibits,
then you walk through a doorway or around a corner, and you're back
in the 1960s with things behind glass in wooden cases.
Nonetheless, if you're reading this weblog, this is a must-see
museum when you're in Paris, because the amount and type of
incredible stuff they have is off the charts. Here's just a sample
to whet your appetite:
I figured out who buys all that Statue of Liberty kitsch in New York
—it's tourists visiting from Paris! Parisians love the Statue of
Liberty. There's a 1/4 scale model on the banks of the Siene, there's
this thing (I think a 1/16) in front of the museum, another one
outside the Mus��e d'Orsay. Look, you gave it away, it's ours
now... don't make this weird, France.
This is the sort of thing you come to the museum for: L��on Foucault's 1862 apparatus for
measuring the speed of light with a rapidly rotating mirror. To see
how it works you can either watch a very slow video or promise yourself you'll
read
the Wikipedia page later and then never get around to it.
Or how about this wicked bastard? This is a steampunk oscilloscope, made
by Rudolph Koenig in the 19th century. On the left is a big stack of
Hemholz resonators, each designed to pick up one specific frequency
and dampen all other frequencies. Each resonator is attached to a
little gaslight. You set all the gaslights blasting away, and when a
resonator vibrates it makes the flame of the attached gaslight
wobble.
Then you turn the crank on the right to rotate the mirror
(everything had a rotating mirror back then), and the resonant
frequencies of whatever sound you're playing show up visually as wavy
lines across the mirror, versus the undisturbed lines of all the
frequencies not present. There's almost no signage on this thing and I
had to sit through a slow five-minute audioguide explanation to figure
out what's going on here but it was worth it!
Perhaps the plastic arts are more your speed. Here's a show-offy
piece by Colville from the 1855 Universal Exposition, which
demonstrates all the colors the manufacturer is capable of slapping
onto a piece of porcelain. It really reminded me of the DOS color
palette the way there are adjacent dark and light versions of the
same color.
Or maybe you're too pure, too abstract for such material
concerns. Maybe you'd like to take this sample case door-to-door,
selling geometric solids to the public? This was briefly a popular
business model among the Willie Loman types of nineteenth-century France, who eventually gave up and
used the shapes to study geometry. These two pieces are by Louis
Dupin (1846) and Baradelle (1805).
You know that the French Revolution gave birth to the metric system
and had its own calendar, but did you know they also used decimal
time? Tragically, counterrevolutionary clocks, like this two-faced
example, made it easy for slackers to continue using the old system,
and decimal time was only the law of the land for about a year. Look
at it! The decimal time face is the tiny one on the bottom! They're
not even taking it seriously!
Sumana with a model of the Jacquard loom, distant ancestor to the
mighty general-purpose computer. What we didn't expect was all
the other looms that came beforehand! They were all here in
one big room that people walked right through, not knowing how cool
the things they were seeing are.
Here's an example: a model of an earlier loom controlled by holes
punched in paper. Now that's computery! Looks just like 1980s
dot-matrix printer paper. (We also saw a full-size loom that basically
ran off a player piano roll.) The problem here is that it's one
huge sheet of paper. If you want to add or remove an
"instruction", sucks to be you. It's like programming in BASIC when
you can't change the line numbers. Whereas the Jacquard loom is
programmed by small cards that are tied together. It's a lot easier
to go in and change something.
There was a whole exhibit hall about keyboards and other input
devices, a section I like to call "Telegraphy and Typewriters". The
museum is full of unusual keyboard layouts. You'll have to trust me
on this because I'm showing you a stenography typewriter, and those
still have weird keyboard layouts. The second picture shows the
box the stenography keyboard came in, and another, more spidery
stenography keyboard in the background.
Here's perhaps my favorie piece from the "Telegraphy" section of
that exhibit hall. This brave inventor refused to succumb to Not
Invented Here syndrome. In an era when everyone was inventing weird
telegraphy keyboards, this person thought "We already have
keyboards! The keyboard has been around and successful for hundreds
of years! I'm not going to reinvent the wheel!"
I'm going to close with this shot of the classic
Minitel terminal. The museum had a very Pavel Chekhov rah-rah
attitude towards all things French, and I don't begrudge this
attitude—technologically the French have a lot to
be proud of. But sometimes it was kind of a stretch. Did you know
that the European ground station for the Telstar satellite was in
France? I don't really think that's sufficient grounds to
display a model of the Telstar in a museum exhibit and do a whole
thing about it. You made Minitel! Minitel was
amazing! You should do a whole Hall of Minitel! Just a suggestion.
Paris Pictures: Mus��e des Arts etM��tiers
just means I can procrastinate by putting up pictures from
our Paris trip. Today I'd like to introduce you to the Mus��e des Arts et
M��tiers, a museum not found in either of our guidebooks but
recommended by every French person we talked to. You know how The
Da Vinci Code starts in the Louvre? Well, Foucault's
Pendulum isn't having any of that mainstream nonselse--it starts
off in Arts et M��tiers. It's a museum of Science
and Invention with none of that postmodern self-reflection seen
in museums that were updated after, say, 1995.
That's probably why it's not in the guidebooks; it's kind of
old-fashioned and disjointed. You'll walk through a bunch of
exhibits that don't seem to have changed since the 1960s, and then
suddenly jump forward in museum time to the electronics age. You
check out some cool old computers and awkard "interactive" exhibits,
then you walk through a doorway or around a corner, and you're back
in the 1960s with things behind glass in wooden cases.
Nonetheless, if you're reading this weblog, this is a must-see
museum when you're in Paris, because the amount and type of
incredible stuff they have is off the charts. Here's just a sample
to whet your appetite:
I figured out who buys all that Statue of Liberty kitsch in New York
—it's tourists visiting from Paris! Parisians love the Statue of
Liberty. There's a 1/4 scale model on the banks of the Siene, there's
this thing (I think a 1/16) in front of the museum, another one
outside the Mus��e d'Orsay. Look, you gave it away, it's ours
now... don't make this weird, France.
This is the sort of thing you come to the museum for: L��on Foucault's 1862 apparatus for
measuring the speed of light with a rapidly rotating mirror. To see
how it works you can either watch a very slow video or promise yourself you'll
read
the Wikipedia page later and then never get around to it.
Or how about this wicked bastard? This is a steampunk oscilloscope, made
by Rudolph Koenig in the 19th century. On the left is a big stack of
Hemholz resonators, each designed to pick up one specific frequency
and dampen all other frequencies. Each resonator is attached to a
little gaslight. You set all the gaslights blasting away, and when a
resonator vibrates it makes the flame of the attached gaslight
wobble.
Then you turn the crank on the right to rotate the mirror
(everything had a rotating mirror back then), and the resonant
frequencies of whatever sound you're playing show up visually as wavy
lines across the mirror, versus the undisturbed lines of all the
frequencies not present. There's almost no signage on this thing and I
had to sit through a slow five-minute audioguide explanation to figure
out what's going on here but it was worth it!
Perhaps the plastic arts are more your speed. Here's a show-offy
piece by Colville from the 1855 Universal Exposition, which
demonstrates all the colors the manufacturer is capable of slapping
onto a piece of porcelain. It really reminded me of the DOS color
palette the way there are adjacent dark and light versions of the
same color.
Or maybe you're too pure, too abstract for such material
concerns. Maybe you'd like to take this sample case door-to-door,
selling geometric solids to the public? This was briefly a popular
business model among the Willie Loman types of nineteenth-century France, who eventually gave up and
used the shapes to study geometry. These two pieces are by Louis
Dupin (1846) and Baradelle (1805).
You know that the French Revolution gave birth to the metric system
and had its own calendar, but did you know they also used decimal
time? Tragically, counterrevolutionary clocks, like this two-faced
example, made it easy for slackers to continue using the old system,
and decimal time was only the law of the land for about a year. Look
at it! The decimal time face is the tiny one on the bottom! They're
not even taking it seriously!
Sumana with a model of the Jacquard loom, distant ancestor to the
mighty general-purpose computer. What we didn't expect was all
the other looms that came beforehand! They were all here in
one big room that people walked right through, not knowing how cool
the things they were seeing are.
Here's an example: a model of an earlier loom controlled by holes
punched in paper. Now that's computery! Looks just like 1980s
dot-matrix printer paper. (We also saw a full-size loom that basically
ran off a player piano roll.) The problem here is that it's one
huge sheet of paper. If you want to add or remove an
"instruction", sucks to be you. It's like programming in BASIC when
you can't change the line numbers. Whereas the Jacquard loom is
programmed by small cards that are tied together. It's a lot easier
to go in and change something.
There was a whole exhibit hall about keyboards and other input
devices, a section I like to call "Telegraphy and Typewriters". The
museum is full of unusual keyboard layouts. You'll have to trust me
on this because I'm showing you a stenography typewriter, and those
still have weird keyboard layouts. The second picture shows the
box the stenography keyboard came in, and another, more spidery
stenography keyboard in the background.
Here's perhaps my favorie piece from the "Telegraphy" section of
that exhibit hall. This brave inventor refused to succumb to Not
Invented Here syndrome. In an era when everyone was inventing weird
telegraphy keyboards, this person thought "We already have
keyboards! The keyboard has been around and successful for hundreds
of years! I'm not going to reinvent the wheel!"
I'm going to close with this shot of the classic
Minitel terminal. The museum had a very Pavel Chekhov rah-rah
attitude towards all things French, and I don't begrudge this
attitude—when it comes to technology the French have a lot to
be proud of. But sometimes it was kind of a stretch. Did you know
that the European ground station for the Telstar satellite was in
France? Furthermore, did you know that's sufficient grounds to
display a model of the Telstar in a museum exhibit and do a whole
thing about it? Gimme a break. You made Minitel! Minitel was
amazing! You should do a whole Hall of Minitel! Just a suggestion.
April 27, 2016
Paris Graffiti
Man, that second one's like a Paul Klee graffito. The snail and the "Nos amores digitales" were on the same wall!
April 24, 2016
I'm Stuffed With Pastries And Drunk With Power
of Sumana's mom. We had a great time, and as time permits I'll be
putting up mini-travelogues of the major sights we saw. I'll start things off with a catalog of our lesser adventures and discoveries.
As always, I travelled exclusively by private bus. We had to make
some minor livery changes to make my usual ride street-legal in France.
We skipped the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, Paris's two biggest
tourist traps. However we did take a boat cruise of the Seine the
first day, so there is proof that I was near the Eiffel Tower
at some point.
We were more enthusiastic about Montmartre, home of the
perspective-tastic steps seen in Celine And Julie Go Boating.
I loved the Jardin du Luxembourg. For some reason people were
always taking selfies next to this statue.
Also in the garden but a bit harder to find
was this
awesome metastatue!
The Luxembourg also features a functional Beaux-Arts latrine (not
pictured).
The most touristy thing we did was a walk down the Champs ��lys��es,
which was the Paris equivalent of walking through Times Square on
Broadway, then crossing the street and walking back. It was cool at
the start (Arc de Triomphe), and again later on once it turned into
a park, but I'm gonna let this picture sum up the middle:
We ate a lot of great food! I won't be sharing pictures of the food
because I don't take good pictures of food, but I'll say that raw
milk cheese is fabulous, and pastries and bread were routinely as
good as the best you can get in New York. High-quality carbs and
cheese: the culinary highlights of my trip. I tried escargot, as well
as the mysterious Futurist dessert known as the floating island, and
my verdict for both is "meh".
We didn't eat at La Grenoille but I thought it was cute and
it can stand in for a lot of Paris restaurants.
We also didn't eat at this restaurant, because it was closed, and
because the passive-aggressive note taped to the window ensures that
no one will ever eat there again.
(My translation: "We will reopen
upon completion of the work to stop the recurrent floods of fecal
water from the WC installed in the basement. We are waiting on the
leaseholder to act.")
But I'm sure you're asking: what do the French think of America
in today's Je Suis Charlie world? Well, here's the answer,
in sidewalk menu form:
Bad luck, rest of the country! According to France, New York City
is coextant with the United States, and Toronto stands in for all of
Canada. It could be worse; in the airport I saw a French guidebook
for "New York + Brooklyn". I mean, I get it, we didn't really leave
Paris, but I know there are different regions in France.
This tote bag we saw in a €1.20 store (i.e. a dollar store,
but more expensive) managed to achieve greater overall accuracy by
avoiding pesky details.
Not sure where that subway map comes from though.
Okay, that's it for now, but tune in soon for scientific
instruments, Duchamp's obviously fake readymades, and the Tetsuo
Milk-approved netherworld of Versailles. Just to whet your appetite,
here's the sort of thing you see in the Mus��e des Arts et M��tiers, a
really cool museum that wasn't mentioned by either of the guidebooks we used, but was mentioned by every French person we asked:
An early steno keyboard! Awesome. See you next time.
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