YouTube - Video explains the world's most important 6-sec drum loop
Topic: Arts
6:03 am EST, Feb 15, 2007
This fascinating, brilliant 20-minute video narrates the history of the "Amen Break," a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip.
His fingers muscled from almost a century of weaving, Yasujiro Yamaguchi worked the humming loom in his private workshop. Patiently lacing golden threads through a warp of auburn silk, he fashioned a bolt of kimono fabric blooming with an autumn garden in shades of tea green, ginger and plum.
But Yamaguchi, like Japan's signature kimono, is slipping into winter. At 102, he is among the last master weavers of Nishijin, the country's most celebrated kimono district, and his pace has slowed. He rubbed the morning chill from his knuckles, fitted his hunched shoulders deeper inside his indigo jacket and resolutely pushed on. ... But today, as a result of globalization and rapidly changing demographics, the kimono business has collapsed, its future in question. Sales are expected to sink to an all-time low this year, even as Japan has emerged from recession to experience its longest economic boom since World War II.
The prosperity has come with an altered set of cultural values. This is a country of manga comics and glittering animation. The rising moguls driving the new economy are more likely to buy muscled chrome from one of Tokyo's expanding list of Ferrari dealerships than drop their spoils on Kyoto silk.
As the kimono becomes more museum piece than couture item, what once made it quintessentially Japanese is gradually fading. Market realities have forced kimono makers to eschew expensive Japanese silk. As a result, more than 90 percent of new kimonos and obi made in Japan, including most of those from Nishijin's most venerable textile houses, are now woven from cheaper imported silk.
Revealing more about himself than he ever has, Garry Trudeau gives us tantalizing clues about what's behind his venerable comic strip's recent burst of genius, and pain.
As notewothy might put it, this is a gold star article. Read the whole thing. It's a rare insight into the world of Garry Trudeau, who is nothing short of a pop-culture hero of mine. It's rare there is anything written about Trudeau that isn't an op-ed either complaining or cheering about this work.
Life, Meet Art: Pinter’s Last Stand - New York Times
Topic: Arts
8:59 pm EDT, Oct 20, 2006
The old man rose painfully as the performance ended. The applause built slowly from a single clap of hands to a tumult. Harold Pinter, playwright and actor, weakened by the years and by illness, had just performed “Krapp’s Last Tape,” by his friend and fellow Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett. ... “And all along Pinter makes you feel the gravity, the meticulousness, the sheer power of his endeavor,” Mr. Nightingale [of The Times of London] wrote. “This is an old man’s last-gasp search for a meaning he knows he’ll never find.”
wow Pinter does Beckett - terrifing, awesome I would love to witness it
edit part of me reflects that in a sense i've been in the hinterland - upon occasion - and one day, barring car accidents or some other sudden exit, i'll face the silence that follows twilight
This list is drawn from the second edition of "The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made" (St. Martin's Griffin, $24.95), edited by Peter M. Nichols and published in 2004. For additional information about the list, read Peter M. Nichols's preface, or A. O. Scott's introduction.
How many have you seen?
quite a few and reminded me of a few i wanted to see or see again but one or two little disagreements no Toystory 2, Moulin Rouge(2001), no House of Flying Daggers and no Save the Tiger (which is one of my all time favourite movies [Jack Lemmon is cool]) or Alfie (1966) (quintessentially British Michael Caine movie)
ahhh lists, lists, lists
edit no Blade Runner which is my favourite film *headdesk*
FACING EAST - Portraits from Asia - A Fine Art Perspective
Topic: Arts
3:39 pm EDT, Sep 1, 2006
This is really well done - it is a nice, short stunningly visual presentation that highlights the unique perspective of the Asian artist, and also gives a small dose of geography.
To start the presentation, Click on the Orange and White Box that say FACING EAST.
ENJOY! ----------------------------------------- ""Facing East: Portraits from Asia," on view July 1 through September 4 at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, explores how portraits expressed identity in Asia and the Near East. Paintings, sculpture, and photographs of Egyptian pharaohs, Chinese empresses, Japanese actors and a host of other subjects, reveal the unique ways that the self was understood, represented, and projected in Asian art.
The exhibition includes approximately 70 masterpieces from the collections of Chinese, Japanese, South Asian, Islamic and Ancient Near Eastern art at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art. A number of the works from the Sackler and Freer galleries will be on view for the first time."
Some movies need the big screen. The Abyss comes to mind--nothing like feeling totally surrounded by water in the dark with a huge screen towering above you. So, when all the hype about this great scary movie, The Descent, was going on, and I figured I was due for a fright (I can only handle one every so often, being overly imaginative. Saw about did me in for two years), my boyfriend and I took the plunge and went to see The Descent. We both figured it was "big screen worthy" (sort of like being sponge-worthy, I suppose), since you want to feel swallowed by the cave.
Was I ever disappointed. I'm shocked with the IMDB ratings and the slew of "wow, greatest thing ever" reveiews. I don't want to offer up spoilers to prove my points, so I'll just rant thusly:
1. Other than an initial "shock value" moment at the start, there isn't anything special about the scares in this movie.
2. I hate people that don't learn from their mistakes. You run away and get separated and you might get picked off. So, after doing something that stupid once, don't you think you wouldn't do it again after regrouping? Yeah, that's what I thought.
3. Make up your mind--are they going to be tough chicks who are logical or are they going to be illogical, whiny, grudge-holding, screaming women. Flip flopping between the two extremes whenever it's convenient for the plot just irritates me.
4. DO NOT USE FLARES IN A CAVE. Duh.
5. All of the inconsistencies, stupidities, etc made it so bad that I actually was hoping for them all to die horrible, horrible deaths (I won't tell you if they do or not). I wanted to laugh, not jump, and I came in there wanting to be truly terrified. I wanted to be so scared that going out to my car in the dark for the next few weeks on my way to the gym tripped me out (this happened with Saw. I thought I was going to die I was so fidgety in the dark for weeks. Yes, I'm a wuss).
6. I got creepier "oooh scary" feelings from the Ted the Caver story on the internet (http://www.holyshiite.com/caver/) which I had read prior to going to this movie. So I was hyped up and ready. Pity it couldn't live up to it.
/rant
I honestly don't get it why everyone's saying it's such a masterpiece of horror and a "gorefest". It's really not. Too many errors. Too many inconsistencies. I just can't believe so many people find it great. I'm sincerely boggled by it.
Rushdie springs to defence of Grass�|�Top News�|�Reuters.co.uk
Topic: Arts
11:13 am EDT, Aug 17, 2006
Salman Rushdie sprang to the defence of Guenter Grass on Thursday after Germany's Nobel prize-winning author confessed he was once a teenage member of Hitler's Waffen SS.
