DISQUS

Excited, yes: it's a great idea, and a few of the movies I have in fact seen: we watched "Bonnie and Clyde" a couple weeks ago. Yet, I'm intimated, too. Everyone knows so much about movies. Everyone's so familiar with every trope. (NYCWeboy's an authority on Oscar history!) And, you can read read "Pictures at a Revolution" before next week, no problem. On top of which, I'd bet my weight in gold your lives are 10x more interesting than mine.
Am I the only one without several clones?

Hey, great review. You're kinda new here so you may not be already sick of my endless bitching about "no TV" in our home. But as long as you're writing TV reviews, or reviewing movies not "in our budget," I'm satisfied.
Hope you comment on Lance's live blogging: I can't (even if I make it a point to write fiction), but for me these circumstances only make reading the threads after the fact that much more fun.

That was nice, Weboy. You may not remember but I was depending on your review, since who knows when I'll see the movie or even one little episode of the TV show?
(I'd need to escape into another life for a while, which sounds exquisite, but looks impossible right now.)
Not that you told too much. I'm determined, if uncharacteristically resigned to wait. And yet, one day, someday, I'm sneaking off.

NYC Weboy, you've no idea how seriously I'm counting on you.
A tiresome detail I've bared to newcritics way too often is that my husband allows no TV. He claims we benefit through real conversation, not just talk; reading books, blogs, and poems out loud to each other; among other things. (It's those "other things" that seals the deal.)
In any case, he's not likely to give SATC the movie a thought, and while I might go alone, MA Peel can attest to the sad fact that at a Paley Center Buffy showing I had no idea who Kim Cattrell was when she appeared on screen lauding the Paley Center.
So if I go to SATC without deep cultural background, I no doubt would watch it (a phenomenon of which I've witnessed 0 TV episodes)clueless.
That worked for "Buffy," but MA sat beside me, filling me in sotto voce, scene per scene.
Further, not only did I not have a clue as to who Kim Cattrell is, I've never seen "Raiders of the Lost Arc," or any previous sequels if there were others before the one coming up.
Bring me up to date and the gods shall reward you.

In the assistant director's note was a story about Chekov showing his play to Tolstoy, described as his mentor. Tolstoy didn't respond for an uncomfortably long time and eventually chided him for wasting his time on plays when he was such a fine short story writer. The tale has Tolstoy snorting in derision that Chekov's effort was "almost as bad as Shakespeare."
Chekov left immediately, and when his carriage was out of range shouted in delight to the heavens: "Almost as bad as Shakespeare!"

A long time ago, Manny and I saw "Pick Up on South Street," billed as a classic "noir" movie. I never thought to pay attention to the actors' names when we saw those old movies. But I think, looking at the photo, that the villain in it, who embodied the whole grisly story, must have been Richard Widmark. When he giggled, it was--no better way to describe this--"spine-chilling."

Ghoul is right! I can only hope that while the grave-robber's in jail, he has to live with himself.

The misogyny at work both shocked and enlightened me. And it wasn't particular to the Deep South. Going by movies and music, 1972 strikes me as a seminal year in many ways.

One of them, I now think, is that as feminism began to gain traction, a backlash occurred that I've read little about, although I'm old enough to recall witnessing some of it. Listen to the lyrics of old Rolling Stones, just as an example.

By comparison, outright pimps (in movies anyway) seem almost gallant.

(i>Payday is grim but fascinating, and I'm encouraging women to check it out. It's almost unbelievable today that men ever behaved so hideously, only to be met with (apparently) a collective, social reaction that this made them sexy.

Incredible--until you watch Rip Torn.


Fr

Who knows when I'll see the movie, but when I do, M.A., I'll remember to look for the subtlety in the scenes and story-frames thanks to you.

Sometimes, though, The Wall Street Journal's editorial page offered up a few clams. Though I grant you that the op-ed page occasionally tossed a few bi-valves back.

I'm not saying Falstaff doesn't have his moments. My favorite line of his (so far): "There's no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune..."

Oh, I haven't seen a play in such a long time. This was second best, though.

While I see suicide as horrific, and the result of an inner torment only the sufferer can possibly know, I often wonder at how easily people who are "excitable" and alternately "brooding" are classified as mentally ill.

We do need to pay attention to signals and take whatever possible measure we can to prevent suicide.

But what some people manage to endure amazes me. When someone else just can not go on, I can often follow the logic.

Hear, hear! Too cool!

Kosta, Thanks for commenting. It's great to think anyone finds the discussion interesting more than nine months after I made my plea in response to articles calling for the silencing of fiction writers, as if they were a much more odious bane upon society than uninspired, unskilled guitar players, drummers, dancers, painters, or sculptors.
My intention was never to ask that people pay attention to what doesn't interest them. It was more to pose the question, What great harm can a struggling, stifled writer inflict upon a society so sick with evil?
Those who appreciate art, music, movies, TV, and writing participate in creative work as its audience. And art requires an audience to exist, no matter how ephemerally. Otherwise, it's only an abstract concept, albeit one that's cost the deluded artist possible income from doing something--anything--else, untold time, and social interaction.
Killing bad writer's isn't necessary much as one may detest the sorry beings. They'll die soon enough, poor and mentally troubled, only to be replaced by other striving souls, a rare one or two of whom may manage a meagre success.

Never having paid much attention to the Grammy's (are they as boring as the Oscars?), I was amazed at the examples of past winners--as if the award-givers were trying to get it wrong.
But the proliferation of categories reflects my impression of what's happening with music: the fall-out is taking an oddly long time to land.

Both my father and father-in-law were one-time, big time "gun collectors."
They both have long since found another talisman. Both have finally realized they're not protecting themselves, their stuff, or their family, but rather inviting deadly crime. No one liked deer meat, anyway.
Men from a generation that never admitted they could be wrong, they've both quietly locked away their weapons, buried them in lead lockers somewhere. Even they no longer argue it's their right or hobby. Too many gratuitous murders have changed their brutally stubborn minds. And if those two get it--anyone can.

OutOfContext, That concern or myth is one of the strongest arguments throughout the book. It's why the writer entered academia in the first place: the more we know, the greater the beauty, the deeper the mystery.

Altos are my favorite. To be truthful, I'm not that familiar with Bach's Mass in B minor. I'm familiar with the Mass and have heard choirs sing some selections from Bach on special occasions. It was always for once glorious.

Convey our sorrow to the family, Tom. A sudden, terrible, tragic loss like this calls for so much more than anything we can say or feel.

MA Peel, you're an inspiration. Do you sing the Mass? I've heard people play versions or pieces on the flute.

Dan, If you're listening to it, those early cues can take you back to when you didn't care if it was absurd. Music plays with time so well it even alters it, if temporarily.
His point about middle-age, I think, was that it's not the best time to take up the violin. You learned to listen to music in childhood, though, and can continue to listen and learn to love and hate all kinds of music whenever you want.

Brutus, hello! Some people take real pleasure in seeing their intuitions confirmed by MIRs. The author finds that interesting but never stops asking why some music evokes greater emotion and sensation in some people than others. Some people care about music to the point of obsession. The mystery remains locked inside the mind/body quandary.
He offers lists and examples and knows so many famous people that the book veers from pop history, musicology, and neuroscience. Having participated in some of the 10,000 hour studies, he suspects 10,000 as being convenient but not arbitrary. An expert listener does need to listen approximately that long to know the music.

The writer said that Pierce, the lecturer, who was an august inventor at AT&T and an authority at Stanford was especially impressed by the timbre in "Little Red Corvette," where the instruments, including the singer's voice, created a unified sound.

A number of questions bother me about this, but the value of abstract art and how it's hyped or not isn't my first concern. Hype-away! Rake in all you can, but let your genius child live out his or her childhood without celebrity discussions and documentaries questioning his or her legitimacy.

If this little girl is hailed as today's Picasso, she'll earn huge sums when money means little to her. Quite likely, and much worse in the long run, she may need to live a long life as a brilliant artist who peaked at age four! Will her work at five warrant another documentary and attendant exhibition?

Fascinating review: now I'm waiting for my chance to see "The Devils," and I appreciate the chance to sign the petition.
What you didn't mention, however, is how dismally the multiplex experience often compares to the "decadent" (if only this were my worst vice) Netflix DVD.
I live in NYC and for $11 I can sit through a show where the sound track is painfully loud, and yet I still hear the two other sound tracks from the movies playing on either side.
I haven't subjected myself to this enough to know whether getting three movies in one, albeit audibly only, is a skill I should develop.
I loved the point you made about the great works living on, and sometimes they do play at an old fashioned house that has survived. To me, that's the guilty pleasure.