Disqus - Latest Comments for Kathleen Maher

Re: Even Nobel Laureates Get the Blues

Kathleen Maher — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 10:04:48 -0000

As a writer who counts accusations of "being melodramatic" among her earliest memories, which sounded (then and now) like the worst sin a three-year-old could commit, I suppose fiction writers are obnoxiously sensitive. Writing fiction, like they say of comedy, is hard. One reliable reason I do it is for an adrenaline rush like no other.
That said, so much of what Steinbeck wrote comes across to me as corny that I miss passages like the one quoted, even though it rings familiar.
Good, bad, melodramatic or sublimely subtle, fiction writers deserve, to my mind anyway, some forbearance. Even in Steinbeck's day, they struggled to earn a living. The adrenaline-fueled activity if one practices it long enough can drive you crazy, especially if like so many fiction writers, you did not start out among the hardiest souls.
Given that so few people read fiction anymore, I do not expect fiction writers be given attention, just a bit more patience than, say, a famous and dazzling gladiator who is commonly widely admired, praised, and rich.

Re: The Artistry of Keith Lee MorrisÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ ‘Testimony’

Kathleen Maher — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 14:57:14 -0000

Hey, Bosco, My point was not that society endorses overt violence. Rather, the competitive jockeying that holds this gang of four young men together allows the death to occur. Yes, there's the methamphetamine (which I note as NOT socially endorsed) but I can imagine the same accident occurring if these guys were merely drunk and watching the Superbowl. Their masculine self-absorption might be enough to foster the casual aggression that results in an accident going overlooked until it's too late.

Re: Miami Vice and the 3 a.m. Soul

Kathleen Maher — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 17:43:47 -0000

M.A. Peel, I found what you wrote about the soul and isolation, quoting Fitzgerald, enlightening me with your reference to St. John of the Cross and the significance of Fitzgerald adding "real" (a word I use too much, because I find more meaning there than any one word can probably carry) so satisfying. When you continued with a review of "Miami Vice," I expected too much. Your description of the show and what was happening kept me hooked. But when I watched the clip, somehow I missed everything, which happens all the time when I watch TV. It amazes me how engaged and reflective other people can get. Something about television always makes me zone out; don't know why.

Re: Live Long and Prosper

Kathleen Maher — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:55:43 -0000

I really liked this, Viscount. It's not often I can understand how old TV shows have managed to effect people so profoundly that they have favorites; they think long deeply about the characters and their possible meaning as real life archetypes. I tend to recall TV as a parade of trends, jokes that were funny at the time, with occasional noticeably fine acting, directing, writing, or filming. Your recollection showed clearly how childhood heroes can help us define who we are and the paths we most wish to take. That's a first for me, so thanks.

Re: And the Oscar Doesn’t Go To…

Kathleen Maher — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 17:33:10 -0000

Almost daily now it surprises me that I am unintentionally living in a sky-castle. The only movie in contention that I've seen is Little Miss Sunshine, which I saw because Lance recommended it. I know Helen Mirren is an interesting actress but will probably skip Queen, whether it wins or not. The English monarchy has always eluded my interest, even though my mother and sister find it fascinating through all time. Babel sounds like something Manny will want to see, but I can't foretell whether we'll watch The Departed or not. I have not counted back to check, but my guess is that the Best Pictures of the last ten years are movies I have not seen yet. If this sounds like reverse-bragging or something, it's not. Manny prefers vintage films shown at dingy art houses. Mutliplexes don't give him enough leg or elbow room and I find the smell of food additives so overpowering at to put me in danger of a migraine, especially if the sound is supposed to disorient all of NYC. (That's the way our nearby Battery Park Cinema tends to treat the volume, anyway.) Getting a taste of everything from newcritics does makes me feel as if perhaps I am not sealed inside a balloon, after all.
IF anyone grabs the mike tonight and screams something political, though, I will pout over missing yet another milestone.

Re: And the Oscar Doesn’t Go To…

Kathleen Maher — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 17:38:07 -0000

P.S. Is"Scanner Darkly" up for an Oscar this year? That was a movie I really enjoyed. I'll watch almost anything with Robert Downey Jr. in it.

Re: The Festival of Mediocrity

Kathleen Maher — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 11:02:03 -0000

Of course you're right. Still, I doubt we're close to mediocrity's demise. Its existence tracks population growth. Its form and sound suits the popular norm, so yes, it usually will win most awards.
Without abundant mediocrity serving as a backdrop for every art, we might miss the sublime. Even with our present surfeit, who's to say great art doesn't glow under wraps, expressing a glimmer of real meaning? Each person must judge for him- or herself.
Keep an eye out, too, for the nadir, and all that falls within its range. Opposites converge, or at least that's the hope. If everyone is great then no one is.

Re: Green Beer and English: The Actors and Poets of St. Patrick

Kathleen Maher — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 20:50:19 -0000

Only recently did I discover that the term "Irish twins" was derogatory. My sister and I, who were born just shy of a year apart, loved being Irish twins. People often commented how very "Irish" it was, too, that while we looked almost identical for many years, our temperaments were opposite. (To me that signaled that she was the nice one, though my mother has begged me to stop saying that.)

Re: Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:05:20 -0000

My reaction to this is odd. I read "The Fountainhead" in high school, and loved it. Most certainly I had no ideas about believable dialog then, although my biggest dirty little secret was that I wanted nothing else but to be a fiction writer. Seeing certain failure there, I ran as fast and hard as I could. Even in those confused days, much as I enjoyed "The Fountainhead," reading it cover to cover, it didn't qualify as "good writing" to my vague, untutored mind. Page-turner, yes. Classic, no.
Then, too much as I loved "The Fountainhead," I couldn't get through "Atlas Shrugged," or any of her other books. Even then, as a would-be writer, I considered it only fair to give any other writer the benefit of 100 pages, unless the work was assigned and then I read it scrupulously, like it or not. One hundred pages of "Atlas Shrugged" didn't work well enough to push me on to page 101. Of course, that was ages ago.
In college, however, I studied real philosophers. My courses required that I read from Plato through to Sartre, in the actual texts, albeit translations (sometimes.)
The course list, scrupulously read, included Kant (my favorite), but also Marx, Adam Smith, Maynard Keynes (not fun), who still factor fairly big in philosophy regarding what's right or wrong in terms of commercial fairness. Hobbes gave us a pithy, all too true picture of our lives with that "nasty, brutish, and short," line. And Machiavelli could not be sold short. In many ways he was not wrong.
Compared to these big-wigs, of course, Ayn Rand doesn't stand a chance, but I doubt she intended to write philosophy as they did. For one thing, they never sold well, and still don't compared to her. But what she wrote amounts to a hybrid, and people have often used it to champion selfishness. Perhaps it's not that far from the movie, "Wall Street," with Michael Douglas's line overtaking Hobbes': Greed is good.
Not really and certainly not always. not:e heohas often Sheple

Re: Kill All the Lawyers? No, Kill the Fiction Writers

Kathleen Maher — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 10:38:36 -0000

I agree that one good line is worth a lifetime of lesser ones, and a beautiful phrase can only spring from great hope and faith.
My bias, though, (just semantics, I'll grant you that) is that creative writing is art. There are mountains of bad art, mind you, among all kinds of media. Art (such as painting, drawing, sculpture, photography) is art if the person making it intended it that way. Creative writing, music, dance, singing, movies and television shows with scripts and stories, if the intention is right, and live theatre: they're all art. Most likely flawed art, bad art, and possibly out-right pathetic art, but still--art.
The definition need not apply only to such glorious works as the Sistine Chapel. Being an artist is a way of life.
As for crafts? Macrame, crocheting, cooking, house painting, hair-cutting, oragami: those are crafts. And even the, if the haircutter seriously intends every the haircut as a work of art, so be it.
Being an artist is a way of life. And yes, some artists produce deplorable work. Worse, some are fakes; their way of life requires no more creative risk than a house painter's. But a few poseurs does not negate the whole concept. A fully-imagined, creative work is not analogous to a sweater, because no matter how exquisite a sweater it may be, it still takes its form from straightforward directions, and any soul-dredging involved in its creation was incidental.

Re: Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer

Kathleen Maher — Wed, 02 May 2007 07:26:50 -0000

The documentary is amazing. They start with clips of her singing and dancing when she was very young. Teamed with Roy Eldridge in Krupa's band (one of the first inter-racial musical combos on stage), she danced through his solos. In the clips, he chastises her for upstaging him. The documentary makers intersperse her younger years with talk show appearances, testimonials from musicians who admired her, and her own commentary on her career and life when she was 87, the year the film was made. At 87, having recovered a little after her throat was burned at a hospital, she continued to perform. Those shaky but famous songs, where she's apologizing for changing keys between lines are overlapped with divided screens showing her doing the same songs at different times. So you really do get a sense of this artist's consistency even as her powers waned. She was always a performing one hundred percent (doped or not--it didn't show with her). For that "Georgia Brown" performance, she admits her addiction was well-fed. Rather, what dominated her every performance was joy, jazz, creativity, and the surrender that ultimately demands to the music itself. And she kept at it until she died.
In 2004, at age 85, she sang at The Iridium to a very young audience that packed the house, laughed at her witty apologies, and danced gleefully to every song, only to scream for more.

Re: Mavis Staples Reaches the Mountain Top

Kathleen Maher — Thu, 03 May 2007 08:31:49 -0000

You sold me. But then I'm always looking for her. A new Mavis Staples record is exciting. Thanks for letting me know.

Re: Defending Edward Hopper

Kathleen Maher — Fri, 11 May 2007 18:20:26 -0000

Because a lot of beautiful art remains ignored, except possibly by certain aesthetes, it hardly follows that celebrated, widely appreciated art is less beautiful. Ultimately, I think the virtue of all art, painting, dance, music, etc, is subjective, and should be.

Re: Volver: A Feast of Banalities

Kathleen Maher — Mon, 28 May 2007 21:57:23 -0000

I don't disagree with you at all.
Yet until I read your review, I hadn't thought too carefully about the movie other than: I enjoyed it, and while the use of color was pleasurable, the story (by any standards)really was ridiculous. But to say so too strenuously might be unfair. For me, apparently, subtitles automatically supply an exotic and thus mysterious allure. Penelope Cruz was too beautiful for the context, which made her appear to me, so much more gorgeous than I had judged her from other movies.
My leniency toward foreign films may amount to a previously undiscovered prejudice on my part. But it's hard to gauge.
For me, it's definitely not a Spanish thing. Four French movies that I have accepted as, well, at least, interesting, may not be. In fairness, too, I should revisit a couple Swedish, German, and Japanese movies for a more honest reappraisal.

Re: Volver: A Feast of Banalities

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 29 May 2007 09:19:03 -0000

I don't know about J-P Melville, but the French affection for Jerry Lewis is hard to fathom otherwise, and always has been.
It has, however, occurred to me that French people love Jerry Lewis because he may, to them, typify the archetypal American, trying to keep up with the rest of the worlds' suave, smart, and fantastically romantic style. Pathetic Americans have no sensibility, to their eyes, other than our inherently obscene buffoonery and sorry tendency to walk with pigeon-toes.

Re: Paul Is Not Dead

Kathleen Maher — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 17:43:11 -0000

I haven't heard the new album and probably won't buy it. But I did read the New Yorker article by John Colapinto.

Paul is quoted referring to the song, "That Was Me:"

"There were two people in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, and I was one of them. ...One guy who wrote, 'Yesterday,' and I was him. One..who wrote..'Let It Be,' 'Fool on the Hill,' 'Lady Madonna' --...all of these things would be enough for anyone's life."

He really said everything there is to say about realizing you're an artist and trying to create the best work you're able to, with what you have and what comes to you. How many of us get to contribute the tiniest fraction of what he had offered the world?

Re: In Praise of Hip Hop

Kathleen Maher — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:49:51 -0000

Ballad Musician, I really do enjoy hip hop music. It's the modern style and the internet plays a big part in making it available so that even little old white women like me can enjoy it. No way could I play an active part. I'd be way out of place at the clubs, and couldn't dance or talk about the beats. But I'm a listener, not a musician, and always have been.
If you want to learn about black music, click on the link to the Breath of Life blog.
And you say you love ballads? I can't imagine the world without them. If no one had composed ballads yet, we'd all hurt so much, missing them so much, someone overflowing with soul would just start singing, low and soft, "Hey baby, what about ballads? The world's no good without them." Or something like that.

Re: I can name that great TV tune in…

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 12:51:51 -0000

What century was I born in? I'm not sure I could name any TV theme song. Isn't that sad? The past year, I've campaigned for a TV in our home. Manny doesn't say no often, but he's not budging on TV. But we really haven't been married forever. Apparently I didn't watch TV growing up, either. If the clock was ticking I might be able to name MASH, The Simpsons and The Jeffersons.
Was the Addams TV theme song the same as the movie's? Again, with a gun to my head, I'm sure I could name the *movie* theme song.
No wonder I have trouble keeping friends.

Re: Jerusalem on the Jukebox: Chabon’s Yiddish Noir

Kathleen Maher — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 12:34:53 -0000

A big Chabon fan, I had planned to read this book when it was available from the library. Or buy it used. Your review (and I'd already read a few) has convinced me I need to read it: now. Your quotes were spectacular in every sense of the word.

Re: Half-Way to a Year: A Quick Editor’s Note

Kathleen Maher — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 23:43:48 -0000

Am I first? A little thrilling to be the first one commenting on newcritics' half-birthday. Every time I check the blog I find at least two very interesting new posts. The comments can be as good as the posts, and are terrific to read.
Through the comments, I met met a hard-working and unsung poet, Jerry Prager, and because of it, I was able to meet the indefatigable M.A. Peel. All in all, I feel as if I belong to a great community.
As for the few posts I've contributed, they were all spontaneous responses to music, a story, a movie, and especially that one that was nothing but a personal reaction to a derogatory remark I kept hearing regarding "bad, very, very bad" writers.
I love the changing banner. But otherwise, my opinion is: don't change a thing. Let it develop on its own.Look at the great flow it's achieved in six short months.

Re: The Great American Rock and Roll Band

Kathleen Maher — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 20:23:00 -0000

The picture of Manny Maher above is grossly misleading. He's my husband, and looks nothing like that woman beside his comment. And unless Alex Sirota is a woman, the responses here are men talking.
My brother was one of those "Dead-heads," who until Jerry Garcia died, traveled around "taping the genius jams."
Once when I was in my early twenties, my younger brother was driving me somewhere in Chicago and indulging in his self-professed "religion." He had kindly turned it down when I requested. But to each his own, guys! I truly couldn't stand it. At the next red light, though it was late at night and I knew only that we were near Chicago somewhere, I jumped from the car. It was that or give up what tenuous hold I have ever had on sanity. One or two girlfriend years ago (claimed) to appreciate the Dead, but I highly doubt they still listen to them very often.

Re: They’ve Got A Great Beat (And You Can Dance To Most of Them)

Kathleen Maher — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:26:21 -0000

That last comment was from Kathleen, not Manny Maher, in case anyone was confused. But the photos are still a scramble. Help, Mr. Wizard!

Re: Confession of a Hater

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:09:22 -0000

So Dan, whom do you LOVE? Who or what grabs you up and won't let go? So you know, your feet are off the ground whenever the musician, writer, actor, dancer puts it out there--and all just for you? What artists ring your bells every time? (What are politicians doing in your list anyway? If they don't merit LOVE, they don't merit HATE. Disdain is different.)
This really is a great post. But for me it stopped at Chapter One.
If you list your LOVES and what they do to how, every time? Half the time? Few are perfect. I'll list mine.
The Grateful Dead, as I've said here before, will send screaming into the unknown night. That might not be all-out hatred, but my aversion to them is intense and personal.
Here, I can't resist throwing in another example. I once worked with a woman, who was as level-headed and good natured as anyone I've known, but a few notes from Joni Mitchell and she'd start screaming, tear at her hair, and run around searching for the source so she could kill it.

Re: The Bully Pulpit: “Sweet Smell of Success” and the Fox News empire

Kathleen Maher — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:02:11 -0000

The lines must really be good if you remember them that well, Dan. I saw the movie with Manny and the dialogue speeds past. I managed to put these in my memory bank, though.

"Sidney, match me."
And:
"Watch me run a fifty yard dash with my legs cut off."

Re: Bergman: The Last of the Great Ones

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 14:34:34 -0000

Hear, hear. Great movies like great books require a little work. It takes two to dance.
That's one way art works. The artist creates a rhythm, a story, a world, and will eagerly lead you through it. One wrong step or even a misplaced emphasis from the artist and the whole show either tumbles or stumbles. But the partner needs to pay attention, and really be up and ready to go with the flow.
And while I rarely enjoyed Bergman's movies, and I don't think the truth, which I recognized, threw me off, he was more than brilliant. His dances are rich and complex and we're lucky to have them.

Re: How To Make a TV Show That DoesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t Suck (Part One)

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:37:24 -0000

It thrills me to boast that Manny and I watched "Twin Peaks" on a basement TV, back when we owned a mortgage on a house that was slanting down and left as it sank into the marshland below.
"Twin Peaks" first episode stretched reality, but a few right after that seemed almost hyper-real. Partly what I liked about the show--the way they used the name "Bob" gave me the giggles--was the way it flipped in and out of plausibility. Was there music warning "this way weirdness comes?" I can't remember. We watched exhausted and wrapped in blankets.
Half the time the slide away from believability matched my own tendencies well enough to make it fun. Except at the end where someone totally lost it. No matter how surreal the story, some consistency is necessary.

Re: Go Raibh Maith Agat, Tommy

Kathleen Maher — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 22:29:59 -0000

Thanks for writing about Tommy Makem. He's not familiar to me, so your tribute is for me an introduction: his music survives.
There's lots of Irish in my family but my parents didn't appreciate the music. Perhaps because their parents sang old Irish songs often.

Re: Archie Shepp at Iridium, 8/16-8/19

Kathleen Maher — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:13:18 -0000

I'm writing about the pie on Diary of a Heretic.
Still, Jennifer has a point. Besides an exhilarating show, dedicated in part as a tribute to Max Roach (read Jason's post), the Iridium serves genuine Key Lime pie. I know because it was my first taste of the real thing.

Re: Californication: Or, Mulder Does the Wild Thing (a lot)

Kathleen Maher — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 16:35:38 -0000

Short, dumpy, and bald? And that's just the women writers?

Oh Dan, were thinking of me? I'm on your mind even when you're watching David Duchovny aspire to Jack Klugman heights, a show that doesn't suck?

Don't tell Manny: he doesn't like it when I resort to artifice. But just to put the clamoring masses off, I sometimes wear very impressive stillettoes, corsetry, and, well, I might need to beg and borrow for it, but someone I know must own a wig.

Aside from that, though: Did you say, dubiety?

Re: Californication: Or, Mulder Does the Wild Thing (a lot)

Kathleen Maher — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 20:06:39 -0000

When I saw how casually you got flung dubiety, working so well for you, I couldn't help wondering, Dan, what's happened to my favorite mainstay: dubiosity? Has it lost cache? I think dubiety and dubiosity are synonyms, but I'd need to look it up to be sure.
Maybe I've just been listening to too much Amy Winehouse (up for a little "suckery" anyone?)

Re: Vacation Reading With Marcel Proust

Kathleen Maher — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:53:51 -0000

Okay, I'll go back to him. I did make it through two volumes once long ago. Not only did reading him feel like work, which was sometimes well worth it and sometimes not, I felt he was a terrible influence on me as a writer. Only geniuses can get away with all that verbosity.(Rhymes with...?) Even without idols who speak in volumes, I don't know how to shut up. It's a nervous habit and oh, god am I nervous.
Proust was undoubtedly nervous, too. I know he suffered from migraines. He wrote in bed. His bed-room was lined in cork. He once banished a friend from ever visiting him again, because he hated the guy's cologne. Not only did he write his six-volume masterpiece, but belle lettres galore. So he wrote to the friend complaining months after their last visit that he had removed everything that had been in his room that day, all the furniture even, but the stink remained.
What do you think? Was the cologne lavender-scented? Perhaps with a lime top note. That, Proust never said.

Re: Vacation Reading With Marcel Proust

Kathleen Maher — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:14:58 -0000

Maybe it's just me, Dan. But I found War & Peace hard to put down and the Brothers K was a breeze, at least compared to In Search of Lost Time. But you're right about the first fifty pages. And we probably do need to acquire a fresher translation.
PS. Manny and I still show up with the same avatar, even though he's using a separate computer. MyBlogLog says it can't be helped unless he start his own blog from another abode, which is unlikely.
Readers take note: Although we're very close, we're VERY different. newcritics pinpoints the many areas where we disagree most. Apparently it doesn't bother Manny.

Re: Extras: the Comedy of Humiliation

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:16:12 -0000

It really sounds great, Dan. And if it weren't for you, who knows how long, if ever, I'd learn about it. Sooner or later maybe my kids might clue me in.

Re: Dead Rock Stars: Heaven’s Best Pick-Up Band (Or Hell’s)

Kathleen Maher — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 10:38:08 -0000

Blue Girl, We girls obviously need to stick together here. The Mama Cass question was a little joke I made during dinner. But after my beloved husband put it up here--with my avatar!--I naturally thought about her opposite; how old was sad little Karen Carpenter?
True, these ladies were far from hard rockers and certainly had nothing to do with my budding adolescence. But they did die young, right? And again, I'm too lazy to check but wasn't Minnie Riperton, not too fat and not too thin, shy of forty?

Re: Dead Rock Stars: Heaven’s Best Pick-Up Band (Or Hell’s)

Kathleen Maher — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 12:01:27 -0000

I hearily agree, Blue Girl. Manny gets a reprieve. He'll never sing as well as Robert Palmer--let alone you! (I want this newcritics band for real. Wasn't Brendog a demon ska heart-throb fewer than ten years ago?)
Anyway, Manny has made me his main mission most of my life. Wherever that much goodness comes from needs discovery and world-wide proliferation.

Re: Listening To Our Ancestors

Kathleen Maher — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 09:58:41 -0000

When we listened to the singers, who live in Canadian coastal villages without restaurants or stop signs--NYC was a trip for them!--much as I yearned to join a 6,000 people community where I belonged as rightly as ocean and trees, I almost unconsciously altered their voices and added a sax to their one wide flat drum.

Re: Listening To Our Ancestors

Kathleen Maher — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:19:40 -0000

Lily! Thanks for stopping by. And yes, jazz does heal us. Remember when I told you about Sarah Vaughn singing "Honeysuckle Rose" on The Roulette Years CD? During bad times, I listen to it repeatedly. You'll have to tell me the notes, and how they work, because it's only that one version that carries the magic formula. The way Sarah hits BEE on honeybee and rhymes it with jealou-SEE a bar later lifts me up--and hasn't let me down yet. Thanks for commenting, Lil.

Re: Listening To Our Ancestors

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:05:15 -0000

Jason, that book suggests exactly what I've been looking for. That clutch in one's heart, I know, can be explained by taking a verse up half a note, but many songs do that. Only when a few musicians do it, in certain songs, does it noticeably and consistently affect me. Thanks for the tip. Would newcritics be interested in the book review?

Re: Live from the Past: New Recordings from Mingus & Don Cherry

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:14:56 -0000

I love Mingus so much I had to check out the songs. Does he really do "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling?" on this CD? I'll have to buy it.
Manny thinks I make too much of it, but that song "Theme for Lester Young"? Do you know it. AKA, "Goodbye Porkpie Hat."
It's plays in a recurring dream of mine. I can never remember the visual part, just that I'm in it and running. But the music is what really makes the dream, once sometimes twice a year since I was in college. That's a lot.

Re: Listening To Our Ancestors

Kathleen Maher — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:17:45 -0000

Ann, thanks so much for that description. The games especially intrigued me, but they weren't described so clearly. You've rendered them so much more immediate, even offering a vision of communal wisdom.

Re: Inland Empire, or, David Lynch Loses His Marbles

Kathleen Maher — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 14:38:47 -0000

Great review, Dan--presented in a way that makes me trust your judgment absolutely, almost like tapping into that "unified field theory." For me, this review's a huge help, because I admire artists who aren't afraid to fail all out of proportion. So if I can fast-forward through those--I'm going to scream if this subway car doesn't start moving, really scream, so that some authorities will at least cart me off to a different scene, a different prison, I'll gladly zip through a Lynch movie for one or two brilliant flashes among the murky nonsense. And while I claim no avant-garde cred, some nonsense, you know, good nonsense, amuses me more than perfect sense. For example, I loved Muholland Drive. Thanks for the extra info, OutofContext, especially because it makes good sense. Still, it seems harsh to equate a weird, erratic, film maker with George Bush.
So Lynch doesn't care enough about his audience: who dies? Maybe no one, except that Lynch must use cheap video and can't quite get together the lighting and angles that make women beautiful.

Re: Worst Movie Ever

Kathleen Maher — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 17:03:21 -0000

This review and report on Ayn Rand's influence over the last 60 years or so, should sound the alarms. Marshal your positions everyone. This fine, brief, totally on-point review should arouse all sleepyheads.
The last Ayn Rand post created a thread of staunch supporters, taking those of us who know little of her "philosophy" by surprise. I read "The Fountainhead" in one all-night sitting, having just broken up with a my second or third boyfriend. The thick but superficial story was diverting and, thus, perfect for my needs. Only later did someone surprise me by referring to Rand's novels as a "philosophy." Until then, I had considered Aristotle and Kant, Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein as quintessential philosophers. I believed philosophies offered and demanded back rigorous thinking. Generally, too, philosophy spoke to how we know what we think we know and/or why we live and die. I was young and reading to escape when I read The Fountainhead, but I was also more immersed in the great philosophers, from Plato to the Existentialists, than in anything else.

Re: Worst Movie Ever

Kathleen Maher — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 11:26:22 -0000

So where have all the Rand-fans gone? Could it be that newcritics' most persuasive thinkers, in fact, epersuaded them to think again somewhere during that earlier discourse?
If so, will those Inspired Persuaders, please, persuade the USA--and not merely to the fallacies in Ayn Rand's philosophy as such, but, everything else?

Re: Berlin Noir

Kathleen Maher — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:28:35 -0000

Sounds like fun reading, Claire. A shade familiar but not entirely, the background one I've never gotten near: that researched presentation of street level Nazism in Berlin.
Too often I assume I've read all I want about WWII and seen as many movies about it I can take: not that I suppose I've got the whole story; rather than it's all so horrible and so ugly and wrenching that I really need to find something nice and soothing, at least for a minute. But I never quite lose my own itch for noir and Bernie Gunther does sound as if he'll tickle me, despite street level despair.

Re: Graduation Pays Off For Kanye West

Kathleen Maher — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:16:24 -0000

So nice to read a review like this. Not one to mention names, I will say that we often read a lot about a handful of great but old(er) musicians here. Kayne's made a distinct impact and to learn he's growing as a musician and adding to his skills is good news, a little bit of good, maybe, but still--good.

Re: Who is Stuart Dybek?

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:54:42 -0000

Manny, although it may look as if you and I are the only Stuart Dybek fans, he did win those awards. And perhaps just in time.

Re: I Want to Wrap My Self-Esteem in a Package of Improbable Preservation! Rah Rah Rah!

Kathleen Maher — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 18:24:39 -0000

Oh my, indeed! Appalling and despicable and to my mind dangerous to the poor women on so very many levels. And no men? Men were cheerleaders, too. $50,000? That won't cover the psych bills let alone those for physical ailments. And even if it did, "all the kings horses and all the kings men" could never undo the damage done.
Is the show assuming most viewers won't find the idea of a middle-aged person trying to look like a teen-ager pathetic?
Or, is it one of those shows where the viewer is expected to laugh at the benighted?

Re: Reign Over Me: Not Quite

Kathleen Maher — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:20:49 -0000

Is the constitutional Pursuit of Happiness still recognized? I'm not being coy here, I'm honestly not sure. Freedom of Religion is certainly nothing like the ideal from history lessons. But there again, I probably misunderstood: For years I imagined the phrase was: Freedom from Religion.
But then, in the movies, anyway, if Liv Tyler's your therapist, perhaps any- and everything really is still possible.

Re: Deborah Kerr

Kathleen Maher — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:33:42 -0000

While unfamiliar with her, I have the impression her movie career inspired a generation of mothers to name their daughters "Deborah;" much more than, say, "Ingrid," "Greer," or even "Marlene/Marlena."

Re: Dirty Streams and Broken Towns: Richard Russo’s Upstate Social Order

Kathleen Maher — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 23:37:21 -0000

I've noticed this too many times, Tom, not to come out with it: of all the book reviewers I read, which I think exceeds the norm, you offer the best quotes. You provide such beautiful quotes that unless I wait several months before reading a novel you've recommended I can't read it straight. I read for the quote.

Re: The Late, Great Mitch Hedberg

Kathleen Maher — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 16:51:45 -0000

Manny and I both loved watching this guy, but he laughed harder and louder. That doesn't happen often, so wait. He's going to come to think up something great. The idea this guy "Lost to drugs and alcohol and stage fright" really hit home the idea that comedy comes from real hurt.
Sometimes it's hard for me to get past that. A nervous person myself, I cringe in empathy at anxious comedians. Still, that turkey joke made me forget the pain, and even his too-close-to-home mantra. The one I use--not on stage; I'd never go there--but just silently in rooms with other people: "See if you can pass for likable."

Re: Ken Russell’s The Devils and Some Thoughts on the Dinosaur Days of Home Video

Kathleen Maher — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 21:13:11 -0000

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.

Re: My Kid Could Paint That, or What is a Painter?

Kathleen Maher — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:49:58 -0000

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?

Re: Your Brain on Music

Kathleen Maher — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:04:54 -0000

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.

Re: Your Brain on Music

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:23:15 -0000

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.

Re: Your Brain on Music

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:37:09 -0000

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.

Re: A Loss in the Family

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:20:57 -0000

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.

Re: Your Brain on Music

Kathleen Maher — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:03:06 -0000

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.

Re: Your Brain on Music

Kathleen Maher — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:47:57 -0000

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.

Re: Melt The Guns

Kathleen Maher — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:06:02 -0000

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.

Re: The Grammy Awards: Yours and Mine

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:16:09 -0000

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.

Re: Kill All the Lawyers? No, Kill the Fiction Writers

Kathleen Maher — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:44:30 -0000

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.

Re: In the New Old-Fashioned Way

Kathleen Maher — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 12:14:19 -0000

Hear, hear! Too cool!

Re: Finding Iris Chang

Kathleen Maher — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 13:31:08 -0000

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.

Re: In the Bleak MidPinter

Kathleen Maher — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 18:46:46 -0000

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

Re: What Is The Question?

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:39:28 -0000

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..."

Re: R.I.P. The Wall Street Journal

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:47:18 -0000

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.

Re: My One Oscar Tidbit: We Saw the Horses in Realm & Conquest, Too

Kathleen Maher — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:39:10 -0000

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.

Re: Payday

Kathleen Maher — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 15:43:10 -0000

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

Re: The Desecration of Alistair Cooke

Kathleen Maher — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:21:33 -0000

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

Re: An American Face

Kathleen Maher — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:57:53 -0000

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."

Re: Comic Suicide: Chekov’s “The Seagull”

Kathleen Maher — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:22:42 -0000

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!"

Re: Dibs!

Kathleen Maher — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:11:50 -0000

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.

Re: Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes

Kathleen Maher — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:51:16 -0000

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.

Re: Darling, If You Want Me To See, See Only You…

Kathleen Maher — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:20:48 -0000

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.

Re: Coming soon to an artsy-fartsy blog near you

Kathleen Maher — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:19:07 -0000

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?