Spotted this morning across the street from my place here in Seattle. I hear the BMI bangers are tagging all the dumpsters south of Pike Street. Looks like a war is coming…
Okay, I started making a list for friends called 13 great movies that you probably never heard of. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
1. Leolo (Canadian) Young French-Canadian kid named Leo believes his mother was impregnated by a Scilian tomato which is why he only answers to Leolo. And he’s the sanest member of his family. The filmmaker Jean-Claude Luzon died at 43 with his girlfriend when the Cessna he was piloting crashed but he lived long enough to tell Norman Jewison to go fuck himself when offered the chance to direct a Gene Hackman thriller and to tell Jamie Lee Curtis, a judge at Cannes, that he wanted to chew her up like a piece of liver.
2. Lovers of the Arctic Circle (Spanish) Directed by Julio Medem. Otto and Ana fall in love as children, become accidential brother and sister, become lovers, fall apart, and never quite find each other again, despite heroic efforts to that end. I’ve watched it six times and it breaks my heart every time.
3. Off the Map (American) Inept IRS man tracks down deliquent family in desert, falls in love with wife (who is standing naked in the garden) at first site, comes down with a fever, bonds with depressed husband, takes up painting and becomes famous at it although he doesn’t really care. Told from the perspective of the young daughter of the family.
4. Last Life in the Universe (Thai) Directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang. Suicidal Japanese librarian on the run from Yakuza moves in with Thai prostitute because there are two dead guys in his apartment.
5. Morvern Caller (Scottish) Lynne Ramsey’s second film (the first was the equally extraordinary Ratcatcher) stars the incredible Samantha Morton as a grocery store clerk who wakes up on Christmas morning to find that her boyfriend has killed himself in the kitchen, leaving behind the manuscript of a novel and the addresses of some publishers. She changes his name to hers and sends it in and then heads off to Spain with her girlfriend for a holiday.
6. Barbarian Invasions (Canadian) Directed by Denys Arcand. A fairy tale about dying not simply with diginity but with joie de vive.
Who has something to add to the list?
Michael Rose, composer and pianist who’s normally found teaching at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, has been on a Fulbright-sponsored stay at the Kerala Kalamandalam, a performing-arts school in south India. The nice folks over at the music & audio review site La Folia are hosting Michael’s report on the highs and lows of his adventure. Not least among the lows is his current opinion of the whole Fulbright biz… The link will take you to part one of his — both entertaining and cautionary — adventure, with links there to parts two and three.
The moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived. I refer, of course, to Robert Fripp’s 4-second start-up theme for the Windows Vista operating system. Soon to be the most played musical signature of all time.
On the Window Vista blog, Jim Allchin writes that the new intro is “made of dual ascending ‘glassy’ (Edit note: as in Philip Glassy) melodies played on top of a gentle fading Fripp ‘AERO’ Soundscape.”
Win-dows Vis-ta…(Click on play under the photo)
Anthony Tommasini has a eulogy today for the much-loved and soon to be gone forever classical music department at Tower Records at Lincoln Center. It was probably the last place in the universe where a perfect stranger would come up to you as you were reading the back of a CD and say “I happened to catch the Sawallisch performance when it was recorded in Vienna. It’s much better.” Sometimes, that person was Sawallisch.
Strange story here about a Texas grandmother who was convicted in New York yesterday of purloining some Glenn Gould memorabilia about 20 years ago and was caught after selling them last year. My favorite part of the story is the bit about her lawyer, a fellow Texan, thought he would score points with a New York jury by suggesting that her cover story about how the papers were given to her by a now dead curator was true because the guy was gay and, thus, untrustworthy. There really are two Americas.
Yet another music social networking site.
From the entry on “Musical bow” (p. 351) in Sybil Marcuse, Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975).
“See also: adingili, adungu, aeolian bow, andobu, arpa-che, bagili, bajang kerek, balu, bandingba, barikendikendi, bawa, bazombe, bendukudu, benta, bentwa, berimbao de barriga, beta, bikefe, bobre, bogonga, bombo, bucumbumba, bumba-um, bum-bum, burum-bumba, busoi, caramba, carimba, chizambi, chunga, cora, darkun, dende, didilavy, dingba, dongeldongel, dumba, egoboli, ekitulenge, elem, elingingile, enanga, fengcheng, gabus, gamakha’s, ganza, gedo, goaramba, gora, goukha’s, gourd bow, gualambo, gubo, gubuolukhulu, gulutindi, gunga, guru, gwale, gwaningba, hade, h’onoroate, hunga, hungo, ibigumbiri, igongs, ikoka, imvingo, inkinge, inkohlisa, ipiano, isankuni, isiqwemqwemana, isitntola, itikili. itumbolongonda, jejilava, jul, kabarome, kakulumbumba, kaligo, kalirangwe, kalove, kalumba, kambaua, kambili, kandiri-kandiri, kandiroe, kan’gan, kanutitsunanikoya, kashane, katungu, kedondolo, kha’s, kidrigo, kijonga, kilibongo, kilingbindiri, kilingilam kinanga, kitingbi, kitingi, koali, kodili, koh’lo, kongo, konko, kpwokolo, kudungba, kumbili, kimguleme, kinkulkawe, kupu, kwadi, kwendibe, lalango, lekope, lengope, lesiba, ligubu, lingongo, lipombo, lontana, lugube …”