05w21:2 Star Wars Posted May 24th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | episode 2005 week 21 number 2 ——————————————————————— Star Wars | Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars “Whereas Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, another science fiction franchise that has enjoyed long-lasting popularity in American popular culture, takes a rational and progressive approach to storytelling, Star Wars has a strong mythic quality. Unlike the heroes of earlier space-set sci-fi film and TV series such as ‘Star Trek’, the heroes of ‘Star Wars’ are not militaristic types but romantic individualists. College literature professors have remarked that the Star Wars saga, with its struggle between good and evil, democracy and empire, can be considered a national epic for the United States. The film has many visual and narrative similarities to John Ford’s ‘The Searchers’ that also provides a clue to the relationship between Leia and Luke. The strong human appeal of the Star Wars story probably accounts for its enduring popularity; it has also been postulated that this popularity is based on nostalgia. Many Star Wars fans first saw the films as children, and the revolutionary (for the time) special effects and simple, Manichean story made a profound impact. The Star Wars films show considerable similarity to Asian Wuxia ‘Kung Fu’ films, as well as Roman mythology. Lucas has stated that his intention was to create in Star Wars a modern mythology, based on the studies of his friend and mentor Joseph Campbell.” Space Case: a review of Ep. III | Anthony Lane http://www.newyorker.com/printables/critics/050523crci_cinema “‘Revenge of the Sith’ is a zoo of rampant storyboards. Why show a pond when C.G.I. can deliver a lake that gleams to the far horizon? Why set a paltry house on fire when you can stage your final showdown on an entire planet that streams with ruddy, gulping lava? Whether the director is aware of John Martin, the Victorian painter who specialized in the cataclysmic, I cannot say, but he has certainly inherited that grand perversity, mobilized it in every frame of the film, and thus produced what I take to be unique: an art of flawless and irredeemable vulgarity. All movies bear a tint of it, in varying degrees, but it takes a vulgarian genius such as Lucas to create a landscape in which actions can carry vast importance but no discernible meaning, in which style is strangled at birth by design, and in which the intimate and the ironic, not the Sith, are the principal foes to be suppressed. It is a vision at once gargantuan and murderously limited, and the profits that await it are unfit for contemplation” Is new ‘Star Wars’ an anti-Bush diatribe? | CBC http://tinyurl.com/76hn3 “At a press conference, Lucas said the film does mirror history, but he did not set out to comment on U.S. foreign policy under Bush. ‘As you go through history, I didn’t think it was going to get quite this close. So it’s just one of those recurring things,’ he said. ‘I hope this doesn’t come true in our country. Maybe the film will waken people to the situation,’ Lucas added jokingly. Lucas also said he penned the film long before the U.S. went to war against Iraq. ‘When I wrote it, Iraq didn’t exist,’ the filmmaker said with a laugh. ‘We were just funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction. We didn’t think of him as an enemy at that time.’ He added that the ‘parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we’re doing in Iraq now are unbelievable.’ As research for writing the prequel trilogy, Lucas studied how democracies become dictatorships with the consent of the electorate. ‘You sort of see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way, with the same kinds of issues, and threats from the outside, needing more control. A democratic body, a senate, not being able to function properly because everybody’s squabbling, there’s corruption.’ Although his films are not overtly political, Lucas has included some allusions to U.S. politics in previous episodes of Star Wars. In The Phantom Menace he named characters after politicians: Nute Gunray, for instance, was named for Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House. “ Save the Republic! | Moveonpac.org http://tinyurl.com/br4m8 “This week, Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith opens in theaters nation-wide. And weirdly enough, the plot of what will undoubtedly be one of the biggest films in movie history revolves around a scheming senator who, seduced by visions of absolute power, transforms a democratic republic into an empire. The movie?s opening buzz and its parallel theme to our current judicial fight present a great opportunity to educate the public ? and have some fun. So we?ve put together a flyer that draws on themes from the Revenge of the Sith story to explain the very real threat to democracy posed by the nuclear option.”Note: with a video file Darth Vader’s Family Values | John Tierney http://tinyurl.com/8d4b4 “The new installment of ‘Star Wars’ has set off the usual dreary red-blue squabble, with liberals using the film to attack Republicans, and some conservatives calling for a boycott. But – and I know this is hard to believe for a movie with characters named General Grievous and Count Dooku – there’s actually a serious bipartisan lesson about the dark side of politics. […]He says he could never betray the Jedi because they’re his family, but then the chancellor puts the family question in perspective: ‘Learn to know the dark side of the Force, Anakin, and you will be able to save your wife from certain death.’ Anakin promptly recognizes the limits of altruism, just as Adam Smith did in the 18th century.” —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 24 May 2005 @ 12:00 PM
05w10:2 Michael Ignatieff Posted March 8th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 10 number 2 (Michael Ignatieff) ——————————————————————— Speech to the Liberal Convention | Michael Ignatieff http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/lectures/ignatieff/ “I put national unity at the centre of our project as a party and as a people. But it matters not just to us. It matters to the world. This is something I see from afar. From afar, we’re a very special and precious experiment. We’re an experiment as to whether a multicultural, multilingual society can survive and prosper. If we can’t do it, ladies and gentlemen, no one else can. And the future of all multiethnic multicultural societies will be grim indeed. That’s why there’s a global stake in us getting this story right. We are a ray of light in a gloomy world, a ray of hope in a world which is in fact ravaged by intolerance and by hatred. Let’s get it right. The world does look to us, the world does ask us, ‘get it right, show us how’. Communities of difference, communities of different languages can live together, can forge a unity together. You’re doing it in this hall tonight but never forget that we truly are a light unto the nations, and we must never forget that in the daily life of our politics. Now, there are countries to the south of us that believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And these countries that shall remain nameless want to export freedom and democracy to the world. And because we’re Canadians, we’re skeptics. We don’t like rhetoric that’s that high flung. We got some doubts about the project. We have doubts about the American dream. Ok. But let’s remember that we have a dream. Because we are the people of peace, order, and good government.” transcript of the audio Smart Guy, Eh? | John Geddes http://tinyurl.com/6vxfn “Michael Ignatieff is used to being admired in his native Canada, not to mention envied. His genre-leaping successes as a writer and broadcaster — reporting from hot spots in books and documentaries, defining the legacy of a major 20th-century political theorist in his biography of Isaiah Berlin, and even making the Booker Prize short list for his novel Scar Tissue — rank him among the most influential Canadian thinkers. And it doesn’t hurt that, at 56, the former BBC talk-show host retains his made-for-TV looks and effortless eloquence. But these days Ignatieff is coming in for as much criticism as adulation on forays back to Canada from his day job as a human-rights professor at Harvard University. The issue that has driven a wedge between him and many of his Canadian fans: Ignatieff was arguably the most prominent liberal supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.” Mcleans Magazine profile, June 2003 —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 08 March 2005 @ 12:22 AM
04w09:1 The Gates Roundup Posted February 28th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 9 number 1 (The Gates roundup) ——————————————————————— The closer you got, the worse it looked | Sarah Milroy http://tinyurl.com/5j6vm “By any estimation, as an intervention into public space, The Gates must be measured a triumph, unleashing a frolicsome joie de vivre in the direst depths of winter — no mean feat. The vibe even swept over the 49th parallel to engulf our own northern breed of pale, thin-lipped hibernators, many of whom migrated south en masse to check out the great event. […]What has been revealed in New York over the past few weeks is that Christo and Jean-Claude are brilliant strategists, passionate advocates for freedom of expression, with an unparalleled ability to mobilize the public behind an idea. But they are not strictly speaking sculptors, in the traditional sense of being form makers. Their wrapping and draping projects have been great because they adhere to, and enhance, three-dimensional forms that exist already. The artists then lay claim to these forms, designating them as things of beauty, drawing our attention to their historical or topographical resonances, and setting them alight with shimmering fabrics as a way of declaring their transcendence, and the transcendence of the human imagination. These works are works of genius. The Gates, alas, was something rather less.” With $3.50 and a Dream, the ‘Anti-Christo’ Is Born | Sarah Boxer http://tinyurl.com/4jcnp “You’ve seen Christo’s ‘Gates’ in Central Park. But what about Hargo’s ‘Gates’ in Somerville, Mass.? Sure, Hargo is unabashedly riding on the coattails of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. But it did take him some time to make his gates: 0.002 years, he estimates. That’s a good chunk of a day. You may as well take a look: not-rocket-science.com/gates.htm” Gated | Peter Schjeldahl http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?talk/050228ta_talk_schjeldahl “Of course, ‘The Gates’ is art, because what else would it be? Art used to mean paintings and statues. Now it means practically anything human-made that is unclassifiable otherwise. This loss of a commonsense definition is a big art-critical problem, but not in Central Park, not this week. What the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been doing for three and a half decades is self-evident. They propose a grandiose, entirely pointless alteration of a public place, then advance their plan in the face of a predictable public and bureaucratic resistance, which gradually comes to seem mean-spirited and foolish for want of a reasonable argument against them. They build a constituency of supporters, including collectors who help finance the project by buying Christo’s drawings and collages of it. What then occurs is like an annual festival – Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, a high-school prom – without the parts about its being annual or a festival. It feels vaguely religious. The zealous installers and minders, identifiable on site by their uniforms and chatty pride, are like acolytes. As with any ritual – though ‘The Gates’ can’t be a ritual, because it is performed just once – how people behave during the installation is what it is for and about. Then it’s gone, before it has a chance to become boring or, for that matter, interesting. “ The Gates on The Daily Show | The Daily Show http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/commentary/2005/02/gates-on-daily-show.html “Simply put, The Gates is a triumph Jon, an artistic milestone that may finally put New York on the cultural map. I don’t want to get ahead of myself here Jon, but I think this may do for the Big Apple what The West Wing has done for Washington DC, or what the band Asia did for that continent.” Conceptual Advertising | Timothy Comeau http://blogto.com/arts/2005/02/conceptual_advertising/ “In yesterday’s Globe and Mail [Simon Houpt wrote] ‘The most enlightening comment I’ve heard so far about The Gates came from a man who had no idea what it was,’ writes Houpt, ‘I don’t mean he couldn’t parse the meanings of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 7,5000 five-metre high doorframes hung with fabric around Central Park, or that he didn’t know whether to call it conceptual art or environmental art or an installation. No, this guy didn’t even know it was art. […] He’d somehow missed all the pre-event press coverage. So as he gazed northward at the thousands of orange shower curtains flapping in the wind, he turned and asked me, ‘Are they advertising that fabric? ‘Christo and Jeanne-Claude call their piece ‘interventions’ because they intrude, or impose themselves and their works, on public spaces. This apparently freaks us out. We’re used to one very specific sort of intervention: commercial ones, otherwise known as advertisements. Indeed, many visitors to Central Park have quipped that it’s a shame the artists don’t accept sponsorships, since the nylon orange is a perfect match for the corporate colours of Home Depot’. ” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Monday 28 February 2005 @ 2:54 PM
05w08:2 Award This Posted February 21st, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 8 number 2 (award this) But first, the news:Blogto.com is a new website dedicated to the city of Toronto and being better than the Torontoist (so cute it makes Antonia Zerbisias want to hurl), and for which I’m writing for. Last week I posted about the Untitled Art Awards, and last night I found the article on literary prizes on the This Magazine blog, and hence, I saw a theme. So, ‘On Awards’ via the blogosphere and shameless self-promotion. As well, Jennifer McMackon is running a new series of submitted questionnaires. I sent mine in on the weekend, which you can check out here, the questions running as previous posts to that entry. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Fiction as a winner-take-all market | Andrew Potter http://blog.thismagazine.ca/archives/2005/02/fiction_as_a_wi.html “I’d like to see someone start a prize that comes with zero dollars attached. Not even a medal or a trophy. You just get some cheapo certificate, like you got in grade 6 for having perfect attendance or something. The trick would be to make it such a prestigious prize, that the very notion that mere money would accompany it would be offensive.” The Untitled Art Awards | Timothy Comeau http://tinyurl.com/4kh6k “Art awards like this are merely props to support a status quo, an attempt to create a monolithic cultural identity, which is unwise, especially in a city as diverse as Toronto. It’s also unwise since monolithic cultural identities are games that Empires play, empires like USA and it’s Greek tutors, the Brits. It doesn’t fit Canada at all, and seems like another example of the Canadian streak of insecure provincialism.” —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Monday 21 February 2005 @ 3:07 PM
05w08:1 Paris Hilton Antoinette Posted February 21st, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 8 number 1 (Paris Hilton Antoinette) You may have heard about this Paris Hilton thing … about her cellphone getting hacked over the weekend, and all the details (including celebrity phone numbers, her email, and photos) have been posted on the web….the invasion of privacy thing might have some weight if they weren’t always trying to sell us stuff and convince they’re so godamn special. Besides, she’s wicked (see reading #2). So, it’s with pleasure that I do my part to bring the world this magic link. – TimothyPS: Who knows how long it will be up, so if it’s gone by the time you check it, apologies. ——————————————————————— Somebody got hizacked | Anonymous http://www.sunroad.pe.kr/paris/ We’ll never have Paris again | Lloyd Grove http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/264804p-226754c.html “The arc of Paris’ ‘career’ – from rich, witless party girl to rich, witless party girl with a hit television show – is an insult to the American sense of fairness: the idea that you get ahead by working hard, playing by the rules and acquiring a skill of some sort. Paris has bothered with none of the above, and yet society continues to reward her with money and fame. The British actor Stephen Fry put it best when he observed recently to Lowdown that being Paris ‘takes a startling vanity, an enormous lack of selfknowledge and a huge amount of greed and desire.’ What is it about this otherwise unremarkable 23-year-old that can provoke such seething outrage? Let me count the ways….” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Monday 21 February 2005 @ 1:33 AM
05w07:1 Nostalgia Posted February 15th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 7 number 1 (Nostalgia) By the way, I have 50 Gmail invites to give away incase anyone’s interested – Timothy ——————————————————————— Stuck still | John Elledge http://www.ak13.com/article.php?id=278 “Instead, it has all been endless nostalgia, cultural flashbacks since. Retro fads, I love 1960s, I love 1970s, I love 1980s, music designed by committee rather than those with something to say, reality TV that involves no creativity almost by definition, britpop, boybands, girlbands, remixes, remakes, New Labour, New Democrats, nu-metal ? none of which had much new about them ? and a regression to 1950s paranoia and values in the US. No new tunes, just variations on a theme. This is not the ranting of a middle-aged guy complaining that the great days are behind us […] I was born in 1980. I have spent ten years waiting for my generation’s cultural zeitgeist ? not, admittedly, doing much in the way of creating it myself ? but found nothing but commercialised music and a hundred splintered interest groups with nothing to bind them but the use of the Internet. It says something that one of what passed for the fads of 2004 was for ‘eclectic’ DJs ? they created nothing new, they merely rearranged the old in a more interesting way. “ We Hate the 80’s | Jeff Leeds http://tinyurl.com/6zr55 “‘The 80’s nostalgia was starting to roll in, and I was like, ‘Wait a minute! Did you people actually listen to the same decade I did? You had eight years of Reagan. There was cocaine everywhere. There were yuppies. We were oppressed by this whole notion of baby boomers trying to cash out.’ At past parties, attended by people wearing parachute pants and Members Only jackets, local bands performed their most hated 80’s memories on Casio keyboards, which they promptly demolished at the end of their set. ‘One year,’ he recalled, ‘a performer called Evil Pappy Twin played Van Halen covers on a classical Renaissance lute.’ In any case, the clock is running out. Whether you love it or hate it, the second coming of the 80’s has already lasted almost as long as the original decade – unheard of in the ever-quickening cycles of cultural nostalgia. Mr. Hirschorn of VH1 admits that ‘the early 80’s are sort of getting long in the tooth.’ Besides which, the 90’s – remember them? – are ready for their retouched close-up. “ Dead Disco | Metric http://www.lyricsdomain.com/13/metric/dead_disco.html “Dead disco / Dead funk / Dead rock and roll / Remodel / Everything has been done / La la la la la la la la la la ” —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 15 February 2005 @ 10:51 PM
05w06:1 The Good Reader in the White House Posted February 8th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments ood Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 6 number 1 (the good reader in the White House) Of George W. Bush, we may often think of this quote of Mark Twain: “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” And yet, apparently Bush does read. Although a few years ago he told reporters that his favorite book was a children’s story, and while he is now historically associated with My Pet Goat an enthralling tale which he couldn’t drag himself away from that Tuesday morning, lately he’s found new books other than the Bible to proselytize about. – Timothy ——————————————————————— The odd couple | The Economist http://www.economist.com/printedition/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=3623386 “Yet for the past few months this paragon of good ol’ boy common sense has been infatuated with a book about an abstract noun by a Jewish intellectual. Mr Bush recommends Natan Sharansky’s ‘The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror’ (Public Affairs) to almost everyone he meets (including Condoleezza Rice, who mentioned the book during her opening remarks at her Senate confirmation hearing). Nine days after winning re-election he spent over an hour discussing the book in the White House with Mr Sharansky himself. The meeting must have sounded extraordinary, given Mr Sharansky’s thick Russian accent and Mr Bush’s Texan drawl. But by all accounts they got on famously. “ White House Letter: Why is Bush reading Tom Wolfe? Don’t ask | Elisabeth Bumiller http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/02/06/news/letter.html “What the official list omits in Tom Wolfe’s racy new beer-and-sex soaked novel, ‘I am Charlotte Simmons’. The president, a Wolfe fan, has not only read the book but is enthusiastically recommending it to friends.” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 08 February 2005 @ 3:00 PM
05w04:2 Freaky Fish Posted January 30th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 4 number 2 (freaky fish) ——————————————————————— Fish Off the Menu After Tsunami Fears | Jocelyn Gecker http://tinyurl.com/5l6zj “Top hotels in several Asian capitals have stopped ordering sea bass and sole from waters off their tsunami-ravaged coastlines to ease diners’ concerns about fish feasting on corpses. Some have turned to suppliers in Australia, while others are buying fish from Indonesian islands off the Pacific Ocean that were untouched by disaster ? dealing another blow to fishermen whose livelihoods were shattered by the giant waves.” Fish Discovered With Human Face Pattern | Local6.com http://www.local6.com/news/4112928/detail.html “A fish that has a pattern resembling a human face on its body was found in a pond in Chongju, South Korea, according to a Local 6 News report.” Reno man taken to hospital after self-castration procedure | Reno-Gazette-Journal http://tinyurl.com/6sex9 “A 50-year-old Reno man told authorities he castrated himself to lower his libido and learned of the procedure on the Internet, police said.” —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Sunday 30 January 2005 @ 2:45 PM
05w02:1 Roadsworth Posted January 12th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 2 number 1 (Roadsworth) Those of you in Montreal will be familiar with Roadsworth, the stencil artist who has made a name for himself by decorating the streets and getting arrested at the end of November. If you’re a regular reader of the Zeke’s Gallery blog, you’ll also be familiar with the story, as Chris Hand has been coordinating the effort of publicizing his predicament. This issue of Goodreads reproduces an article on the subject that was published last week in the Globe and Mail, and links to one of the Chris’ entries where he offers a 6MB mp3 file of an interview he did on a Montreal radio station. – Timothy ——————————————————————— When the stencil his the road | Reid Cooper http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/reidcooper/ “The seriousness of the charges and the potential punishment, however, has to be seen in light of the overwhelming support for Roadsworth’s images. Chris Hand, the director of Zeke’s Gallery on the Plateau, who is organizing public support for Gibson through his webpage, says he was ‘surprised about how many people thought the art had been done by the city.’ Bernard Lamarche, writer for Montreal’s Le Devoir, says ‘It is absolutely shocking that there is a criminal attitude against his art. They should hire him to do more of this around the city to acknowledge their supposed willingness to be a cultural centre.’ Jonathan Achtman, a resident of the Plateau says the art ‘makes the streets more pleasant. By arresting him instead of aligning themselves with him, the city has squandered an opportunity to show itself as the progressive city that I like to think I live in.’ Even the political adviser to the Mayor of the Plateau Mont-Royal borough, Richard Coté says, ‘Roadsworth’s work makes people smile.'” More Free Roadsworth | Chris Hand http://zekesgallery.blogspot.com/2004/12/more-free-roadsworth.html within the text there is the link to the audio file Roadsworth Gallery | Mike Patten and Zeke’s Gallery http://mikepatten.ca/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=roadsworth photo gallery —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Wednesday 12 January 2005 @ 10:23 PM
05w01:3 Tsunami Articles Posted January 4th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments ood Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 1 number 3 (2 tsunami articles) ——————————————————————— Nature’s way | Simon Winchester http://www.guardian.co.uk/tsunami/story/0,15671,1382849,00.html?gusrc=rss “The eruption of the Indonesian island of Krakatoa in 1883 not only caused a catastrophic tsunami that killed tens of thousands, it also helped to spark a revolution. Twenty-three years later, a huge earthquake destroyed San Francisco, with equally far-reaching consequences. Simon Winchester on how natural disasters can change the world.” Quake Angel | Duncan Larcombe http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/37579.htm “‘I think it’s phenomenal that Tilly’s parents and the others on the beach are alive because she studied hard at school,’ said Craig Smith, the American manager of the JW Marriott Hotel where Tilly’s family was staying.” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 04 January 2005 @ 7:30 PM
