Here's what I watched last night.

Man you do read alot.Brendan wrote:Picked up the Herzog-Kinski movie pack recently. Cobra Verde is next, then second season of The Shield.
I'm almost through Hans Urs von Balthasar's 7 volume The Glory of the Lord and R.T. France's commentary on Mark. Still have a stack of things to read and I'm already eyeing Guthrie's history of Greek philosophy.
*****Corlyss_D wrote:You wouldn't know it from his modest demeanor, but Ralph is a celeb.Gary wrote:Ralph wrote:I briefed SecDef MacNamara way back when...
*****Corlyss_D wrote:Gary may have missed your youthful adventures as a plaintiff against the SecDef. I was wondering sometime ago if you were a lawyer then, or did you go to law school after you got out of the Army.Ralph wrote:Not these days, no. But there was a time...
EUROPE CENTRAL
By William T. Vollmann.
811 pp. Viking. $39.95.
William T. Vollmann's 12th book of fiction, ''Europe Central'' -- almost a novel in stories -- is his most welcoming work, possibly his best book. Vollmann has often been an off-putting writer, sometimes intentionally so. There is the seamy (and admittedly autobiographical) subject matter -- living with prostitutes, using drugs -- of too many early works, and also of his novel ''The Royal Family'' (2000). There is the remote North American history of the four published novels in his ''Seven Dreams'' series. And, of course, there is his vaunting ambition: since 1987 Vollmann has released 14 books, 20 if one counts as separate works the seven volumes of ''Rising Up and Rising Down'' (2003), his valiant attempt to comprehend worldwide violence.
In ''Europe Central,'' the history he is dealing with is more familiar and more dramatic; most of the stories are set in Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II. The major recurring characters here are actual influential people -- artists like the German painter K* the Kollwitz, the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich and the Russian filmmaker Roman Karmen; military men like the Russian general A. A. Vlasov and the German field marshal Friedrich Paulus; and Hitler and Stalin, whom Vollmann calls ''the sleepwalker'' and ''the realist.'' Vollmann has previously entered his fictions as a poorly disguised character or an ironic editorializer, but here he restricts his appearances to some 50 pages of notes on biographical sources and his fictionalizing of them.
His writer's ambition remains intact. ''Europe Central'' gives us 37 stories, five of them more than 50 pages long, to represent Central European fanaticism and to recover little-known acts of conscientious resistance to Nazi and Communist totalitarianism. What sets ''Europe Central'' apart from Vollmann's other large-scale historical productions is its strong narrative lines. The pieces are dated and arranged chronologically to give the book a plot that arcs from prewar political machinations to Germany's surge east to Russia's counteroffensive, and that ends with cold war politics in divided Berlin.
Stories about Shostakovich and his intimates or rivals -- his lover Elena Konstantinovskaya; her husband, Roman Karmen; the poet Anna Akhmatova -- recur often enough to make the collection a suspenseful near novel about the composer and his times. Shostakovich is so fascinating -- in his musical ideas, his often failed defenses against Stalinist demands, his nearly suicidal wit and his bumbling speech -- that you may be tempted to skip the intervening stories to see how his treacherous life turns out. Vollmann's pell-mell telling of Shostakovich's last years -- 1943 to 1975 -- in the almost 110-page story called ''Opus 110'' is a tour de force. As the composer jams the horrible sounds of his life into his summary opus, Vollmann compacts the themes and motifs of his book into its emotional climax.
In his notes, Vollmann identifies Shostakovich as one of his two heroes in ''Europe Central.'' Like Vollmann, Shostakovich lived dangerously, wrote quickly and voluminously, rejected mainstream art and alienated many listeners. Soviet authorities censured Shostakovich for ''formalism,'' not a quality one associates with Vollmann's sprawling works. But ''Europe Central'' is carefully formed and tightly controlled. In the prologue, ''Steel in Motion,'' Vollmann introduces a telephone exchange -- ''Europe Central'' -- that appears throughout the collection, connecting the overheard voices of numerous narrators and providing a unifying metaphor of central authority that sacrifices peripheral and marginal people.
The stories come as ''pincer movements,'' as pairs that give readers manageable units to ponder between segments of the Shostakovich ''novel.'' The pairings are almost always set in the same approximate time and usually in opposing spaces -- Germany and the Soviet Union. Often one story sketches a minor political character or articulates an ideological position, and the paired story will be longer, more personal, more subtle. (Think of Hemingway's ''In Our Time'' with its alternating World War I brief interchapters and stories.)
In ''Zoya,'' Vollmann tells in five pages how the executed Russian partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became a propaganda heroine for her statement that ''you can't hang all 190 million of us.'' Vollmann pairs Zoya with Kurt Gerstein, a German SS officer whom Vollmann identifies as the other historical hero in the collection. ''Clean Hands'' devotes 55 pages to Gerstein's desperate attempts to retard the Final Solution by interfering with shipments of Zyklon B for the gas chambers and by alerting unbelieving officials from Switzerland, Sweden and the Vatican. Failed propagandist and tortured moralist, Gerstein commits suicide when accused of genocide.+
At the very center of ''Europe Central,'' Vollmann modifies the interchapter-story pattern with matched novellas, ''Breakout'' and ''The Last Field-Marshal,'' about the Russian general Vlasov and the German field marshal Paulus. Attempting to save their defeated men from massacre, both officers ignored their dictators' orders. Vlasov encouraged his troops to break out or escape in small units on the Volkhov front meant to liberate Leningrad, and Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad; both were called traitors. Captured by the Germans, Vlasov offered to lead disaffected Russians against Stalin; captured by the Russians, he was executed. Paulus survived the war but in disgrace. Vollmann's intimate, detailed and compelling portraits provide a moral center for his book and represent its achievement as heroic historical recall.
Although Vollmann has composed and arranged this whole opera of mostly doomed souls, he speaks in his own voice only in the notes. Like an intelligence agent tapped into the telephone exchange, he records narrators both sympathetic and repugnant, authentic and propagandistic, fumbling and crazed. This ventriloquizing creates a challenging disorientation when the narrator and the facts are at odds. Kurt Gerstein's heroic story, for example, is told by a condescending hard-core Nazi. Although in wartime Central Europe political bombast often drowned out the personal voice, Vollmann finds figures like Gerstein whose actions resist ideological blat and blather.
*****Cosima__J wrote:I'm reading "Persian Fire" by Tom Holland. Against all odds, the Greeks turn back the invasion by the fiercesome army of Xerxes, King of Persia in 480 BC, thus saving the day for Western civilization.
The description of life in Sparta is absolutely fascinating. The Spartans were certainly a breed apart. Why would any group of people agree to live like that?
Cosima__J wrote:The Spartans were certainly a breed apart. Why would any group of people agree to live like that?
*****Gary wrote:Corlyss_D wrote: You wouldn't know it from his modest demeanor, but Ralph is a celeb.
And here I thought he was merely an expert on Dittersdorf.
I own that documentary -- I saw it at Seattle's Guild 45th when it first came out. At the end, dead silence in the audience -- I think half of us forgot to breathe.Gary wrote:
Here's what I watched last night.
Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" is beautifully written, very entertaining and highly informative--and now, it is lavishly illustrated as well.
Bryson is not a scientist, but rather a curious and observant writer who, several years ago, realized that he couldn't tell a quark from a quasar, or a proton from a protein. Bryson set out to cure his ignorance of things scientific, and the result was "A Short History of Nearly Everything," which was originally published in 2003.
For readers who are new to science and its history, "A Short History of Nearly Everything" contains one remarkable revelation after another. It is amazing how enormous, tiny, complex and just plain weird the universe is. Learning about "everything" is a humbling experience, and I kept thinking of Stephen Crane's blank verse: "A man said to the Universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the Universe, 'the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.'"
Just as engaging as Bryson's story of what we know is the parallel story of how we know it--from the first clever experiments to figure out how much the earth weighs to today's ongoing efforts to describe the origins of the universe itself, it becomes obvious that science is not an answer but a process, a way of learning about a world that always seems to have one more trick up its sleeve.
Whatever else may be said about the universe, Bryson explains that learning about its mysteries is a very human endeavor. The book is peppered with tales of the odd turns, like Percival Lowell, the astronomer who saw canals on Mars when in fact there are none (and whose initials figured in the naming of "Pl"uto, the ninth planet); the Askesian Society, a learned 19th century body devoted to the study of laughing gas; and the knock-down, drag-out personal battles between scientists whose genius was rivaled only by their lack of civility.
This is a superb book and a quick read despite its length. The illustrated edition makes the journey all the more enjoyable.
*****Wallingford wrote:The last month or so, I've been renting (from video emporium supreme Scarecrow Video) THE WOODY WOODPECKER SHOW--the early-60s TV edition of animation giant WALTER LANTZ's legacy, in a DVD set representing the only release of these films so far in this format.
Lantz's posthumous reputation has really suffered since his death in '94 (at the age of 94).....pretty unfortunate, as his was a very distinct brand of comedy entertainment.
Lantz's wife Grace Stafford--who did Woody's voice--passed away from cancer a year-and-a-half before her spouse died.[/url]
EXACTLY--Woody mercilessly heckled his adversaries, often with no motivation whatsoever. You never felt he EARNED his victories as Bugs did.Ralph wrote:
I liked Woody a lot (still do) but Bugs is better.
Madame wrote:I own that documentary -- I saw it at Seattle's Guild 45th when it first came out. At the end, dead silence in the audience -- I think half of us forgot to breathe.Gary wrote:
Here's what I watched last night.
![]()
Brilliant production and character study by Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, 1988), who interviewed McNamara from off-camera. I'll never forget it.
Book Description
Available for the first time in one volume is the basic vision of Philo, the greatest Jewish mystic, philosopher, and theologian of the Greco-Roman period. This book lets Philo speak in his own words. Since the corpus of his writings is immense and his style diffuse, no one treatise or small group of treatises exhibits his full perspective on any given spiritual theme; thus and anthology was necessary.
The volume is edited by David Winston, Professor of Hellenistic and Judaic Studies and Director of the center for Judaic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. In his Introduction he summarizes the latest findings of Philonic scholarship and offers a new and more balanced appreciation of Philo's thought than was available before, based on a new full-scale study of Philo's religious philosophy which he is now in the process of preparing. In this volume Philo's The Contemplative Life and The Giants are translated in full.
Selections from the other treatises are presented under the following themes: Allegorical Method; Creation, Time and Eternity; Divine Transcendence; The Mystic's Way to God; The Intermediary World; Logos, Ideas, Powers, and Daemons; The Soul; Preexistence and Immortality; Theory of Knowledge; Reason and Faith; Prophetic Revelation; and others. Professor Winston says, "Philo of Alexandria stands at the apex of the cultural activity of the Jewish-Alexandrian community, his literary work climaxing a long chain of Jewish-Hellenistic writings whose aim was to establish the validity and integrity of Jewish religious thought in the face of counter claims of the intellectually powerful Greek tradition."
John Dillon in his Preface to the book says, " This excellent selection of his works will give the reader a vivid picture of the essential Philo in all his aspects."
Book Description
It is a remarkable fact that the writings of Philo, the Jew from Alexandria, were preserved because they were taken up in the Christian tradition. But the story of how this process of reception and appropriation took place has never been systematically research.
In this book the author first examines how Philo's works are related to the New Testament and the earliest Chritian writing, and then how they were used by Greek and Latin church fathers up to 400 c.e., with special attention to the contributions of Clement, Origen, Didymus, Eusebius, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, and Augstine.
Philo in Early Christian Literature is a valuable guide to the state of scholarly research on a subject that has thus far been investigated in a rather piecemeal fashion.
About the Author
David T. Runia is Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the University of Leiden, and also C. J. de Vogel Professor Extraordinarius in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Utrecht.
Publisher: Fortress Press
Publication Date: Oct 1 1993
Format: hardcover
9.063 in. x 6.375 in.
320 pages
Engrossing on many levels -- marveling that this mid-octegenarian seemed to still be firing on all cylinders, once again seeing live footage of events almost faded from my memory, feeling I was watching a one-man production, and wondering ... where is this headed?Gary wrote: I didn't see it at the theater. I found out about the film when I caught an episode of The Charlie Rose Show, in which Charlie interviewed Morris and McNamara.
I rewound the DVD during certain moments of the movie in order to catch everything McNamara said. An engrossing film indeed.
If you're like Errol Morris, and you want to make documentaries about unusual personalities, it's one thing to choose obscure subjects, people like Fred Leuchter (aka "Mr. Death") or men that excel in topiary hedge sculpture or the study of the African mole rat (two of the people interviewed in "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control"). Not many critics out there will be waiting to pounce if you don't get things just right about the likes of people like these. But it's quite another matter if you choose Robert S. McNamara, one of the last century's most towering, controversial, and - some would say - evil characters. "Fog of War" distills more than 20 hours of interviews that Morris conducted with McNamara over a span of two years, when McNamara was in his mid-80s, and the subjects - all various McNamara ventures - range from "his" World War II, through his days at Ford Motor Company, the Cuban missile crisis, and - finally and mainly - his views of the Vietnam War.
As a result, Morris now finds himself in a no man's land of critical crossfire. On the one hand, film critics - people like Steven Holden, Roger Ebert and J. Hoberman - uniformly praise this work. While political pundits of the left - people like Eric Alterman and Alexander Cockburn of "The Nation" - lacerate Morris, accusing him of being overmatched, manipulated, not doing his homework (i.e., being naïve and unprepared), and thus allowing his film to be nothing but a conduit for the formidably crafty McNamara's continuing campaign of self aggrandizement and distortions of history. Whew. I think the controversy here is based on a misconstruction of the film's purposes by the pundits. First, it is quite clear that McNamara, in full command of his fierce intellectual and interpersonal powers, is not about to be pushed around by an assertive interviewer. McNamara is gonna say what McNamara wants to say, period. To drive home this point, Morris gives us a brief epilogue in which he asks McNamara a few trenchant questions about his sense of responsibility for the Vietnam War, why he didn't speak out against the war, and so on. And McNamara won't bite. He stonewalls Morris absolutely, with comments like, "I am not going to say any more than I have." Or, "I always get into trouble when I try to answer a question like that."
More importantly, it doesn't matter very much if Morris or McNamara does not get all the facts straight. If the political pundits went to the movies more often, at least to Morris's films, they would know that his primary interest is in the character of his subjects - their integrity and beliefs and ways of explaining or rationalizing themselves and their lives: he's into people way more than into facts. "Fog of War" is not an oral history, it is the study of a person. For all that, in my estimation, Morris does get on film as close to an acceptance of responsibility for his actions in two wars as McNamara is likely ever to make, short of some dramatic, delirium-driven deathbed confession. He speaks of the likelihood that he and Curtis LeMay would have been deemed war criminals for the fire bombing of Japanese cities, had our side lost. And he speaks clearly when he says "we were wrong" in not seeing that the Vietnam War was a civil war, not a phase of some larger Cold War strategy by the USSR or China. What do the pundits want?
Nor was it Morris's purpose to use Santayana's lesson about repeating history to rail at Bush's preemptive war in Iraq. In fact Morris decided to make this film way back in 1995, after reading several books by McNamara and concluding that he was a quintessential man of the 20th Century, embodying all that was so outstandingly smart and sophisticated and ultimately destructive. The interviews wrapped sometime in 2001, the year before Iraq. As usual in Morris's films, the editing is superb, with seamless use of archival footage and special visuals created for this film. I do think Morris gratuitously flattered McNamara by organizing the film around 11 platitudes of his - many of them banal aphorisms known to most high school graduates, students of martial arts, or your grandmother (e.g., "get the data," "empathize with your enemy," "rationality will not save us," "belief and seeing are both often wrong").
Political pundits, mired in interpreting concretisms from the historical record, not only see too few films but also don't take seriously the symbolic visuals and sounds offered here. Philip Glass has created an edgy, anxious score that feels just right, just creepy enough for the macabre subjects at hand. I'm also thinking of the scenes when McNamara is recounting his pioneering (he claims) studies of auto safety. As we listen to him, Morris shows us human skulls wrapped in white linen being dropped several floors through a stairwell to smash upon the floor below, all in slow motion. The effect is chilling and speaks volumes about McNamara's famed passionless capacity to treat human carnage as a matter of statistical calculation. It is through such poetic characterization that Morris keeps the game with McNamara in balance.
*****Gary wrote:Oh, I see.![]()
Yes, I'd love to meet Brendan. He reads Homer in Greek. Now, that's impressive!
No, we moved that to Westchester. Didn't you get the email?Ralph wrote:*****Gary wrote:Oh, I see.![]()
Yes, I'd love to meet Brendan. He reads Homer in Greek. Now, that's impressive!
Perhaps you too will meet at the first CMG International Conference at Rancho Corlyss next summer.
Wall! You need to find that thread on your condition and post this there!Wallingford wrote:WELL! I spent an unexpected five hours in the clinic yesterday on my third follow-up visit since the operation. I merely lowered my head to look at the staple scars on my abdomen which the doc was checking, and passed out!
Ended up with another anemia report on my blood count and was wheeled to IV therapy where they injected a liter of saline into me, and I amused myself by discovering yet another judge-show on afternoon TV--Judge Mathis (Fox network--after watching an old Timon & Pumbaa cartoon on Disney).
Oh my! Hope you get well soon, Wallingford.Wallingford wrote:WELL! I spent an unexpected five hours in the clinic yesterday on my third follow-up visit since the operation. I merely lowered my head to look at the staple scars on my abdomen which the doc was checking, and passed out!
Ended up with another anemia report on my blood count and was wheeled to IV therapy where they injected a liter of saline into me...
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