Points of interest
January 7th, 2010
- If you spend all day on your hands and knees with no one to talk to then a good podcast can really perk you up. In particularly dire situations an amusing man may even save your life. Paul Foot has amused me greatly of late since his Resonance FM show has been made available in podcast form. His mode of address is charming, like he’s being constantly distracted by his own head until a gush of comedy concept pours fourth. He look a bit like a Roxy era Brian Eno too! (gl)
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Not pranksters. Serious men
After watching the Coen’s latest film A Serious Man, I found myself dwelling upon the fact that many, many film critics simply aren’t up to doing their job. Far from being the architects of empty cathedrals of meaning – a description of their work that is heavily implied if not outright stated in far too many positive and negative reviews – the Coen’s movies are and perhaps always have been very concerned with tackling deep and important issues. The fact that there are paid critics out there who don’t understand that A Serious Man, amongst other worthwhile things, poses difficult questions, troubles me immensely, but thankfully notable pundit Matt Zoller Seitz isn’t amongst them. Even better, he’s written an essay (one of ten on the best film makers of the decade) that attempts to undermine the popular and specious view outlined above. Personally I don’t think his analysis goes deep enough in that he seems to miss the point that much of the Coen’s work is explicitly philosophical – I doubt that anyone who knows anything about the studies of epistemology and intentionality would fail to see that A Serious Man has Serious things to say on those subjects. (z)
- Sesame Street + Phillip Glass + the geometry of circles = wonderful (z)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch-R1aIM-C0&feature=related]
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