Category Archives: Art

Angie’s Activism

Art, Celebrity, Foreign Policy, History, Hollywood

Angie’s at it again with a film that is likely to bring as much joy to moviegoers as did “A Mighty Heart”:

The film was Mariane Pearl’s attempts at self-beatification. Her husband, journalist Daniel Pearl, was beheaded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who accused Pearl of being a spy and agent of the Mossad and made him recite a humiliating confession to that effect, before lopping his head off. The jihadis released a video of Pearl’s butchering titled, “The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl.”
Mariane, upon whose memoir the film was based, did not seem to comprehended the role vintage, Islamic Jew hatred played in her husband’s “slaughtering.” At the time, she responded to the barbarism by declaring superciliously that “revenge would be easy, but it is far more valuable … to address this problem of terrorism with enough honesty to question our own responsibility as nations and as individuals for the rise of terrorism.”
So as to aggrandize themselves, Angelina and Mariane had diminished Daniel in the film. The dashing Daniel was played by the unknown Dan Futterman, whom Salon.com’s no-doubt feminist reviewer described approvingly as “grave and elfin.” That’s a good thing only if you are a garden gnome. Mariane did, however, have the mark of a member of the media: she celebrates both herself and the Islamic hajj.

That was then. Our expert on the Balkans watched the trailer of “In the Land of Blood and Honey” (people being lined up and robbed, then shot next to a waiting earthmover). Nebojsa Malic thinks “Angie has watched too much Spielberg. Bosnia was no picnic, but any comparison with the Shoah is just plain insulting to the actual victims thereof. Especially since the Bosnian Muslims (along with the Croats) were eager accomplices in the Shoah. Israel’s Ramathkal in the Yom Kippur war, Elazar, was a Bosnian Jew. He didn’t leave Bosnia because of loud music, you know? :)”

Meantime, the question of plagiarism has been raised. It’s quite possible. Those who possess power and money, but not much by way of original ideas, do often rip off the marginalized.

MORE at Nebojsa’s

UPDATE II: Jackie Kennedy: enchantress (Style & Substance)

Aesthetics, America, Art, Critique, Etiquette, History, Human Accomplishment, Music, The State

Jacqueline Kennedy’s dowdy daughter Caroline Kennedy has released “never-before-heard audio recordings of interviews conducted with the former first lady in 1964, shortly after her husband’s assassination,” together with a book, “Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy.” We know Jackie Kennedy for her style, sophistication, sense of history, and love and knowledge of music and art. We now know something about her well-formulated opinions and astute observations, delivered in dulcet tones and exquisite English. (The other day I used “hermetically sealed,” which was common usage when I was, well, much younger. My husband wanted to know why I was using a term used in engineering!)

Discussions with the late historian Arthur Schlesinger reveal Jackie to be not only a dazzling conversationalist, but a forceful, if ever-so feminine personae.

Especially appreciated is Jacqueline Kennedy’s opinion about the sainted Martin Luther King (whose real worldview I discuss briefly—and unfavorably—in my book). All the more so given how irreverent she is in coming out and dissing a legend in the making. PC was not an issue back then. My book also quotes Kennedy on affirmative action: the man was conservative as few conservatives are today.

From a performance of Pablo Casals in the White House to Beyonce’s bump and grind: how far we’ve fallen. To be fair, Bush was also without class and culture.

UPDATE I (Sept. 16): STYLE & SUBSTANCE. Myron Pauli: Like many a libertarian, you refuse to address issues of culture. A comment such as mine, dealing with an impressive, classy lady—Jackie was certainly mistreated by her husband, but never responded like a tawdry tart, as is the custom nowadays—is reduced to the problem of statism. In a universe in which everything is reduced to the state, is there any place for observations about culture, human accomplishment, personality, etc?

I suggest to you that things would not be so bad if more women today had the class and classical education of a Jackie O. At the very least, women with a similar frame of reference would not feel so obsolete and voiceless.

UPDATE II: “Go, Jackie,” writes Lew Rockwell:

Funny how the media are trotting out Mrs. Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, to try to smooth over her mother’s taped views: that LBJ was an integral part of the assassination plot (of course, but not mentioned in this article), that she didn’t admire Martin Luther King, FDR, or Churchill, that she rejected feminism, etc.

UPDATE II: Oscar Offal (Salutations From the Stutterers)

Art, Film, Hollywood, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

If Kirk Douglas stole the show, you have got to know that there was not much to steal. So blared an MTV online headline describing the 2011 Academy Awards. (Headline here.) Previously, I watched the Grammys for you guys and came away with the conclusion that the winner was Auto-Tune, “the ‘holy grail of recording,’ that ‘corrects intonation problems in vocals or solo instruments in real time,” and without which the tartlets I watched ‘sing’ would have been even more inaudible and tuneless. (Here.)

The Oscar’s self-aggrandizing crowd proved too much for me. Stutterers are the cause célèbre (because of “The King’s Speech”). Helen Mirren, full of airs and graces, really does believe she’s a queen, and so does everyone else. When I see Mirren’s name paired with that of Simon Schama in the Financial Times, I ask myself what a well-known historian (and superb writer) like Schama is doing interviewing a woman who makes a living imitating other people? (Here) Shouldn’t she be interviewing him? I’m not in-sync with the times, I know.

The unfunny shtick, the specter of the poor, palsied Kirk Douglas spluttering incoherently while the pretentious onlookers cooed: You get the picture.

The last simply superb picture I watched was “The Secret In Their Eyes,” a film without loud-mouthed, humorless, self-referential Hollywood hedonists. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards. Naturally I will be on the lookout for more such gems in this category.

UPDATE I (Feb. 28): TRUE PUKE.
Mike D.: For me film is not really about striking the right ideological tone; it’s about weaving a yarn and avoiding that wagging ideological finger. I will not be lectured by pin-heads. I’d like them to weave a story that I have not figured out in the first 5 minutes.

I would never watch—much less wax fat about (as some libertarians have been doing)–“Atlas Shrugged” when placed in the hands of Hollywood. (I believe Dagny takes to green energy, or something along those lines.) And the snippet I saw of the “You Go Girl,” aka “True Grit,” was the standard emotional rubbish from Hollywood. Mike, you seem no longer able to even detect the abiding themes that ought to repulse you: young courageous girl sets lax, libertine, drunk adult on the right track and awes all with her moral certitude. They should provide vomitoria in the cinema for this kind of fare.

Such hackneyed, corrupting pabulum ought to repel the intelligent viewer. It’s Hollywood’s revival of the Noble Savage, only applied to kids; they are always the prescient sages; adults are the dolts needing the guidance and direction of babes barely out of diapers. Puke.

And if saintly, snotty-nosed kids are not enough, then you have “The Social Network”: fast talking, hubristic Millennials, making, if to go by Mike’s advisory, “profound” statements about the Culture of the Commons. Yeah, that’s just what I crave. Wisdom from Meghan McCain’s peers. Remember the dot.com kids to whom errant adults were praying, not so long ago?! Get a grip!

UPDATE II: Salutations From the Stutterers. A disease has been born. A new adversity to diagnose, medicate, write soppy stories and scripts about overcoming, launch campaigns for, and discuss, if you are lucky, while plonked on Oprah’s load-bearing couch.

UPDATE IV: Grammy Awards: And The Winner Is … Auto-Tune (Quality Vs. Longevity)

Art, Music, Pop-Culture

The tartlets I watched “sing” at the Grammys would have been even more inaudible and tuneless were it not for the Auto-Tune: the “holy grail of recording,” that “corrects intonation problems in vocals or solo instruments, in real time, without distortion or artifacts.” (See “Antares.com”) With the exception of Lady Antebellum, a group that was passable compared to the rest, the In Memoriam segment featured the event’s better talent (all passed, sadly). (I missed the classical section.) I had never before heard Rihanna, Katy Perry, and Gaga, who with all her pretentious Yoko Onanisms, actually proved, surprisingly, more hard-working and polished than the first two. This is not saying much, I know. But, as a studio musician explained to me, this T & A line-up (to which you can generally add Talor Swift, the Britney Spears of country music) would be reduced to embarrassing grunts, out-of-tune yelps, and bedroom whispers, if not for the Auto-Tune. As to “The Suburbs”/Arcade Fire as Album of the Year: For once, I’m without words to describe their sheer ineptness.

I did not catch the entire thing, but Iron Maiden are good.

UPDATE I (Feb. 16): TRY TRUE TALENT. Mike D: You might like “Arcade Fire,” but they are G-d-awful as musicians. They sustain one or two pitches and exhibit zero proficiency on any of the instruments they belabor. The guitarist strums wildly, producing a cacophony with almost no melodic momentum or variation. One of his guitar strings was broken, but it made no difference. Not only are their songs lacking any chord progression, but, again, they cannot play their instruments. Why learn to play like virtuoso Tony MacAlpine plays guitar (and piano), when you can get a contract and sell your crap without it?

Standards are dead. To those who wish to reclaim a feel for such an unhip concept, here’s a start:

Here’s the same chap, who’ll never get honored for artistic achievement at the Grammys or the Trash House, playing Chopin, no less (bloody difficult):

UPDATE II: WOW: Thanks to Graham who sent a clip of Gaga “before she went gaga.” Not half bad. I knew my instincts for music were good (was brought up listening critically to music—everything from the Beatles to chamber music from a tender age), when I wrote above that “Gaga, with all her pretentious Yoko Onanisms, actually proved, surprisingly hard-working and polished.” Stephanie Germanotta was okay, at least far better than Madonna (although I thoroughly dislike the wailing and the agonized style of singing, in general).

UPDATE III (Feb. 17): QUALITY VS. LONGEVITY. Robert, you too seem to confuse the immutable quality of art with its longevity. Most young people can’t tell you who Bach is. If the Idiocracy has the upper hand, in 100 years or so, he too will have been forgotten despite his unparalleled genius.

“Arcade Fire” are categorically horrid as far as music goes. But they were sweet. Quebecers are nice. Very un-American. Regular folks. Not arrogant, and without airs and graces. Perhaps there is an art to being pleasant?

UPDATE IV (Feb. 18): Michel, thanks for the invite to Montreal. I adore that city; spent time there in 2003. What food! What sweet people. So beautiful too; good-looking and thin folks; what’s not to like? However, I was not prepared for the cold.