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Friday, August 16, 2002 |
Here I Sit, Broken Hearted
So it's the 25th Anniversary of Elvis' death. Last weekend, on my new Tivo, I watched part of the 1968 Comeback Special and all of Viva Las Vegas. Enjoyed them both. Downloaded some nice video tracks from Grokster; a clip of him singing Unchained Melody in concert six months before he died; he looked like shit, but was in good voice.
Anyone who is at all curious about this guy, or about America in the first decade of the second half of the last century, should read Peter Guralnik's The Last Train to Memphis. A wonderful book. I'm sure the second volume of the biography, Careless Love, is great, too, but I just can't bring myself to crack it open.
(I gotta get my act together so I am linking to Amazon, BN, and Alibris on these book references. One of these days.)
11:23:52 PM Permalink
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The Top 10 Movies of All Time
Sight & Sound polls critics and directors and lists the 10 Greatest Films (and Directors) of All Time. Sure, as CounterPunch says, it's predicable, but I've only seen half of them recently enough to be familiar with them. If I were a Netflix customer, I'd put them on my list, as it is I'll just have to remember some of them, or try to.
CounterPunch's own lists are every bit as compelling, and less predictable; there are a lot more of them, and many more that I haven't seen. Alexand Cockburn's list is great. Max Sawicky lists only Mel Brooks movies; I might buy into that, but I saw Spaceballs not too long ago.
(I do have to complain about Jeffrey St. Clair referring to the wonderful Leigh Brackett as "et. al." in his listing of The Big Sleep; her contribution to that movie was every bit as important as William Faulkner's, and the movies she worked on, from Rio Bravo to Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye to The Empire Strikes Back is mighty impressive.)
11:12:29 PM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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