dimanche 11 avril 2004

Untimely tidings from the blogroll The latest turn in "the war against intelligence" in France is that we have a new minister of culture and communication with a 0/10 record in cultural achievement and a 10/10 criminal score for money-laundering (BBC), along with one of his predecessors. As Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres says on his website: "Politics is a tough life. But service to the State is as exalting as it's hard." He should know. For French resident readers, nevertheless, the free of spirit remain hopeful about yet another petition. Today, in "démolition totale", davduf draws our attention to Iris and its efforts to prevent a tiresome bunch of politicians from enacting legislation which would require internet service providers to be the censors of online content. After all, privatising the judicial system could make the business of running a nation so much cheaper... The ISPs, unsurprisingly, are against it. Unlike members of the government, they don't seem to think that the prospect of spending up to a year in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros (source: Reporters without Borders) would be terribly good for their careers and their reputations. But as we're reminded at 'To the Barricades', it doesn't do, especially for politicians, to admit occasionally that they make mistakes (via Open Source politics). zzz "We must be blunt about the current system's threats to free speech, intellectual freedom, and the free flow of information. We must be careful not to be trapped into nihilistic rhetoric about the 'end of copyright.' Copyright need not end if we can rehabilitate and re–humanize it. Our culture and democracy depend on it." Here it's censorship at issue right now, but across the pond, Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of communication studies at New York University, has taken a close look at 'The state of copyright activism' (via J.D. Lasica's New Media Musings'). zzz "Given the bizarre mind-melding between the government and media and the Soviet-style propagandizing that's been taking place, one has to wonder: Is there is any significance in the fact that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and David Brooks are all beating the same tom-tom?" 'Will the 2004 Election Be Called Off?' asks Maureen Farrell (Buzzflash). Now there's a thought. While the "Madrid + bombs = 'Terror' 1 - 'Democracy' 0" hypothesis is insulting nonsense, Farrell's intriguing essay takes a rather different line, attracting Heli's attention (Heaven and Hell). If you think these are turbulent times for we Terrans, consider the stars. That's what astronomers in Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden have been up to for 1,000 nights spread over 15 years — but a tiny instant in the life of our stellar neighbours. "For the first time, the changing dynamics of the Milky Way since its birth can now be studied in detail and with a stellar sample sufficiently large to allow a sound analysis. The astronomers find that our home galaxy has led a much more turbulent and chaotic life than previously assumed," says the European Southern Observatory. "Supernova explosions, galaxy collisions, and infall of huge gas clouds have made the Milky Way a very lively place indeed!" Those who understand such things may be interested in the full 'Geneva-Copenhagen survey of the Solar neighbourhood' (PDF file direct download, 2.5 MB), but the rest of us are offered a glimpse of the findings in a little movie at 'Astronomy & Astrophysics' (via Grafyte (April 9). zzz "A big part of the problem is W.'s apparent lack of intellectual curiosity. It appears, for example, that he doesn't read very much. (...) Last year Pizza Hut, as part of a program to encourage children to read, asked all the governors to list their first favorite books. Bush put The Very Hungry Caterpillar at the very top of his list. And it's a very good book. I read it to my kids when they were little. The thing is, The Very Hungry Caterpillar was not published until 1969, a year after W. had graduated from Yale." Al Franken, in October 2000, reminded us that even for we earthlings are concerned, some things evolve very slowly indeed (via 'Brain Not Found', Fr). Back to nature, then? Close to home, Jean-Michel reckons the abandoned "little crown" down the road to the south of Montparnasse, could have become "the wildest part of Paris" (at MONTPARSUD). 9:44:56 PM  link   your views? [] Agony, ketchup and artificial additives Wherein Tony becomes the first guest columnist on taliesin's log. All but the title, illustrations and links in this entry are the work of my fine friend Mr Brock: Despite the fuss, Mel Gibson's 'Passion of the Christ' was just another Spaghetti Spectacular with perhaps a higher budget for tomato ketchup than other Biblepics. Always slow and at times boring, it spared no cliché from flashback through to slow-motion shots and the Heavenly Choir. I found the acting crass and the dialogue hardly rivetting, since my Aramaic is not as good as it might be and I didn't realise the Latin was Latin until I grasped that, most of the bit players being Italian, they were pronouncing it the way they read it. My interest, in so far as I had any, was in the lighting, the casting and fidelity to the script. It began with the Agony in the Garden, which meant lots of flickering torchlight and references to Rembrandt (Artchive), while the faces of the taunting crowd were Breugel (Artcyclopedia): the mise en scène was never memorable. The Christ character, a wooden bloke called Jim Something [James Caviezel; IMDb], was probably chosen because he looked like the face on the Turin Shroud, a change from the usual pre-Raphaelite Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild but a little off-putting because he had one eye half-closed for most of the action. Maybe the many non-Scriptural bits (e.g. Judas being driven to suicide by jeering urchins or Pilate's wife giving some towels to the BVM) were drawn from gospels not admitted to the canon, maybe they came from later legends, or maybe Gibson thought they improved the story line; for me they were just brakes on it and made me wonder why, since it put bits in, it left out bits that are scriptural and would be missed. I couldn't help comparing it with other versions to its disadvantage. The Pasolini 'Matthew's Gospel' (1964, IMDb, played straight, with little dialogue and only occasional Bach and the Missa Luba) had much more impact. Dorothy Sayers' 'The Man Born to be King' (serialised [in 1941] on Children's Hour; Christian History Institute) probably went direct to my psyche; it was sensational in its time because it had an actor playing Christ rather than the reported speech of the Bach passions. He was Robert Speaght (Salvation Army), chosen because he was a practising Christian and had a beautiful speaking voice, which made such a deep impression on me that I was shocked when I heard it again as a grown-up. This was in the Garrick pub, just off Cambridge Circus, that I'd entered with a colleague on the 'Evening News': a man wearing a Homburg hat with a beer in one hand and a sausage in the other waved at us and said: "Hallo Felix, come and have a drink." He should have said "Peace be with you." Which brings me to my chief objection to the Gibson opus. There is an Evangelical hymn: "It is a thing most wonderful Almost too wonderful to be That God's own son should come from Heav'n And die to save a child like me." For the sceptical, it is too wonderful — God? His Son? Sacrifice? Too much to swallow at once. But to G.K. Chesterton, "It's too good to be true but it is true." If you are a sceptic, you'd hardly want to make the film; if you're not, you might not share GKC's love of paradox but you're bound to be on his side: the story line is quite simply the central point in human history. So why make another run-of-mill movie, even if your distributors can release it in Holy Week? What of things that seemed to me secondary to the scenario? Like the gratuitous cruelty: two floggings, one with the birch, one with chains. In the Roman Catholic Stations of the Cross, Christ falls three times; I lost count of how often this happened in the movie — backwards, sideways, on the face, shot from different angles, including upside down. Cheap and nasty, but probably hardly shocking to punters used to villains ending up carbonised after a car chase. Nor did I buy the anti-Semitic complaint. It's true that the Sanhedrin ('Judaism 101') are presented as pompous assholes wearing embroidered dressing gowns with tea cosies on their heads, but the Romans, all ugly as well as brutal, come off worst. Nothing is made of the historically significant Gospel line: "His blood be on us and on our children" ('beliefnet')*. If it was said, I missed it — easily done in the linguistic circumstances. I found myself speculating about penitential practices, like young Filipinos getting themselves crucificed, me fasting and abstaining on Good Friday and people going to see films like this. Why do we do it? __________ *Tony missed nothing. In 'Mel Gibson and Matthew 27:25' (the linked article), David Klinghoffer writes: "This cut has been hailed as a victory for Jews who worry about the impact of the film. Is it really something to celebrate?" Paintings: Breugel, The Procession to Calvary, 1564 Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna Rembrandt, Descent from the Cross, 1634 Hermitage, St. Petersburg 3:58:20 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.