I am supposed to be at a recital (here on campus) of songs by Purcell, Haydn, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, and others, sung by the baritone Peter Lightfoot, a colleague from USC’s Thornton School of Music faculty, who I met when we were both new here. He was a neighbour in the excellent faculty residence complex in which you can rent a house when you’re new to the city. The TAs are working hard on grading the midterm we set earlier today (see here) and so as I have to stay on campus until they’re done (we try to get everything done immediately after the exam has been taken, and finish it all and announce the grades the same night) it was an opportunity to relax for a while and listen to some wonderful singing, before coming back to work on entering and analyzing the grades, etc. Well, I went to the recital hall and found that it was cancelled. Drat. So I’ve come back here and thought I would blog for a bit instead, since it is so much more attractive than having to write my Annual Activity Report, which is due tomorrow….
So last Friday I seriously needed cheering up, and so decided to go and see the newly released film by the often excellent director/writer Michael Winterbottom, “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story”. I was excited about this film when I saw the trailer, because many years ago I started reading the book “Tristram Shandy”, by Lauwrence Sterne (I never finished…I will one day). A dear friend, Richard Lee, who is the father of Zoe, who I tutored in Physics when I was a graduate student, insisted that I have his copy and that I should read it. It was around the time of writing my thesis, and focussing on that (among other things) meant that I never finished….
The book is well known in England, although not many people have read it. It is just well known, for some reason. It is quite bizarre, and pretty much unfilmable, which is why I wanted to see the film, especially when I heard who had made it. From the trailer, it was clear that they decided to build in the unfilmability of the book into the film itself, and the cast was so excellent (Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon), it was bound to be a treat.
Where was I? Oh, yes, so went to see the movie. It was clearly going to be a better “performance” of the film if one went along to a place that had a good audience (the Arclight, of course) and maybe with some like-minded friends, so I took some students along on a sort of “field trip”, like I did for Proof last semester (see post here). Admittedly, the connection to mathematics and physics is a bit harder to argue for in this case, but what the hey…. So there was Arnab and Rama from Team cvj, (that’s a sort of in-joke…see Wes Anderson’s wonderful “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou”) , and Amy Cassidy from the Condensed Matter Theory group, and she brought along her friend Sam, who is not a student, but a web page architect. (Yes, she did use the word “architect”…. not a mere “designer”, I gather.) Anyway, Sam is probably way hipper than any of us, but she didn’t seem to mind being seen with us for an evening, bless her.
It turned out to be a more significant evening than I’d anticipated, since the three students had never been to see a film at the Arclight before, which I find incredible. So it was high time that they did so. How was the film? Brilliant. Just Brilliant. You know that sort of situation where you’re laughing and it hurts, and then you just want the source of laughter to stop for a minute to allow you to breathe, but it continues and there’s nothing you can do? Well it was like that in several places. I actually was hurting on one side from laughing when we left the theatre. I suspect that part of the reason it was so funny to me, and possibly Arnab and Rama, who are from India, is that there is a sort of British way of being (also known in India) which was so well portrayed and sent up in several places…. but Amy and Sam (not infected with that sort of British influence) found it very funny in several places too so rest assured that you’re not excluded, by nationality, etc, from liking it a lot. I found it especially enjoyable because of it’s self-referential “knowingness”, which was done well with several winks…… and there were at least three or four levels of “meta”-ness to it, which was fun. (Film of the film-makers making a film of the book, etc….but that itself was the film….)
So we left in giggles and with lots of chatter about the film, which was good. Since we had no youngsters in the field trip this time, we could go to a place where they served something a bit stronger than milkshakes, and they also wanted some not-too-pricey food for a late dinner. So I took them to one of my nearby haunts, the Cat and Fiddle, which on a Friday night is just good plain fun (recently described here). Good traditional British pub food was had, and I had a much needed pint of Guinness as well.
Hmmmm….once again, this has turned into a really long post, so I’m going to split off the rest of it, which is about a different issue (sort of) and put it into a different post.
-cvj
February 17th, 2006 at 1:14 am
[…] Sean « More Evidence of Fun […]
February 17th, 2006 at 2:06 am
I think I know what I’ll go see tomorrow night, then! I loved 24 Hour Party People and have been anticipating this film since I read about it in the NY Times magazine last summer. Us hayseeds in San Francisco had to wait an extra couple of weeks for it to open….
February 17th, 2006 at 4:22 am
Gosh, if you loved “24 Hour Party People” you are in for *such* a treat. It was so good I feel like seeing it again tomorrow night!
-cvj
February 17th, 2006 at 11:37 am
*sigh* Looks like I gotta wait yet another week before the movie comes to the Hinterlands on the Bay, after all. But thanks for confirming my hunch that Winterbottom and Coogan strike gold again!
Guess it’ll be The New World for me tonight, before it disappears from the theaters completely.
February 17th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
“The New World” - Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!
(sorry)
-cvj
February 17th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Welll, truth be told I have not seen it, but I have a bad feeling about that film. When big American Studios try to make blockbuster movies about American History ….. it usually ends in tears. Come to think of it, any history. (There are exceptions…)
But it might be good, I could well be wrong!
If in doubt though, its not too late to catch “Capote”, or “Good Night and Good Luck”, if you have not already seen those excellent ones….since the studios have re-released them to several large population areas. Oh, and “Syrianna” is worth a look.
I’ve also heard that Speilberg’s “Munich” is excellent.
Ok…I’ll shut up with the unsolicited recommendations now.
-cvj
February 17th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
I’ve also heard that Speilberg’s “Munich” is excellent
I was kind of dissapointed, when I realize it was a remake of one I had seen just a month before, replaying on television.
As Munich was playing, my mind started to see the plot of the previous, and then what came next, seem to follow suit.
Sort of like remakes of Ocean Eleven?
February 17th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
Already saw bothGood Night and Good Luck, Capote, and Syriana. Though I could stand to see Syriana again to get all of the storylines straight. And a person in my writing group said that Munich isn’t that interesting because the conflict is kind of predictable.
No, I’m bound and determined to see The New World! I’ve been warned that the pace is very leisurely, but since I do visual art I can deal with that. And Terence Malick is considered to be an auteur. And it’ll be good practice for seeing Powaqatsi (sp?) tomorrow night at the symphony hall downtown. I’ve been on an American anthropology jag since reading Charles Mann’s excellent book 1492 over Christmas, you see…
If I do die of boredom, you will know by my absence.
February 17th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Well, come back and tell me/us how it was. I am curious, I must admit.
-cvj
February 18th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
It’s a eye opener.
In syriana, a indoctrination of sorts, of the blind, being lead by the blind?
February 19th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
So I saw The New World on Friday night, and Powaqqatsi with soundtrack performed live by the Philip Glass Ensemble last night. It’s interesting to compare and contrast these two movies because they deal with similar subjects (the impact of technology upon indigenous ways of life) and rely very heavily on the use of imagery and music as opposed to narrative to create their impact. (In fact, the recurring musical theme in The New World sounded very Glass-ish, though it wasn’t his composition.)
I enjoyed The New World very much, though the leisurely, deliberate pace had me nodding off a wee bit at one point. But that might have been because I had settled in with some popcorn at the outset. The main narrative is pretty thin and linear–Syriana was at least an order of magnitude more complex on that score. Pocahontas meets Smith, they fall in love, he leaves, she thinks he’s dead, she marries Rolfe. Some conflict is created because she learns that Smith is actually still alive, so she doesn’t love Rolfe so much. Then they go to England to be presented to the king and queen. She dies, the end.
But the movie isn’t really about the narrative. It’s about the atmosphere, the mood, the visual metaphors. It’s kind of like the manga-influenced graphic novels, or Chris Ware’s depressing cartoon in NY Times Magazine’s “Funny Pages”, where the interstitial moments carry as much weight as the dialogue and foreground action. There are the meditative shots along the river and in the woods, which I think are meant to help put the viewer into the frame of mind of the settler confronting this “wilderness” (which might however been quite tamed by Native American use). The Virginia scenes contrast mightily with the scenes in England, where nature has been dominated by man into formal symmetries.
So, I enjoyed the movie as a visual art piece and poetic ruminations on the fall of an Arcadia to a European mode of domination.
And now that I’ve seen Powaqqatsi, I can’t help but wonder to what degree Terrence Malick and his team might have been influenced by the Qatsi trilogy. I remember hearing about Koyaanisquatsi when it first came out, but I was 14 at the time and some weird hippie-type movie would have seemed so lame to me. But now that I’m old enough and cynical enough to be way outside the target audience for mainstream movies, not to mention no longer holding the kneejerk belief that every new gadget that comes down the pike will make our lives better, I was ready to see a movie that questions how our culture chooses to live.
Powaqqatsi is even further from the mainstream than The New World was, the latter at least having a story, characters, and dialogue. Powaqqatsi is really more of a symphony with images, which nevertheless are arranged to create a meditative state and hopefully impact one in a way that bypasses the usual channels. It’s supposed to be kind of a trip, but not just for a pleasurable experience–the director’s idea is that we are so trapped in our familiar modes of thought that words are not enough to convey what we need to understand.
And it worked for me. I felt it was a powerful experience which was not merely entertaining, but also moving. I don’t know that I can solve the world’s problems, but I am more aware of the impact our first-world way of life has on other cultures. Of course, Syriana in parts addresses this, too. But I think maybe addressing these issues in a theatrical release was less common back in the ’80s when the first two Qatsi films were made.
So that’s what the movies are about. A fun fact about The New World, by the way–it was the first film in nine years to be filmed in almost its entirety in 70 mm film stock. Meaning that there’s a tremendous depth of detail on the big screen that you won’t see on DVD. If you want a gorgeous visual experience but don’t want to walk around a museum, check it out.
February 19th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Kristin… Thanks! That was very interesting and useful indeed. Glad you enjoyed yourself.
-cvj
February 21st, 2006 at 2:40 pm
Hi! Clifford
I’m Sam, the girl you mentioned on the last line of the 4th paragraph. ^———^
I accidentally found your blog. (i guess this is very unprofessional excuse. ^^;; If you mind, i won’t come back here.)
Anyhow, thanks for your comment about me. =)
As a matter fact, I think i understand only 60% of the movie… but if i see the movie with Korean subtitle, i bet you i will love the brilliance of the movie.
It seems like you guys like movie as much as me. so.. I’d like to recommend a Chinese movie called
Happy together, directed by
Kar Wai Wong ,I don’t know any of you have seen this movie.
It is a story about two hong king gays. If anyone like Brokeback Mountain, they will like it. I believe the movie won Cannes Film Festival 1997.
let me know if you guys like it.
bye.
p.s: i hope i didn’t ruin your private blog.
February 21st, 2006 at 5:09 pm
Hi Sam,
It’s not a private blog…We welcome everyone! Please join in all the discussions here! Thanks for the recommendations. I will try to see that movie.
(Look out for discussions of Korean food in the future, by the way… another cuisine I like a lot!)
Cheers,
-cvj
February 21st, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Korean food! I’m looking forward to that, you do know I am mostly Korean (in the spirit of you are what you eat…).
February 21st, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Moshe: - Yeah…. Sadly, I have not visited Korea for few years now, but still have fond memories of the food and the hospiltality from my trips there. On the plus side, I have access to a huge Korea-Town here in LA… USC borders on it, and I come through it every day to and from work….. I like several restaurants that I’ve learned…. and Sam told me about a few more…… Hmmm maybe I can convince Sam (and Amy?) to take me on a tour of some of them and we can report back?
As you know, there are some pretty excellent dishes to be had. With plenty of soju on the side….. oh yeah!
-cvj
February 21st, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Yep, it is really under-appreciated cuisine, just the thought of one of your reports, with full color images, makes me hungry…
February 22nd, 2006 at 2:38 pm
Wow! I didn’t know that Korean food is that popular. Actually i don’t really know about Korean restaurant because the food of price is way expensiver than Korean. And.. I can cook those stuff if i want. ^^v i don’t usually don’t get inspiration though.
February 22nd, 2006 at 10:11 pm
I’m sure there are several others (besides Moshe and I) who love Korean food! (I miss all those great kimchee varieties in several little bowls that come with every meal….)
So you’re saying you prefer to cook? Excellent! We can do a cook’s tour, or you can give me some Korean cooking tips… maybe even a demo. I’ll buy the soju!
Cheers,
-cvj
P.S. For the food-lovers among you…. watch out for a post on cooking Chinese-style, coming up. I’ve been doing some experiments….. Just got to find the time to write up the results. (I’m sure I’ll be opening myself to ridicule from the people who really know what they are doing!)
February 22nd, 2006 at 10:17 pm
It’s really hard to cook great Chinese stir-fries at home because most stoves just don’t put out enough heat to really drive a wok. The key is to work in small batches with a flat bottomed wok. I have one made out of cast iron which is great for heat retention, but you lose the ability to change the temperature quickly.
But Sichuan peppercorns are legal again which is cool.
February 22nd, 2006 at 10:28 pm
Ah… yes, this is a problem… but my stove does the trick nicely, happily. Wide range of (gas) heat from the burners.. from warm-your-toes gentle through torch-that-barn right up to weld-that-garden-gate.
-cvj
February 22nd, 2006 at 10:40 pm
They have serious heat on the ones in Chinese restaurants. It’s looks like cooking on a jet engine. A home stove puts out around 16k BTUs maybe. The suckers in the restaurant do over 125k.
February 22nd, 2006 at 10:51 pm
You’re right of course, but I suspect that one can get a decent meal with way less than 125k BTUs. After all, the whole of China and Taiwan is cooking excellent domestic meals somehow, right? And probably has been for several generations without 125K BTUs….
Cheers,
-cvj
February 23rd, 2006 at 2:17 am
I think wok’s were traditionally used on a wood stove way back when, but I’m not really sure. Maybe someone reading can say what’s generally done at home in Asia these days. Anyways, my whole point in postings was to give some advice on how you can do pretty well on a western stove.
If you like Sichuan food, by the way, give Fuschia Dunlop’s Land of Plenty a try.
February 23rd, 2006 at 9:51 am
Aaron,
Thanks…… Your excellent tips about temperature will be useful. I did not mean to suggest otherwise.
Cheers,
-cvj