Today's Adventure: Francis Ford Coppola articulates his vision for Apocalypse Now
Showing newest 49 of 150 posts from April 2007. Show older posts
Showing newest 49 of 150 posts from April 2007. Show older posts
April 30, 2007
Adventures in American Filmmaking #73
Today's Adventure: Francis Ford Coppola articulates his vision for Apocalypse Now
Relevant Quote #86
"My master heard me with great appearances of uneasiness in his countenance; because doubting, or not believing, are so little known in this country, that the inhabitants cannot tell how to behave themselves under such circumstances. And I remember, in frequent discourses with my master concerning the nature of manhood in other parts of the world, having occasion to talk of lying and false representation, it was with much difficulty that he comprehended what I meant, although he had otherwise a most acute judgment. For he argued thus: 'that the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now, if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated, because I cannot properly be said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving information, that he leaves me worse than in ignorance; for I am led to believe a thing black, when it is white, and short, when it is long.' And these were all the notions he had concerning that faculty of lying, so perfectly well understood, and so universally practised, among human creatures."
-- Jonathan Swift
April 29, 2007
Through the lens of Cyril Arapoff #5
A group of boys outside a second-hand shop in the vacinity of Aldgate.
April 28, 2007
When Legends Gather #242
Elvis Presley, Tennessee Williams, Col. Tom Parker, Laurence Harvey and Hal Wallis
April 27, 2007
The Art of Songwriting #17
Dapper Dan from Dear Old Dixieland
Music: Albert von Tilzer
Lyrics: Lew Brown
(Broadway Music Corp; 1921)
April 26, 2007
Seminal Image #646
Koroshi no rakuin
(Branded to Kill)
(Seijun Suzuki; 1967)
(a big and enthusiastic thanks to Nate Bundy of Real Political Face Talk for this image)
April 25, 2007
April 24, 2007
April 23, 2007
David Halberstam Dead at 73
For those among us who despair at the dwlindling number of writers who can truly wield a sentence, some extremely sad news crosses the wires this evening: David Halberstam was killed earlier today in an automobile accident in Menlo Park, CA.
He was, as the obituaries would say, 73.
Of course, he was more than just another New Journalist (though he was among the finest of that species), and more than just a best-selling author with a Pulitzer all his own. Covering the earliest stages of the United States' invasion of South Vietnam for The New York Times, Halberstam's dispatches were so blunt in their portrait of the rapidly deteriorating Diem regime, and so at variance with Washington's own version of events, that then-President John F. Kennedy had the Times' publisher, Arthur Ochs 'Punch' Sulzberger, reassign his ass to the Paris desk (and that's where he went). But he went on. With 1965's The Making of a Quagmire and the majestic The Best and the Brightest (1972), Halberstam established himself as the only journalist in America who could grasp the full spectrum of that blood-soaked folly in Southeast Asia; seeing it as no less than the demonic spawn of third-rate academics fashioning themselves into an intellectual/managerial elite.
True, he wasn't the only journalist in Vietnam to openly challenge the official line in his reporting (in fact, the above photo, from 1963, shows Halberstam, on the left, with two of the others: Malcolm Browne of the Associated Press and fellow Times maverick Neil Sheehan), and you could never call him a radical with a straight face. But he always devoted himself, even when his work reached a nadir of relevance (his books on Baseball are . . . problematic), to getting the story in all its protean detail.
I think you would agree that the contrast to our present-day reportorial class . . . those J-school grads who content themselves with the magic tricks of CentCom handouts and Pentagon briefings . . . is incalculable.
April 22, 2007
Collect 'Em All #27
Claudette Colbert
(No. 12 in a series of 50 from Player's Navy Cut Cigarettes)
Claudette Colbert was born in Paris on September 13th, 1905, and christened Claudette Cauchoin. In 1913 she moved with her family to America, and finished off her education in New York by attending an art school, where a chance meeting with a playwright resulted in a small part in a new production. This was in 1924 and she quickly won fame on Broadway. Her first film, a silent, was made between stage productions in New York, and after two talkies she was given a Hollywood contract. Among her latest successes are It Happened One Night, Cleopatra and Imitation of Life.
April 21, 2007
April 20, 2007
When Legends Gather #241
Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, James Baldwin, Marlon Brando
and Harry Belafonte
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