October 17, 2003

Shorts, 10/17.

Steven Berkoff If you're like me, that face will be familiar to you but you won't be able to place it right off. It's Steven Berkoff, playwright and actor, and for its Friday Review cover story, the Guardian has excerpted little chapterlettes from his new book, Tough Acts. They're sketches, really, not quite full-fledged profiles of people ranging as widely as Joan Collins and Stanley Kubrick, and they're full of marvelously readable and unexpected observations, such as this one, of Eddie Murphy: "He is the perfect Brechtian. He stands outside his character and works it like a puppeteer."

Also in the Guardian:

  • Xan Brooks on what the disappearance of the Hollywood ending says "about today's America": "This, after all, is the land of the second President George Bush, of 'Gulf War 2' and the ongoing, amorphous war on terror.... We are being bounced, in instalments, through the second, third and fourth acts of a neverending story."
  • More big picture thinking from John Patterson: "We live in an era in which all forms of bestseller or successful movie or TV show seem to rely to an embarrassing degree on forms that were at their high tide half a century ago."
  • Though their direct relation to film is weak, these three music pieces warrant mention: Tom Service on Gyorgy Ligeti; Maddy Costa on Chicks on Speed; and Skye Sherwin on Daft Punk's collaboration with Leiji Matsumoto, Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem.

    We've got one happy and several unhappy Kill Bill-related pointers today. The good news first. Steven Rosen pays a fun visit to "Quentinworld" for the Denver Post. And the bad? It's ugly. Movie City News traces a controversy that began when New Republic blogger Gregg Easterbrook wrote some undeniably nasty words implicating Miramax's Harvey Weinstein and parent company Disney's Michael Eisner as "Jewish executives [who] worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence." That is, of course, taken out of context, which Easterbrook emphasizes in the apology which is currently his top entry. Along the way, however, Nikki Finke has fanned the flames at Jim Romenesko's Media News (currently blogging another letter from another outraged critic, though the complaint is a lot less explosive) and the battle rages on at Kevin Roderick's LA Observed blog and Roger L. Simon's as well.

    Meanwhile, David Poland outlines "exactly what is wrong with Ain't It Cool News, and has been for years." Namely: "They are alternately inside and outside the system - more and more inside as every day passes - and both studios and talent, looking to take advantage of the alleged teen cache the site carries, also play the game." Poland asks, "Are there any standards left?" Well, here's a question: Have Knowles and Co ever claimed to be journalists? Honestly. I haven't ever followed the site closely enough to know.

    Alex Abramovich was "charmed" by School of Rock, but was also left with the "feeling that the sight of our elders being afraid for our music, rather than of it, was a sure sign of something amiss." It's an interesting piece to read right alongside another in Slate from its deputy Washington bureau chief. About R.E.M.

    The 19th Annual Film Arts Festival happens in San Francisco from October 30 through November 2.

    Today's online viewing tip comes courtesy of M. Signalstation. With the DVD release of Millennium Actress just around the corner, the trailer for Satoshi Kon's next film, Tokyo Godfather, is now up. A friend of a friend of a friend writes that the film tells the story of three homeless people who find an abandoned child on Christmas Eve: "The key word in this movie seems to be the 'luck.'"



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    Posted by dwhudson at October 17, 2003 9:43 AM

    • Comments

    David,

    Thanks so much for the link to the Ligeti article in the Guardian. Ligeti is one of my favorite composers, and I am not alone in thinking that he is probably the greatest living composer today. I'm especially fond of the music he's been writing since 1985. His Etudes for Piano, Book I are masterpieces (though I prefer Frederik Ullen's performance of them, on the BIS label, or Volker Banfield's on Wergo, to the recordings the Aimard on Sony that Ligeti himself evidently prefers).

    Like Miles Davis, Ligeti reinvented his art again and again, changing styles, moving his focus, but always illuminating something new with a keen ear. When we like what an artist is doing, and then that artist changes to a radically different style, we sometimes think the artist has lost his or her way. But I'm starting to think that such periodic reinvention is actually a mark of a great artist. Like Ligeti.

    Posted by: oldkingcole at October 17, 2003 10:47 PM

    If you hadn't seen the article before, I'm glad you found it here. I'll readily admit that I know nowhere near as much about Ligeti or most other contemporary composers as you do, but I have found him mind-tickling!

    Posted by: David Hudson at October 18, 2003 2:20 PM