Dragons | Jane Austin > Jo Walton, Tooth and Claw.
[English translation: Dragons Jane Austinified results in Jo Walton's delightful Tooth and Claw. Slight, yes, but lots more fun than “Little Women”.]
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I just saw “Sideways” which is a remarkably good movie. Googling around to try to find out the origin of the title, I found this outstanding review:
Entertaining? Definitely, although this is a very subtle movie. It's got NO explosions in it whatsoever.
Says it all, really.
Ken MacLeod, the wondrous science fiction writer, unearths something beyond the imagination of a lesser science fiction writer. In fact it's so demented that, given the source, I had some doubts as it its plausibility. But there it is:
The Early Days of a Better Nation: Do you find modern art baffling and depressing? Have you ever wondered if it's all a ridiculous hoax? Don't worry. It's meant to be baffling and depressing, and it is a ridiculous hoax. According to American leftist James Petras's review of Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders,
[the]CIA and its allies in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) poured vast sums of money into promoting Abstract Expressionist (AE) painting and painters as an antidote to art with a social content. In promoting AE, the CIA fought off the right-wing in Congress. What the CIA saw in AE was an “anti-Communist ideology, the ideology of freedom, of free enterprise. Non-figurative and politically silent it was the very antithesis of socialist realism” (254). They viewed AE as the true expression of the national will. To bypass right-wing criticism, the CIA turned to the private sector (namely MOMA and its co-founder, Nelson Rockefeller, who referred to AE as “free enterprise painting.”) Many directors at MOMA had longstanding links to the CIA and were more than willing to lend a hand in promoting AE as a weapon in the cultural Cold War. Heavily funded exhibits of AE were organized all over Europe; art critics were mobilized, and art magazines churned out articles full of lavish praise. The combined economic resources of MOMA and the CIA-run Fairfield Foundation ensured the collaboration of Europe's most prestigious galleries which, in turn, were able to influence aesthetics across Europe.
So the whole hegemony of boring decadent rubbish art that has been inflicted on us for fifty years, from Jackson bloody Pollock to Damien fucking Hirst, has all along been a CIA plot.
Never could quite see the point of Robert Motherwell myself. This is certainly the most close-to-rational account I ever heard.
MacLeod's coda is biting:
Socialist Realist art now commands higher prices than that of the dissidents and the Western-imitative official art of perestroika. The market has taken an ironic revenge on its votaries.
This, to me, is about the weirdest thing I ever read in the newspaper. Well, after invading Iraq with too few troops because someone else, living elsewhere, attacked the World Trade Center. Or that the US is systematically torturing people, and elite lawyers are writing opinions justifying it or working out strategies to allow the torturers to avoid prosecution.
In Death, Loved Ones Can Live On As Diamonds: When William Lucas' mother died nearly two years ago, he found an unusual way to keep her memory close at hand.
The general contractor from Kitty Hawk, N.C., had some of ''Momma Luke's'' ashes converted into three synthetic blue diamonds, each about a third of a carat. One is set into his wedding band.
I remember going to see Liquid Sky in college, intrigued at what sort of indie art sex/drugs/rockNroll movie could get a rave review out of the Wall Street Journal. (I suppose that combination tells you something of what I was like then, and probably now.)
How bizarre to discover that DVDs of Liquid Sky now sell for $200! (Why so much? Why didn't / don't they print some more?) And how interesting to see the customer reviews at Amazon, including several saying 'best movie ever', and several saying 'worst movie ever'—notably the guy who suggested it would be cheaper and about as much fun to flush your head down the toilet, then cover yourself in peanut butter and sit near an anthill.
FWIW, I liked the movie.
I just saw the National Theater's performance of Allan Bennett's new play The History Boys, thanks to a barrister friend who was able to get tickets.
This is simply a spectacular play, brilliantly performed by an outstanding cast. It was even better than Bennett's The Madness of King George III, which I saw years ago in its first run at the National. And that was a great play and a great production (better than the film, I thought, although there's always a tendency to like the one you see first best).
Londoners are so spoiled when it comes to theater. When Caroline and I lived here we went to an average of more than one play a week. It is easily the thing I most miss about London. (Number two, oddly enough, is doing my weekly shopping at the Dalston Market.)
A mathematician friend has an extra ticket for another play at the National on Saturday that he is going to let me have. Tomorrow morning I'm going to TKTS to see what I can scare up. That makes three. Friday is complicated as I have appointments out of town, but I could either (horrors) book a full price ticket by phone, or see if I can get to TKTS early enough to catch my train after buying a ticket. That would make four.
I suppose going to a matinee on Saturday as well as an evening performance would be gluttonous. But I'm tempted.
(Recommendations from any readers who happen to be in London or know about what's on gratefully welcomed.)
Jotwell Blenderlaw