(no subject)
Being in San Diego for four days made me realize that there is perhaps no major city that isn't better than phoenix. anyway. saw a bunch of people who knew me when i was a wee lad. i had no idea who any of them were. awkward! went out on a boat. neat. adams ave. book store -- perfect. stacks and stacks of used books, warning signs on some of the shelves that they might in fact collapse on you, two cats that hang out in there. one day i must own a place like that. yes. i totally scored a bilingual edition of the cherry orchard, among other things.
read danto's After the End of Art on the plane. not his strongest work. the usual statements apply -- no more master narratives in art. also as usual, the sticking point is probably 'there is a kind of transhistorical essence in art, everywhere and always the same, but it only discloses itself through history.' our wittgensteinian sensors go off immediately.
there is also an issue of hedging a little as to what is art. sometimes he sounds like he's talking about all the visual art ever made, but other times he sounds like he wants to limit the 'end of art' to mean the narrative of western art that starts around 1400 or so when we get the concept of art as art instead of as say, iconography, or magic or whatever.
also read scorsese on scorsese. the man knows his film history. he also made at least one of the greatest movies of the last 25 years.
started watching the 6 disc commemorative michael jordan dvd's. amazing. say what you will about wade, he can't defend like mike. not even close. in the very first dvd they had a golf pro on talking about how he likes to take jordan's money.
also watched woody's Match Point. Jesus. Dark some? He's decided to one-up the usual Allenesque nihilism--since there is no god and no morality but your own, the difference between justice and injustice, crimes going punished or unpunished, comes down to what you can live with, and of course luck. So, that's a typical Allen theme. But in Crimes and Misdemeanors, Landau likes his life, and he wants it to continue. In this movie, even when you get 'lucky' you aren't, because after doing the worst things possible to get what you want, then catching a break of the biggest kind, rationalizing your deeds, you find out that you still aren't happy, that you despise your life, that you've attained something you can't remember why you wanted, that in the end there is not a single thing that can be counted on to bring even contentment, because in the struggle between passion and pragmatism, there is no right choice, and you are screwed either way. the depth woody's pessimism here is just...damn.
read danto's After the End of Art on the plane. not his strongest work. the usual statements apply -- no more master narratives in art. also as usual, the sticking point is probably 'there is a kind of transhistorical essence in art, everywhere and always the same, but it only discloses itself through history.' our wittgensteinian sensors go off immediately.
there is also an issue of hedging a little as to what is art. sometimes he sounds like he's talking about all the visual art ever made, but other times he sounds like he wants to limit the 'end of art' to mean the narrative of western art that starts around 1400 or so when we get the concept of art as art instead of as say, iconography, or magic or whatever.
also read scorsese on scorsese. the man knows his film history. he also made at least one of the greatest movies of the last 25 years.
started watching the 6 disc commemorative michael jordan dvd's. amazing. say what you will about wade, he can't defend like mike. not even close. in the very first dvd they had a golf pro on talking about how he likes to take jordan's money.
also watched woody's Match Point. Jesus. Dark some? He's decided to one-up the usual Allenesque nihilism--since there is no god and no morality but your own, the difference between justice and injustice, crimes going punished or unpunished, comes down to what you can live with, and of course luck. So, that's a typical Allen theme. But in Crimes and Misdemeanors, Landau likes his life, and he wants it to continue. In this movie, even when you get 'lucky' you aren't, because after doing the worst things possible to get what you want, then catching a break of the biggest kind, rationalizing your deeds, you find out that you still aren't happy, that you despise your life, that you've attained something you can't remember why you wanted, that in the end there is not a single thing that can be counted on to bring even contentment, because in the struggle between passion and pragmatism, there is no right choice, and you are screwed either way. the depth woody's pessimism here is just...damn.