A Human Voice
Sorry. Eventually the pollen season will be over and I’ll be back on the blog and maybe even set up accounts for my old friends.
Last night I nearly blogged but there was a show about John Lennon another member of the household was listening to, and I couldn’t think over it, so I went to sleep. It was one of those short-attention-span documentaries where all the breathing room is ruthlessly excised. Back in my day we did it with razor blades on tape. My goal was usually somewhat tamer than slam-cutting from piece to piece. Nowadays filmmakers cut from one scene to another with scarcely a quarter second in between. That cuts away all room for thinking about what’s been said and even properly listening.
But modern documentary makers don’t want us to listen or think. They want us to be entertained by a relentless stream of sound. And obtw, John Lennon is God, of course, but of the Beatles he was the least musical (or, to be kind, musically memorable,) and 10-second excerpts of his music don’t stand up well to being hard-cut in at a canning factory pace.
Maybe peace doesn’t have the human dress but a human pace.
One genuine joy, so you don’t think I’m terminally grumpy. in the Facebook Atheist, Agnostic and Non-Religious group (abbreviated AANR in our blogroll) a discussion arose about what if Satan were real and came go earth and disguised himself as a human; say, Karl Rove.
One of the particicipants (I tried to find who, but couldn’t) commented, “Worst. Disguise. Ever.”
Finally, three love letters from human voices: MissyHiggins sings “The Special Two,” Maria Schneider plays “Journey Home,” and the late Bob Florence plays a Bronislaw Kaper medley.
I would have voted for Ringo as being–by far–the least musically memorable out of the Fab Four (or, I guess, Pete Best if you want to get technical), but John would have been next.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:20 amIsn’t Karl Rove, the architect of political victory by mobilizing the Christian Evangelicals of the far right, an agnostic? If so, perhaps he is the root of all evil.
And as far as film is concerned, I would heartily recommend Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope.” Alfred shot an entire reel of film at a time, so it feels more like a play than a movie. He would ingeniously zoom in on the back one of the actor’s suit jacket when he needed to cut, then zoom back out when the reel was changed and resume filming. This movie also has the most memorable entrance by Jimmy Stewart of any of his films, which occurs perhaps a full half hour into it, and is the result of a subtle zoom out to reveal Stewart’s character patiently waiting to be greeted by the other characters.
Other examples of films I can think of that remind me of plays are “Glen Garry Glen Ross” and the HBO movie “Conspiracy” (no, not “Conspiracy Theory”).
June 25th, 2008 at 8:00 pm