Hilarius Bookbinder

Stay Calm

2012-02-01T00:02:00.002-05:00

I wish to state, for the sake of any who may be interested in the subject, that I shall treat it, not by ridicule, but by argument; perhaps with great freedom, but with good temper and in peaceable language; with very little hope of reclaiming converts, with no desire of making enemies, but with a firm belief that its pretensions and assertions cannot stand before a single hour of calm investigation.

...

As one humble member of a profession which for more than two thousand years has devoted itself to the pursuit of the best earthly interests of mankind, always assailed and insulted from without by such as are ignorant of its infinite perplexities and labors, always striving in unequal contest with the hundred-armed giant who walks in the noonday, and sleeps not in the midnight, yet still toiling, not merely for itself and the present moment, but for the race and the future, I have lifted my voice against this lifeless delusion, rolling its shapeless bulk into the path of a noble science it is too weak to strike, or to injure.

-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Emile Zola on the Oscars

2011-02-26T09:32:00.001-05:00

Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is?

Suppose the artist's paradise turned out to be as nonexistent as the Catholics, and future generations prove just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting. There are some accepted masterpieces for which I myself wouldn't give a twopenny damn.

Classical training has given us a wrong view of everything and forces us to acclaim as geniuses a lot of fellows who are no more than well-balanced, facile painters, while what we might really prefer is the work of more emancipated but less even artists known only to an initiated few. Immortality at present depends entirely on the average, middle-class mind and is reserved only for the names that have been most forcibly impressed upon us while we were still unable to defend ourselves...

Perhaps that's the sort of thing that's best left unsaid. It's certainly the sort of thing that gives me the shudders!
Emile Zola

The Myth of American Religious Freedom

2011-02-01T22:18:00.000-05:00

Using bad history does not help public debate and it does not make stable law. Liberals should acknowledge that the past did not feature a harmonious arrangement of freedom that sprang from the minds of Jefferson and Madison. By reframing their arguments away from that bad history, I actually think liberals would strengthen their own position because the most powerful argument for liberal jurisprudence is historical. It goes something like this: Once upon a time, the individual was subject to religious oppression that used the apparatus of the state. But then the Supreme Court realized that the Bill of Rights, which defines the rights of American citizens, should apply to the states because the states were infringing upon the rights of the individual guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. As the Supreme Court began applying the Bill of Rights to the states, it made a host of questionable historical arguments. But it did so for a still legitimate purpose that is now under attack by religious partisans in the present. The Court sought to free the individual from oppression in order to make the United States into a liberal democracy. We can uphold those rulings while not repeating the same bad history, because acknowledging past Protestant power helps to show why the liberal jurisprudence is necessary.

-David Sehat, author of The Myth of American Religious Freedom.

On Discovering a Butterfly

2011-01-26T22:21:00.000-05:00

I found it and I named it, being versed
in taxonomic Latin; thus became
godfather to an insect and its first
describer -- and I want no other fame.

Wide open on its pin (though fast asleep),
and safe from creeping relatives and rust,
in the secluded stronghold where we keep
type specimens it will transcend its dust.

Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss,
poems that take a thousand years to die
but ape the immortality of this
red label on a little butterfly.

-Vladimir Nabokov, Poem #1498

Hip

2010-11-14T20:44:00.001-05:00

Taste is not stable and peaceful, but a means of strategy and competition. Those superior in wealth use it to pretend they are superior in spirit. Groups closer in social class who yet draw their status from different sources use taste and its attainments to disdain one another and get a leg up. These conflicts for social dominance through culture are exactly what drive the dynamics within communities...
n+1

The Last Solider Killed

2010-11-11T14:37:00.000-05:00

There was one incident that captured the essence of war on the western front, the distillation of its arbitrary violence. At two minutes to eleven in the vicinity of Mons a Canadian private named George Price was hit by a sniper’s bullet. He died instantly. The man who killed him remains unknown. That man made a choice. He was a marksman, a skilled soldier. He had just moments remaining in which it was legal for him to kill. There was no need to fire, no purpose, and some risk at least to himself and any comrades near him. If he waited until eleven, and then put his gun down, the only consequence would be that a young stranger would go home. Instead, the shot rang out. Two minutes ticked past. The war ended. George Price lay dead.

On Madmen

2010-10-09T12:14:00.000-04:00

In an era where a show like Mad Men has become so popular all across the board, it is easy to forget that for many, its nostalgic take gilds the era in a way that seems to be not quite complete or accurate. In the shadow of these Madison Avenue Mad Men types, a new kind of American was emerging—one typified by Ferlinghetti—that was looser, that put a paper back book in his or her pocket and mulled the post World War 2 American dream/landscape and said “no thanks.” - John.

The only representative of the Empire of China

2010-07-03T23:35:00.000-04:00

Reported in the New York Times, July 12, 1863:

Among the killed at Gettysburgh was a young Chinaman, known as JOHN TOMMY. He was attached to the First regiment Excelsior brigade, Capt. PRICK's company. JOHN TOMMY was the only representative of the Central Flowery Kingdom in the Army of the Potomac, and was widely known both from that circumstances and certain peculiarities of this own. JOHN TOMMY came to this country immediately after the breaking out of the war, and was induced to enlist in Gen. SICKLES' brigade, at that time being raised in [New York.] He was then a mere lad, entirely ignorant of our language. Being bright, smart and honest, he soon become a favorite at Red Hook, States Island, and was at once the butt and the wit of the whole regiment.

Before he became located on the Maryland shore of the Potomac opposite Aquia Creek, in one of the reconnaissances on the south side of the river, TOMMY was taken prisoner and soon become a lion in the rebel camp. He was brought before Gen. MAGRUDER, who surprised at his appearance and color, asked him was he a mulatto, Indian or what? When TOMMY told him he was from China, MAGRUDER was very much amused, and asked him how much he would take to join the Confederate army. "Not unless you would make me a Brigadier-General," said TOMMY, to the great delight of the secesh officers who treated him very kindly and sent him to Fredericksburgh.

Here TOMMY become a great lion, and his picture was published in the Fredericksburgh papers. Subsequently he was sent to the Libby Prison, Richmond, where he met his captain, BENJAMIN PRICE, who had been taken prisoner at Williamsburgh. After his parole TOMMY [returned] to New York City. where he employed his time in attending upon his sick and wounded comrades. He was the kindest of [nurses] and [spent] his little means in providing delicacies for sick fellow soldiers. In the subsequent engagements at Frederick and last at Gettysburgh. JOHN TOMMY was one of the bravest soldiers in that bravest of brigade, the Excelsior. He seemed not to know what fear was and was the universal favorite of all his fellow soldiers. He had not been wounded up to Gettysburgh, but in Friday's night he was wounded by a shell, which tore off both legs at the thighs, and he shortly [bled] to death. The company he was in went into the action with twenty eight men and lost twenty in killed and wounded. TOMMY's [service] is peculiar as he was the only representative of the Empire of China in the finest army on the planet [or in the] World.

From Ebert

2010-02-20T22:54:00.001-05:00

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear, he writes in a journal entry titled “Go Gently into That Good Night.” I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

For a Zinn - Maybe I could be like him.

2010-01-28T00:39:00.004-05:00

Your honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
-Eugene Victor Debs

Imogen

2009-11-04T12:06:00.001-05:00

On Children

2009-07-13T13:04:00.000-04:00

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

-Kahlil Gibran

A Father

2009-06-26T20:50:00.001-04:00

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

–Rudyard Kipling

Answer within / Keats

2009-02-13T21:31:00.001-05:00

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thou express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunt about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Written in 1819, 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'

Crick / Ridley

2009-02-08T11:07:00.002-05:00

He trained his mind to be exquisitely good at solving nature's puzzles using logic, had the courage to take on the biggest problems, and threw himself exuberantly into the task, never letting prejudice stand in the way of reason. Throughout, he stayed true to himself: ebullient, loquacious, charming, sceptical, tenacious. He would have liked to find the seat of consciousness and to see the retreat of religion. He had to settle for explaining life.

I Want to Believe

2009-01-16T20:03:00.003-05:00

And do you think that unto such as you;
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew:
God gave the secret, and denied it me?--
Well, well, what matters it! Believe that, too.
(Le Gallienne)

Drink wine! and then as Mahmud thou wilt reign,
And hear a music passing David's strain:
Think not of past or future, seize to-day,
Then all thy life will not be lived in vain.
(FitzGerald)

غیاث الدین ابو الفتح عمر بن ابراهیم خیام نیشابوری
The Quatrains of Omar Khayyam: Three Translations of the Rubaiyat

a haircut / in the mood for love / and bin

2008-06-28T10:00:00.000-04:00

Can there be a transition from quantitative qualification to a qualitative one without a leap? And does not the whole of life rest in that? iv c 87 n.d 1842-43.

Chinese Beautiful Losers / Cohen

2008-06-07T20:00:00.000-04:00

Dear Reader,

Thank you for coming to this book. It is an honor, and a surprise, to have the frenzied thoughts of my youth expressed in Chinese characters. I sincerely appreciate the efforts of the translator and the publishers in bringing this curious work to your attention. I hope you will find it useful or amusing.

When I was young, my friends and I read and admired the old Chinese poets. Our ideas of love and friendship, of wine and distance, of poetry itself, were much affected by those ancient songs. Much later, during the years when I practiced as a Zen monk under the guidance of my teacher Kyozan Joshu Roshi, the thrilling sermons of Lin Chi (Rinzai) were studied every day. So you can understand, Dear Reader, how privileged I feel to be able to graze, even for a moment, and with such meager credentials, on the outskirts of your tradition.

This is a difficult book, even in English, if it is taken too seriously. May I suggest that you skip over the parts you don't like? Dip into it here and there. Perhaps there will be a passage, or even a page, that resonates with your curiosity. After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover. In any case, I thank you for your interest in this odd collection of jazz riffs, pop-art jokes, religious kitsch and muffled prayer æ an interest which indicates, to my thinking, a rather reckless, though very touching, generosity on your part.

Beautiful Losers was written outside, on a table set among the rocks, weeds and daisies, behind my house on Hydra, an island in the Aegean Sea. I lived there many years ago. It was a blazing hot summer. I never covered my head. What you have in your hands is more of a sunstroke than a book.

Dear Reader, please forgive me if I have wasted your time.

Los Angeles, February 27, 2000

Leonard Cohen

He was going to stay here.

2008-05-16T14:02:00.001-04:00

Church Going / Philip Larkin

2008-04-21T23:41:00.000-04:00

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
"Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

After the Wedding

2007-12-04T11:44:00.001-05:00

Life knows us not and we do not know life - we don't even know our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit. Faith is a myth, and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of tomorrow. / Joseph Conrad

Oxford University, December 3, 1964

2007-11-11T17:39:00.000-05:00

Irreversible / 4 others

2007-10-03T11:06:00.000-04:00

Irreversible. Because time destroys everything. Because some acts are irreparable. Because man is an animal. Because the desire for vengeance is a natural impulse. Because most crimes remain unpunished. Because the loss of a loved one destroys like lightning. Because love is the source of life. Because time reveals everything - the best and the worst.

Eastern Promises

2007-09-25T21:45:00.000-04:00

Jeanne Aufmuth : “Promises” is also a brooding meditation on good vs. evil and the duality within, craftily embodied in Mortensen’s composed, complex observer.

Across the Universe

2007-09-11T14:20:00.000-04:00

Justin Chang: Julie Taymor has delivered an audacious, idiosyncratic creation that plays like a riff on Hair with Fab Four cachet, stretching a thin love story across one tumultuous decade.

30-Once

2007-09-09T14:35:00.000-04:00

Duane Dudek: A portrait of an intimate musical friendship that becomes a safe harbor for two ships passing in the night...

Death of Friendships

2007-08-21T22:37:00.000-04:00

This slow moving but ultimately quite touching film unfolds, resonating with familiar experiences of friendships shifting or dissipating over time.

I Was Meant For the Stage

2007-08-08T21:58:00.000-04:00

I was meant for the stage,
I was meant for the curtain.
I was meant to tread these boards,
Of this much I am certain.

I was meant for the crowd,
I was meant for the shouting.
I was meant to raise these hands
With quiet all about me.
Oh, Oh.

Mother, please be proud.
Father, be forgiving.
Even though you told me
'Son, you'll never make a living.'
Oh, oh.

From the floorboards to the flys,
Here I was fated to reside.
And as I take my final bow,
Was there ever any doubt?
And as the spotlights fade away,
And you're escorted through the foyer,
You will resume your callow ways,
But I was meant for the stage.

The heavens at my birth
Intended me for stardom,
Rays of light shone down on me
And all my sins were pardoned.

I was meant for applause.
I was meant for derision.
Nothing short of fate itself
Has affected my decision.
Oh, oh.

And from the floorboards to the flys,
Here I was fated to reside.
And as I take my final bow,
Was there ever any doubt?
And as the spotlights fade away,
And you're escorted through the foyer,
You will resume your callow ways,
But I was meant for the stage.

Oliver Schmitz / Segment: "Place des Fêtes"

2007-07-30T14:36:00.000-04:00

Shame / The Film Poet

2007-07-30T13:51:00.001-04:00

“I want to be one of the artists of the cathedral that rises on the plain,” he said. “I want to occupy myself by carving out of stone the head of a dragon, an angel or a demon, or perhaps a saint; it doesn’t matter; I will find the same joy in any case. Whether I am a believer or an unbeliever, Christian or pagan, I work with all the world to build a cathedral because I am artist and artisan, and because I have learned to draw faces, limbs, and bodies out of stone. I will never worry about the judgment of posterity or of my contemporaries; my name is carved nowhere and will disappear with me. But a little part of myself will survive in the anonymous and triumphant totality. A dragon or a demon, or perhaps a saint, it doesn’t matter!”

COLOSSAL YOUTH / + 300 Hours

2007-05-15T13:28:00.000-04:00

The best film of 2006 may also turn out to be the best film of 2007; a richer, more daring and compelling work this year is unimaginable. COLOSSAL YOUTH centres on Ventura, a Cape Verdean ex-labourer whose wife of thirty years decamps Lisbon for home and leaves Ventura wandering his new neighbourhood, Casal Boba, to visit his “children” - various lost souls who see him as a father figure. Among them is Vanda Duarte, familiar from Costa's previous two films, now on methadone and ensconced in a new apartment with husband and baby. Achieving grandeur with minimal means, Costa turns Ventura's encounters with the once or presently dispossessed into a humanist epic. Carved out of over three hundred hours of material shot digitally, YOUTH offers one lovely composition and heart-smiting moment after another. Voted in several critics' polls as one of the three best undistributed films of 2006, YOUTH is truly colossal. “If there were many good movies in Cannes this year, and perhaps even a couple of great ones, COLOSSAL YOUTH is the only one I would venture to call heroic” (Scott Foundas, L. A. Weekly).

Director: Pedro Costa
Year: 2006
Runtime: 155 minutes
Country: Portugal/France/Switzerland
Cast: Ventura, Vanda Duarte

A Chicken Coop / and Some Dark Pudding Gravy

2007-05-01T11:44:00.000-04:00

In Ken Loach’s movies — he has made more than 20 in the last 40 years — characters frequently argue about politics, which is only fitting, since the films themselves are political arguments. There is no point in combing through Mr. Loach’s work for hints of ideological significance. Ideology — Marxist, anti-imperialist, aligned with the perceived interests of the powerless and the marginal — is the engine that drives his stories. The clarity and force of those stories is considerable, but their bluntness sometimes sticks in the craw of critics, who often scold Mr. Loach for lacking subtlety. The history presented in “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” hardly feels like a closed book or a museum display. It is as alive and as troubling as anything on the evening news, though far more thoughtful and beautiful.

— A. O. Scott, The New York Times

JFK

2007-04-09T18:40:00.000-04:00

I have today signed an Executive Order providing for the establishment of a Peace Corps on a temporary pilot basis. I am also sending to Congress a message proposing authorization of a permanent Peace Corps. This Corps will be a pool of trained American men and women sent overseas by the U.S. Government or through private institutions and organizations to help foreign countries meet their urgent needs for skilled manpower.

It is our hope to have 500 or more people in the field by the end of the year.

The initial reactions to the Peace Corps proposal are convincing proof that we have, in this country, an immense reservoir of such men and women--anxious to sacrifice their energies and time and toil to the cause of world peace and human progress.

In establishing our Peace Corps we intend to make full use of the resources and talents of private institutions and groups. Universities, voluntary agencies, labor unions and industry will be asked to share in this effort--contributing diverse sources of energy and imagination--making it clear that the responsibility for peace is the responsibility of our entire society.

We will only send abroad Americans who are wanted by the host country--who have a real job to do--and who are qualified to do that job. Programs will be developed with care, and after full negotiation, in order to make sure that the Peace Corps is wanted and will contribute to the welfare of other people. Our Peace Corps is not designed as an instrument of diplomacy or propaganda or ideological conflict. It is designed to permit our people to exercise more fully their responsibilities in the great common cause of world development.

Life in the Peace Corps will not be easy. There will be no salary and allowances will be at a level sufficient only to maintain health and meet basic needs. Men and women will be expected to work and live alongside the nationals of the country in which they are stationed--doing the same work, eating the same food, talking the same language.

But if the life will not be easy, it will be rich and satisfying. For every young American who participates in the Peace Corps--who works in a foreign land--will know that he or she is sharing in the great common task of bringing to man that decent way of life which is the foundation of freedom and a condition of peace.

Governance has made me captive

2007-04-03T22:32:00.000-04:00

2006-12-20T18:19:00.000-05:00

An outdoor plant indoors is fake.

2006-11-26T18:28:00.000-05:00

Lots of Wangs

2006-06-27T22:30:00.000-04:00

What are your true feelings towards Big Brother? I love him.

2006-05-30T22:33:00.000-04:00

Just a Pond

The Crucible

2006-05-16T20:19:00.000-04:00

I can. And there's your first marvel, that I can. You have made your magic now, for now I do think I see some shred of goodness.

2006-05-13T20:58:00.000-04:00

Over Two / Rewind

Dwight D. Eisenhower / Why We Fight

2006-02-22T12:57:00.000-05:00

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

- U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961

Winston Churchill

2006-01-10T09:48:00.000-05:00

Why, you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together - what do you get? The sum of their fears.

Martin Niemoller / Silence is Easy

2005-12-29T13:45:00.000-05:00

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out, because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me
and by then there was no one left to speak out for me.

Gotham / Mayor Bloooooom-berg

2005-12-12T02:10:00.000-05:00

John Howard / High Park / Nap

2005-10-29T14:25:00.000-04:00

The Bard / Sonnet 97 / Clay and Glass

2005-10-23T10:50:00.000-04:00

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness every where!
And yet this time removed was summer's time,
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me
But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.

Thomas Stearns Eliot / Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding / EinsteinFest

2005-10-06T23:21:00.000-04:00

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

A Young Master / Hirokazu Kore-eda / Nobody Knows

2005-10-04T14:52:00.000-04:00

Ella Taylor / Unfolds with such leisurely, terrible beauty, it takes a while to realize that what we are witnessing is the children’s long slide into beggary, exacerbated by the slow torture of faint hope.

Moira Macdonald / This is a profoundly sad film, but it's made with such artistry that it's almost uplifting; you watch it mesmerized, immersed in the strange community the children create. And some of its details are startlingly lovely: an unexpected cherry blossom; a child's red-crayoned drawing; Akira's innocent smile as he looks at his happy siblings.

Hugo Chavez / Arabian Girls

2005-09-20T09:39:00.000-04:00

They're insane. These people have been combating for centuries. This is the Mesopotamian people. I know a little bit of the spirit of the Arab countries. Those are warriors, ten times more warriors than we are. They've been struggling in war for many centuries. They're going to receive, not with flowers, they're going to resist the occupation.

Uri Avnery / The Edge of a Republic; a warning

2005-09-18T12:43:00.000-04:00

The great majority of Israelis are not aware of the real and present danger to Israeli democracy. They still have the illusion that this is something that will pass. Only when people realize that real danger is there and that people must come out and face it will there be a chance that some leadership will emerge. One can only hope that it will not be too late. I'm very much reminded of the last days of the Weimar Republic. I think about it constantly. And I think that the dangers that people were facing at that time are here. It has been said that the Weimar Republic collapsed not because the fascists overthrew it, but because at the moment of truth no one was ready to step up and defend the Republic. This nightmare pursues me. I think about it all the time.

Susan Sontag / The Love of Film / The Decay of Cinema

2005-09-08T11:45:00.000-04:00

Perhaps it is not cinema that has ended but only cinephilia -- the name of the very specific kind of love that cinema inspired. Each art breeds its fanatics. The love that cinema inspired, however, was special. It was born of the conviction that cinema was an art unlike any other: quintessentially modern; distinctively accessible; poetic and mysterious and erotic and moral -- all at the same time. Cinema had apostles. (It was like religion.) Cinema was a crusade. For cinephiles, the movies encapsulated everything. Cinema was both the book of art and the book of life.

Herman Melville / Moby Dick / Starbucks Coffee

2005-09-06T16:31:00.000-04:00

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the airs smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness; as last year's scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swarths - Starbuck!

Afghanistan Physics

2005-08-27T09:01:00.000-04:00

Ziyi Zhang / Wong Kar-Wai / 2046

2005-08-12T09:47:00.000-04:00

It is Ziyi Zhang who owns 2046, pulling us in as her coquetry turns into unrequited need. / Laura Clifford

The affair between Chow and Bai Ling consumes only part of the story, but Ms. Zhang's shockingly intense performance burns a hole in the film that gives everything, including all the other relationships, a sense of terrific urgency. / The New York Times

Of all the women with whom Chow dallies, Zhang emerges the most powerfully as Bai Ling, the subject of his most lasting relationship. She's all grown up, heart-stoppingly beautiful, with a startling command of the screen. Here she fulfills the promise of her more youthful performances in films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. / The Associated Press

Zhang is simply phenomenal, effortlessly capturing her character's caprices and heartbreak... It's Zhang who is the real surprise here. Her breakout performance puts her on a level with the world's best actresses. / Film Journal International

Cameron Crowe / Film Dialogue

2005-07-19T10:02:00.000-04:00

L: Aw, man. You made friends with them. See, friendship is the booze they feed you. They want you to get drunk on feeling like you belong.

W: Well, it was fun.

L: They make you feel cool. And hey. I met you. You are not "cool."

W: I know. Even when I thought I was, I knew I wasn't.

L: That's because we are uncool. And while women will always be a problem for guys like us, most of the great art in the world is about that very problem. Good-looking people have no spine. Their art never lasts. They get the girls, but we're smarter.

W: I can really see that now.

L: Yeah, great art is about conflict and pain and guilt and longing and love disguised as sex, and sex disguised as love... and let's face it, you got a big head start.

W: I'm glad you were home.

L: I'm always home. I'm uncool.

W: Me too.

L: You're doing fine. The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool.

W: I feel better.

L: My advice to you. I know you think those guys are your friends. You want to be a true friend to them? -- Be honest -- and unmerciful.

Constantin Constantius / Repetition: Be Boring

2005-07-17T10:37:00.000-04:00

Repetition’s love is in truth the only happy love. Like recollection’s love, it does not have the restlessness of hope, the uneasy adventurousness of discovery, but neither does it have the sadness of recollection – it has the blissful security of the moment. Hope is a new garment, stiff and starched and lustrous, but it has never been tried on, and therefore one does not know how becoming it will be or how it will fit. Recollection is a discarded garment that does not fit however beautiful it is, for one has outgrown it. Repetition is an indestructible garment that fits closely and tenderly, neither binds not sags. Hope is a lovely maiden who slips away between one’s fingers; recollection is a beautiful old woman with whom one is never satisfied at the moment; repetition is a beloved wife of whom one never wearies, for one becomes weary only of what is new. One never grows weary of the old , and when one has that, one is happy. He alone is truly happy who is not deluded into thinking that the repetition should be something new, for then one grows weary of it. It takes youthfulness to hope, youthfulness to recollect, but it takes courage to will repetition: To will the boring.

Cinematheque / Henri-Georges Clouzot

2005-07-17T10:11:00.000-04:00

Title: Diabolique
Foreign Title: Les Diaboliques
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Year: 1955
Runtime: 116 min
Country: France
Cast: Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot
Screening times and locations:
Saturday, July 23, 2005 8:30 PM
All films are screened at Jackman Hal

Last Life in the Universe / Stephen Holden

2005-06-30T16:17:00.000-04:00

Allusive, and enigmatic, with hallucinations that vie with reality in its characters' minds, this Thai film is a wistful mood piece whose contemplative tone is periodically punctured with eruptions of violence. A meditation on the mysterious symmetry of lives and the unlikely attraction of opposites, the movie observes the off-kilter romance of one of the world's odder couples: a lonely Japanese librarian's assistant living in Bangkok who lives a compulsively orderly existence and a brash Thai bar girl about to move to Osaka. In its exploration of intercultural communication and the attraction of opposites, it suggests an elliptical Asian response to "Lost in Translation."

Otto Wels to Adolf Hitler/ The Third Reich / And a Cyanide Capsule

2005-06-11T10:18:00.000-04:00

In this historic hour, we German Social Democrats solemnly profess our allegiance to the basic principles of humanity and justice, freedom and socialism. No Enabling Law gives you the right to annihilate ideas that are eternal and indestructible. The Anti-Socialist Law did not annihilate the Social Democrats. Social Democracy can also draw new strength from fresh persecutions. We greet the persecuted and the hard-pressed. Their steadfastness and loyalty deserve admiration. The courage of their convictions, their unbroken confidence, vouch for a brighter future.

Cinematheque / Ingmar Bergman

2005-05-19T10:59:00.000-04:00

Title: Shame
Foreign Title: Skammen
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Year: 1968
Runtime: 94 min
Country: Sweden
Cast: Liv Ullmann, Max von Sydow
Screening times and locations:
Saturday, June 18, 2005 6:30 PM

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard / Moroccan Tea, With Her

2005-05-19T10:42:00.000-04:00

What is it that makes a person strong, stronger than the whole world; what is it that makes him weak, weaker than a child? What is it that makes a person unwavering, more unwavering than a rock; what is it that makes him soft, softer than wax? -- it is love! What is it that is older than everything? It is love. What is it that outlives everything? It is love. What is it that cannot be taken but itself takes all? It is love. What is it that cannot be given but itself gives all? It is love. What is it that perseveres when everything falls away? It is love. What is it that comforts when all comfort fails? It is love. What is it that endures when everything is changed? It is love. What is it that remains when the imperfect is abolished? It is love. What is it that witnesses when prophecy is silent? It is love. What is it that does not cease when the vision ends? It is love. What is it that sheds light when the dark saying ends? It is love. What is it that gives blessing to the abundance of the gift? It is love. What is it that gives pith to the angel's words? It is love. What is it that makes the widow's gift an abundance? It is love. What is it that turns the words of the simple person into wisdom? It is love. What is it that is never changed even though everything is changed? It is love; and that alone is love, that which never becomes something else.

Thomas Mann / An Ordinary Young Man

2005-04-27T22:20:00.000-04:00

A human being lives out not only his personal life as an individual, but also, consciously or subconsciously, the lives of his epoch and contemporaries; and although he may regard the general and impersonal foundations of his existence as unequivocal givens and take them for granted, having as little intention of ever subjecting them to critique as our good H. himself had, it is nevertheless quite possible that he senses his own moral well-being to be somehow impaired by the lack of critique. All sorts of personal goals, purposes, hopes, prospects may float before the eyes of a given individual, from which he may then glean the impulse for exerting himself for great deeds; if the impersonal world around him, however, if the times themselves, despite all their hustle and bustle, provide him with neither hopes nor prospects, if they secretly supply him with evidence that things are in fact hopeless, without prospect or remedy, if the times respond with hollow silence to every conscious or subconscious question, however it may be posed, about the ultimate, unequivocal meaning of all exertions and deeds that are more than exclusively personal – then it is almost inevitable, particularly if the person involved is a more honest sort, that the situation will have a crippling effect, which following moral and spiritual paths, may even spread to the individual's physical and organic life. For a person to be disposed to more significant deeds that go beyond what is simply required of him - even when his own times may provide no satisfactory answer to the question of why - he needs either a rare, heroic personality that exists in a kind of moral isolation and immediacy, or one characterized by exceptionally robust vitality. Neither the former nor the latter was the case with H., and so he probably was mediocre after all, thought in the very honorable sense of the word.

Cinematheque / Yasujiro Ozu

2005-04-02T13:19:00.000-05:00

Title: Tokyo Story
Foreign Title: Tokyo Monogatari
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Year: 1953
Runtime: 134 min
Country: Japan
Cast: Chishu Ryu, Setsuko Hara
Screening times and locations:
Sunday, April 10, 2005 1:00 PM

Franz Kafka / An Admission

2005-03-19T12:38:00.001-05:00

Today S. no longer thought of shame; the petition had to be written. If he couldn't find time for it at the office, which was quite likely, he would have to do it nights at home. And if the nights weren't sufficient, he would have to take a leave of absence. Anything but stop halfway, that was the most senseless course of all, not only in business, but anywhere, at any time. Admittedly, the petition meant an almost endless task. One needn't be particularly faint of heart to be easily persuaded of the impossibility of ever finishing the petition. Not because of laziness or deceit, but because without knowing the nature of the charge and all its possible ramifications, his entire life, down to the smallest actions and events, would have been called to mind, described, and examined from all sides. And what a sad job that was.

Peter Benenson / Pen Pals

2005-03-08T16:54:00.000-05:00

Open your newspaper - any day of the week - and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government. The newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of disgust all over the world could be united into common action, something effective could be done.

I was spurred into that by reading an article about how two Portuguese students had been arrested and sentenced to imprisonment for drinking a toast to liberty in a Lisbon restaurant. That so enraged me at the time that I walked up the steps of St Martins-In-The-Fields church, out of the underground, and went in to see what could really be done effectively to mobilize world opinion.

I became aware that lawyers themselves were not able sufficiently to influence the course of justice in undemocratic countries. It was necessary to think of a larger group which harnessed the enthusiasm of people all over the world who were anxious to see a wider respect for human rights.

Once the concentration camps and the hell-holes of the world were in darkness. Now they are lit by the light of the Amnesty candle; the candle in barbed wire. When I first lit the Amnesty candle, I had in mind the old Chinese proverb: 'Better light a candle than curse the darkness.'

Jørgen Leth / Timelessness

2005-03-04T23:39:00.000-05:00

This is my working credo, which still holds: Film is a series of images put together. Not a sequence, not a story, but a series of images, nothing more. The order of the images is less important than the single images. The final consequence of that assertion is that images may be put together blindfolder. That thier order may be determined by means of rules that makes allowance for a strong element of chance.

Cinematheque / Dana Rotberg / Roy Andersson

2005-03-04T10:35:00.000-05:00

Title: Angel of Fire
Director: Dana Rotberg
Year: 1991
Runtime: 90 min
Country: Mexico
Cast: Evangelina Sosa, Lilia Aragón
Screening times and locations:
Saturday, March 12, 2005 6:30 PM

Title: A Swedish Love Story
Foreign Title: En Kärlekshistoria
Director: Roy Andersson
Year: 1969
Runtime: 119 min
Country: Sweden
Cast: Ann-Sofie Kylin, Rolf Sohlman
Screening times and locations:
Saturday, March 12, 2005 8:30 PM

Bold Young Captain

2005-02-27T02:50:00.000-05:00

Here - at this final hour, in this quiet place - Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes - extinguished now, and gone from us forever. For Harlem is where he worked and where he struggled and fought - his home of homes, where his heart was, and where his people are - and it is, therefore, most fitting that we meet once again - in Harlem - to share these last moments with him. For Harlem has ever been gracious to those who have loved her, have fought for her, and have defended her honor even to the death.

Beware of Pity / Stefan Zweig

2005-02-19T17:58:00.000-05:00

And as she made all these reckless proposals, [...] she laughed and joked away so gaily and irresponsibly that my opposition was completely silenced. And it was only when I found myself alone in my room that night that I heard a faint warning knocking on the wall of my heart: were not her hopes a trifle exaggerated? Ought I not to prink the bubble of this dangerous optimism? But I refused to admit the thought to my consciousness. Why worry as to whether I had said too much or too little? Even if I had gone further than in all honesty I should have done, my lies, those lies born of pity, had made her happy; and to make a person happy could never be a crime.

Cinematheque / Wong Kar-wai

2005-02-01T14:45:00.000-05:00

Title: Days of Being Wild
Foreign Title: Ah Fei Zheng Zhuan
Director: Wong Kar-wai
Year: 1991
Runtime: 94 min
Country: Hong Kong
Cast: Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung
Screening Time: Friday, February 25, 2005 6:30 PM
Saturday, February 26, 2005 8:30 PM
Tuesday, March 1, 2005 8:45 PM

Sway / Klüft / Perishers

2005-01-25T20:10:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, May 17, 2005, Toronto

I talk to you as to a friend
I hope that’s what you’ve come to be
It feels as though we’ve made amends
Like we found a way eventually

It was you who picked the pieces up
When I was a broken soul
And then glued me back together
Returned to me what others stole

I look at you and see a friend
I hope that’s what you wanna be
Are we back now where it all began?
Have you finally forgiven me?

Nuremberg Judgment / Part 22 International Military Tribunal

2005-01-10T21:48:00.000-05:00

The charges in the indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

Cinematheque / Director Retrospectives / Sergio Leone

2004-12-29T13:34:00.000-05:00

Title: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Foreign Title: Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo
Director: Sergio Leone
Year: 1967
Runtime: 180 min
Country: Italy
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach
Screening Time: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 6:30 PM

Gilbert Adair / The Front Row

2004-12-27T01:14:00.000-05:00

Inside the auditorium itself, the atmosphere was even more extraordinary. We were utterly absorbed in the film that was being screened before us, sitting in a silence I would call "religious" except that it was eerily free of the coughing and shuffling that tend to punctuate a church service; and if I had to define the difference between a filmgoer and a film buff (a buff of that generation at least, the type who'd always be found in the very front row), I'd say that, while a filmgoer is inside the cinema, a buff is someone who does their darnedest to get inside the film itself.

Albert Camus / A Letter to An American Friend

2004-12-15T22:34:00.000-05:00

I feel a choking sensation. No, I didn’t love my country, if pointing out what is unjust in what we love amounts to not loving, if insisting that what we love should measure up to the finest image we have of her amounts to not loving. That was five years ago, and many men thought as I did. Some of them, however, have already been stood up against the wall facing the twelve little backs eyes of German destiny. And those men, who in your opinion did not love their country, did more for it than you will ever do for yours, even if it were possible for you to give your life a hundred times. For their heroism was that they had to conquer themselves first.

Cinematheque / Exclusive Limited Run

2004-11-27T01:40:00.000-05:00

Title: Burn!
Foreign Title: Queimada!
Director: Gillo Pontecorvo
Year: 1969
Runtime: 132 min
Country: Italy/France
Screening times and locations: Saturday, November 27, 2004 6:30 PM - All films are screened at Jackman Hall

Lest We Forget; We Are All Nazis

2004-11-11T11:11:00.000-05:00

Andre Friedman, Gerda Taro / Robert Capa

Hugo Munsterberg / The Photoplay; A Psychological Study

2004-11-07T21:50:00.000-05:00

The photoplay tells us a human story by overcoming the forms of the outer world, namely space, time and causality, and by adjusting the events to the forms of the inner world, namely attention, memory, imagination and emotion...[These events] reach complete isolation from the practical world through the perfect unity of plot and pictorial appearance.

2004-11-05T00:12:00.000-05:00

cato.org @ 10 weeks

2004-11-01T23:40:00.000-05:00

Henri Cartier-Bresson / Albert Camus

Perimeter Institute Lecture / Proofs and Pictures

2004-11-01T20:58:00.000-05:00

Proofs and Pictures: The Role of Visualization in Mathematical and Scientific Reasoning
Wednesday, November 3, 2004 7:00PM
James Robert Brown , Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto

University of Waterloo / Colloquium Series, Fall 2004

2004-10-26T16:36:00.000-04:00

The Meno, Recollection, and the Role of Hypothesis
Friday, October 29 , 2004 2:30PM
Joe Novak, Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo

Personhood, Autonomy, and Free Will
Friday, November 12, 2004 2:30PM
Natalie Osterberg, Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo

Spurious / Old Cynic

2004-10-26T01:17:00.000-04:00

I just know to expect nothing from you, little bourgeois, you who are content merely to aestheticise his experiences, indulging in lyrical pen portraits drawn a decade after the events he describes. Everything about you reeks of a safe distance: you are far enough from manual workers to evoke their suffering without letting it touch you, and far enough from your past to transform it into something which merely looks like a critique of capitalism. I know you and I know your type: you are the bourgeois who has to catastrophise the world in order to take revenge for what you see as your present misery. Whence your attraction for apocalyptic theories, your desire for environmental collapse. In the end, you want what every bourgeois wants: safety, security, a life lived at a distance, and your call for the great collapse is mere resentment that you have not received what you think is your due.

Spurious / Dialogue with an Old Cynic

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard / A Cupboard

2004-10-24T20:49:00.000-04:00

I have had a palisander cupboard made. It was while I lived in Nørregade on the first floor. It is constructed according to my design and this because of something my beloved said in her agony. She saidthat she would willingly thank me all her life if she had to live in alittle cupboard. With an eye to this, it is constructed without shelves. - Everything is kept carefully in the cupboard, everything that reminds me of her and that could remind me of her.

2004-10-22T15:20:00.000-04:00

New York Times / Cheerleading

2004-10-21T22:37:00.000-04:00

cato.org @ 10 weeks

2004-10-21T22:20:00.000-04:00

cato.org @ 4 months

2004-10-21T22:06:00.000-04:00

Father David Bauer

2004-10-21T21:53:00.000-04:00

cato.org @ 4 months

Andrei Tarkovsky / Cinema

2004-10-21T18:30:00.000-04:00

Despite the current plight of the cinema, film remains an art form, and every art form is specific, with a content which doesn't correspond to the essence of other forms. For example, photography can be an art form, as the genius of Cartier-Bresson shows, but it is not comparable to painting because it's not in competition with painting. The question that film-makers must ask themselves is, what distinguishes cinema from other arts? To me cinema is unique in its dimension of time. This doesn't mean it develops in time — so do music, theatre and ballet. I mean time in the literal sense. What is a frame, the interval between "Action" and "Cut"? Film fixes reality in a sense of time — it's a way of conserving time. No other art form can fix and stop time like this. Film is a mosaic made up of time.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald / Amory Blaine

2004-10-19T23:32:00.000-04:00

I'm restless. My whole generation is restless. I'm sick of a system where the richest man gets the most beautiful girl if he wants her, where the artist without an income has to sell his talents to the button manufacturer. Even if I had no talents I'd not be content to work ten years, condemned either to celibacy or a furtive indulgence...

John Pilger / The Fake Debate

2004-10-19T11:50:00.000-04:00

The real debate is neither Bush nor Kerry, but the system they exemplify; it is the decline of true democracy and the rise of the American "national security state" in Britain and other countries claiming to be democracies, in which people are sent to prison and the key thrown away and whose leaders commit capital crimes in faraway places, unhindered...

Axis of Logic / Critical Analysis / The Fake Debate

Albert Einstein / The Jewish State

2004-10-18T14:14:00.000-04:00

I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. Apart from practical consideration, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain -- especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state. We are no longer the Jews of the Maccabee period. A return to a nation in the political sense of the word would be equivalent to turning away from the spiritualization of our community which we owe to the genius of our prophets.

Cinematheque / Cambodian Elegy: The Films of Rithy Panh

2004-10-16T23:04:00.000-04:00

Title: S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine
Director: Rithy Panh
Year: 2003
Runtime: 101 min
Screening times and locations: Friday, October 29, 2004 9:00 PM / Sunday, October 31, 2004 3:00 PM

Title: Bophana: A Cambodian Tragedy
Foreign Title: Bophana: Une tragédie Cambodgienne
Year: 1996
Runtime: 60 min
Screening times and locations: Saturday, October 30, 2004 4:30 PM

Title: The Land of Wandering Souls
Foreign Title: La Terre des ames errantes
Year: 1999
Runtime: 100 min
Screening times and locations:Tuesday, November 2, 2004 6:30 PM

All films are screened at Jackman Hall
Director: Rithy Panh
Country: France

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche / Boats

2004-10-16T13:09:00.000-04:00

My dear friend, what is this our life? A boat that swims in the sea, and all one knows for certain about it is that one day it will capsize. Here we are, two good old boats that have been faithful neighbors, and above all your hand has done its best to keep me from "capsizing"! Let us then continue our voyage—each for the other's sake, for a long time yet, a long time! We should miss each other so much! Tolerably calm seas and good winds and above all sun—what I wish for myself, I wish for you, too, and am sorry that my gratitude can find expression only in such a wish and has no influence at all on wind or weather!

2004-10-15T09:23:00.000-04:00

Princess Cinema / La Dolce Vita / 10.17.2004.19:30

Judith Butler / University of California at Berkeley

2004-10-14T17:29:00.000-04:00

To the Editors of the NY Times:

Jonathan Kandell's vitriolic and disparaging obituary of Jacques Derrida takes the occasion of this accomplished philosopher's death to re-wage a culture war that has surely passed its time. Why would the New York Times assign the obituary to someone whose polemics are so unrestrained and intellectual limitations so obvious? There are reasonable disagreements to have with Derrida's work, but there were none to be found in Kandell's obituary. If Derrida's contributions to philosophy, literary criticism, the theory of painting, communications, ethics, and politics made him into the most internationally renowned European intellectual during these times, it is because of the precision of his thought, the way his thinking always took a brilliant and unanticipated turn, and because of the constant effort to reflect on moral and political responsibility. Kandell reports that Derrida disparaged the classics and jettisoned notions of truth, but Derrida made his name through reading Plato and Rousseau, among others, and anyone who has read his work in the last years know that questions of truth, of meaning, of life and death - the perennial questions of philosophy - are the ones that claimed him most. This most outrageous obituary fails to demean Derrida only because his work will continue to be read unabated, but it does cast a shadow on those who wrote and published it. Why would the NY Times want to join ranks with American reactionary anti-intellectualism precisely at a time when critical thinking is most urgently required?

The Ister / Inside Film Magazine

2004-10-13T14:49:00.000-04:00

The Ister, then, is about philosophy, and is an attempt to conjoin cinematic and philosophical considerations at a reasonably sophisticated level. Both of us were interested in the philosophical tradition, and Dan was engaged in researching a doctorate on the philosopher Martin Heidegger. Eventually we came around to the idea that a particular lecture course by Heidegger offered cinematic potential, as well as being of great intrinsic interest in itself. The lecture course, delivered in 1942, concentrated on one ‘hymn’ by the German poet, Friedrich Hölderlin. The hymn was called ‘Der Ister,’ a Germanized version of an old Greco-Roman name for the Danube River.

Mark Twain / Samuel Langhorne Clemens

2004-10-12T21:04:00.000-04:00

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words. His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those other things are his history. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written. Every day would make a whole book of 80,000 words - 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

2004-10-11T21:27:00.000-04:00

cato.org @ 7 months