I found this practically by accident.

I was looking on YouTube for docs on WWI, typed in the Great War, and this popped up.  It is an eighteen hour long BBC documentary, featuring Sir Michael Redgrave as the narrator, and Sir Ralph Richardson as Sir Douglas Haig.

You really get the feeling that Ken Burns most certainly could have seen this somehow when he was a youngster, or when he went to college, because it is pretty much the complete foundation for his style.

I am five episodes in, out of twenty-six total, and it is great stuff.  Highly recommended.











--Ardent

If you love movies and

Have a couple of hours to spare, I would point in the direction of The Criterion Collection's channel on YouTube. I had a delightful morning yesterday, ripping through the eighty or so 3 Reasons videos.  Each one is only about ninety seconds long. 

My faves were Topsy Turvy, Fish Tank, Something Wild, Carlos, Harold and Maude, Brazil, The Lady Vanishes, The 39 Steps, etc, ... It really is a lot of fun.  I think I will try and get the Wife to watch them with me on our big teevee through our Apple teevee box.

Here are a few of those faves:

P.S.:  They do not show him at all in the video but dreamboat Michael Fassbinder is in Fish Tank.  All three of those films come extremely highly recommended by me.



















Mwah, ...

It is funny.

I totally have wanted to do a piece like this on fauxluxe for a while now.  I even attempted it around this time last year, but abandoned it because I just could not get the tone right, or could not capture the theme beneath the text.  Psst, for fun, here is a great quote from Whit Stillman's film, Barcelona (about text and subtext):

Fred: Maybe you can clarify something for me. Since I've been, you know, waiting for the fleet to show up, I've read a lot, and... 

Ted: Really? 

Fred: And one of the things that keeps popping up is this about "subtext." Plays, novels, songs - they all have a "subtext," which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So subtext we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext? 

Ted: The text. 

Fred: OK, that's right, but they never talk about that.

Plus, the platform for my post would have been different.  mistermix is talking about the film, High Fidelity, Elvis Costello, and YouTube.  I was going to talk about MGMT, their song, Song for Dan Treacy; Dan Treacy's band, Television Personalities; and YouTube.

But, the main thrust of his post would have been the same as mine:  The internets truly are spectacular.

I used to get all my knowledge about new and exciting bands, books, films, art, etc, ... from word of mouth and reading magazines and books.  I guess I am an old fusty, but the convenience of the internets, while spectacular, is also, finally, disheartening and dehumanizing to me, as well. I am not crazy about the trade-off.  (He said on his blog.  I know I know, ... )

Anyhoo, mistermix beat me to it.  Good for him.  Great post on Balloon Juice.





Ardent








P.S.  I love the Nick Hornby novel, High Fidelity, and used to love Stephen Frears' film of the book, but now think it has aged poorly, and is not very good.  The song High Fidelity by Elvis Costello is still an absolute Monster of Angst, from his splendid cracking album Get Happy!