Pompeii has nothing to teach us
After not sleeping for more than a day and a half, I stayed asleep for nearly twelve hours last night. I dreamed of walking out in the rain to watch cartoons at a historic theater in New York that could be reached by walking into Harvard Square. I almost left my bathrobe at the theater. Sometimes you get complex, imagistic dreams full of narrative significance; sometimes this happens.
I saw the news of Manchester yesterday morning. I was in the process of posting about a nearly sixty-year-old movie in which a terrorist bombing figures prominently. It would have been nice for that aspect of the film to have dated as badly as its Cold War politics, but even the Cold War politics have become popular again these days. I don't want to speak for a city that isn't mine: I wish everyone strength and safety. Title of this post from H.D.'s Blitz poem The Walls Do Not Fall (1944).
(I am not pleased that just because the man in the White House does not understand security, privacy, or boundaries, apparently whole swathes of the U.S. intelligence community have decided to follow suit.)
Some things from the internet—
1. It is not true that I had no idea any of these events were actually photographed, which is my problem with clickbait titles in general (seriously, the one with Tesla has been making the rounds of the internet for a decade), but this is nonetheless an incredibly interesting collection of historical photos. The one of a beardless van Gogh is great. The records of the Armenian genocide, the Wounded Knee Massacre, and Hitler in full-color Nazi splendor are instructive. I am way more amused than I should be that thirty-one-year-old Edison really looks like a nineteenth-century tech bro.
2. Courtesy of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moon_custafer: "ZEUS NO." I am reminded of one of my favorite pieces of Latin trivia, which I learned from Craig A. Williams' Roman Homosexuality (1999/2010): that Q. Fabius Maximus who was consul in 116 BCE got his cognomen Eburnus because of the ivory fairness of his complexion, but he got his nickname pullus Iovis—"Jupiter's chick," pullus being slang for the younger boyfriend of an older man—after he was hit by lightning in the ass.
3. Courtesy ofdrinkingcocoa: "James Ivory and the Making of a Historic Gay Love Story." I saw Maurice (1987) for the first time last fall, fifteen years after reading the novel, and loved it. I should write about it. I should write about a lot of movies. I need to sleep more.
4. All of the songs in this post are worth hearing, but I have Mohamed Karzo's "C'est La Vie" on repeat. You can hear him on another track from the same session—covering one of his uncle's songs, his uncle being the major Tuareg musician-activist Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou—here.
5. Well, I want to see all of this woman's movies now. Like, starting immediately: "Sister of the sword: Wu Tsang, the trans artist retelling history with lesbian kung fu."
I saw the news of Manchester yesterday morning. I was in the process of posting about a nearly sixty-year-old movie in which a terrorist bombing figures prominently. It would have been nice for that aspect of the film to have dated as badly as its Cold War politics, but even the Cold War politics have become popular again these days. I don't want to speak for a city that isn't mine: I wish everyone strength and safety. Title of this post from H.D.'s Blitz poem The Walls Do Not Fall (1944).
(I am not pleased that just because the man in the White House does not understand security, privacy, or boundaries, apparently whole swathes of the U.S. intelligence community have decided to follow suit.)
Some things from the internet—
1. It is not true that I had no idea any of these events were actually photographed, which is my problem with clickbait titles in general (seriously, the one with Tesla has been making the rounds of the internet for a decade), but this is nonetheless an incredibly interesting collection of historical photos. The one of a beardless van Gogh is great. The records of the Armenian genocide, the Wounded Knee Massacre, and Hitler in full-color Nazi splendor are instructive. I am way more amused than I should be that thirty-one-year-old Edison really looks like a nineteenth-century tech bro.
2. Courtesy of
moon_custafer: "ZEUS NO." I am reminded of one of my favorite pieces of Latin trivia, which I learned from Craig A. Williams' Roman Homosexuality (1999/2010): that Q. Fabius Maximus who was consul in 116 BCE got his cognomen Eburnus because of the ivory fairness of his complexion, but he got his nickname pullus Iovis—"Jupiter's chick," pullus being slang for the younger boyfriend of an older man—after he was hit by lightning in the ass.3. Courtesy of
drinkingcocoa: "James Ivory and the Making of a Historic Gay Love Story." I saw Maurice (1987) for the first time last fall, fifteen years after reading the novel, and loved it. I should write about it. I should write about a lot of movies. I need to sleep more.4. All of the songs in this post are worth hearing, but I have Mohamed Karzo's "C'est La Vie" on repeat. You can hear him on another track from the same session—covering one of his uncle's songs, his uncle being the major Tuareg musician-activist Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou—here.
5. Well, I want to see all of this woman's movies now. Like, starting immediately: "Sister of the sword: Wu Tsang, the trans artist retelling history with lesbian kung fu."
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Aquarium drunkard! I used to follow them all the time back before web 2.0.
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I didn't know how it would hold up. I think some aspects of it are still radical.
Aquarium drunkard! I used to follow them all the time back before web 2.0.
I enjoy them! They almost always have something that interests me and with relative frequency they introduce me to things I love.
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I can just imagine PM May taking DT-45 aside for a very private chat starting with her saying some variant of the "WTF are your people playing at here?" chorus.
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You were saying?
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Unless Vladimir Vladimirovich decides to yank on both their leashes.
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That one may well be my favorite.
(My favorite Roman name belongs to Caius Fuficius Fango, the Octavian-appointed governor of Africa in 41 BCE who famously—being engaged at the time in a territorial skirmish with Titus Sextius, Antony's preferred candidate for the job—mistook a passing herd of hartebeest for enemy cavalry and and committed suicide. His cognomen was Oscan for "mud.")
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Nine
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I like Caius Fuficius Fango too much to inflict any of them on him!
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It was honestly everything I had hoped it would be and perhaps even more, because I'd had no idea until then that Rupert Graves had ever been so beautiful.
(In 1987! Re our earlier conversation, no wonder Brokeback Mountain in 2005 did not feel like anything new. Star-crossed queer tragedy, we got that covered. Sweeping historical queer romance with comfortable nudity? TAKE MY MONEY AWAY.)
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Adore the lightning. And the nickname for the chick.
Everything's better with lesbian king fu.
Nine
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He's younger in the photograph than any of the self-portraits, of course, but I like that he's recognizable as himself.
Everything's better with lesbian king fu.
I really can't disagree. Seriously, would the HFA just like to do a retrospective? I'd show up.
(The HFA this summer is doing Ernst Lubitsch and Jean Renoir. Hands up everybody who wants to see The River (1951) in Technicolor.)
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Hands up everybody who wants to see The River (1951) in Technicolor.
Here!
Nine
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Nine
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Hm. I had hoped to see it on film someday; I wonder if there's a problem with the prints.
(I am glad it is getting critical and popular attention, though!)
How can they breathe in those collars?
Relatively sexily, as I recall.
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Hope not. Would they withdraw all the old prints?
Nine
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Different film stocks are more or less successfully color-fast—Technicolor is virtually permanent if you treat it well, but it was falling out of favor by the 1960's due to the time and expense of the process and the 1970's saw it pretty much replaced in the U.S. and UK by cheaper, quicker, but more fading-prone stocks, most notoriously Eastmancolor which drains everything onscreen to red after a few years. (I have seen original Eastmancolor prints. The cyan goes first, then the yellow, and finally all you're left with is magenta. It's like watching a mezzotint in borscht.) I was wondering if that had happened to Maurice. I see from IMDb that it actually was filmed in Technicolor, however, which means that original prints in good condition should look fantastic. Maybe it's just that so few theaters can run film as opposed to DCP these days that if you want a movie to be widely seen, it has to be digital.
Maurice
On the other hand, I bought a "making of" book about Merchant Ivory films almost entirely because of the still of Rupert Graves (Scudder) standing alone at the boathouse, waiting.
Re: Maurice
Nice!
On the other hand, I bought a "making of" book about Merchant Ivory films almost entirely because of the still of Rupert Graves (Scudder) standing alone at the boathouse, waiting.
I'm not going to argue with this decision.
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You're welcome! I'm really glad to hear it.