Michael Haneke, The Piano Teacher
Michael Haneke is becoming a favorite director. I watched The Piano Teacher last night, after having seen Caché a few years ago, and holding off watching another because I liked it so much I didn’t want to be disappointed. The Piano Teacher is excellent. Disturbing and excellent. But I don’t really think of movies that work (or anything else, for that matter) on any other level — there is an intelligence in something well crafted that is the only thing important to me. It is streaming on Netflix, and you can buy it here.
Toilet Seat Assistance in Row Number One — Thank You!
I’ve been sitting on this too long, because, frankly, something like this comes along only once in a lifetime. So, if you’ve already seen it, you can’t unsee it anyway. And if you haven’t, I’m sorry.
(thanks, Aaron)
The worst thing that will happen to you today.
Will be watching this bra fitting video.
Via The Hairpin.
the Southwest Texas Alternative Energy and Sustainable Living Field Laboratory
In October 2007, Mr. Wells bought this land — a 40-acre parcel — for $8,000 in cash, adding a 20-acre tract for $5,000 a year and a half later. It took nine days and $1,600 to build the shell of his one-room house, the first structure in a compound that now includes four shipping containers under a soaring arched roof planted on a lacy framework of metal trusses, all of which he made himself. He gave it all a fancy moniker, the Southwest Texas Alternative Energy and Sustainable Living Field Laboratory, but you can call it the Field Lab for short.
By the following summer, he had started a blog detailing his daily struggles and small triumphs, planting guy wires for the wind turbines or extracting a scorpion from the composting toilet.
His blog is here.
P.S. Grace beat me to this on Twitter. I’m watching you, Grace.
from the comments
Note to norteamericanos: Aggbrig is what we we might call something like a village within something called Wakefield, which is in something called West Yorkshire, which is in England, which . . . you know. But don’t ask me to explain. My postal address is Galena, Illinois, but in truth I live in something called Guilford Township. Before that my postal address was Murphysboro, Illinois, but I lived in Somerset Township. Which all sounds very English to me. Life made more sense when I lived in Chicago.
from the comments
In 1969, in Mexico, I saw a Spanish-language dub of the 1968 US film Charly, a “sensitive” film about a “mentally challenged” man, based on the novel Flowers for Algernon. The Mexican audience were laughing so hard they were practically pissing themselves.
image out of context
“Don’t donate money to Japan”
The punchline:
That said, it’s entirely possible that organizations like the Red Cross or Save the Children will find themselves with important and useful roles to play in Japan. It’s also certain that they have important and useful roles to play elsewhere. So do give money to them — and give generously! And give money to other NGOs, too, like Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which don’t jump on natural disasters and use them as opportunistic marketing devices. Just make sure it’s unrestricted.
Thanks to Walt for pointing me to this.
John Welding, Illustrator | Oral History of Agbrigg and Belle Vue
As an archivist and a lover of illustration, how could I not like such a project as this by John Welding? (Thanks to clusterfriend Pete Ashton.)
Spent time yesterday redrawing illustrations for the Oral History Book Project. My first attempts didn’t quite match up with my recent efforts, which I thought were better. These are made using a light box to trace off elements with pen and brush that are needed then moved around to make the picture work, to place emphasis where it’s needed.
headline of the day
Ty Segall – SO ALONE
(via)
Ngram This, My Pitbull
Not sure if this has made the rounds on Clusterflock, but google has this addicting new tool called the Ngram viewer which lets you mine the history of language patterns. When you enter words or phrases into the Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how often these words occurred in a “corpus” of some 18 million books (depending on language chosen), by the year the book was published.
[via the sadly soon-to-be-defunct On Language column of NY Times]
Perspective
Posted on the Book of Faces by an American-born high-school friend of mine, returned only recently to the States from Japan:
By the way, to friends in Chiba, we have a well so if you need water, and can get to Tsuga, I am sure H_____ will be happy to share, as long as he has power to run the pump.
A previous post:
Everyone is fine. The kids told me H_____ walked home from work . . . 35 miles.
kottke turns thirteen
Jason’s been posting at kottke.org thirteen years today. I remember friends using his silkscreen font when I was developing sites for the Dallas Cowboys and Indy Racing League. The internet felt like a cozy place back then.
Beautiful Clothes (Make Beautiful Girls) [1942]
Featuring Harry Langdon. Directed by Josef Berne.
Furs by Louis Rifkin.
We were talking about visual merchandising. And living mannequins.
Middle Men
The movie is decent, but the story behind the movie is even better.
Gotta Love March Madness
The comments on Deadspin are even better.
Jimmie Old
I found out the woman I considered my grandmother when we lived in Iran died Saturday. She and her husband were responsible for my parents’ choice to move to Texas, as well. So she had a lasting effect on my life in thousands of ways.
Rest in peace, Jimmie.
The Longevity Project
What are the variables that affect how long we live?
In The Longevity Project the psychology professors Howard S. Friedman and Leslie Martin describe their two-decade-long odyssey to answer that question using Terman’s data. Eventually publishing about 50 scholarly papers on the subject, they discovered that many adages promising long life—get married, exercise regularly, think happy thoughts, don’t work so hard—are not shortcuts to immortality, and for certain groups of people, they can actually have the opposite effect.
Fish Tank
I watched Fish Tank last night. The trailer isn’t perfect, but the film is very well put together, and emotionally beautiful.
It is streaming on Netflix or you can purchase it here.
Without regret
Distrustful of such happiness, I thought
to break a window out of our small room and soon
had bloodied both my arms, had cut and caught
my wrists on shards, sharp shrapnel of a ruin-
ation I would try — did try, and failed to fly or flee. Then you,
you, painstaking, reframed each single pane and turned
and asked me how the light looked then, and left
me still a moment, looking at the sky. My arms both burned
when you took me into yours. (I felt your heft.)
You showed me where the door had always been
and offered to undo the locks, unpry
the hinges that we two had closed together, painted over, sealed.
A brief whiteness passed the window: I turned to you.
Other things have yet to make me stay
like well-marked exits do.
- Amy Cannon
be the person that caught them
tweet of the day
EAT. Your Best Friends
The YBF dinner party collective is back, this time they served a ten course meal based on the Arcade Fire’s album The Suburbs. This is the third course, Snow Day.
Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup: Butter Grilled Sourdough Bread, Sharp Cheddar Cheese and Apple Ice Cream, Tomato Sorbet, Lemon Roasted Garlic Mousse, Strawberry Balsamic Glaze, Smoked Fluer De Sel. Served on top of smoking dry ice and chive oil.
Tyler and Jessica Kemp are doing remarkable things with food, all from their own home kitchen. The care and precision required to pull these dinners off is incredible, and well worth the $50 price tag.
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