A Concert Stage With No Backdrop
U2's upcoming tour is going to be something concertgoers haven't seen before.
Check it out here. Be sure to use the different "cameras" listed in the corner.
"Watchmen": Five Reviews from Critics that Matter to Me (They Disagree)
Post your review, or a link to your favorite, below.
Here are five from voices that matter to me:
U2's Best Performance in 2009 So Far...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVJQutwtd3c
Okay, now that you've seen the best, here's a bonus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKwnkYFsiE
And now, check out Cathleen Falsani's wonderful meditation on the album.
Okay, one more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mphi30pMAZg
"Raven's Ladder": An Update
The new strand of The Auralia Thread will be called Raven's Ladder.
I hope you like it. Tonight (all night) and tomorrow morning (all morning) I am packaging up my first draft for the editor. I have that familiar sensation of excitement and nerves and relief and apprehension...
Anyway, that's what I'm doing tonight. What are you doing?
You're watching the trailer for the new Jim Jarmusch film... at Twitch.
The U2 Late Show Continues...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izjgw2SIHk8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmVFyYmUmBE
"Every generation gets a chance to change the world
Pity the nation that won't listen to your boys and girls
Cos the sweetest melody is the one we haven't heard
Is it true that perfect love drives out all fear?
The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear
Oh, but a change of heart comes slow...
It's not a hill, it's a mountain
As you start out the climb
Do you believe me, or are you doubting?
We're gonna make it all the way to the light..."
Doing our due Dillinger
The names Johnny Depp and Christian Bale are almost a guarantee of a quality motion picture. The name Michael Mann just about seals the deal. And this Untouchables-flavored trailer only throws fuel on the fire.
But then, these two lines have grabbed my attention:
"Robbin' banks is gettin' harder."
"We're having too good a time today, we aren't even thinkin' about tomorrow."
Suddenly, this "period piece" doesn't seem quite so much like a genre exercise. It sounds ripped from the headlines. Is this a film about America, right here and now?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEU9Vt-mGfM
In HD here.
Farewell to Horton Foote, screenwriter of "Tender Mercies," "To Kill a Mockingbird"
I'm a little late relaying this news, but I learned on Twitter earlier today that Horton Foote has died.
Horton Foote, who chronicled America’s wistful odyssey through the 20th century in plays and films mostly set in a small town in Texas and left a literary legacy as one of the country’s foremost storytellers, died in Hartford, Conn., on Wednesday. He was 92, said his daughter, Hallie Foote.
In screenplays for such movies as “Tender Mercies,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Trip to Bountiful,” and in plays like “The Young Man From Atlanta” and his nine-play cycle “The Orphans’ Home,” Mr. Foote depicted the way ordinary people shoulder the ordinary burdens of life, finding drama in the resilience by which they carry on in the face of change, economic hardship, disappointment, loss and death. His work earned him a Pulitzer Prize and two Academy Awards.
Which of those films has made an impression on you? And why? (I've only seen three of them.)
Auralia Thread Update: New Title for the Gold Strand?
On Friday, I'll be turning in the (very rough) draft of the third book in The Auralia Thread. Then, my editor will plow through it and come up with many brilliant suggestions for sharpening the story for you. When she's finished, I'll go back on my tour of Seattle coffee shops, almost every evening and all weekend long, revising, revising, revising.
Auralia's Colors was The Red Strand.
Cyndere's Midnight was The Blue Strand.
The third volume will be The Gold Strand.
But will it be called Cal-raven's Ladder, as was promised at the end of Cyndere's Midnight? Perhaps not. I've been mulling over a possible title change. Stay tuned.
The Death of Satire
Novelist A.G. Harmon on satire:
...the thing about satire is that it runs the fine line between comedy and exposé; comedic in the sense that it’s funny, exposé in the sense that it brings to light the hypocrisies or venalities or idiocies of its object. And the object has to be topical too. Satire can’t be dated.
Have satirists all gone to film and TV? There are some candidates. The Office is a remarkable sketch of the work-a-day world, but there’s no real edge to it. However brilliant Jerry Seinfeld was, his show can’t qualify either. Nobody was made uncomfortable. Even causing discomfort can’t qualify a work if it’s not felt in a ruling class of some sort. Monty Python was great, but no one really winced, and no one in power ever did.
Because another requirement is that there has to be some danger to satire. There has to be something lèse majesté about it. Otherwise you only have Saturday Night Live, which found a little blood for its carcass in this year’s political season, pretending to be brave. They know better than to take on the real ruling class, so they skewer those that their own class finds contemptible. What will they do now? Zing Representative John Boehner? Or the junior representative from Ardmore, Alabama?
U2's next album is "Songs of Ascent", coming soon.
I'm actually more excited about hearing *this* album, due to Bono's description (which, as most U2 fans know, usually isn't, um, precise):
U2 just released its first album since 2004 this week, but the Irish rock band is already planning a quickie follow-up for next year.
The new disc will be called "Songs of Ascent," and it will be more mellow than the current album, "No Line on the Horizon," singer Bono says in a cover story in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine.
And in the Rolling Stone article:
True to form, Bono already has a plan for the first single from the band’s next album. RS uncovered details of that project, described as “a sister release to No Line on the Horizon, a Zooropa to its Achtung Baby,” which could arrive within the year.
Bono already knows the title — Songs of Ascent — and the first single, a surging anthem called “Every Breaking Wave” that was left off No Line at the last minute. Songs of Ascent will be quieter than No Line; in many ways, it’s that ghost album of hymns and Sufi singing. “We’re making a kind of heartbreaker, a meditative, reflective piece of work, but not indulgent,” Bono says. “It will all have a clear mood, like Kind of Blue. Or A Love Supreme would be a point of reference, for the space it occupies in people’s lives, which is to say, with that album, I almost take my shoes off to listen to it.”