November 2011
Good Will Hunting (1997)
- Sean: Do you have a soul mate?
- Will: Define that.
- Sean: Someone you can relate to, someone who opens things up for you.
- Will: Sure, I got plenty.
- Sean: Well, name them.
- Will: Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Frost, O'Conner, Kant, Pope, Locke...
- Sean: Well that's great. They're all dead.
- Will: Not to me, they're not.
- Sean: You can't have a lot of dialogue with them.
- Will: Not without a heater and some serious smelling salts.
Listen
Liam Neeson reads The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney
Ottuagenario con il giubbetto dei Cleveland Cavaliers
Tu non lo sai, ma sei stato l’unico sorriso della mia giornata.
“We would like to apologize for the way in which politicians are represented in this programme. It was never our intention to imply that politicians are weak-kneed, political time-servers who are more concerned with their personal vendettas and private power struggles than the problems of government. Nor to suggest at any point that they sacrifice their credibility by denying free debate on vital matters in the mistaken impression that party unity comes before the well-being of the people they supposedly represent. Nor to imply at any stage that they are squabbling little toadies without an ounce of concern for the vital social problems of today. Nor indeed do we intend that viewers should consider them as crabby, ulcerous, little self-seeking vermin with furry legs and an excessive addiction to alcohol and certain explicit sexual practices which some people might find offensive. We are sorry if this impression has come across.”
—Monty Python’s Flying Circus
Word of the Day: splenetic →
merriam-webster.com
adjective: marked by bad temper, malevolence, or spite
In early Western physiology, a person’s physical qualities and mental disposition were believed to be determined by the proportion of four bodily humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. The last of these was believed to be secreted by the spleen, causing feelings of disposition ranging from intense sadness (melancholia) to irascibility. This now-discredited association explains how the use of “splenetic” (deriving from the Late Latin “spleneticus” and the Latin “splen,” meaning “spleen”) came to mean both “bad-tempered” and “given to melancholy” as well as “of or relating to the spleen.” In later years, the “melancholy” sense fell out of use, but the sense pertaining to ill humor or malevolence remains with us today.
Listen
Franz Liszt - Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major, S.125
Adagio sostenuto assai - Allegro agitato assai
[Performed by London Symphony Orchestra and Sviatoslav Richter.
Conductor: Kirill Kondrashin]
Che poi SergioLeone doveva averci qualcosa coi ponti.
Perché sia la scena del ponte di legno a Lexton ne IlBuonoIlBruttoEIlCattivo, sia quella del ponte di pietra in GiùLaTesta sono tra le più belle scene nella Storia del cinema.
“According to Eli Wallach, when it came time to blow up the bridge, Sergio Leone asked the Spanish army captain in charge to trigger the fuse, as a sign of gratitude for the army’s collaboration. They agreed to blow up the bridge when Leone gave the signal “Vai!” (Go!) over the walkie-talkie. Unfortunately, another crew member spoke on the same channel, saying the words “Vai, vai!”, meaning “it’s OK, proceed” to a second crew member. The captain heard this signal, thought it was for him and blew the bridge; unfortunately, no cameras were running at the time. Leone was so upset that he fired the crewman, who promptly fled from the set in his car. The captain was so sorry for what happened that he proposed to Leone that the army would rebuild the bridge to blow it up again, with one condition: that the fired crewman be re-hired. Leone agreed, the crewman was forgiven, the bridge was rebuilt and the scene was successfully shot” (via)
Diamond Life became a statistician’s dream; it spent 99 weeks on the UK chart, racked up awards, launched a hugely successful career in the US and put Sade on the bill at Live Aid, and still no-one really had any clue who Adu and her band were. For them, there was no celebrity, no pouring out of clubs at 4am. It started them as a cottage industry at the centre of the music business, and that continues to this day.
Sade Diamond Life Review
Roger Ebert Interview - The Observer, 2011
- Rachel Cooke: You're a great Anglophile, so I'm sure you know about Desert Island Discs: a guest chooses their eight favourite records. At the end, they must choose just one to take with them to the island. What are your Desert Island Movies and why? And which one would you take to watch out there, over and over?
- Roger Ebert: I have a lifelong refusal to make lists of movies. But I enjoy that programme and so I will play. Citizen Kane, The Third Man, La Dolce Vita, 2001, Vertigo, The General, Ozu's Floating Weeds and Kurosawa's Ikiru. The one I'd take to the island is La Dolce Vita, because it has been a touchstone since 1962 of my own developing maturity. When I first saw it, Marcello Mastroianni was living a life I could only dream about. Later, it was the life I was living, then the life I had escaped, and now he seems to me a touching and troubled young man.
“If you could breathe a breath so strong you could blow out the wolf. Like you blow out the copo. Like you blow out the fire from the candela. The wolf is made the way the world is made. You cannot touch the world. You cannot hold it in your hand for it is made of breath only.”
—[Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing]
Landslide
Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac - Landslide
I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
‘Till the landslide brought me down
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life
Well, I’ve been afraid of changing
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m getting older too
