July 2011
1 tag
4 tags
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Clarice Starling: Did you do all these drawings, Doctor?
Hannibal Lecter: That is the Duomo seen from the Belvedere. Do you know Florence?
Clarice Starling: All that detail just from memory, sir?
Hannibal Lecter: Memory, Agent Starling, is what I have instead of a view.
3 tags
4 tags
The peripatetic Marco Polo got around to recording his classic travels through China only because he was captured in 1298 during a naval battle with Genoa and held in a lavish palazzo. Five hundred years later, the playboy Giacomo Casanova found time for his renowned erotic autobiography only after he had run out of money (and libido) and retreated to Castle Dux in Bohemia, where he accepted a...
4 tags
5 tags
Nick Cave and Neko Case covering The Zombies’...
1 tag
3 tags
“Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars,...”
– [Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver]
3 tags
7 tags
A Virtual Walking Tour: The Alhambra →
2 tags
3 tags
Julio Cortazar - The Art of Fiction No. 83
Jason Weiss: You have said at various times that, for you, literature is like a game. In what ways?
Cortázar : For me, literature is a form of play. But I’ve always added that there are two forms of play: football, for example, which is basically a game, and then games that are very profound and serious. When children play, though they’re amusing themselves, they take it very seriously. It’s important. It’s just as serious for them now as love will be ten years from now. I remember when I was little and my parents used to say, “Okay, you’ve played enough, come take a bath now.” I found that completely idiotic, because, for me, the bath was a silly matter. It had no importance whatsoever, while playing with my friends was something serious. Literature is like that—it’s a game, but it’s a game one can put one’s life into. One can do everything for that game.
13 tags
3 tags
7 tags
Cruelty and Kevin Costner don’t typically go together, outside of his serial killer character in Mr. Brooks and the experience of watching The Postman. But the actor who has for so long embodied a certain milk-fed, Midwestern morality may get a chance to be seen in a completely different light in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, where Costner reportedly is in negotiations to join a cast that...
4 tags
For Coffee-Lovers
From your morning mug to cake, pie, gelato, and more, coffee proves that it’s useful for more than just a cheap high. Browse recipes
2 tags
3 tags
“These memories can’t wait.”
– [Talking Heads]
1 tag
2 tags
Weather lore: What’s the science? Does a red sky at night really mean no rain the next day? Meteorologist Tomasz Schafernaker looks at the science behind old weather sayings.
2 tags
2 tags
Smithsonian Photography Initiative
Explore the Smithsonian Institution’s photography collections from its 18 museums, 9 research centers and the National Zoo. The photographs presented are from the Institution’s art, history, and science collections. It’s the first online batch of the Smithsonian’s 13 million images.
4 tags
5 tags
The Top Five I.R.S.-Era R.E.M. Music Videos →
During its tenure on I.R.S. Records between 1982 and 1987, R.E.M. practically invented the language for alternative rock music videos. Rebuking the style and flash of the first MTV generation, in those years the Athens, Georgia quartet produced beguiling videos (often directed by singer Michael Stipe) to accompany its singles and a select few album cuts that were more art films than pop promos,...
2 tags
7 tags
Casablanca (1942)
Rick Blaine: Don't you sometimes wonder if it's worth all this? I mean what you're fighting for?
Victor Laszlo: We might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.
Rick: What of it? Then it'll be out of its misery.
Victor: You know how you sound, Monsieur Blaine? Like a man who's trying to convince himself of something he doesn't believe in his heart. Each of us has a destiny, for good or for evil.
Rick: Yes, I get the point.
Victor: I wonder if you do. I wonder if you know that you're trying to escape from yourself and that you'll never succeed.
1 tag
3 tags
4 tags
5 tags
“People ask me, «Were you the geek?» No, I wasn’t. «So which one were you?» I...”
– [John Hughes]
2 tags
The World At Night is a program to produce and present a collection of stunning photographs and time-lapse videos of the world’s landmarks against the celestial attractions. The eternally peaceful sky looks the same above symbols of all nations and regions, attesting to the truly unified nature of Earth as a planet rather than an amalgam of human-designated territories.
3 tags
WatchThe Face of Cult - Cult movies and the power of the close-up
4 tags
Rome’s most mysterious places →
The crypt of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini on Via Veneto. This has been lavishly decorated in the ultimate of recycled decoration: human bones. The underground chapel contains the remains of around 4,000 friars buried between 1500 and 1870. These memento mori (reminders of mortality) have been almost playfully fashioned into all sorts of decorative devices, from altars to...
3 tags
2 tags
Ernest Hemingway - The Art of Fiction No. 21
George Plimpton: When do you work? Do you keep to a strict schedule?
Hemingway: When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.
2 tags
