Absolutely insane

Okay:

I concede that I like to use hyperbole and superlatives on this blog a lot.  They’re expressive, they’re readily at hand, and they’re memorable.  They can be overused, though, and I concede that I do that too.

That being said, what follows is the most absurd nonsense in the history of all possible worlds.

As is often the case with specialized fields of art, the world of animated films has its own central adjudicating committee and awards ceremony to honour those works each year that show the highest level of achievement within the medium.  They’re called the Annies, in this case, and you can probably guess what that’s short for.  The winners were announced yesterday.  The noteworthy nominees for the major prizes were Bolt, Kung Fu Panda and Wall-E.  There were thirteen feature-related categories in which these films were nominated, and it seemed like there’d be a healthy race between two of them with the top honours in at least the major categories falling to the other.

But then there’s what actually happened.

Kung Fu Panda – that movie, the one about the panda – swept all fifteen categories.  Nobody else stood a chance, apparently.  Bolt got nothing.  Oh well.  It was nice, but not amazing; nobody thought it was going to be breaking any records, here.  Wall-E also got nothing.  Nothing!  Not even a “thanks for trying” plaque and a gift certificate.  Kung Fu Panda even won in two additional categories for its video game adaptation and a short animated film based on it.  Fifteen in all.

Let me just let that sink in: Wall-E – the one of which you’re thinking, yes; that one – got nothing.  From the organization that gives out awards for excellence in animated filmmaking.

Nothing.

The worst part?  Well shit, there’s lots of worst parts.  Did you read that bit about all that stuff above?  That’s pretty bad.  It’s also the case, however, that Kung Fu Panda is a fun and delightful film, and certainly a well-made one.  Even an original and groundbreaking one, in a couple of ways.  It deserves at least some recognition.

But it doesn’t deserve to sweep fifteen frakking categories against what is arguably one of the greatest works in the history of the medium.  That’s unthinkable.  Unimaginable.  Absolutely, totally and in all other ways inconceivable.

I am not a conspiracy theorist.  But then, this isn’t a conspiracy in theory; this is apparently a conspiracy in practice.  I’d recommend that we boycott the ASIFA in protest, but I don’t even know how we could do that.

But something must be done.  :cry:

The Fall (2006)

One of the most bafflingly awesome movies I have ever seen. 9/10

More on E.V. Rieu

Well, not really.  Just posting a humourous poem he wrote so I can prove that he really did write humourous poems in addition to producing legendary translations of Homer and Appollonius of Rhodes:

Hall and Knight

or ‘z + b + x = y + b + z’

When he was young his cousins used to say of Mr Knight:
‘This boy will write an algebra – or looks as if he might.’
And sure enough, when Mr Knight had grown to be a man,
He purchased pen and paper and an inkpot, and began.

But he very soon discovered that he couldn’t write at all,
And his heart was filled with yearnings for a certain Mr Hall;
Till, after many years of doubt, he sent his friend a card:
‘Have tried to write an Algebra, but find it very hard.’

Now Mr Hall himself had tried to write a book for schools,
But suffered from a handicap: he didn’t know the rules.
So when he heard from Mr Knight and understood his gist,
He answered him by telegram: ‘Delighted to assist.’

So Mr Hall and Mr Knight they took a house together,
And they worked away at algebra in any kind of weather,
Determined not to give up until they had evolved
A problem so constructed that it never could be solved.

‘How hard it is’, said Mr Knight, ‘to hide the fact from youth
That x and y are equal: it is such an obvious truth!’
‘It is’, said Mr Hall, ‘but if we gave a b to each,
We’d put the problem well beyond our little victims’ reach.

‘Or are you anxious, Mr Knight, lest any boy should see
The utter superfluity of this repeated b?’
‘I scarcely fear it’, he replied, and scratched this grizzled head,
‘But perhaps it would be safer if to b we added z.’

‘A brilliant stroke!’, said Hall, and added z to either side;
Then looked at his accomplice with a flush of happy pride.
And Knight, he winked at Hall (a very pardonable lapse).
And they printed off the Algebra and sold it to the chaps.

There’s a certain Bellocian quality to it.

[Source.]

Just the ticket

As seems to happen to me often, I wandered through a bookshop today, looking to purchase something interesting, and discovered the perfect realization of a desire that I had previously thought to be in vain. Often have I had ideas about books-in-potentia only to have them satisfied soon after they’ve been conceived; a recent example can be found in the almost perfect realization of the James Brothers saga only lightly sketched out in my mind.

And it has happened again! There before me lay Jeremy Lewis’ Penguin Special, a biography of Allen Lane. I had been saying to myself as recently as a week ago that I wished there were some biography or other of Allen Lane out there. And there it was. It had even been put in the bargain bin, reduced to $5 from $45.

You might reasonably ask just who Allen Lane is. Fair enough. Allen Lane Williams (for it was with this name that he was born) was the nephew of John Lane, the justly renowned English publishing magnate who, with Elkin Mathews, founded the Bodley Head. The elder Lane was responsible for all sorts of excellent things, not least of which was the more or less worldwide propagation of Stephen Leacock’s works, which he first chanced upon while visiting Montreal in 1910. The two men became fast friends and the Bodley Head – later Dodd & Mead – put out loads of Leacockiana to the delight of all the world.

Allen Lane is no less important to the history of publishing. Indeed, in terms of the twentieth century and how the people who existed therein came to understand books as a feature of public life, it would be hard to find someone who had a more profound impact.

Allen Lane founded Penguin Books.

The possibly apocryphal origin of the most recognizable literary brand in the world (for such great undertakings always carry the whiff of romance) runs simply enough; Lane, finding himself waiting for a train in 1935 with nothing to read, grew frustrated with the material being offered by the bookstalls and newsagents nearby. It was uniformly shoddy stuff in both content and construction: lurid thrillers and tales of scandal that would likely fall apart before you had even finished reading them. This may have been a mercy in itself, but Lane, through whose veins ran printers’ ink and through whose brain ran a set of dazzlingly high standards, couldn’t just sit back and tolerate it. There was no reason, he opined, that works of high literary quality couldn’t be printed in cheap paperback editions for mass distribution. His intention was that they should be available wherever you could buy cigarettes, and for a comparable price (the original Penguin paperbacks sold for sixpence a piece, as it happens).

This much I know. Whether his motives were democratic or aesthetic or mercenary or some combination of three I shall no doubt discover, in time, but for the moment the story as it stands will serve. I may have more to say about the history of the Penguin publishing empire at some later date – particularly when it comes to the Penguin Classics imprint, which is just awesome – but for now I’ll just note, to your no great surprise, that Lane’s novelties proved to be an immediate and astonishing success. Over one million – one million – Penguin paperbacks were published in the company’s first ten months of existence. Their most popular title was André Maurois’ Ariel, basically forgotten today.

Anyway, I look forward to the reading that lies before me. I hope the book includes some material on Emile Victor Rieu, an heroic figure in the world of classics publishing and apparently a pretty excellent guy all around. The first general editor of the Penguin Classics line, Rieu was also responsible for its very first published volume – his prose translation of The Odyssey, which remains basically the only prose translation of that work that’s tolerable. Indeed, it’s more than tolerable; it’s a classic in its own right. He also produced a translation of The Iliad and of the four Gospels, wrote a good deal of humorous poetry, and had much to do with the establishment of the Oxford University Press, than which few greater university presses may be conceived. More on him later too.

The sum of the matter is that I’m pleased with my purchase, and with much else besides. The same jaunt saw me find cheap copies of E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful and Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, as well as Justin Phillips’ history of C.S. Lewis’ work for the BBC. I also got the complete Doré illustrations from both Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and the Bible – about 500 plates of Doré goodness in all. It was a pleasant afternoon, in spite of the blizzard.

Uniscum Zero

In addition to his frank candour on the subject of all of the people and events that he is and embodies, that pompous ass is now being equally candid about the people and events that he is not:

“Richard Nixon, during Watergate, fought tooth and nail to keep those tapes from being heard because he knew there was something wrong on there. Me? I’m the opposite, the anti-Nixon. I want every one of those tapes heard in the impeachment trial, and every witness called in.”

An impassioned Blagojevich went on to note that he was also not Hitler, Pope Alexander VI, the Bataan Death March or the world-eater, Galactus.  He briefly renounced any claim to being Tamerlane, but almost immediately retracted the renunciation for further consideration.

Another poetic interlude

To while away the hours until the grave claims us, some of the grad students in the University of Ottawa’s English department (myself obviously included) have conspired to hold a series of bi-weekly sonnet challenges. For the hell of it. It really came about as a result of that Socrates one from a few weeks ago and another marvelous piece written in response to it by another guy in the department. I don’t know that I’m at liberty to post that, unfortunately, but I can sure post my own work, and will. The inaugural challenge’s chosen topic was “stained-glass windows.”

The sonnet that follows is based in part upon the subject at hand, and in part upon a synthesis of a poignant anecdote from Chesterton’s travels in Poland and a slightly less poignant anecdote from Bill Mauldin’s ‘Up Front’.

In burning City after Hell’s long night
–As through the towerous blooms of grease-dark smoke
That rise aloft from foul infernos bright
The dawn, enraged, swept up and finally broke–
The soldiers sift through ruins – prod and poke -
Where some cathedral stood, its pious height
Now broken, and its windows, framed in oak,
All shattered by the passing of the fight.

Shattered all but one: Herself remains,
Barefoot and in blue, with breaking heart.
A soldier looked up sadly, for ’twas known
That, come the darkness, bombs would fall again.
He raised his gun, and blew the panes apart:
“I couldn’t bear for her to die alone.”

I’m not entirely happy with it, just yet, but I’m happy enough with it to call it essentially complete.

Scum Revolutions

I thought I was just being sarcastically extrapolative, but apparently:

Blagojevich further explained comments that he channeled major political figures who overcame adversity as he was being arrested.

“I’ve been criticized for this, but I’m not comparing myself to Dr. King or Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi, but I tried to reach in to history and imagine some inspiring figures that would have gone through something like I was going through for sustenance and inspiration.”

“…as he was being arrested.”  Amazing.

The trouble is that he apparently was comparing himself to Dr. King and Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, and also to Ulysses and the Pacific Fleet besides.  I thought I was only kidding about the Battle of Flamborough Head, too, but now I’m almost certain that he’ll go there, and soon. Keep an eye out for it.  If he does so allude, anyway, the whole internet can buy me a coke.

Coming soon

After a whirlwind round of submissions from concerned parties, the “fill in the rest of the alphabet” film review project will shake out like this:

# – 12 Angry Men (1957)

B – Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

E – The Emperor’s New Clothes (2001)

F – Fail-Safe (1964)

J – Joyeux Noël (2005)

K – Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

M – The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

N – The Night of the Hunter (1955)

O – Ostrov (2006)

X – I don’t know.  I guess I could find and watch that first X-Files movie, or something.  I really don’t to have to watch the X-Men movies again (any of them).

Y – Same problem.  Yellow Submarine?  We’ll see.

Z – Zulu (1964)

These reviews will proceed along no established schedule (though they’ll likely happen in order), and they’ll probably be interspersed with reviews of other things as my day-to-day viewing moves me to produce them.

Every so often…

…modernity and its art conspire to not let me down:

Oh, who am I kidding.  It happens a lot of the time, actually.

Turn back the clock

Vernunft of The New Skeptic has a short reflection upon the academic trend of finding salacious significance in every possible thing. The post is cast in terms of a mysterious passage from one of Immanuel Kant’s lady correspondents, and it’s certainly worth reading even if you know nothing at all about it:

Here’s the situation: among Kant’s correspondence is a 1762 letter received from Maria Charlotta Jacobi, which includes the line: “Well good, we shall await you and then my watch will get wound.” This remark is cryptic to say the least.

Two interpretations are current.

First: it’s a reference to Tristram Shandy. In the words of Arnulf Zweig, editor of the Cambridge edition of the Correspondence, “Tristram’s father would wind the house-clock every Sunday night, in time to attend to his marital duties.”

Second: it’s a reference to a comment Kant makes in Anthropology. “As concerns scholarly women: they use their books somewhat like their watch, that is, they carry one so that it will be seen that they have one; though it is usually not running or not set by the sun.”

Check it out, anyway, and learn less than you ever wanted to know about Kant’s sex life.