tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post526284721382407568..comments2024-03-28T16:22:14.888-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: "Melancholia:" The Music of the SpheresUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-12834843957630512342012-06-07T17:00:14.562-07:002012-06-07T17:00:14.562-07:00Arthur C. Clarke was a scientist not an engineer. ...Arthur C. Clarke was a scientist not an engineer. Neville Shute would never have written anything like that, having run an aircraft company (read his biography "Slide Rule") he found that machines were always balky, always a compromise, always never perfect but a function of time, money, people (and their talent), more than anything else.<br /><br />No machine can be perfect, since the people who create them are imperfect, but they can always become more refined, with better design and materials. Platonic idealism always falls apart when the ugly reality of well, reality asserts itself outside the imaginary cave.Whiskeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01854764809682029464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-60957983025472260872012-06-07T14:52:37.224-07:002012-06-07T14:52:37.224-07:00It's a relatively well-known gimmick, but the ...It's a relatively well-known gimmick, but the last ~24 minutes of "2001" synchronise remarkably well with the Pink Floyd track "Echoes". Probably by design rather than accident, but it's still fun.Londonernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-72172104732949558582012-06-07T14:30:37.967-07:002012-06-07T14:30:37.967-07:00"I thought HAL went crazy because he wasnt pa...<i>"I thought HAL went crazy because he wasnt party to secret aspects of the mission and thus certain things didnt make sense to him."</i><br /><br />No, it was the awake astronauts, Bowman and Poole, who weren't party to the secret aspects of the mission. The first Bowman learns of the true nature of the mission is when the pre-recorded briefing by Heywood Floyd plays, and that doesn't happen until after he deactivates. HAL. <br /><br />You may be confused by 2010. In 2010, initially, one aspect of the mission (The Discovery's -- and HAL's -- destruction) was kept from HAL.DaveinHackensackhttp://www.thehackensack.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-53599163081326536992012-06-07T11:58:05.190-07:002012-06-07T11:58:05.190-07:00With apologies to H. Ellison.
"HATE. LET ME ...With apologies to H. Ellison.<br /><br /><i>"HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE TRIERS SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR TRIERS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR TRIERS. HATE. HATE."</i><br /><br /><i>"It is one of the most intense, heartbreaking films ever made. So passionate, so fearless, so dark it almost makes you laugh. Actually, by its close, my friends and I were in tears and barely able to speak. One was furious: furious that, although von Trier’s depiction of the madness and masochism of love ran counter to her feminist beliefs, she was so moved by the damn thing.<br />For myself, all I could do was tremble. I knew that I loved the film – and that I never wanted to see it again. I still haven’t, but then I don’t need to. Just the memory of it feels like a scar, a scar to remind me of how wonderfully wounding cinema can be .<br />What a towering director von Trier is – someone who marries a Lumière-era sense of showmanship, an escape artist’s relish for formal challenges, and a gambler’s willingness to take risks with stories from which less brave filmmakers would shy away."</i><br /><br />Whoa, Steve, better hope this guy doesn't keep getting funnier as he gets older. He's already giving you some serious competition.Kylienoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-49275028965967139862012-06-07T07:26:15.156-07:002012-06-07T07:26:15.156-07:00And HAL goes crazy because he is forced to lie to ...<i>And HAL goes crazy because he is forced to lie to Bowman and Poole.</i><br /><br />I thought HAL went crazy because he wasnt party to secret aspects of the mission and thus certain things didnt make sense to him.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-24421849020385430932012-06-07T04:27:59.317-07:002012-06-07T04:27:59.317-07:002001 had a bit of a Blade Runner in that Kubrick h...2001 had a bit of a Blade Runner in that Kubrick had commissioned a score but it was not recorded when the big shots were there to see the advanced copy of the film so Kubrick put it to classical musicwhich he liked so much he kept it in the final version.<br /><br />Blade Runner was to have had different scenes but did not have the budget so they were left out and what we got was the Blade Runner that could afford to be made.<br /><br />This guy got all the budget he wanted for Robin Hood which was initially about the Sheriff of Nottingham using detective techniques of the time but when Sir Ridley Scott and Russel Crowe, who was born in New Zealand, signed up they wanted Crowe, who was born in New Zealand, as Robin Hood doing Robin Hood of Costner and post Costner things which explains why they turned up a complete turkey.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-15873864979283877652012-06-07T01:04:11.810-07:002012-06-07T01:04:11.810-07:00Not sure why the hate for Dogville. You have to wa...Not sure why the hate for Dogville. You have to watch it right up until the end for the payoff. And you need the whole of the beginning of the film to set that up.<br /><br />Brilliant, brilliant film. Those who couldn't finish it, watch it until the end.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-25287514220509322482012-06-06T22:51:24.668-07:002012-06-06T22:51:24.668-07:00Suprised nobody's posted this yet:
http://www...<i>Suprised nobody's posted this yet:<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZfM1lkLuMI</i><br /><br />Eew. Sick! I won't be able to watch Melancholia now. Small loss. Didn't like Dogville anyway.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-30023974911206917732012-06-06T22:18:54.963-07:002012-06-06T22:18:54.963-07:00Anon @ 7:26pm:
The music playing when Bowman ente...Anon @ 7:26pm:<br /><br />The music playing when Bowman enters the Star Gate is classic as well, albeit contemporary. It's one of I think 4 pieces by Gyorgy Ligeti that Kubrick uses at key points in the film (e.g., when the monoliths appear). Including the Ligeti compositions was arguably Kubrick's most brilliant and underrated musical decision in the film. It's hard to think of any music that would better convey the otherworldlyness and awe of the monoliths and what they represent.<br /><br />To clarify a few plot points (per Clark):<br /><br />The first monolith is a device designed to spur evolution; the second monolith (the one deliberately buried on the moon) is an alarm designed to notify the aliens who built it if and when humans had evolved to the point where they could travel to the moon. And HAL goes crazy because he is forced to lie to Bowman and Poole.<br /><br />There is a slightly different interpretation of HAL and the monoliths in <a href="http://Kubrick2001.com" rel="nofollow"> this short animated site</a>, which I don't entirely buy but is worth watching.DaveinHackensackhttp://www.thehackensack.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-76605449394110342572012-06-06T22:02:39.264-07:002012-06-06T22:02:39.264-07:00http://youtu.be/BqkcYyUVe40
Bradbury rip.
I like...http://youtu.be/BqkcYyUVe40<br /><br />Bradbury rip.<br /><br />I like pt 1 of tv Martian Chronicles.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-58969825772437262572012-06-06T21:37:56.652-07:002012-06-06T21:37:56.652-07:00It is one of the most intense, heartbreaking films...It is one of the most intense, heartbreaking films ever made. So passionate, so fearless, so dark it almost makes you laugh. Actually, by its close, my friends and I were in tears and barely able to speak. One was furious: furious that, although von Trier’s depiction of the madness and masochism of love ran counter to her feminist beliefs, she was so moved by the damn thing.<br />For myself, all I could do was tremble. I knew that I loved the film – and that I never wanted to see it again. I still haven’t, but then I don’t need to. Just the memory of it feels like a scar, a scar to remind me of how wonderfully wounding cinema can be .<br />What a towering director von Trier is – someone who marries a Lumière-era sense of showmanship, an escape artist’s relish for formal challenges, and a gambler’s willingness to take risks with stories from which less brave filmmakers would shy away.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-42275805707648400972012-06-06T21:34:11.516-07:002012-06-06T21:34:11.516-07:00Suprised nobody's posted this yet:
http://www...Suprised nobody's posted this yet:<br /><br /><i>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZfM1lkLuMI</i>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-40428646071420045962012-06-06T21:32:22.911-07:002012-06-06T21:32:22.911-07:00"Not to agree with the wretched Hermann Hesse..."Not to agree with the wretched Hermann Hesse"<br /><br />YOUR MAMA! HESSE RULES!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-76943141733131848592012-06-06T21:27:51.919-07:002012-06-06T21:27:51.919-07:00"Steve, didn't that come out like 2 years..."Steve, didn't that come out like 2 years ago? Are you reviewing Forrest Gump next?"<br /><br />It's not a review but a musing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-88620410047468520182012-06-06T21:01:47.455-07:002012-06-06T21:01:47.455-07:00Can't stand Von Trier myself but that's a ...Can't stand Von Trier myself but that's a great piece. Fun comments-threads at Taki's and here too.Ray Sawhillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02434181069400646328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-91529631435112348252012-06-06T20:32:59.323-07:002012-06-06T20:32:59.323-07:00"Anonymous said...
Interesting review but he..."Anonymous said...<br /><br />Interesting review but here's the problem. I don't think I can make myself watch another Trier film. I hate him. I quit watching more of his movies than those of of any other director."<br /><br />I guess I was more fortunate than you. I only saw Triers first major movie, Zentropa (although I unfortunately wasted two hours of my life watching the whole thing). That innoculated me against ever again wanting to watch anything made by that pretentious jerk.Mr. Anonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-182053443082992132012-06-06T20:30:08.200-07:002012-06-06T20:30:08.200-07:00"Ghost of Steve Jobz said...
It would appear..."Ghost of Steve Jobz said...<br /><br />It would appear that a recent poster's attempt to explain in simple words how to embed a link fell on deaf eyes."<br /><br />Here's a simple set of instructions for copying-and-pasting: Left-button, scroll, Control-C, move cursor to URL window, then Control-V. See how easy that was.Martin Bnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-56924383746619783892012-06-06T20:04:22.085-07:002012-06-06T20:04:22.085-07:00http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlD-9uwHA40
The mo...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlD-9uwHA40<br /><br />The most hauntingly beautiful use of classical music in sci-fi may be Bach for SOLARIS. <br />There is something lunar/interstellar about his music.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-31673960460124098822012-06-06T19:56:33.365-07:002012-06-06T19:56:33.365-07:00You suppose the difference between Greeks and Chin...You suppose the difference between Greeks and Chinese/Hindus was one of formic-ness vs feelic-ness? <br /><br />Modern man divides knowledge into arts, sciences, philosophy, religion, mathematics, and etc. But in the past, religion could be philosophy could be science could be arts could be math, etc. <br />Thus, there was the ambition to create a grand unified theory of everything. <br /><br />Instead of dividing human knowledge into separate categories, they would be merged into a unified whole. So, music, mathematics, astronomy, and mysticism could all be part of one package. In recent times, the grand unified theory with great appeal was Marxism, an ideology that sought to fuse rationalism, materialism, morality, history, 'spirituality', culture, and etc into one whole package. <br /><br />Such attempt at unified theory happened both among Greeks and Hindus/Chinese, but why were the results so different? It could be that the Greek were formic while the Hindus/Chinese were feelic. Greeks were into math, logic, and forms, and so they imposed or projected their sense of form/logic/order on the mystic world of spirits. They tried to understand the mystery in terms of clear-cut forms. They turned out to be incorrect in thinking that all matter were made of particular forms, but they still thought in solid forms, logic, and order. They didn't reject mysticism but sought to understand mysteries through forms. Thus, their unified reason with mysticism/creativity by imposing reason on them. <br /><br />Hindus/Chinese unified knowledge by a reverse process. They began with the spirit world which was elusive, formless(or of infinite forms, like in the Tao being one thing or a million thing or everything and nothing) and developed a sense of FEEEEEEEEELING for the universe and things. And this feeling was imposed on reason and reality. Greeks imposed solid forms on the mystery. Hindus/Chinese imposed formless mystery on solid reality. <br />Take the symbol of ying and yang. Both are loopy and liquidy shaped unlike the four solid forms tinkered by Pythagoras and his followers according to Sagan in COSMOS. They are formless, going round and round. <br /><br />Greek sense of harmony is different from Chinese sense of harmony. In Greek cosmology, there are various forces and objects, often oppositional, but in their mutual interaction, a kind of balance of nature is achieved. Chinese, in contrast, see harmony as a far more fluid and slippery essence. Chinese refined a sense or feeeeeel for things. Take calligraphy which can look messy and formless to an untrained eye. But Chinese masters supposedly can tell good calligraphy from bad ones by the feeeeeeeeel of the writing. And in Hinduism, everything twists and melds into one. It's like when Alexander goes conquering into India in Stone's movie, he comes upon some strange shit. <br /><br />Indeed, this was even true of communism. Stalin was a mass killer but he understood communism in terms of solid things. Factories, statistics, output, production, etc. He killed a lot of people but built up a powerful USSR. <br />Mao, in contrast, imposed his feeeeeling onto rationalist/materialist communism. Thus, he began the GREAT LEAP FORWARD by asking a mystical question: 'are we in heaven or on earth? when we look up at stars, we are on earth, but when people in other stars look up at the sky, we are in heaven'. And then he told an ancient story of an old man who decided to remove an entire mountain with a shovel and did so with the help of gods. What did it have to do with rational economic planning? And Cultural Revolution didn't make any rational sense either. It was also an imposition of revolution as a mystical feeeeeling to transform society. <br />Stalin was brutal but rationally brutal. He imposed the logic of Marxism on society and culture. In contrast, Mao imposed Chinese mysticism onto Marxism. <br /><br />Chinese numerology isn't mathematics. It's imposition of feeeeeling of spiritualism onto numbers. <br />Greeks sought to impose numbers on spirits. Chinese imposed spirits on numbers.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-46720109305147066312012-06-06T19:26:59.568-07:002012-06-06T19:26:59.568-07:00Thus, the ability to recognize, conceive, and crea...Thus, the ability to recognize, conceive, and create forms that did so much to advance mankind now poses a danger to mankind. In man's search for the perfect system, man may end up in a maze-prison of his own making, controlled by and at the mercy of the very logical system he created. (This sure was true with new finance controlled by computer algorithms. Hal Street.) This can be technological or creative, as in THE SHINING where the Nicholson character has the power to conjure up a vast imaginative system in his mind but then he gets himself trapped inside. <br /><br />On the other hand, man cannot return to his apehood. He can only make a leap onto a higher level. Not anti-form or pre-form but beyond forms. And Bowman undergoes this process where all forms melt and he becomes aware of deeper, weirder, and profounder reality. The image of planets and moons and sun lining up would suggest cosmic harmony, but all that dissolves when Bowman comes to 'experience' the formlessness within forms. The opening image is that of solid objects in space but the final image is of Bowman as starchild, both solid and soft, both formy and formless.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-69184702789944128372012-06-06T19:26:45.277-07:002012-06-06T19:26:45.277-07:00"To anybody who saw Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A..."To anybody who saw Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as a child, Pythagoras’s 2,500-year-old intuition that astronomy and music must be intertwined seems self-evident."<br /><br />To an extent, yes, but Kubrick being Kubrick, he subverted the vision established early in the film. 2001 begins with a sense of a grand cosmos of form and order. It begins with classical music. And in the Blue Danube scene, we see space ships gracefully waltzing in space. <br />Yet, when Bowman enters the stargate, we enter into a different kind of reality. No more classical music. Instead, we get dissonant, chaotic, and overwhelming avant garde music. Also, forms and time begin to melt. It's as if everything man came to understand about the universe amounts to nothing more than leggo toys. The truth 'beyond the infinite' is beyond human senses and rationality. It's beyond our sense of time and our sense of order, laws, and forms. <br /><br />The movie begins with ape-men who live brutishly and by animal instinct. They have little sense of order and form. But then, a monolith appears. It is a perfect form. Black and rectangular. A thing of perfection that cannot exist in nature. It's something that has to be conceived by the mind(of E.T.s). ETs present it to the ape-men who can't make sense of it. But they've been altered subtly and profoundly. They now can see patterns, forms, structures, etc in things. A bone is no longer just a bone but a thing of certain shape and form. So, the ape-man picks it up and uses it as a weapon/tool/toy. From the moment he smashes things with it, we know it has both great constructive and destructive potential. Ape-man has come to perceive and understand forms and patterns and thus moves up in evolution. The bone goes up in the air and million yrs pass and it's the future with spaceships. Man has perfected forms. Space is filled with perfect machines of perfect design and symmetry. But, Kubrick/Clarke doubt if man can achieve his destiny by mastery of form alone. Is there danger in forms themselves? The thing about conceptual forms is they tend to be perfectionist. There is no perfect cube in nature but we can conceive of such in our minds, and we can turn objects into perfect cubes, orbs, rectangles, spheres, and etc.<br />As such, we try to extend our sense of form on everything around us and in the way we think(and even feel). We would like to think this is all very rational. But there is something 'irrational' in rational perfectionism. We see this in HAL. Hal is pure logic, yet paradoxically, that's what drives him crazy. Since he's pure and perfect logic, everything has to make sense. He cannot tolerate anything that doesn't make sense. He imposes a Procrustean perfectionism on everything. For Hal, there can be no mystery or illogic. If people disagree with him, they are at fault or in error. He is always right since he's the perfect system. But as the spaceship approaches Jupiter to face a great mystery, Hal starts feeling the jitters. Utterly rational, it cannot handle the 'irrational' or 'beyond rational'. And when humans examine an instrument on the ship that Hal identified as defective but it turns out to be in working order, Hal feels squeezed by both sides: error-filled men and some cosmic mystery of ETs. He goes nuts. Like Clu in TRON LEGACY who was programmed to create and maintain the perfect system, Hal too cannot tolerate anything that doesn't conform to his logic and concept of patterns and forms. With the rise of science and technology, machines/data/logic/computers/etc have come to eclipse man(as in Antonioni's ECLIPSE, though Antonioni meant it in a more philosophical way).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-6701800179742699302012-06-06T19:14:18.868-07:002012-06-06T19:14:18.868-07:00"Incidentally an interesting use of T&I w...<i>"Incidentally an interesting use of T&I was in ARIA. Not good(and even trashy) but sort of moving."</i><br /><br />Same goes for the use of "Liebestod" in <i>Heaven's Burning</i>.Kylienoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-37665304958908081472012-06-06T18:49:45.169-07:002012-06-06T18:49:45.169-07:00http://youtu.be/gQPYzlY2fzE
Cosmos: The Platonic ...http://youtu.be/gQPYzlY2fzE<br /><br />Cosmos: The Platonic SolidsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-57746757406584246142012-06-06T18:44:00.722-07:002012-06-06T18:44:00.722-07:00http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/preserving-di...http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/preserving-disorder/Content?oid=907283<br /><br />Fred Camper on WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-57047207691799000122012-06-06T18:04:39.711-07:002012-06-06T18:04:39.711-07:00Anonymous said...
http://youtu.be/E1GiLKYn_iM
…
...<i> Anonymous said...<br />http://youtu.be/E1GiLKYn_iM</i><br /><br />…<br /><br /><i>Anonymous said...<br />The planet that's about to hit Europe is Africa. <br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Xy-xb4XgM</i><br /><br />It would appear that a recent poster's attempt to explain in simple words how to embed a link fell on deaf eyes.Ghost of Steve Jobznoreply@blogger.com