At the risk of sounding like I’m shilling for yet another PBS show, I highly recommend Jacqueline du Pré: Genius and Tragedy currently on PBS. Narrator Yo-Yo Ma describes du Pré as the “greatest instrumentalist of the 20th century.” While obviously a debatable opinion, her virtuosity on the cello is not. Some of the descriptions […]
Tag: Videos
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light premieres Sunday, March 23, 2025 on PBS. More about the show can be found here. I thought the first season of Wolf Hall, which covered Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, extremely well done. I didn’t read those books until after seeing the show and […]
2020 strikes again. We were to go rafting in Hell’s Canyon this coming week, but a rockslide closed the only direct road to it (from our direction). I’ve already been to Hell (Grand Caymans) and the Gates of Hell (Stanford campus), so I was looking forward to Hell’s Canyon. Hopefully later this year. On that […]
On Amazon Prime I stumbled across a couple of films based on Bohumil Hrabal’s writings that are available for free to Prime members. First was The Snowdrop Festival, directed by Jiří Menzel. As I mentioned in the post, it’s a quirky, fun movie with a strong undertow of poignancy. Menzel doesn’t capture the full complexity […]
The Minutemen: Mike Watt, D. Boon, George Hurley I owe a debt of gratitude to Dangerous Minds for their post Minutemen Unplugged: Punk Legends’ Rollicking Acoustic Jam on Cable Access TV, 1985. Their post covers the important points of the short performance, although when I saw them in Dallas earlier that year (1985) their set […]
Picture source: Big Star Third Live Facebook page I have wanted to post something…anything…but haven’t felt up to it for a while. I’ve posted about this tour elsewhere, but I’m pleasantly surprised how much I liked the documentary release covering one of its performances. There are some interviews with a few of the performers, but […]
Another week, another trip to the hospital for an infection. Fortunately this was caught early enough that medication may be enough to handle it. On to brighter things… The video appears to be the 1991 movie 30 Door Key based on Witold Gombrowicz’s book Ferdydurke. I’ll be checking it out this weekend. I had […]
I have had the above video open in a browser for several weeks without watching it. I wanted to see Hugh Kenner, but the topic title, “The Political Responsibility of Artists,” put me off. I finally screwed up the courage to watch and found it stimulating…I shouldn’t have let the title guide me. Kenner is […]
When I posted about Win Riley’s documentary on Walker Percy, my brief comments in this post noted my disappointment there wasn’t more from the episode on Firing Line that had Eudora Welty and Walker Percy (although I understood the legal issues). At the time, though, you could find the transcript of the episode online and […]
I’m really enjoying the Universidad Francisco Marroquín’s MOOC on Don Quijote and wanted to share the second live session that was held this past Thursday (18 Feb 2016). The session covered questions from Chapters 15 through 28 in Part I. I was fortunate to get a few questions in on the call…enjoy! Live Session 2 […]
I wish I could say I’ve read Hilary Mantel’s books Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. I want to say that…I really do. But I’ve been knee-deep in readings about the Plantagenets lately. I’ll get to Mantel’s books soon, I know I will. In the meantime I just found out about PBS’ upcoming series […]
The Collected Works posted a link earlier today to a YouTube video of Leonard Nimoy as Roger in the 1963 movie version of Jean Genet’s The Balcony. I have not watched the movie, but I was happy to watch these short clips. It highlights the absurdity of the play while providing Nimoy a great role. […]
Honduran archaeologist Ricardo Agurcia Fasquelle, Executive Director of the Copán Association, presents this inaugural lecture in the Great Battles Series. Until recently scholars depicted the ancient Maya as a peaceful civilization devoid of warfare. This somewhat romantic notion has been overturned by evidence of a starker reality: during the Classic period (ca. 250—900 CE) an […]
Dr. Patrick Hunt, Stanford University, speaks. Hannibal, a Carthaginian commander who lived ca. 200 BCE, is considered one of the greatest military commanders in history. His use of the environment in his warfare against Rome in the Second Punic War—often called the Hannibalic War—set precedents in military history, utilizing nature and weather conditions as weapons […]
(From the YouTube description) Dr. Jeremy McInerny [sic], Professor of Classical Studies, examines the tactics and strategy of the Battle of Thermopylae (in present-day Greece) in 480 BCE. Why was the battle fought at this location and was it, as it is often portrayed, a turning point in the confrontation of East and West? This […]
Thank a discussion on Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit for this post, in particular the closing number of the Saturday evening concert of 1996 where Patti Smith joins many of the evening’s performers during the closing number “Helpless.” It turns out there is a YouTube video of this performance, which illustrates what I tried to […]
…can make you laugh and cry at the same time. Presented without further commentary.
I’m overloaded on so many fronts, the temperature reminds me of Hell’s antechamber (yes, I would know), and yet I’m under the spell of Pío Baroja’s “magical melancholy”. It’s a beautiful day, indeed.
I had a long post on this, but I’ll shorten my comments on this viral video…brilliant on so many levels. One of my favorite songs, ever. And a book and movie that I couldn’t stand. Which is why laughing at it probably makes me enjoy it that much more. (Warning–simulated violence and sex.) I posted […]
I’ve been enjoying a week off from work and staying offline as much as possible. Here’s wishing everyone a happy Fourth of July.