Links and commentary on media, politics and culture by Steve Rhodes.

 
Still posting on my typepad blog.

I also am also doing frequent links to interesting articles and sites at del.icio.us/tigerbeat
posted by steve at 11/28/2004 09:11:00 AM

 
article on donald trump from 9-12-04 NYT Mag
posted by steve at 9/18/2004 02:07:00 PM

 


posted by steve at 3/26/2004 01:09:00 PM

 

Strange how a stubborn cookie will keep you (well, me) from posting.

For now, some links on Pauline Kael. I often didn't agree with her (especially on Citizen Kane), but she was always worth reading.

The New York Times obit. There are a bunch of links at some letters at Medianews.org. Yahoo has a full coverage page with lots of links.

You can listen to a program Fresh Air did on her today. I'm surprised Salon doesn't have a link off their front page to this brief speech she gave they published last year. And even more surprised there isn't anything on the New Yorker site.


posted by steve at 9/04/2001 06:50:00 PM

 

I've started contributing items to Aaron Barnhart's TV Barn. I wrote a profile of Aaron back in 1994.
posted by steve at 8/10/2001 11:40:00 PM

 
From B92's excellent daily email newsletter:

Death penalty set to go

BELGRADE, Friday - The Serbian justice ministry has drawn up a series of
amendments to the criminal statute including the abolition of the death
penalty.

Minister Vladan Batic said that capital punishment had been repealed
throughout Europe on the grounds that it was outdated and ineffective. It
has in any case not been put into practice in Yugoslavia in many years.

The bill will increase the penalties for voting offences and rape, among
other crimes. It also defines some new offences in the areas of corruption
and racial violence. (B92)

posted by steve at 8/03/2001 02:56:00 PM

 
Peter Jennings writes in his email newsletter:

And finally tonight, we start a series that is a source of some pride. In this day and age we try constantly to find new ways to bring you the news -- in particular the news from faraway datelines that are difficult and expensive to reach. Some time ago, our longtime foreign correspondent Mike Lee came to us with an ambitious proposal. "Send me around the world," was essentially what Mike said.

And instead of the usual company of producer and camera crew, I'll travel alone. I'll go without the heavy gear, too -- just a camera, a computer, a cell phone and a notebook. Well, Mike has returned after 50 days on the road, loaded with stories. We begin bringing them to you tonight. We're calling this The Road To Anywhere. You'll enjoy it.

note: add link to road to nowhere series which will return to ABC news in the future.
posted by steve at 7/23/2001 04:31:00 PM

 
so we're led by denial like lambs to the slaughter

serving empires of style and carbonated sugar water

from subdivision

it's a heartbreak even situation

one part powerful elation

one part pitiful and frail

and i'm trying to feel my way around

a book of promises written in braille

there is pressure from within this

and pressure from above

there is pressure on our tenuous, strenuous love

and there's wet wool blankets one, two, three

laid onto my chest

'til i just can't breathe

and i try not to let my emotions show

but it ain't a balloon i can just let go

it's an ice cream cone dripping in the sun

sticky hands

sticky arms

sticky situation

from heartbreak even

Letterman Show Axes DiFranco Performance

Ani DiFranco statement on the cancellation.

MP3 of Sudivision (which she wanted to perform). You can also listen to it at the end of this performance on Democracy Now (there also was a second http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20010507.html#4>performance).

posted by steve at 7/19/2001 05:31:00 AM

 

The American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee has posted audio from their conference.
posted by steve at 7/11/2001 11:16:00 PM

 
Some upcoming shows of interest on tv:

Jon Else's Sing Faster airs on KQED Ch. 9 at 6 pm today (and is also airing on other PBS stations). I interviewed Else about the documentary.

The British mini-series Traffik (which was the basis for the film Traffic) airs tonight and next Sunday as part of Masterpiece Theater on many PBS stations. It is also now available on video and DVD.

On POV (which has a a great season this year) Tuesday, Of Civil Rights and Wrong: The Fred Korematsu story.

And on Wednesday, the wonderful documentary, A Natural History of the Chicken, airs on many PBS stations. It will be on KQED at 10 pm.
posted by steve at 7/08/2001 02:17:00 PM

 
Time has a pretty funny story about the making of The Score staring Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Edward Norton and Angela Bassett (who is ignored in the article) and directed by Frank Oz. It sounds like a Hearts of Darkness style behind the scenes documentary would have been more interesting than the film itself. The New York Times has a related story (the link will be good for about a week) by Patricia Bosworth on her attempts to interview the actor for a biography.

From the article in Time (with fuck and ass complete since this is the web):

...wrangling Brando was anything but simple. When the Method-acting legend showed up to shoot his first scene, he was in full makeup (eye shadow, rosy cheeks, the works), and his initial performance as the gay Max looked something like Barbara Bush doing her best Truman Capote impression. "He had earnestly worked on his character," says Oz diplomatically, "but my tone was more reality based." In take after take, Oz asked Brando to "bring it down." Brando obliged, but told the director, "Fuck you."

In the ensuing battle of wills, Brando would refuse to come to the set if Oz was present. De Niro had to direct Brando's big emotional scene, while Oz watched the action on an off-site monitor and sent instructions to De Niro via an assistant director. When they were in the same room, Brando also jabbed at Oz by calling him Miss Piggy and telling him, "I bet you wish I was a puppet so you could stick your hand up my ass and make me do what you want." Still, Oz gave Brando plenty of freedom to ad-lib. During one scene--an argument with De Niro's character--Brando picked up a water bottle and, pretending it was a phone, mumbled, "Operator, we got a nut down here."

posted by steve at 7/08/2001 02:14:00 PM

 
The July 8th New York Times has an article, Intellectual Science Fiction Is Hollywood's Orphan (the link will only be good for about a week). Despite all the hype over AI being a rare intelligent SF film, true films about ideas are rarely made. Octavia Butler's Kindred has been optioned, but no producer has been able to raise the money to get it made. The article does neglect to mention that the Scifi channel will be making mini-series of Ursula K. Leguin's The Left Hand of Darkness and Earthsea books (and their website did an audio version of Kindred). And the very debasement of science fiction on film helps prevent the situation from changing. From the article:

"Hollywood in general is terrified of the notion of ideas," says the award-winning science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany [who was recently interviewed by Nerve]. "People in Hollywood are afraid that anything that is perceived as an
abstract idea will drive people from the theater," says Mr. Delany. "They always say they have a good idea for a story, but in science fiction what you need is a good story for an idea, a story that will dramatize an idea."...

But there is also a feeling, left over from the pulp magazine days of the 1930's and 1940's, that science fiction is some sort of debased form, meant primarily for consumption by male adolescents. In this respect, Ms. Butler remembers being at a science fiction convention a few years ago where two Hollywood producers were promoting their latest project.

"I remember they stood in front of this audience and said they made science fiction films so they could finance their `real' work," says Ms. Butler. "They said they didn't like science fiction, because it's not about people and character."

posted by steve at 7/08/2001 02:12:00 PM

 
I have sort of a tradition of going to the opening show of the San Francisco Mime Troup on July 4th in Delores Park. I then go towards the end of the season in late August or early September. It has almost always changed (to reflect some of the events that have happened over the summer) and improved.

This year's show is 1600 Transylvania Avenue. A good companion book is Mark Crispin Miller's The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder. When he spoke in San Francisco recently, Miller recommended the Bush Biography Fortunate Son. Miller wrote the forward to the new edition. It also has has a preface from Soft Skull Press publisher Sander Hicks which reveals that two of the three sources in the book on Bush's drug conviction in the early 70s were Clay Johnson, friend and advisor to Bush, and Karl Rove, Bush's chief strategist
posted by steve at 7/04/2001 10:50:00 PM

 
I have a letter on John Stossel's special on the enviroment at medianews.org (it is the first letter under July 2, 2001, so you have to scroll down a bit).