Waiting for an update on the condition of author Salman Rushdie, who was attacked as he was being introduced at a lecture.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62524922
In February 1989, at the height of the controversy over Salman Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses”, I took a month-long business trip to Saudi Arabia…
Picture dissolves to a flashback scene.
Did I know that Phil Spector covered a Beatles-written song in 1964? Don’t think so, to my chagrin.*
“Hold Me Tight” is an early example of the unusual quality the Beatles had. John and Paul’s potential as song writers was, after all, why they were signed by EMI, as I explained here.
Even as a little kid, some of their songs sounded different to me, even strange. As heard from Paul…
… and from John.
* It can be inferred from the credit “Engineer: Larry Levine” that the record was produced at Gold Star Studios.
It’s safe to say that GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE is a film for grown-ups. This preview is rated PG-13, for very explicit language.
I dunno if this controversy is for real. It seems likely to be something thought up to generate buzz for the movie, and that’s okay.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/emma-thompson-calls-intimacy-coordinators-123044188.html
This isn’t the first time Emma Thompson has shown her stuff on camera. Thompson is exceptionally attractive in Carrington, from 1995. The film includes one of the most intense scenes of passion to ever appear in mainstream cinema as distinct from “dirty movies.” It’s done, to borrow a term from the Leo Grande trailer, “doggy style.”
Questions about how love scenes in movies are filmed are as old as the medium, going back to Edison’s The Kiss in 1896. Legend — urban or otherwise — has it that, nearly 100 years ago, Greta Garbo and her leading man John Gilbert “did it” for real on a movie set. Their love affair is covered in Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film.
Early on, one of my goals for this blog was to post the entire 13-part Hollywood series, transferred from my LaserDisc box set. It took a lot of time and effort, but I did it, to my later regret. People started contacting me, offering to pay for copies of Hollywood on DVD. I had, and still have, the hardware to do that.
I quickly suspected that some of those requests were coming from those who were probably not only fans, but dealers wanting to sell bootleg copies. I declined those offers, but having the videos online made them available for downloading by those who were sufficiently tech savvy.*
Which made me wonder if I might be opening myself up to legal trouble. I found an interview with Kevin Brownlow, who produced the series with the late David Gill. Brownlow was asked about a DVD set, and he said some of the family estates were holding out for more money. So I decided to play it safe and took the page offline. It’s still here, but hidden.
Times have changed from the days when YouTube allowed video uploads of only 10-minutes. Someone braver than myself has taken the risk that I didn’t, so far without being deleted. This series has the absolute highest Dog Rat ***** rating. Consider it not just recommended viewing, but mandatory. Some of these transfers were definitely sourced from VHS.
The playlist is missing Part 4: “Hollywood Goes to War”. I’ll add it separately.
Part 10: “The Man With the Megaphone” wasn’t allowed by YouTube, but somebody else managed to post it.
* For all I know, the DVD’s for sale at this link could have been made from my transfers: https://www.moviedetective.net/product_p/holl.htm
Economics is the study of how people and society choose, with or without the use of money, to employ scarce productive resources which could have alternative uses, to produce various commodities over time and distribute them for consumption now and in the future among various persons and groups of society. — Paul Samuelson
In the tradition of John Maynard Keynes, Samuelson favored run-on sentences, but his is one of the more generally accepted definitions of Economics. In short, it’s about the use and distribution of resources. Supply and demand. The haves and have-nots. Keeping up with the Joneses (whether a neighbor or an international conglomerate).
Via RSS, I’ve followed the Econbrowser blog for years. I don’t read everything there, but since inflation kicked in I’ve been making more of a point to keep up.
It does seem that Biden’s nearly $2 trillion stimulus, coming during the supply chain crisis, was a significant inflation trigger. Money chased goods that were stuck on container ships. Looks like Lawrence Summers was right.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/04/larry-summers-biden-covid-stimulus/
The Fed shouldn’t have waited so long to raise interest rates. This is from July 14, 2021.
Elvis Costello covering Neil Young on Jimmy Fallon’s show last night.
https://youtu.be/f3vNCuC-mWw
Guess now’s a good time to hear Neil’s album, released when Costello was 14.
Why wasn’t Elvis on Colbert’s show? They’ve been best buds for ages. Oh, right. Joe Walsh is playing over there this week.
Watching Monday’s penultimate episode of Better Call Saul, I thought, “Hey… is that a Dell Ultrasharp 1708FP?”
“It doesn’t look big enough to be a 1908FP…”
“… well, maybe it does. Either way.”
I have two Ultrasharp 1708FP monitors.
The timeline of the TV series places that scene circa 2010, so the attention to period detail is spot-on. A noteworthy point is that back then not all computer monitors were suitable for medical imaging use. The 1708FP was, and my dentist’s office has one in every exam room.
When the Ultrasharp 1708FP was being discontinued, I bought mine in a 2-for-1 deal from Dell Direct. As long as these things continue to be reliable and they stay bright enough, I’ll keep using them.
Sorry for the spoiler, but I have to say that Rhea Seehorn outdid herself yet again. Kim Wexler leaving her old life behind was exactly the point, and her portrayal in the “Waterworks” episode is a completely different person than the character everybody knows. If Rhea doesn’t win the Emmy this year, then it will truly be a case of voter fraud.
