Category: Culture

I’ve been quite busy lately.

The weather just keeps teasing. It promises sun, then gives us cold and rain. I’m pretty sure it will snow this afternoon. My friend sent me a photo of Pont Alexandre that was covered in snow taken last Thursday. Not much nicer here. I’m still (sort of) regretting postponing my trip but no biggie, in the grand scheme of things 🙂

Watching Kurosawa’s Kagemusha this lazy afternoon and I’m finishing a few books that I have been reading concurrently on my iPad such as the incredibly interesting Maps of Time. Grand swathes of history that puts Toynbee to shame. But, although good, there is something different about e-reading as opposed to the book. Maybe it’s different with a dedicated ebook reader but I’m not sold on e-reading. And I also don’t feel the same sense of shame as I do seeing an open book lying somewhere in my apartment. Since they are digital, those books can be hidden, and, perhaps, forgotten.

Oh yeah, Kagemusha is yet another Kurosawa masterpiece. Literally, “shadow warrior” is an excellent tale of intrigue and also one of the last Kurosawa films. I have studiously watched each and every Kurosawa film that I could lay my hands on, including various edits. The only one left is Madadayo! It is a very interesting, although long, process to review an entire filmography!

Spartacus, the TV series, is almost over. Amazing season with great CGI and effects. The addition of Caesar was an interesting development! We will be watching the finale at lunch next week. We’ll have to keep the volume down!

And while I love the Sherlock Holmes character I must object to the U.S. network version. Watson is a chick (and my objection isn’t to her being a woman, I really enjoyed The Return Of Sherlock Holmes from 1987 with a female Watson) and Sherlock is falling in love with her, overcoming his mild social idiosyncrasies. Barf. Seriously? The Brits deploy Benedict Cumberbatch and excellect storylines for their remake of SH and you put out the Little Pony of Baskerville? Double barf.

Tomorrow is the date for the server migration so, fingers crossed, I wont lose my entire blog. With the server upgrade I hope to expedite my workflow, including writing posts using my iPad.

Very cool, God Saves and Satan Invests poster by the master of the print image here.

There were some clear winners of yesterday April Fools festivites. My favorites: Lulu Leather here, and Chris Hadfield’s UFO hoax here.

Very funny stuff! Also notable was the replacement of the .ca domain with .eh and Scope’s bacon flavoured mouthwash. Funny stuff here!

I was surprised that bacon mouthwash didn’t already exist! 🙂

A very relaxing weekend! I have enjoyed puttering around and doing nothing. Well, I ate a lot of food. Lots. Brownies. Red Meat. Bacon. Did I mention the multi-berry pie?

So not much to update. Hot yoga was great. Quiet class. I’m going to do a Game of Thrones mini-marathon in anticipation of episode 1 of season 3. After I finish watching this video of the Whistled Language of Oaxaca, Mexico. Interesting that some believe that language evolved from an earlier form of vocal communication: mimicking bird song.

Here is a great article on the re-opening of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It was closed last year when I went so I will have to go back and spend hours there as well as the van Gogh, across the street.

Here is Simon Schama writing about it here.

The museum opens April 13.

Yup. Big time nerd here. Star Trek Enterprise season 1, one of the better spin offs of the Star Trek franchise is set to be released in glorious Blu-ray next week. More info here.

It also includes a gag reel! And yes. It is my birthday in October. 🙂

The Japan Society is presenting an exhibit titled: Edo Pop: The Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints running until June. Info here. Prints from the masters including Hiroshige and Hokusai will be presented (everyone knows Hokusai’s tsunami wave with Mt. Fuji in the background) to show their impact on contemporary art, not only in Japan.

I was stunned when I first saw the influence that artists such as Hiroshige and Hokusai have on European artists such as van Gogh, Manet, Monet, Degas, and Toulousse-Lautrec. The van Gogh museum in Amsterdam shows the influence (Japanesery) quite clearly. I remember looking twice at both the Flowering Plumtree and The Bridge in the Rain, two “copies” of Hiroshige’s work done by van Gogh hanging in the gallery. It certainly provides a different context to works of the European masters of the 20th century and a different perspective on how best to interpret art history from this same period.

Howard Greenberg, of New York’s Howard Greenberg Gallery, is showing part of his archival photography collection at Paris’s Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation beginning early April through April 21 (two days before I was to arrive — more about this later), in an exhibition that originates at the Musée de l’Elysée photography museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. It leaves Switzerland this week. Since my friend Krista is studying there I sent her a link to the gallery and informed her that I would be eternally envious (a lot of hidden resentment too) that she can enjoy what I will miss.

The collection includes photographic works centering on the role and influence of New York in United States culture in the 20th century and some exceptional imagery from the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

Yes, the great director passed in 1998 but he would be 103 today. To celebrate, all of his films are being streamed for free this weekend!