Gabriel Yared - "End Title Song" (Troy)

Amazing piece. The score overall is pretty good, though I sometimes had Star Wars flashbacks which would have been strange while watching Troy, but some pieces blew me away, and this was by far the best of them.

William Basinski - "Disintegration Loops - part 1"

It is like Philip Glass' "music with changing parts". Very intense in its idea and core, but not always easy to listen to.

Or rather, I do not know how to listen to this properly. When.

quotation vs citation

Quotation

If you are writing about something and wish to bolster your point of view, you can refer to an earlier text that is well known or is considered otherwise authentic. While quoting someone else, what is necessary is that you use the same words and apply quotation marks in the beginning and at the end. Thus in essence you are repeating what has been said or written earlier to prove your point of view. In quotation, you have to repeat verbatim and not paraphrase. Thus you are reproducing the view point word by word and emphasize it also by the use of quotation marks. Here are a few examples of the use of the word quote.

My brother has a habit of quoting famous people.

The teacher asked students to quote a few lines from the poem in the exam.

Among those famous, Shakespeare is quoted most often.

Citation

Citation is another way of using written text from a source to bolster your view point. But unlike quotation, citation does not require you to reproduce the entire text. You can write it in your own words and there is no need to use quotation marks even. You merely use what a reputed writer has written earlier as you wish to add weight to what you are saying. Citation makes use of view points of those who are considered to be authority in the field you are writing upon. For example, if you are writing something about motion and wish to authenticate your view point, you can easily cite Newton’s laws of motion. Similarly, if writing something on psychoanalysis, you can easily cite the work of Freud to bolster your view point or add weight to it. When using the word citation while speaking, here is how to go about.

The speaker cited the high rate of automobile accidents to add weight to his theory.

Attorney cited earlier judgments to convince the jury about the innocence of his client.

Helen cited the works of great authors in her essay.

recrudesce and propinquity

recrudesce - (formal) break out again, recur

propinquity - the state of being close to someone or seomthing, proximity. (technical) close kinship

turgid - swollen and distended or congested; a turgid and fast-moving river

(yes, both from Gormenghast)

quote - "gedrogeerd met identificatie"

"We kunnen dus niet meeleven, de kijker wordt niet gedrogeerd met identificatie, waarmee hij - indachtig de toneeltheoriën van Bertold Brecht - het perspectief op de situatie zou verliezen." Paul Verhoeven over Michael Hanekes' film "Amour"

He was a quiet man (2007)

Tiny film with Christian Slater about a disgruntled office worker who saves the girl he loves from an even more disgruntled worker. Only after the very Hollywood-ish "they get together!" exaltation do the difficulties start.

Small, a tiny gem, not amazing but good.

Lola Rennt

Tom Tykwer.

Still impressive, still heart beating good. He often seems to do, or participate, in the music. Which is quite different from "Perfume - The Story of a Murderer"

Petula Clark - "Cut Copy Me"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iM48qNM8xI

Funny, simple video with old school PC screen.

It's not exactly my style, and a bit too poppy, but there's a catch in this song.

Perfume - The Story of a Murderer (2006)

Book written by Patrick Süskind, directed by Tom Tykwer (him of Lola Rennt)

The logic of the story left some big gaps. Particularly in the beginning, half of the film is a hippety-hop rabbit tale, well done, beautiful scenery, all too nice... only later the magic of the story starts to shine through.

Seems the story is a bit too big for a film.

Must read the book!

Marcel Möring - "In Babylon"

it's ok - some good scenes, one of them a good erotic one - but somehow it often rubbed me in the wrong way, the descriptions, the "snappy" comments..

reading the final 3 pages or so, lingered for weeks, almost months, before I "got around" (made time). I think it's a good book, but it would need rewriting in dialogue and perhaps some real editing, because I never could really care too much.

Biffy Clyro

Listening to some random songs (new album?) online. Can't say they do much for me.

Coriolanus (2011)

Shakespeare adaptation featuring Ralph Fiennes.

I do like Shakespeare plays in a modern setting (not language!) and this by itself was no exception. The "small" fights, between men and generals, were convincing; no big armies, but man-to-man, even if it's with semi-automatics.

Aufidius' sway through Coriolanus' mother to spare Rome and then to blame Coriolanus.. it came too fast.

The silliness of the people, following anybody who yells for them, was good.

Gritty, moody. My spirits have not lifted.

Eavan Boland - "The Pomegranate"

The only legend I have ever loved is

the story of a daughter lost in hell.

And found and rescued there.

Love and blackmail are the gist of it.

Ceres and Persephone the names.

And the best thing about the legend is

I can enter it anywhere.  And have.

As a child in exile in

a city of fogs and strange consonants,

I read it first and at first I was

an exiled child in the crackling dusk of

the underworld, the stars blighted.  Later

I walked out in a summer twilight

searching for my daughter at bed-time.

When she came running I was ready

to make any bargain to keep her.

I carried her back past whitebeams

and wasps and honey-scented buddleias.

But I was Ceres then and I knew

winter was in store for every leaf

on every tree on that road.

Was inescapable for each one we passed.

And for me.

                    It is winter

and the stars are hidden.

I climb the stairs and stand where I can see

my child asleep beside her teen magazines,

her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.

The pomegranate!  How did I forget it?

She could have come home and been safe

and ended the story and all

our heart-broken searching but she reached

out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.

She put out her hand and pulled down

the French sound for apple and 

the noise of stone and the proof

that even in the place of death,

at the heart of legend, in the midst

of rocks full of unshed tears

ready to be diamonds by the time

the story was told, a child can be

hungry.  I could warn her.  There is still a chance.

The rain is cold.  The road is flint-coloured.

The suburb has cars and cable television.

The veiled stars are above ground.

It is another world.  But what else

can a mother give her daughter but such

beautiful rifts in time?

If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.

The legend will be hers as well as mine.  

She will enter it.  As I have.

She will wake up.  She will hold

the papery flushed skin in her hand.

And to her lips.  I will say nothing.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - "Higgs Boson Blues" (Push the Sky Away

I've got the Higgs Boson Blues
I've got the Higgs Boson Blues
I'm going down to Geneva

Who cares what the future brings

Zadie Smith on allowing characters to exist imperfectly

"It’s something that’s important to me, in fiction: imperfect knowledge. That’s the reality of most people’s lives—mine too. It seems to me that we often commit ourselves wholly to something while knowing almost nothing concrete about it. Another word for that, I suppose, is “faith.” I fully believe in global warming, for example—but what do I really understand of the science? Very little. If I tried to explain it to someone who had just landed from another planet I would only talk a lot of ill-informed nonsense at them—an approximation of the truth, a sliver of what I’ve gleaned from the articles I’ve read and half-comprehended. The thing that can be challenging in fiction is allowing people to exist imperfectly. There is perhaps an added pressure if the author belongs to a group that feels itself burdened by what I want to call the responsibilities of representation. But if I believed that every time I wrote a Nigerian character that he carried the heavy burden of representing “The Nigerian People” in their entirety, well, I would find it hard to write a word. I’m sure there are readers who read in that way, but I can’t—won’t—write for them. I want to write without shame or pride or over-compensation in one direction or another. To write freely."


"We’re all capable of that kind of thoughtlessness; it’s how we live. It’s what makes the life we live possible. In the end, empathy is a very limited emotion. Here in the West we romanticize its power—especially in literature!—but the truth is empathy gets turned on and off as needs be. My own feeling is you need to legislate for it, to encourage people into its practice—to enforce it, if need be. Perhaps all those Wall Street bankers were perfectly nice people, too, who didn’t mean to hurt us as they did, but we shouldn’t rely on the vagaries of human personalities. Desperation, weakness, vulnerability—these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy."


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/02/this-week-in-fiction-zadie-smith.html#ixzz2LG9xKXyE

U.N.K.L.E. - "When Things Explode" (War Stories, featuring Ian Astbury)

I know that I've been falling
Into your dreams.

It's also Astbury who features on "Burn my Shadow". Should look him up.

De Kift

Live performance. Never saw them before and loved them.

The use of trumpets and all things copper... and the lyrics!