The Criterion Collection on Hulu

Too many great movies to watch over the weekend (too cheap to actually pay Hulu to stream it for money after the President’s weekend) – must watch some more Bergman!

Rebekka Bakken chante Tom Waits

Here.
En entendant le nom de Tom Waits, on pense immédiatement à sa voix rocailleuse et aux innombrables morceaux de blues composés par cet artiste américain à la vie mouvementée, qui affiche 63 ans au compteur. Ses chansons les plus lyriques et mélodieuses sont à présent interprétées par la chanteuse de jazz Rebekka Bakken, dont la voix si particulière a été saluée par la critique. L’artiste norvégienne est accompagnée par le Bigband du Hessischer Rundfunk sous la direction de Jörg Achim Keller.

« Dès le départ, j’étais conscient que si Tom Waits n’interprétait pas lui-même ses chansons, seule une voix de femme pourrait convenir pour ce projet » a déclaré Jörg Achim Keller, qui a adapté les morceaux de l’artiste américain pour une formation de jazz. C’est la première coopération entre le chef d’orchestre invité du bigband et Rebekka Bakken. Mais dès le premier contact, il a compris qu’ils étaient sur la même longueur d’onde.

Tom Waits a écrit des chansons à la croisée du folk, du blues et du vaudeville, dont la beauté n’a été pleinement dévoilée que par d’autres interprètes. Souvent, ces morceaux ne faisaient leur entrée dans les charts que lorsqu’ils étaient repris par d’autres. Jörg Achim Keller a passé au crible l’œuvre de Tom Waits à la recherche de perles. Née à Oslo, Rebekka Bakkens se présente comme une chanteuse et compositrice ouverte à divers courants musicaux. Avec toute l’étendue de sa gamme vocale, elle était la personne idoine pour ce projet, et sa voix très expressive évolue avec une étonnante fluidité entre accents rauques et graves, sonorités légères et cristallines.

Morton’s book out: forgets to mention one important OOO figure and misspells the name of someone he is acknowledging…

Tim Morton’s new book is out – surely it will be as awesomely nonsensical as his blog writings = here. First thing to draw my troll attention? Lack of Levi Bryant, one of the other founders of OOO, in the Acknowledgement section – scandalous!

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, Graham Harman [check] brought this book into being in almost every sense. He compelled me to become an object-oriented ontologist, through the ingenious device of brilliant, seductive prose. And as series editor he has been a most helpful, generous partner in putting this book together.

Ian Bogost [check], one of the founders of object-oriented ontology (OOO), gave me the title at a highly spiced brainstorming session in Los Angeles in December 2010, and since then has shared his thinking in the most generous ways possible.

There many people whose more than inspiring ideas and kind words have helped me on this project, including but not limited to: Jamie Allen, Jane Bennett, Bill Benzon, Paul Boshears, Rick Elmore, Paul Ennis, Rita Felski, Dirk Felleman, Nathan Gale, Bobby George, Thomas Gokey, Joseph Goodson, Peter Gratton, Liam Heneghan, Eileen Joy, Julia Reinhard Lupton, Douglas Kahn, Ken Reinhard, Tom Sparrow, MacKenzie Wark, Cary Wolfe, and Ben Woodard.

This book is dedicated to my son Simon. Anyone who has trouble imagining causality as magical and uncanny need only consider the existence of children.

Sure, there are parenthetical references to the great onticologist here and there in the book, but nothing really interesting. I propose to move the periodization of the fake philosophical history of OOO to the next stage: “…and then it split into two sub-movements: pro-Harman (Morton and Bogost) and pro-Bryant (Bryant).”

Note to sympathetic commenters – sure, this is a waste of my time, but it’s hilarious and I mention it because I like to poke holes at self-important morons. Give me this one thing, please. No egos were hurt in the preparation and publication of this blog post.

The Perfect American (New Opera by Philip Glass)

You can stream it online for free on Medici.tv here.

Dariusz Zejmo, ‘Venice’ 2011; oil on canvas; 39.5in x 39.5in

 

Here (and it’s only $2475)

Suitcase’s graham harman gets stranded in Cairo

All around object-oriented philosopher Graham Harman exhibits suspiciously human-oriented interpretation of his lost bag tragedy. For those not following this epic human ordeal (start now), the very human philosopher lost his bag in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He is now publicly chiding American Airlines for refusing to send his lost bag to him in Cairo.

However, he is looking at it all wrong: the real tragedy is not that a human person in Cairo is now without its bag, it is that a bag is now in Cedar Rapids without its human person!

What about the bag? Who will think about how the bag must feel now? Perhaps it got tired of its human person and simply used this opportunity to escape?