Pinter/Losey 1963

Class Dismissed
by Tom Sutpen
Revisiting Losey and Pinter's misunderstood masterpiece, The Servant
via Bright Lights Film Journal

As Hugo Barrett, the manservant with a private agenda, Dirk Bogarde achieves more with a glance or a slight movement in Joseph Losey's The Servant than another actor would have accomplished bringing a lifetime of stage technique to the part. Barrett is a phenomenally complex, delicate role, and the wrong actor could have easily thrown the entire film out of balance simply by leaning too heavily on a line or holding a beat just a second too long. What it needed was an actor possessing both prodigious intelligence and intuition, and Bogarde was, in that sense, perfectly suited for it.
...
Matters of Class may have been a principal subtext of the novel from which The Servant was derived (a novel I confess I have not read), but in no sense are they anything more than a vague underpinning of either the movie Joseph Losey directed or, particularly, the screenplay Harold Pinter wrote. This is a film about power, in its most basic and consuming forms.

London

Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe
Via Zimbio: Members of the public enjoy the two newly refurbished fountains in Trafalgar Square on May 29, 2009 in London, England. A year-long restoration project costing £190,000 as just been completed to install LED lighting and repair two of the three fountain pumps; enabling far higher projection of water than has been seen in the last 30 years.

Aix-en-Provence

Photo: Claude Germain de Vauvenargues

Picasso's studio in the Château de Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence. For the first time, it's being opened to the public.

For the love of Dog

Bob Morris

Via Salon
Disappointed, but Gay as Ever:

I still think it’s a good moment for gays in this country, who can now get legally married in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont and Iowa, with New York state heading in the same direction. And if I had to choose between California being able to maintain its same-sex marriage laws last November or the election of our current president, I’d pick the latter. I don’t just want a better world for gays. I want a better world for everyone, and I like to believe that we now have a president who wants to steer us in that direction. Yes, we may be in an economic depression, but if a troubled economy helped to get us a nuanced thinker in the White House, a man who symbolizes such hope for America’s minorities, well then, I’m willing to take the good with the bad for now.

$12.4 mm

Photo: RM Auctions
1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa.

Sullivan on California Ruling

It has been upheld. The 18,000 same sex marriages performed in California are still valid. For my part, I will leave the fine legal analysis to those trained in these matters (and link to them). Politically, this seems to me the perfect decision. It would have been dreadful if voters were retroactively told their valid vote was somehow null and void - it would have felt like a bait and switch and provoked a horrible backlash.

It would have been equally dreadful if those couples lawfully wed were subsequently forced into divorce by the court. And these married couples and their families and children will now become the focus of the debate in California, as they should be. They are the evidence that we are right: that extending the blessings and responsibilities of full family life to gay men and lesbians is a good and conservative and integrating thing. We need now to put these families forward as our core argument. Their lives are our best case. Like mixed-race married couples in another era, they will show that there is nothing to fear here and much to celebrate.

Separate is not Equal

10:09 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- California voters legally outlawed same-sex marriage when they approved Proposition 8 in November, but the constitutional amendment did not dissolve the unions of 18,000 gay and lesbian couples who wed before the measure took effect, the state Supreme Court ruled today.

Kubrick: Barry Lyndon (1975)

Guion: Stanley Kubrick, basado en la novela de William Thackeray.
Fotografía: John Alcott.
Diseño Determinado: Ken Adam.
Actores: Ryan O’Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Krüger.
La lectura que hace Kubrick de las fuentes originales de sus películas no deja de sorprenderme. Si Nabokov cambia de dimensión en sus manos, Thackeray se transforma absolutamente. Así, las divertidas e irreverentes aventuras del incorregible Barry Lyndon llegan a la pantalla como un lienzo de infinita delicadeza. Para ello Kubrick elimina los elementos pícaros del original y nos entrega un suntuoso espectáculo. Realmente maravilloso. ¿Por qué se animó a filmar una novela de ese tipo? “Llegó en el momento misterioso del deseo de crear”, comentó el cineasta. “Es tan indefinible como intentar explicar por qué encontramos a una mujer atractiva o por qué nos casamos con otra”.
Duración: 184 minutos.

Via La Soga por Alberto Servat

Fleet Week

Photo: Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times

NYTimes: Sailors on 42nd Street in Manhattan. Fleet Week events include a military aircraft flyover, free tours of the ships moored at docks in Manhattan and Staten Island, military band performances and tactical demonstrations by troops. New York has commemorated Fleet Week since 1984. The Navy opened this year's celebration with a flyover by six military aircraft.

Cannes

Ron Reagan Jr

Limbaugh hasn't had a natural erection since the Nixon Administration; think he's compensating for something? Now, I wouldn't pick on him for any of this stuff, not his blubbiness, not his man-boobs, not his inability to have a natural erection -- none of that stuff -- to me, off limits until! until! -- Mr. Limbaugh, you turn that sort of gun on somebody else -- once you start doing that, you're fair game, fat boy. Absolutely, you jiggly pile of mess. You're just fair game, and you're going to get it, too. [Laughs] You'd better watch what you say, Limbaugh, because it can come back the other way.

Athens

Photos: Nikos Daniilidis
Opening 20 June: Bernard Tschumi's Acropolis Museum.
Top: The entrance to the Museum with the canopy providing shelter to the archaeological ruins below.

How Rumsfeld's Pentagon Used God

He needed some way to get through to Bush.

From Salon:

[A] new article in GQ by Robert Draper is doing more damage to [Former Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld's already-tarnished reputation. Veterans of the Bush administration, who'd apparently been waiting for the opportunity to unload on an old foe, dished plenty of dirt on the former defense secretary, and delivered some truly amazing images to go along with it.

On its Web site, GQ has published a slide show of cover sheets that accompanied intelligence updates produced by Rumsfeld's DOD for Bush. They all feature images of American soldiers in the field, and biblical quotes. It was, apparently, at least partially an attempt to appeal to Bush's religious belief, but it also made other administration officials quite unhappy, in part because if they ever leaked, the images would bolster the perception, which the administration had been working to counter, that America was fighting a holy war against Islam.

From Gentleman's Quarterly:

And He Shall Be Judged by Robert Draper:

On the morning of Thursday, April 10, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline secretary of defense, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.”

Holme

Distressed leather satchel
Circa: 1980s
Item Price: $78.00
From Holme

Neil Rolnick

Alan Kossin
NYTimes Review:

Neil Rolnick has been a prolific and inventive composer of electronic music for the last quarter-century, but lately he has been revisiting the joys of acoustic instruments. He has not abandoned technology entirely: in the title work, scored for Western string quartet and four Chinese string instruments, comparatively light electronic processing of the eight string lines adds a ninth strand, used sparingly.

“The Economic Engine” (2008) is an idiosyncratic four-movement dialogue between antiquity and modernity, and its charm is in the blend, clash and interplay of Asian and Western timbres, gestures and textures. The Chinese instruments usually sing in their native accents (without using traditional themes) but stretch toward Western styles too, and at times the two sound worlds are juxtaposed: a keening erhu line is supported by a vibrato-rich violin.

From the director of Helvetica

http://www.objectifiedfilm.com/about/

Neil Tennant

Photo: Lee Jenkins

On President Obama:

We’re crazy about Obama in Europe. We’re all Obama crazy. Everyone thinks he’s sexy. Lovely teeth, as my mother would say. He actually would have made a very good cardinal, that sort of gliding across St. Peter’s Square thing he does. He’s got that kind of bearing. He’s just brought back dignity, which is an amazing thing to put back on the cultural agenda. There’s a slightly corny song on our album called “More Than a Dream,” which was written when Obama was slugging it out with Hillary in the primaries, and you could feel the potential for the world to change away from the sort of paranoia -- justified as it may be -- to something different.

From the interview with Sullivan at Out.com here.

New York City

Photo: Frank Franklin/Associated Press

Christie's auction: David Hockney’s “Beverly Hills Housewife” brought in $7.9 million.

Story here.

NPH

Photo: Jonathan Alcorn for The New York Times
Neil Patrick Harris, seen here at the Magic Castle in 2008, will be the host of the 2009 Tony Awards.

Silhouette

Photo: David Roemer for The New York Times
Antonio Azzuolo cotton sport coat, $2,600 at Kesner; striped cotton shirt, $460 at Marc Jacobs; cotton denim jeans, $74 at American Apparel; Florsheim by Duckie Brown saddle oxfords, $295 at Barneys New York.

We Reconsider

Okay, I get it. I will always give President Obama the benefit of the doubt. As Sullivan says today:

My immediate shock that Obama would be willing to suppress evidence of prisoner abuse, torture and even murder - stunningly widespread in the Bush-led military - somewhat distracted me from the politics of this. That is often a mistake with Obama who both takes his own responsibilities as commander-in-chief seriously and always appears to be playing a longer game than his opponents.

But this is a blog, written in real time, so allow me some secondary thoughts after a night to sleep on it. In the cold light of morning, it doesn't seem quite so offensive. In fact, the rope-a-dope this time might be on us.

...

The point of the photos is not to demonstrate more gore; it is to have a fresh opening to explain to Americans just how widespread this was, and also to remind them that this led to the deaths of scores. But against this important public interest, the president has another duty - to his soldiers in the line of fire. These soldiers deserve a chance to do their astonishingly difficult job without inflaming those who might be inspired to kill and attack them. I see no reason to suspect that Obama is not genuine about this question, and it's a fair factor to consider. More importantly, he has not said that suppressing the photos at this time means suppressing them for ever, and has not indicated that he will prevent justice being done. In fact, his statement said the opposite.

The pro-torture right will say this call is obvious. It isn't. It's very hard. When you have inherited a policy of war crimes, and you are still fighting a war, balancing accountability with responsibility is tough. I think, having made our point, we should cut the man some slack on this. What matters is holding those who destroyed America's moral standing responsible. That is a struggle for patriots to engage, a Truth Commission to study, and the attorney-general to pursue, while allowing the president to do his job as commander-in-chief.

I will note this too about the politics. If Obama wants to get the truth out, and does not want to be slimed as a partisan avenger (the propaganda line from the Rovians), it helps him to have symbolic spats with those of us who believe we have no choice but to confront the war crimes of the last administration. This has long been his mojo: give symbolic gifts to your opponents while retaining the core issue. These gestures - Rick Warren, dinner with Bill Kristol, summits with Cantor - help insulate him from being drawn into the kind of partisan fight the Rove right likes to fight. In this rope, in other words, the anti-torture movement is the current dope.

Fine. Rope-A-Dope us. But let us not let the responsible parties get away with torture, abuse and murder. And let us play a smart and relentless long game as well.

Chicago

Photo: Michelle Litvin for The New York Times

Renzo Piano's Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago
Nicholas Ourousoff:

It is this obsessive refinement that raises Mr. Piano's best architecture to the level of art. In an age with few idealists, he exudes a touching faith in the value of slow, incremental progress. He has never fully abandoned the belief that machines can elevate as well as destroy. The beauty of his designs stems from his stubborn insistence that the placement of a column or a window, when done with enough patience and care, brings us a step closer to a more enlightened society.

Slideshow here.

On Blocking the Torture Photos Release

A.C.L.U. Executive Director Anthony D. Romero:

The Obama administration’s adoption of the stonewalling tactics and opaque policies of the Bush administration flies in the face of the president’s stated desire to restore the rule of law, to revive our moral standing in the world and to lead a transparent government. This decision is particularly disturbing given the Justice Department’s failure to initiate a criminal investigation of torture crimes under the Bush administration.

It is true that these photos would be disturbing; the day we are no longer disturbed by such repugnant acts would be a sad one. In America, every fact and document gets known – whether now or years from now. And when these photos do see the light of day, the outrage will focus not only on the commission of torture by the Bush administration but on the Obama administration’s complicity in covering them up. Any outrage related to these photos should be due not to their release but to the very crimes depicted in them. Only by looking squarely in the mirror, acknowledging the crimes of the past and achieving accountability can we move forward and ensure that these atrocities are not repeated.

Andrew Sullivan:

Without photos, we would never have heard of the mass abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib. Bush and Cheney would be denying today that any of it happened at all. When the photos were uncovered, revealing clearly what the anodyne words "stress position", "mock execution", "forced nudity" etc actually meant, we finally were able to hold the government accountable for the abuse it authorized.

Of course, they lied to us and to the Congress about this, declaring that these techniques, meticulously crafted in Washington, had been improvised by a few "bad apples" on the night shift whom the Weekly Standard believed should be jailed or executed (that was before they discovered that their friends were deeply implicated).

We now know that these Abu Ghraib techniques were imported from Gitmo and were used in every theater of war as Cheney constructed a secret war machine that used the capture, torture and abuse of prisoners as its central intelligence-gathering tool. But we only have the photos from Abu Ghraib and so people can continue to pull a Noonan and pretend that this didn't happen no a much wider scale. From my understanding, the photos would prove very similar techniques spread across the globe. And so it would be clear that any Muslim anywhere, upon seeing US troops, could be Abu Ghraibed. The photos would reveal more powerfully than the impressive documentation in countless reports that Bush and Cheney's torture and abuse machine was everywhere, in every theater. How do you run an effective counter-insurgency when all Afghans know that Americans bring torture along with "democracy"?

Obama inherits this legacy. He has two options: pull the lid right off it, and fuel more anger and anti-Americanism; or hunker down, acquiesce to the military and become an active accomplice to the cover-up. He's trying to straddle the divide but now realizes he cannot prosecute Bush's wars with Bush's military while exposing Bush's war crimes. Hence the cover-up.

Illustrator/Author: Peter Brown

Sherie Posesorski:

As all good, enduring stories are, “The Curious Garden” is a rich palimpsest. Echoing the themes of “The Secret Garden,” it is an ecological fable, a whimsical tale celebrating perseverance and creativity, and a rousing paean, encouraging every small person and every big person that they too can nurture their patch of earth into their very own vision of Eden.

The Torment of St. Anthony

Photo: Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

NYTimes: The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth has acquired what some scholars now say is the first painting made by Michelangelo. And if he created it, he did so when he was only 12 or 13.

Story here.

Kristo

Self-portrait: Brussels

Atlantis

Matt Stroshane/Getty Images
NYTimes: The space shuttle Atlantis blasted off from Florida on Monday afternoon carrying a seven-member crew to revamp and refresh the Hubble Space Telescope.

Lennon in New York City

Photo: David Behl/Courtesy of Yoko Ono
NYTimes: “John Lennon: The New York City Years,” an exhibition at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC in SoHo, provides a glimpse of the nine years the artist lived in the city, from 1971 until his death in 1980.

Haris Epaminonda

Photo: Uwe Walter
Book #13 from The Infinite Library project with Daniel Gustav Cramer
Neue Nationalgalerie
5th Berlin Biennale, Berlin 2008

"The Infinite Library is an ongoing project by Daniel Gustav Cramer and Haris
Epaminonda. It is primarily an expanding archive of books, each created out of
pages of one or more found books and bound anew."

www.harisepaminonda.com/

Nassim Taleb

Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there.

--From The Black Swan

Say it ain't so

Photo: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

NYTimes/Michael Schmidt:

Manny Ramirez, the Dodger's All-Star outfielder, was suspended by Major League Baseball on Thursday for violating its performance-enhancing drug testing program. Ramirez said in a statement released by the players’ association that he had been given a medication, not a steroid, that a doctor had recently prescribed him for a personal health issue.“Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy,” Ramirez said. “Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility. I have been advised not to say anything more for now. I do want to say one other thing: I’ve taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons.”

He will be eligible to return July 3.

Afghanistan

Photo: Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
NYTimes:
A man suffering from withdrawal symptoms inside [a detox] center in Kabul. A United Nations survey taken four years ago revealed 200,000 opium and heroin addicts in Afghanistan's population of about 35 million. A new study, to be completed in the summer, is expected to show even more. Kabul contains a handful of drug treatment clinics, but they have nowhere near the capacity to treat the number of people in need.

Full story here.

Milton

“The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.”

Illustrator: Viktor Koen

Andrew Sullivan

On most issues, I side with what used to be the center-right, but the GOP is poison to me and many others. Why?

Their abandonment of limited government, their absurd spending under Bush, their contempt for civil liberties, their rigid mindset, their hostility to others, their worship of the executive branch, their contempt for judicial checks, their cluelessness with racial minorities and immigrants, their endorsement of torture as an American value, their homophobia, their know-nothing Christianism, and the sheer vileness of their leaders - from the dumb-as-a-post Steele to the brittle, money-grubbing cynic, Coulter and hollow, partisan neo-fascist Hannity.

I'm waiting for the first leading Republican to do to these grandstanding goons what Clinton once did to the extremists in his own ranks: reject them, excoriate them, remind people that they do not have a monopoly on conservatism and that decent right-of-center people actually find their vision repellent. And then to articulate a positive vision for taking this country forward, expanding liberty, exposing corruption, reducing government's burden, unwinding ungovernable empire, and defending civic virtue without going on Jihads against other people's vices.

If today's "conservatives" spent one tenth of the time saying what they were for rather than who they're against, they might get somewhere. But the truth is: whom they hate is their core motivation right now. That's how they define themselves. And as long as they do, Americans will rightly and soundly reject them.

Earless in Arles

Self-portrait with cut ear: Vincent Van Gogh
Photograph: Roger-Viollet/Rex Features

Van Gogh's Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence

The American Wing

Photo: Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
NYTimes: After two years of construction and renovation, the Charles Engelhard Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will reopen on May 19, along with its period rooms.

Broadway

Photo: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Pictured: David Alvarez, one of three actors alternating in the title role of “Billy Elliot,” which received fifteen Tony nominations. Patrick Healy (NYTimes) writes: The Three Billys of “Billy Elliot” nab a joint nomination! These three charming teen-age boys are bound to be all over CBS on the night of the Tonys.

Spring in D.C.

Mexico

(Reuters)

New Hampshire

Cheryl Senter for The New York Times

David Souter's house.