Sir Barack, Brave Knight?

'Twas a big weekend for the "forces of Hope". Say what you will about Presidential Candidate Barack Obama -- he gets people out there VOTING. His totals from South Carolina were more than his Republican opponents' totals combined.

Here are this week's newest endorsements of Obama's brand of optimism:

Patrick Kennedy (D - R.I.) and Ted Kennedy's (D - Mass.) endorsement.

and

"A President Like My Father", by Caroline Kennedy.

For this candidate's positions on the issues, jump HERE.

Thursdays with Alan...

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.”

Show Must Go On?

Maybe not --
Head over to United Hollywood for Writer's Strike updates...

For Best Actor, this year I was able to see Daniel Day-Lewis in "There Will Be Blood" and Viggo Mortensen in "Eastern Promises".
Both outstanding.
Bowling-pin wielding "Daniel Plainview" versus naked, knife wielding "Nikolai".
A good matchup.
For all the nominations, jump HERE.

The Coolest Album You've Never Heard

It is rare that something new is unearthed for me -- enter "Talk Talk" and Spirit Of Eden. This is one of the most moving albums I've ever listened to -- again and again (as I work on my latest Project, "Harmony Gates"). It has been my muse.

Talk Talk began in 1981 as a synth-pop band (not my style). They were best known for the hit "It's My Life" (later reborn by No Doubt). Then in 1988, Talk Talk released Spirit Of Eden. It was totally different then anything they'd done before, and it was a commercial disaster, effectively ending their mass popularity.
Spirit Of Eden was recorded in darkness. It's improvisations fuse Jazz, Rock, Classical, and Ambient Soundscapes. It is an intensely spiritual work, and is alternately tranquil and rousing, evocative and unsettling.
Mark Feltham's "fusion harmonica" work is astounding.

5 out of 5.

Inheritance
Nature's son
Don't you know how life goes on
Desperately befriending the crowd
To incessantly drive on
Dress in gold's surrendering gown
Heaven bless you in your calm
My gentle friend
Heaven bless you

The Folly of Feeling Human

"Man - full of emptiness and torn apart with homesickness for the desert, who because of a lack of external enemies and opposition was forced into an oppressive narrowness and regularity of custom - impatiently tore himself apart, persecuted himself, gnawed away at himself, grew upset, and did himself damage - this animal which scraped itself raw against the bars of its cage, which people want to "tame", this impoverished creature, consumed with longing for the wild, had to create in itself an adventure, a torture chamber, an uncertain and dangerous wilderness - this fool, this yearning and puzzled prisoner, was the inventor of "bad conscience". With him was introduced the greatest and weirdest illness, from which human beings up to the present time have not recovered - the suffering of man from his humanness, from himself..."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

PISCES [Feb. 19–March 20]
"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's," wrote visionary poet William Blake. I suggest you write out that quote and keep it in plain sight throughout 2008. The coming months will be prime time for you to design a highly organized, richly disciplined approach to living the life you want to live, and doing it with such rigor and vigor that you will never again have to be controlled by or pay constant homage to someone else's life plan.





-- my Horoscope via The Village Voice

Movie Review Haiku

ANGEL-A

Love and redemption
per super-model Angel
heavenly Paris

***3/4 Stars (out of 5)

Click the photo for the sublime Trailer.

Movie Review Haiku

No Country For Old Men

The anti-western
Bleak and allegorical
Filtered through two Jews.

**** Stars (out of 5)

I defy you to be grouchy when faced with...

two of these fearsome creatures wrestling....

Click the photo for sugary sweetness.

Good Deed, Good Vocabulary.

Go here.
Get smarter.
Feed hungry people.
'nuff said.

www.freerice.com

(credit to Dana and NPR)

Movie Review Haiku: Rescue Dawn

Rescue Dawn

No schadenfreude here
A Herzog escape drama
Propelled by Method

***1/2 Stars (out of 5)

Back tonight, and maybe for more...

Led Zeppelin is hands-down my favorite all time band. For me, nothing comes close.
They are back tonight in London.

My favorite song is "The Rover", off of Physical Graffiti.

What's your favorite Band, and favorite song?

New Project...

Stay tuned.

There's no mistletoe, but...

Judah Hasmonean, later named Maccabee, or "Hammer", led a resistance against the Greeks in 167 BCE. Antiochus Epiphanes, the Greco-Syrian King, forbade the Jews from practicing their religion, placed a statue of Zeus in the Jews' holiest Temple, and massacred them on a daily basis. Judah formed a small band of fighters - The Maccabees - and after three years of fighting, they overthrew the Greeks, reclaiming the Temple.

So, here is a recipe for Latkes:

Makes approximately 12 palm-sized latkes

• 4 medium potatoes
• 1 medium onion
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup matzah meal (flour or bread crumbs can be substituted)
• salt and black pepper to taste
• vegetable oil

Shred the potatoes and onion into a large bowl. Press out all excess liquid.(if using a food processor, use the chopping blade for 2 or 3 seconds after pressing out liquid to avoid stringy fly-aways). Add eggs and mix well. Add matzah meal gradually while mixing until the batter is doughy, not too dry. (you may not need the whole amount, depending on how well you drained the veggies). Add a few dashes of salt and black pepper. (don't taste the batter -- it's really gross!). Don't worry if the batter turns a little orange; that will go away when it fries.

Heat about 1/2 inch of oil to medium-high heat. Form the batter into thin patties about the size of your palm. Fry batter in oil. Be patient: this takes time, and too much flipping will burn the outside without cooking the inside. Flip when the bottom is golden brown.

Place finished latkes on paper towels to drain. Eat hot with sour cream or applesauce.

Happy Hanukkah!

Movie Review Haiku : "Brick"

Brick

High School murder-yarn
Super-serious film noir
Turns the genre out

**** Stars (out of 5)

PISCES [Feb. 19–March 20]
"You owe it to us all to get on with what you're good at," said poet W.H. Auden. Make that your motto in the coming weeks, Pisces. Your motivation for doing the useful work you love to do shouldn't come from you alone. We, the rest of the world, want to be there inside you so that we can root you on and encourage you to give us your very best gifts. Tap into and refine and explore your talents for your own sake, yes—but do it for us, too.

-- my Horoscope via The Village Voice

Pay the Writer!

Harlan Ellison, Science Fiction writer (original writer for The Outer Limits and Star Trek), has always been outspoken. Before becoming a "paid" writer, he held jobs as, by his account: "tuna fisherman, itinerant crop-picker, hired gun for a wealthy neurotic, dynamite truck driver, short order cook, cab driver, book salesman, floorwalker in a department store, and door to door brush salesman".
Some aspects of the story for The Terminator were sufficiently similar to two episodes ("Soldier" and "Demon with a Glass Hand") of the TV series The Outer Limits — both written by Ellison — that Ellison sued James Cameron. Ellison settled for several hundred thousand dollars, and the film's credits now include the simple statement: "Acknowledgment to the works of Harlan Ellison."
He is a fascinating man, and so --

Click on his photo above for his short rant on why writers should be paid, which includes the charming line "I don't take a piss without getting paid for it..."

For those of you who swear by "24"...

"Are we nuts thinking Hillary Clinton could be president of this country? Honest to God, just stand back and think about it".
-- Joel Surnow, Executive Producer of FOX's "24"

So Why are the Writers' Striking?

HERE is a succinct video explaining the reasons for the strike:

WGA: Why We Strike

Here is a letter from a Writer's Guild Strike Captain, George Hickenlooper...

Dear family, friends and colleagues,

As most of you know the Writer's Guild of America (of which I am a proud member) is set to go on strike at one minute after midnight tomorrow. There has been a lot of negative and false information fed to the press lately about how the average WGA member makes over 200K per year and that the guild is being unreasonable in its contract negotiations and that basically we're all a bunch of left leaning, privileged, silver-spoon fed, pinko cry babies.

The reality is NONE of this is true. What is true is that the average Guild member makes 5K per year from his or her writing services, the average Guild member is middle class, and the average Guild member has been financially taken advantage of for the past two decades to the point of embarrassment.

The other big reality is that the future of ALL film and television is INTERNET bound, a paid advertising medium for which each and every Guild member currently has ZERO financial participation.
MORE

The horror. The horror...

I love Halloween, and so, here are TWO movies that I find to be freakin' terrifying.

AUDITION

Where do I begin? This is unbelievably disturbing, and very good quality cinema. Written and Directed by Takashi Miike, this is totally over the top and genuinely horrifying. You shouldn't see this alone. Perhaps you shouldn't even see this. Intrigued? God help you.

AND, my favorite horror movie of all time,

The Exorcist III: Legion

Superb acting from George C. Scott (Patton, 12 Angry Men), and Brad Dourif (LOTR's Wormtongue and Deadwood's Doc Cochran). Very artful direction from William Peter Blatty, who is the original author of The Exorcist. Cameo by Patrick Ewing as The Angel Of Death.
The film picks up 15 years from where the original 1973 Exorcist film left off, discounting the events of the first 1977 sequel entirely. Awesome awesome awesome. I watch this all the time, it's like manna to me.

Happy Halloween, all.

Awesome Album Covers

Click on the Freddie Gage laugh-a-thon for more albums to get you through the day...

Now THIS is the life...

A close friend of mine up North posted the following on his Blog, The Cold, Hard Facts Of A Cold, Hard Man:

I'm doing a little project that requires outside help.

I'd like to know what it would take for you to speak the words "Now, this is the life" aloud, and really mean it. Where would you have to be? What would you have to be doing? What person, place, thing, taste, or moment in life could you make you feel that way?

What's YOUR answer? Mine was this:

I would be surveying my woodland home, my children playing in the open field that lies just beyond a barn that had been converted into a music studio/production facility. They sky would be gray, a meerschaum pipe hanging limply from my lips. My wife waves to me from her circle of friends who lounge by the Koi pond. I can just make out the very edge of my property,the waist-high wire surrounding the perimeter gives off a faint crackle of implied electricity. "This is the life..."

Two Amazing Films You Haven't Seen...

TAMPOPO
This movie is a wonderful look at the world. Through food. And the enjoying of food. And the overwhelming importance -- and eroticism -- of food.
Lighthearted, bawdy, and totally sublime, it refers to itself as "The first Japanese noodle western".
This is one of my favorite films, and I screen it every once and awhile to remember what good movies look like.

ZATOICHI
Based on one of Japan's longest running series' about a peaceful, wandering blind masseur. But also a Hero-Swordsman, master of Iaijutsu.
I am in love with the Takeshi Kitano version of this movie. So much heart, so quirky. Tears and laughter, sprinkled with tension. And a tap dancing finale, of course.

Click on the photos for more, but these are SO worth your time.
Let me know what you think of them.