Demystifying Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand,” and How It Was Inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost

 

“Youtuber Polyphonic has done a good job of looking at some hoary old classics of ‘60s rock, but he doesn’t always dip his toe in taking on contemporary music, or even considering a modern canon. Pronouncing what is essential listening of the last few decades is a minefield, especially among the ranks of Commentus YouTubus.So their choice to explore Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ ‘Red Right Hand’ is a deft one. It’s not Cave’s most well-known song—-that would be ‘The Mercy Seat’—-but it’s one that many non-Cave fans know regardless. Though released in 1994, it’s now best known as the theme song from Peaky Blinders, though it also showed up in all three of the first Scream films. It’s been used to sell tequila and tourism as well. ...”

Open Culture (Video)

2008 August: Nick Cave, 2010 November: Henry Lee - Nick Cave & PJ Harvey, 2011 March: The Boatman's Call, 2011 December: B-Sides & Rarities, 2012 January: Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - White Lunar, 2013 January: "We No Who U R", 2013 April: No More Shall We Part, 2013 June: The Secret Life Of The Love Song/The Flesh Made Word (1999), 2013 October: The Abattoir Blues Tour (2007), 2014 March: Push the Sky Away (2013), 2014 May: Live from KCRW (2013), 2014 July: I Am the Real Nick Cave, 2014 March: God Is In The House (2001), 2015 June: Nocturama (2003), 2015 July: Higgs Boson Blues, 2020 March: Nick Cave's inspiration: pictures and notes from his archive

​The great betrayal: how the Hillsborough families were failed by the justice system

 

After 32 years of establishment lies, media smears, inquests, trials and retrials, the families of the Hillsborough dead have yet to see anyone held accountable, October 21, 2021: "On a grey morning in May this year, the English legal system’s epic failure to secure justice for the families devastated by the Hillsborough disaster finally ground to its dismal conclusion. Ninety-seven people were killed due to a terrible crush on an overcrowded terrace at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough football stadium on 15 April 1989. Since then, the families have endured a 32-year fight for the truth to be accepted – that the main cause of the disaster was police negligence, and for those responsible to be held accountable. ...” 

Guardian

Red Eye to New York - Janet Delaney (2021)

 

“Throughout the 1980s, Janet Delaney’s job in a San Francisco photography lab was punctuated by the last-minute flights she would take to New York as a courier. Within these unexpected pockets of time she spent in New York, Delaney would wander the streets with her Rolleiflex camera, attending to the rhythms and characters of this much-mythologised city. Despite being tired and often lost, the act of photographing made Delaney feel present and alert, in tune with the crowds that pushed past her and mesmerised by the depth of history woven into the city’s structures. ...”

Janet Delaney

Guardian - No sleep till Brooklyn: a red-eye view of New York – in pictures

​Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany

 

“Documentary which looks at how a radical generation of musicians created a new German musical identity out of the cultural ruins of war. Between 1968 and 1977 bands like Neu!, Can, Faust and Kraftwerk would look beyond western rock and roll to create some of the most original and uncompromising music ever heard. They shared one common goal – a forward-looking desire to transcend Germany’s gruesome past – but that didn’t stop the music press in war-obsessed Britain from calling them Krautrock. ...”

Documentary Heaven (Video) 58:25 BBC

​A Bacchanal, follower of Dosso Dossi, 1525

 “This orgy in the countryside is a raw and racy take on a classical theme. It’s set in a mythical golden age, or at least bronze age, inspired by ancient Roman poetry, where goat-legged satyrs hang out with cupids and nymphs. Bacchus was the god of wine and his followers drunken reprobates. Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne, perhaps the most famous depiction of bacchanalian behaviour, was painted as part of a series of mythic scenes for the Duke of Ferrara in the early 1500s (and today hangs in the National Gallery). This painting also from Ferrara, is in the fierce, intense style of local painter Dosso Dossi. But it playfully takes Titian’s classical revels into more pornographic territory, with dangerous liaisons everywhere you look.“

The National Gallery

W - Dosso Dossi

Five Corners - Tony Bill (1987)

 

“'Five Corners,' opening today at the Baronet and other theaters, is about coming of age in the Bronx in the autumn of 1964, when student activists were listening to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., young women were still doing their darnedest to look like Jacqueline Kennedy and glue-sniffing was an acceptable way to attain a high. Directed by Tony Bill, the film is based on John Patrick Shanley's first screenplay. ... In a period of approximately 24 hours, 'Five Corners' tells the stories of Linda (Jodie Foster), her sometime boyfriend James (Todd Graff) and Harry (Tim Robbins), who's about to go off to register voters in Mississippi. Their comparatively placid lives are thrown into chaos with the arrival back in the neighborhood of Heinz (John Turturro), a young psychotic who has been serving time for the attempted rape of Linda. ...”

NY Times: By Vincent Canby (Jan. 22, 1988)

Criterion, dailymotion

YouTube: Five Corners Trailer 1987

United States: Essays, 1952-1992 - Gore Vidal (1993)

 

“United States collects 114 essays written by Gore Vidal over the last four decades. Despite the reproduction of Jasper Johns’s forty-eight-star flag on the dust jacket, less than half of them are about politics. The rest describe books, places, and people he has known. ... Most of these pieces are anchored to a discussion of some book. If it is a book he likes, Vidal provides a summary that is both detailed and interesting. He favors a bright, staccato prose, which draws its variety from the length of its sentences. Short fragments. Good for facts. These will be followed by long, elliptical tendrils of analysis or appraisal, occasionally wise, often witty, and when neither, at least … bitchy. ...”

The New Criterion: State of the essay?

NY Times: Two Score of Gore

Gore Vidal mastered the art of the burn.

amazon

2011 May: An American history lesson with Gore Vidal, 2013 September: Gore Vidal’s Gore Vidal – BBC Omnibus 1995

​In the Company of Wes Anderson

 

“It’s his first film set in France, and the first done as an anthology. But Wes Anderson’s 10th movie, ‘The French Dispatch,’ was made in much the same way, and with much the same cast, as many of the features that preceded it. Along with his fastidious and vibrant visual sense and staccato pacing, his company of free spirits has become his signature. ... ‘The French Dispatch,’ about writers at a midcentury magazine based on The New Yorker, is set in the fictional town of Ennui-sur-Blasé and was filmed in Angoulême, France. ...”

NY Times

NY Times - ‘The French Dispatch’ Review: Remember Magazines? (Video)

NY Times - When Wes Anderson Comes to Town, Buildings Get Symmetrical

Exclusive Exhibition Celebrating ‘The French Dispatch’ To Open In London (Video)

amazon

YouTube: THE FRENCH DISPATCH | Official Trailer

2013 November: Wes Anderson Honors Fellini in a Delightful New Short Film, 2013 November: Rushmore (1998), 2013 Decemher: Hotel Chevalier (2007), 2014 March: Wes Anderson Collection, 2014 April: The Perfect Symmetry of Wes Anderson’s Movies, 2014 July: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), 2014 August: Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), 2014 December: Welcome to Union Glacier (2013), 2015 January: Inhabiting Wes Anderson’s Universe, 2015 July: Books in the Films of Wes Anderson: A Supercut for Bibliophiles, 2015 November: Moonrise Kingdom (2012), 2015 December: Chapter 8: "The Grand Budapest Hotel", 2016 June: Here's pretty much every song used in a Wes Anderson film, 2016 November: Watch Come Together, Wes Anderson’s New Short Film...., 2018 September: Isle of Dogs (2018), 2020 May: Honest Trailers - Every Wes Anderson Movie, 2020 July: Exploring Wes Anderson’s wonderful cinematic commercials, 2020 September: Steal Like Wes Anderson...

How Neal Stephenson’s Sci-Fi Novel Snow Crash Invented the “Metaverse,” Which Facebook Now Plans to Build (1992)

“Whatever the benefits and pleasures of our current internet-enriched world, one must admit that it’s not quite as exciting as the setting of Snow Crash. Originally published in 1992, that novel not only made the name of its author Neal Stephenson, it elevated him to the status of a technological Nostradamus. It did so, at least, among readers interested in the internet and its potential, which was much more of a niche subject 29 years ago. Of the many inventions with which Stephenson furnished Snow Crash‘s then-futuristic 21st-century cyberpunk reality, few have captured as many techie imaginations as the ‘metaverse,’ an enormous virtual world inhabited by the avatars of its users. ...”

Open Culture

amazon

2021 September: Cryptonomicon (1999)

​Illuminate I Could: On Lucille Clifton

 

Caroline and son. Courtesy of the Clifton family.

What is our relationship to history? Do we belong to it, or is it ours? Are we in it? Does it run through us, spilling out like water, or blood? I think the answers to those questions, at least in America, depend upon who you are—or rather, on who you’ve been taught to believe that you are. If the history you descend from has been mapped, adapted, mythologized, reenacted, and broadcast as though it is the central defining story of a continent, perhaps you can be forgiven (up to a point) for having succumbed to a collective distortion. ...”

The Paris Review

The Paris Review - Generations: A Memoir, Lucille Clifton

The Long Crisis: New York City and the Path to Neoliberalism - Benjamin Holtzman (2021)

 

“... The reasons for that seemingly abrupt development were complex and long in the making, and they are traced with precision and care by Benjamin Holtzman’s history of the intertwined crises of liberalism and the metropolis, The Long Crisis: New York City and the Path to Neoliberalism (Oxford 2021). Whereas Smith opens The New Urban Frontier with the policing of houselessness at Tompkins Square Park, Holtzman’s book concludes with it, building over five chapters before coming to a crescendo with the 1980s spike in houselessness. The action in that final chapter sits like an all-too-avoidable train wreck whose multi-causal derailing demands careful study. We are fortunate to have Holtzman holding the magnifying glass....”

The Privatized City from Below: Benjamin Holtzman’s The Long Crisis: New York City and the Path to Neoliberalism

The Nation: New York City’s State of Permanent Crisis

New York City and the path to neoliberalism in the 1970s [timeline] By Benjamin Holtzman

amazon

Raincoats - The Kitchen Tapes (1983)

 

“The first thing to be said about the Raincoats is that they are the most appropriately named London band in the history of pop music. The second is that their music has moved from emotional manifestations of situations and events to statements of emotional positions taken on situations and events–and that the music here, recorded at the Kitchen in New York City in December, 1982, is a result of the latter approach. In other words, these are performances of songs. As such they can speak for themselves, but the Raincoats did not always ‘perform songs,’ and before they are subsumed into rock history–the band may well be gone by the end of 1983–or marked off as a half-page in one more new-women-in-rock book, it might be worth noting what they did instead. ...” 

Greil Marcus

Discogs (Video)

W - The Kitchen Tapes (The Raincoats album)

YouTube: Only loved at night, The Kitchen Tapes: 12 - Puberty Song 13 - No Side To Fall In 14 - Honey Mad Woman

2015 July: Odyshape (1981), 2017 January: The Raincoats (1979)

​Cockroaches, car camping, poverty wages: Why are minor-leaguers living in squalor?

 

“It happened in Rochester, home of the Nationals’ Triple-A affiliate, a few times during the early part of the season. In San Antonio, where the Padres’ Double-A team is located, they’re up to five break-ins this year, as players’ cars — which can double as living quarters or storage facilities — are easy fodder for a potential burglar. Several players on the Brewers’ Triple-A roster in Nashville piled into a small one-bedroom apartment thinking they struck gold within their budget: instead they found a roach infestation. At the Mets’ Double-A affiliate in Binghamton, N.Y., last month, a group of players lost electricity and went nearly three days without power and running water. ...”

The Athletic

2021 September: Minor Threat, 2019 January: Strike up the band: Mariachis win the cup, 2019 July: Cape Cod Baseball League, 2019 December: Across the Country, Minor League Towns Face Major League Threat

​The Best of Townes Van Zandt

 

“After a number of short-lived compilations, it seems that The Best of Townes Van Zandt is finally going to be the album that definitively represents Van Zandt's classic Tomato recordings. ... On the plus side, it is generally agreed that Van Zandt's music is best heard in an intimate acoustic setting, and The Best of Townes Van Zandt leans heavily toward that supposition, featuring ‘Tecumseh Valley’ and ‘White Freightliner Blues’ from the concert album Live at the Old Quarter and the second recorded version of ‘For the Sake of the Song’ that Van Zandt preferred to the 1968 original. ... People are going to cry out over some of this stuff, asking where's this and that, but such omissions ensure that people will continue to buy Van Zandt's proper records, and that is essential.”

allmusic

Discogs

YouTube: The Best of Townes Van Zandt   1 / 16

2014 March: Heartworn Highways - James Szalapski (1975), 2014 September: The 10 Best Townes Van Zandt Songs, 2015 January: Solo Sessions (Jan 17, 1995), 2015 September: Townes Van Zandt & Nanci Griffith - "Tecumseh Valley," 1993, 2016 February: "If I Needed You" - Townes Van Zandt (1972), 2021 March: In The Beginning... (1966)

90 Seconds of Rage

 

“The American flag became a blunt instrument in the bearded man’s hands. Wielding the flagpole like an ax, he swung once, twice, three times, to beat a police officer being dragged down the steps of a United States Capitol under siege. Other officers also fell under mob attack, while the rest fought to keep the hordes from storming the Capitol and upending the routine transfer of power. Sprayed chemicals choked the air, projectiles flew overhead and the unbridled roars formed a battle-cry din — all as a woman lay dying beneath the jostling scrum of the Jan. 6 riot. Amid the hand-to-hand combat, seven men from seven different states stood out. Although strangers to one another, they worked as if in concert while grappling with the phalanx of police officers barring entry to the Capitol. ...”

NY Times (Video)

2021 February: 77 days: Trump’s campaign to subvert the election, 2021 February: First They Guarded Roger Stone. Then They Joined the Capitol Attack., 2021 February: A Small Group of Militants’ Outsize Role in the Capitol Attack , 2021 March: Police Shrugged Off the Proud Boys, Until They Attacked the Capitol, 2021 March: ‘We’ve Lost the Line!’: Radio Traffic Reveals Police Under Siege at Capitol, 2021 April: Capitol Police Told to Hold Back on Riot Response on Jan. 6, Report Finds, 2021 May:  Trump Is Marching Down the Road to Political Violence, 2021 June: Senate Report Details Security Failures in Jan. 6 Capitol Riot, 2021 July: Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol, 2021 July: ‘A hit man sent them.’ Police at the Capitol recount the horrors of Jan. 6 as the inquiry begins., 2021 September: Among Those Who Marched Into the Capitol on Jan. 6: An F.B.I. Informant, 2021 October: Jan. 6 Was Worse Than We Knew

​Poussin and the Dance

 

W - A Dance to the Music of Time (painting)

“Richly illustrated and engagingly written, this publication examines how the pioneer of French classicism brought dance to bear on every aspect of his artistic production. Scenes of tripping maenads and skipping maidens, Nicolas Poussin’s dancing pictures, painted in the 1620s and 1630s, helped him formulate a new style. This style would make him the model for three centuries of artists in the French classical tradition, from Jacques-Louis David and Edgar Degas to Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso. Poussin and the Dance, the first published study devoted to this theme, situates the artist in seventeenth-century Rome, a city rich with the ancient sculptures and Renaissance paintings that informed his dancing pictures. ...”

Getty

The National Gallery (Video)

Guardian: Poussin and the Dance review – the greatest frozen ballet in all art

The Musical Wanderings of Don Was

 

“Is Don Was the definitive musical journeyman of the late 20th century? Born Don Fagenson in Detroit in 1952, he co-founded the funk/pop band Was (Not Was), of ‘Walk the Dinosaur’ fame; won four Grammys in the far-flung genres of country, children’s music and blues; serves as president of the jazz powerhouse Blue Note Records; made documentary films about The Beatles and Brian Wilson; and has produced albums for the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Elton John and Willie Nelson. It’s exhausting to  think about. ...”

Red Bull Music Academy (Video)

2021 July: Was (Not Was) - What Up Dog? (1988)

​Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

 

Watson is also depicted in a mural at the site of the original Hampden Park

"There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. ..."

BBC

Lanquidity (Definitive Edition) - Sun Ra (1978/2021)

 

“That’s how Sun Ra responded when Philly Jazz Records owner Tom Buchler visited the late jazz giant at his Philadelphia apartment early in the summer of 1978 in an attempt to discuss the upcoming studio session that would yield the album Lanquidity. In the liner notes assembled especially for a new expanded double-disc edition of the album, Buchler recalls his expectations. ... Of course, anyone familiar with Sun Ra can easily picture the train of thought those conversations must have followed, which is easy to reconstruct thanks to multiple longform monologues with Ra expounding on likeminded topics that are now available online. By the time he met Buchler, Ra—born Herman Blount, but later changing his legal name to Le Sony’r Ra—had advanced his central message for decades. ...”

With 1978’s Lanquidity, Sun Ra and His Arkestra Tried Their Hand at Funk on a Galactic Scale

Bandcamp (Audio), Soundcloud (Audio)

Discogs (Video)

amazon

​The Dangers of Distracted Parenting

 

“Smartphones have by now been implicated in so many crummy outcomes—car fatalities, sleep disturbances, empathy loss, relationship problems, failure to notice a clown on a unicycle—that it almost seems easier to list the things they don’t mess up than the things they do. Our society may be reaching peak criticism of digital devices. Even so, emerging research suggests that a key problem remains underappreciated. It involves kids’ development, but it’s probably not what you think. More than screen-obsessed young children, we should be concerned about tuned-out parents. Yes, parents now have more face time with their children than did almost any parents in history. ...”

The Atlantic

​The Trojan Story

 

“Since 1968, Trojan Records has been synonymous with the reggae, rocksteady, dub, and ska genres.  The U.K. label founded by Lee Gopthal and Island Records' Chris Blackwell was instrumental in spreading those Jamaican sounds throughout the world and popularizing such key artists as Jimmy Cliff, Desmond Dekker, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, and The Maytals.   By 1971, Trojan - with its focus on 45 RPM singles - had amassed enough hit records to release a label anthology. ... The Trojan Story was the first large-scale release to celebrate the music of Jamaica to the world at large.  The three-disc, 50-song anthology was curated by Trojan label manager Rob Bell, Dandy Livingstone, Webster Shrowder, and Joe Sinclair. ...”

Invitation to Jamaica: Landmark Anthology "The Trojan Story" Sees 50th Anniversary Reissue

allmusic (Audio)

Discogs (Video)

amazon

Absolut Cuba - Raúl Cañibano

 

Viñales - His approach means we find genuine people in his pictures, who never appear manipulated or contrived

“Absolut Cuba is Raúl Cañibano‘s declaration of love to his native country. His surprising, caring, yet incredibly precise take and his lightning-fast, instinctive and gripping intellect let him capture moments which might seem totally familiar: normal everyday life in urban or rural settings. This makes him one of the most gifted photographers in Latin America. His project Tierra Guajira pays tribute to Cuban farmers in an almost anthropological approach – tracing his own childhood in the east of the country. Raúl Cañibano combines it with pictures from his series Ciudad, Fe por San Lázaro and Ocaso to let us sense the heart and soul of Cuba. His images are truthful and convey a sense of identity. They are filled with tradition, happiness, tragedy and magic. ...”

Repeating Islands

Guardian: Viva Cuba! The heart and soul of an island nation – in pictures

amazon

​Concrète Dschungel: Einstürzende Neubauten’s Kollaps At 40

 

“Feral musicians emerging from the rubble of bombed-out West Berlin and creating themselves out of their own blood and guts very much feels like a tale from another age. In a world of coffee shop startups, utilitarian computer software and ersatz bedroom electronica as aural wallpaper, building your own percussive instruments from scrap might seem primitive, complex, redundant even. But in 1981, when Einstürzende Neubauten made Kollaps, it was revolutionary. For the briefest of moments they tried to be conventional, but it didn’t last long. The Moon Club in Berlin on April 1st, 1980 was the scene of Naubauten’s first ever show, after Blixa Bargeld overheard a promoter telling somebody else that an act was needed for the following Tuesday night; he formed the band there and then and blurted out the name - ‘collapsing new buildings’ - to give them something to put on the poster. ...”

The Quietus

W - Kollaps

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: Kollaps [Live], Kollaps (1981) [full album]

2010 September: Einstürzende Neubauten, 2012 September: Imaginary Sounds Feature, 2013 September: Alles Wieder Offen (2007)

​Whirlpool Galaxy

 

Whirlpool Galaxy (M51A or NGC 5194), the smaller object in the upper right is M51B or NGC 5195

“The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a, M51a, and NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus. It lies in the constellation Canes Venatici, and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. Its distance is estimated to be 31 million light-years away from Earth. The galaxy and its companion, NGC 5195, are easily observed by amateur astronomers, and the two galaxies may be seen with binoculars. The Whirlpool Galaxy has been extensively observed by professional astronomers, who study it to understand galaxy structure (particularly structure associated with the spiral arms) and galaxy interactions. What later became known as the Whirlpool Galaxy was discovered on October 13, 1773, by Charles Messier while hunting for objects that could confuse comet hunters, and was designated in Messier's catalogue as M51. ...”

Wikipedia

2020 May: See Spring's Finest Spiral Galaxies

When J.R.R. Tolkien Worked for the Oxford English Dictionary and “Learned More … Than Any Other Equal Period of My Life” (1919-1920)

 

“When J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings appeared in the mid-1950s, its first critical readers held some diverging views on the books’ quality. On the one hand, there was praise for the revival of fantasy for grown-ups, and comparisons to great epics of the past. On the other hand, Tolkien’s prose was excoriated for its wordiness, length, and seemingly inexhaustible obsession with obscurities. Both perspectives seemed to miss something important. ... The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) remains an indispensable reference for scholars of language and literature, but it is not itself a typical academic text. ... The experience as an OED lexicographer prepared Tolkien for his lifelong career as a philologist. It also informed his literary technique, argue Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner, the authors of Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary and former OED editors, all. ...”

Open Culture

amazon: The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary

W - Interlacing in The Lord of the Rings

2018 February: Oxford English Dictionary

2010 January: The Lord of the Rings, 2018 January: An Atlas of Literary Maps Created by Great Authors: J.R.R Tolkien’s Middle  Earth, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island & More, 2019 January: The Largest J.R.R. Tolkien Exhibit in Generations Is Coming to the U.S.: Original Drawings, Manuscripts, Maps & More, 2020 January: Hear Christopher Tolkien (RIP) Read the Work of His Father J.R.R. Tolkien, Which He Tirelessly Worked to Preserve, 2020 August: The Complete Guide to Middle-earth - Robert Foster (1971), 2021 September: When the Nobel Prize Committee Rejected The Lord of the Rings...

​Assassin's Creed Ambience- The Most Beautiful music from AC 1 to AC: Odyssey

 

“Here you can find the most beautiful music you will ever hear. Some of the tracks can be classified as classical or ethnic music. Remember... the music tells a story... a story that is more powerful than any hand-written text. Words are weak and often meaningless. Words can describe different objects and events. But can they directly transfer feelings? Here comes the music. The music itself is one complex collection of emotions. All you have to do is just to listen and feel... feel every sound you hear, feel every story that's behind these sounds. I managed to collect the most beautiful and the most emotional tracks from all of the main Assassin's Creed games (that exist until this moment). Tracks are sorted according to the game release dates. In the video I labeled all of the historical periods and places that tracks represent. ...”

YouTube: Assassin's Creed Ambience- The Most Beautiful music from AC 1 to AC: Odyssey 3:01:45

Smoke - Wayne Wang and Paul Auster (1995)

 

“Smoke is a 1995 American independent film by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster. The original story was written by Paul Auster, who also wrote the screenplay. The film was produced by Greg Johnson, Peter Newman, Kenzo Horikoshi, and Hisami Kuroiwa. Among others, it features Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Stockard Channing, Harold Perrineau Jr., and Forest Whitaker. The film follows the lives of multiple characters, all of whom are connected via their patronage of a small Brooklyn tobacconist store managed by Auggie (Harvey Keitel). Brooklyn Cigar Co. was located on the corner of 16th Street and Prospect Park West. Auggie has been taking photographs of the store from across the street at 8:00am every morning and has been collecting all his photos in albums. A recently-widowed writer Paul Benjamin (William Hurt) spends an evening with Auggie, during which Auggie tells Paul of his photographs, which he describes as his ‘life's work’. ...”

Wikipedia

Criterion (Video), amazon

YouTube: Smoke Official Trailer 1, Smoke, Auggie's Photo Album, Auggie Wren's Christmas Story 13:07

2017 May: The New York Trilogy (1986)

Louder in Lagos

 

“In the shadow of Nigeria’s 61st Independence Day, Africa Is a Country radio stops over in Lagos on its tour of African club cultures inspired by the Ten Cities book project. ... That narrative is one that focuses on individual artists’ success, propelled by a general surprise around Africans’ access to wealth, itself fueled by a long tradition of single African stories.  At a time when Wizkid has sneaked his way into our daily subconscious via the banal stream of mainstream radio, even making it on to that holy commercial grail of US black radio that black international stars have been trying to crack for decades, we would be wise to remember that the push and pull dynamics of national history that have shaped the Lagos music scene (and its urban environment in general) are inseparable from the music itself. Take a listen on Worldwide FM or below via Mixcloud, and if you have an account there, go ahead and hit follow to keep up on all the latest episodes. ...”

Africa Is a Country (Audio/Video)