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Currently at Toronto Pearson: 9. High today: 10, which is what it's been for most of the last twelve hours.
Updating last January's stupid research project: this now-completed January had twelve "big temperature swing" days (i.e., days on which the mean temperature was five or more degrees higher or lower than the previous day's) at Pearson, which is the most since there were fifteen in 1995. The last January with twelve or more big temperature swing days before that appears--my graph is a little hard to make out--to have been 1984. This month gave a good kicking to my hypothesis that Januarys with lots of big temperature swings tend to be relatively cold ones--our swings this month have mostly been between normal and way-above-normal--though I still think the hypothesis holds generally.
Periodically since I went to see Lost in Translation at a "Film and Philosophy" thing last week, I've been trying to think of how that "[something] about [something] is like [something] about [something]" line goes. I finally remembered tonight that the second something about something is "dancing about architecture", which googled me up "writing about music", which led me to this amazingly long essay on the probable origins of the phrase "writing about music is like dancing about architecture". (To cut to the chase, it was probably originally "writing about music is as illogical as singing about economics", in The New Republic in 1918, and it was probably Martin Mull who made it "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" sometime in the '70s. And it was definitely not Elvis Costello, Laurie Anderson, or Steve Martin, and nobody even knows why anyone thinks it was Frank Zappa. (There is something to be said for John Lennon's variant--after all, lots of people do enjoy writing about music, and just about everyone seems to enjoy reading other people writing about music. Even if they shouldn't.))
I wasn't thinking of that because of Lost in Translation in particular; just generally because of the whole problem of having a "Film and Philosophy" thing. Having such a thing seems like a good idea. But then it comes time to talk about the film, and people haul out their philosophical instruments, and the film fades into the background. Actually what I've always half-wanted to do is start a "philosophical drama" club--don't talk about it; do it. But the trouble is that any good artwork is philosophical in the proper sense--it has a particular ability to advance you toward understanding of phenomena by showing something essential--and "philosophical" ones (like "philosophical" discussions about artworks) aren't necessarily. Mostly you need to let good art speak for itself; mostly what makes good art is that it shows what it shows better than you can say it. Mostly you need to let it be.
Well, anyway. The first time I saw Lost in Translation, I guess a couple of years ago, I didn't see all of it (I think I saw most of it) and I found it very irritating. The only thing in particular I can remember irritating me is the fact that (spoiler?) Bob sleeps with the lounge singer. Seeing the film again now, I find that I can hardly relate to being irritated about that. Two things irritated me about the film this time: its feeding into the idea that all marriages are unhappy except the next (possible) one (and the closely related idea that everyone is superficial and stupid except us), and the fact that there is no apparent reason for Charlotte to be interested in Bob in the first place. The first thing, especially with the touches of American Beauty-style caricaturing of Bob's marriage, I think is a real weakness (and danger) of the film. The second thing seems like the real weakness of the film because it threatens the film's logic. But thinking about my own differing reactions to the film at different times I think it may be the strength of the film that its logic is, in some ways, open (it isn't just that there's no apparent reason for her to approach him; they have nothing apparent in common at all apart from being unhappily married Americans in Japan), which prompts viewers to project their own logics onto it from out of their own concerns. You can fill in the unapparent blanks (and, most obviously, the whispered farewells) with whatever you've got on your mind.
Last night we went to see The Tree of Life. There are a lot of things that you can say about The Tree of Life that aren't necessarily wrong or stupid, but it's hard for anything you could say to even hint at what the film is like. If you said that this film is a failure on the whole, I couldn't say that you're wrong (although I would not say that, at all). Among its virtues is that it tries to be the kind of thing that you might at least imagine people had in mind when they thought about what film (film itself, not recorded enhanced theatre) might be as an artform when movies were invented. I think that to really be what it wants to be it needs to be longer--six hours, ten hours? One important but not necessarily essential thing I would say about it is that I have never seen a film that captures so well a large part of what life felt like for me growing up--the disorienting randomness of things and other people, having irresistible urges to do things you don't really want to do and feeling bad to your core about it ... and then (and this is getting at the essence of the thing) bits of all that (and everything else, in a big jumble that no one could finally make sense of) staying with you (in a way, in the film, that makes me think of Virginia Woolf) for the rest of your life. (The kids, who are more the stars of the film than the adults, are amazing.)
I made a mistake in taking what's said at the beginning of the film opposing nature and grace as a kind of thesis statement. It's what's up for question. (For better or worse, it's a scene with a couple of dinosaurs that serves as the main symbol of the question's undecidedness.)
I was thinking today that it seems like a good idea to only see movies that someone would include among their favourite movies. (This is not actually a good idea. But it is close to a good idea.) Of course, it's an interesting question whether there are any movies that wouldn't pass that test, even if you severely restricted the range of "someone" (to, you know, adults, serious people, people you like, whatever).
Updating last January's stupid research project: this now-completed January had twelve "big temperature swing" days (i.e., days on which the mean temperature was five or more degrees higher or lower than the previous day's) at Pearson, which is the most since there were fifteen in 1995. The last January with twelve or more big temperature swing days before that appears--my graph is a little hard to make out--to have been 1984. This month gave a good kicking to my hypothesis that Januarys with lots of big temperature swings tend to be relatively cold ones--our swings this month have mostly been between normal and way-above-normal--though I still think the hypothesis holds generally.
Periodically since I went to see Lost in Translation at a "Film and Philosophy" thing last week, I've been trying to think of how that "[something] about [something] is like [something] about [something]" line goes. I finally remembered tonight that the second something about something is "dancing about architecture", which googled me up "writing about music", which led me to this amazingly long essay on the probable origins of the phrase "writing about music is like dancing about architecture". (To cut to the chase, it was probably originally "writing about music is as illogical as singing about economics", in The New Republic in 1918, and it was probably Martin Mull who made it "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" sometime in the '70s. And it was definitely not Elvis Costello, Laurie Anderson, or Steve Martin, and nobody even knows why anyone thinks it was Frank Zappa. (There is something to be said for John Lennon's variant--after all, lots of people do enjoy writing about music, and just about everyone seems to enjoy reading other people writing about music. Even if they shouldn't.))
I wasn't thinking of that because of Lost in Translation in particular; just generally because of the whole problem of having a "Film and Philosophy" thing. Having such a thing seems like a good idea. But then it comes time to talk about the film, and people haul out their philosophical instruments, and the film fades into the background. Actually what I've always half-wanted to do is start a "philosophical drama" club--don't talk about it; do it. But the trouble is that any good artwork is philosophical in the proper sense--it has a particular ability to advance you toward understanding of phenomena by showing something essential--and "philosophical" ones (like "philosophical" discussions about artworks) aren't necessarily. Mostly you need to let good art speak for itself; mostly what makes good art is that it shows what it shows better than you can say it. Mostly you need to let it be.
Well, anyway. The first time I saw Lost in Translation, I guess a couple of years ago, I didn't see all of it (I think I saw most of it) and I found it very irritating. The only thing in particular I can remember irritating me is the fact that (spoiler?) Bob sleeps with the lounge singer. Seeing the film again now, I find that I can hardly relate to being irritated about that. Two things irritated me about the film this time: its feeding into the idea that all marriages are unhappy except the next (possible) one (and the closely related idea that everyone is superficial and stupid except us), and the fact that there is no apparent reason for Charlotte to be interested in Bob in the first place. The first thing, especially with the touches of American Beauty-style caricaturing of Bob's marriage, I think is a real weakness (and danger) of the film. The second thing seems like the real weakness of the film because it threatens the film's logic. But thinking about my own differing reactions to the film at different times I think it may be the strength of the film that its logic is, in some ways, open (it isn't just that there's no apparent reason for her to approach him; they have nothing apparent in common at all apart from being unhappily married Americans in Japan), which prompts viewers to project their own logics onto it from out of their own concerns. You can fill in the unapparent blanks (and, most obviously, the whispered farewells) with whatever you've got on your mind.
Last night we went to see The Tree of Life. There are a lot of things that you can say about The Tree of Life that aren't necessarily wrong or stupid, but it's hard for anything you could say to even hint at what the film is like. If you said that this film is a failure on the whole, I couldn't say that you're wrong (although I would not say that, at all). Among its virtues is that it tries to be the kind of thing that you might at least imagine people had in mind when they thought about what film (film itself, not recorded enhanced theatre) might be as an artform when movies were invented. I think that to really be what it wants to be it needs to be longer--six hours, ten hours? One important but not necessarily essential thing I would say about it is that I have never seen a film that captures so well a large part of what life felt like for me growing up--the disorienting randomness of things and other people, having irresistible urges to do things you don't really want to do and feeling bad to your core about it ... and then (and this is getting at the essence of the thing) bits of all that (and everything else, in a big jumble that no one could finally make sense of) staying with you (in a way, in the film, that makes me think of Virginia Woolf) for the rest of your life. (The kids, who are more the stars of the film than the adults, are amazing.)
I made a mistake in taking what's said at the beginning of the film opposing nature and grace as a kind of thesis statement. It's what's up for question. (For better or worse, it's a scene with a couple of dinosaurs that serves as the main symbol of the question's undecidedness.)
I was thinking today that it seems like a good idea to only see movies that someone would include among their favourite movies. (This is not actually a good idea. But it is close to a good idea.) Of course, it's an interesting question whether there are any movies that wouldn't pass that test, even if you severely restricted the range of "someone" (to, you know, adults, serious people, people you like, whatever).
