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HASTY REACTION: The Apartment (1960) Directed by Billy Wilder; watched on DVD. The latest in my personal Festival of Billy Wilder Movies I Haven’t Seen Yet. I was a little apprehensive because in a recent re-watching of Some Like It Hot, I found Jack Lemmon’s comedic affect to be jarring, over-the-top and unfunny. Released only a year later, The Apartment re-teamed Lemmon and Wilder, but fortunately the circumstances were considerably different. The central device of insurance drone C.C. “Bud” Baxter (Lemmon) allowing executives the use of his bachelor apartment for their extramarital trysts in return for professional advancement establishes a rather darker palette than two guys in drag joining an all-girl band. It’s a comedy, but the kind that rests upon all-too-familiar predicaments, e.g. being conscripted into the secrets of others. The movie takes off and flies because of Shirley MacLaine as Fran Kubelik, elevator attendant and the object of Bud’s desires. The 26 year old MacLaine is irresistible — she speaks volumes in few words (compared to the voluble Bud), with a face both beguiling and wholly incapable of untruth. A thoroughly good movie; I now see why so many list it among their favorites, and how influential it has been to later filmmakers (Exhibit A: Cameron Crowe).

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May 11, 2010 | 1 comment

What Would Jesus Anything

May 3, 2010 | Post a comment

My friend Julie and her cohorts at LKG Productions are at it again. Their music video (embedded below) is in some kind of “who can get the most views” competition on atom.com. I hope I’m not posting it here too late to help them, because it’s funny and they deserve to win stuff. Even if I am too late, at least they still have an inside track to making my eventual “Best Web Videos of 2010″ list (which I’m sure means the world to them). Update»

Here are Julie Wittner, Ryan Smith, and Johnny Markoudakis in WWJD a Music Video, directed by Kim Evey.

WWJD a Music Video

Ms. Wittner and Ms. Evey may already be on your radar screen if you have notched any of the 25 million plus views of their giggle-inducing YouTube series 2 Hot Girls in the Shower. Yes, it does sound like pØ®n, but it doesn’t stray beyond PG-13 range. It will shortly take up residence here in the C&B blogroll.

I’ve just realized that they made WWJD and posted it to the LKG YouTube channel in 2007, which would mean it’s technically not a Web Video of 2010. So… I’ll figure that out when the time comes — or as the combined saying goes, I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it. If I break my own rules, I’ll have to be ready to face the consequences from myself.Powered by Hackadelic Sliding Notes 1.6.4

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Update: “Kashmir” On Video

April 15, 2010 | Post a comment

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It’s hard to find everything worth noting on a given topic the first time out — such is the nature of the internet. I am no stranger to the sudden moment of “how did I not find this before?”

My first Got You Covered post, focusing on the rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” by Matt Haimovitz and Uccello, has just been updated to include a YouTube video of them performing the song. Here I was all proud of having edited and compressed a 30-second MP3 excerpt of the track, and all the time we could have been watching and hearing the whole thing… duh. Well, better late than never.

As long as I’m calling attention to that post, I might as well mention that a week or two ago I re-wrote part of its text that I found unsatisfactory. I do that sometimes, but unless it’s a substantive change or an addition to the original post, I don’t point it out with an update like this.

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Castellers are Totally Badass

February 22, 2010 | 4 comments

Proof of my nerd cred: among my occasional pastimes is picking an image from the “Images for Cleanup” category at Wikimedia Commons and, you guessed it, cleaning it up. (If you’re curious, here’s an example of my handiwork.)»

Nerdiness sometimes brings unexpected little rewards: last night I came across an image at the Commons that only needed to be categorized. The photo that caught my eye showed something like an enormous game of Jenga… an enormous game of Jenga, made of people. Pardon my internet shorthand, but OMFG!

It turned out that I had found a photo of the Castellers de Vilafranca. Castells, I learned, are human towers, the building of which is a traditional Catalan sporting activity. I also learned that it is fucking insane — and I mean that admiringly.

Check this out: here are the Castellers de Vilafranca on August 31, 2009, attempting history’s first tres de nou amb folre i agulla — roughly translated, a nine-level tower with two base levels, three people each on the upper levels, and an agulla (“needle”) of one person per level inside the main tower. If you can’t understand the commentator’s Catalonian-accented Spanish,(oops...)» If you can’t understand a word the Catalan-language commentator is saying, don’t worry — just his tone of voice pretty much says it all.

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before after
Hiram Rhodes Revels of Mississippi, the first African-American U.S. Senator

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A commenter quite kindly set me straight on this point.Powered by Hackadelic Sliding Notes 1.6.4

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The Heavy is Beyond Funky–They’re Filthy

January 8, 2010 | 2 comments

So there I was, browsing through the various free downloads available at NPR Music (recession-friendly shopping, as I think of it). I had found some stuff I liked pretty well—at the very least, well enough to download it for free. Then I stumbled across something that I found truly exciting, and I reacted the way any music lover would: I thought, “I must blog this.”

Unlike the other artists whose music I’d just downloaded (stuff by The Decemberists, K’Naan and Heartless Bastards, among others), I’d never heard of the British band The Heavy. Well, now I have… and you have too. Watch this:
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