November 2008

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

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Sounds like bad satire but it's a film being directed by Werner Herzog starring Nicholas Cage.
Looks like Abel Ferrara lost control of his character or story rights as Herzog is saying this isn't a remake but is "like a Bond film."
Whoa, the latest adventure by that masturbating drug addict bent cop--follow him as he takes you vicariously to exotic locales.
Read the interview with Herzog where he claims not to know who Abel Ferrara is and blusters to hide the total hackdom of this movie project.

Update, June 2016: Herzog's version was pretty good.

Not Our Commander (A Civics Reminder)

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Referring to the U.S. President as "our commander in chief," which both Joe Biden and Sarah Palin have done recently is, as Greenwald has noted in his Salon blog:*

...much more than a semantic irritant. It's a perversion of the Constitution, under which American civilians simply do not have a "commander in chief"; only those in the military -- when it's called into service -- have one (Art. II, Sec. 2).

Worse, "commander in chief" is a military term, which reflects the core military dynamic: superiors issue orders which subordinates obey. That isn't supposed to be the relationship between the U.S. President and civilian American citizens, but because the mindless phrase "our commander in chief" has become interchangeable with "the President," that is exactly the attribute -- supreme, unquestionable authority in all arenas -- which has increasingly come to define the power of the President.

*prob. subscription-only

Pollock and Placement

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Recommended: Brian O'Doherty review of Victoria Newhouse's book on reading artworks through their surroundings, particularly how singular works look when placed in different museums. (Hat tip JWS.) Newhouse's test cases are the famous Laocoon-and-snakes statue, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and forty years of Pollock exhibitions.

The article seems especially germane to this post of Paddy Johnson's. An obviously fake Pollock (would he ever make dominant whitish lines that hesitant or obvious? no, he wouldn't) seems even faker with a self-professed hater of abstract art standing next to it, gesturing towards it like a carnival barker.