Month: January 2007

Hello Robert Altman

25/012007

I was going to link to a won­der­ful bio­graph­i­cal piece about Robert Alt­man that I had seen at youtube. The oper­a­tive word here was. When I returned to the link this is the mes­sage I found in bold red letters:

“This video has been removed at the request of copy­right own­er Acad­e­my of Motion Pic­ture Arts and Sci­ences because its con­tent was used with­out permission.”
Give me a freak­ing break! A homage to Robert Alt­man due to his death and we get these crap­py mes­sages! The amount of threat­en­ing going on at youtube to remove con­tent now that the com­pa­ny that owns it has some mon­ey blows my mind. Sud­den­ly there is an asser­tion about copy­rights and crap about intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty when the pow­ers that be could­n’t give a fly­ing you know what not that long ago.

I wish I knew what Robert Alt­man would say so I could post it.

Back to my orig­i­nal inten­tion… I could­n’t write this post the day of Robert Alt­man’s death because I had to spend some time think­ing about when I first saw each of his movies; what amazed me in each and every one.

Mar­garet and I had just seen Prairie Home Com­pan­ion and were pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by the film. Even with one of the best sto­ry­tellers [Gar­ri­son Keil­lor] and best envi­ron­men­tal design­er [Alt­man] I had my doubts… after just two min­utes they were cast away.

We’ve begun to watch the movies again. To remem­ber a life’s work and enjoy see­ing the world from his point of view. I thought, should they be watched in the order they were made? No, I would begin with the film that had the most impact on me — 3 Women. Shel­ley Duvall and Sis­sy Spacek need I say more?

I’ve past­ed the fil­mog­ra­phy and list of movies for which he was nom­i­nat­ed for Acad­e­my Awards from Wikipedia [not to steal con­tent but to link to it]. Nev­er award­ed an Emmy for a piece of work the indus­try gave him an hon­orary one just before his death.
I think McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) is next.

Films

Nom­i­nat­ed: Best Direc­tor
1970 MASH
1975 Nashville
1992 The Play­er
1993 Short Cuts
2001 Gos­ford Park

casey santorum

25/012007

photo

An inter­est­ing thing hap­pened to me the oth­er day…

I had signed a cou­ple peti­tions to voice my oppo­si­tion to the con­tin­u­ing and esca­lat­ing war in Iraq; and instead of get­ting the same old stock respons­es from the pre­vi­ous sen­a­tor from penn­syl­va­nia [he who shall not be named] I got them from the new sen­a­tor from pennsylvania.

I guess it was pre­dictable… change brings more or less the same.

I did­n’t real­ly expect much I guess. I did­n’t even real­ly want to vote for the new sen­a­tor. But I had to get the old sen­a­tor out of office.

Again I have two sen­a­tors from the com­mon­wealth that I can’t think of as my senators.

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Seeking the holiday tree.

24/012007

Back out to Tom’s Trees!

On decem­ber 24th each year we grab the tree saw and hop into our 1986 Toy­ota pick­up and head out west of Philadel­phia to Tom’s Trees. It’s the annu­al trek for break­fast and find­ing our hol­i­day tree; cel­e­brat­ing the winter
sol­stice. We’ve been cut­ting our live tree at Tom’s for many years now.
This pho­to shows our view when we arrived at Tom’s — no snow and a pret­ty mild day. We walked most of the tree farm and brought home a 9 foot beauty! 

Bright lights and sav­ing energy.
This year was our first year using LED’s to do all our hol­i­day light­ing. On a trip to Tar­get we found a pret­ty good selec­tion of both white and col­or lights They are real­ly bright! 

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