Sunday 14 September 2014

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT


Susan Sontag captured by photographer Peter Hujar in 1975. Photo via Humanities.



Susan Sontag, Essayist and So Much Else. "How to capture a life? A problem of biographical projects, especially those involving subjects who left behind multiple books and interviews and hours of film footage, is that ten edits of the same story will yield ten different lives. This raises a further question with which every biographer must contend, even for lives much less complex and ecstatic and varied than Susan Sontag’s: How much space should be given over to the messy details of the private life—the love affairs, the children, the fraught relationships with family—how much to the public life, and beyond that, how much to the environment and the era by which that life was shaped?
Nancy Kates’s new documentary film, Regarding Susan Sontag—a fascinating, moving, and often gorgeous entry into the canon of works produced about Sontag since her death—doesn’t neglect the time and the social forces that shaped Sontag’s life, but, for the most part, the narrative that emerges is deeply personal. It’s a close portrait of a woman who was, in the words of her son, “interested in everything”: Wittgenstein, but also sci-fi B movies; John Cage, but also Fred Astaire." Read full article by Emily St. John Mandle in Humanities. E.T.P. 8'

Photo via Biography.

Nice article Chelsea Leibow's piece on Joan Rivers that will bring a new vision to those who only knew Rivers as the mean hostess of Fashion Police: "Traditionally a boys club, insult comedians run the gamut from old timers like Don Rickles and Jackie Gleason, to modern-day incarnations like Seth MacFarlane and the “Roast” specials on Comedy Central. Joan rose to stardom in 1965, where her brash, unadulterated comedic chops made her an instant hit as a guest star on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. She went on to host her own rival program,The Late Show, and remains the only woman to host her own late night talk show on network television. Let me state that again for the cheap seats: it’s 2014, and Joan Rivers is the only woman to host her own late night talk show on network television. While the laughability of Joan’s more scornful jokes is debatable, her longevity and influence is certainly not. It’s paramount to remember Joan for her path-forging efforts for women — not just in comedy, but in the media as a whole." Reaf full article in Nerve. E.T.P. 7'



Still from A Month of Sundays.


Thanks to our friend Mariana we discovered Metronomy's new video: A Month of Sundays. Directed by Callum Cooper in one of my favorite places in London: the Barbican. I think this is the perfect soundtrack for the place and how Cooper plays with the video is great and new and all that, but I think it also reflects -and this is the magic part- how I felt when I experienced the Barbican for the very first time. Maybe if you grew up in London, and the Barbican is part of your visual repertoire since you're a kid, it's different. But when you enter that gigantic brutalist maze for the first time as an adult I can swear that what Cooper beautifully filmed and edited is an exact record of how your brain is feeling that place. The device used to record the video was also developed by Cooper as part of his work in sculpture for moving image. Go ahead and watch A Month of Sundays in Callum's Vimeo. E.T.P. 3'30''

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