Al Pacino starts his speech with, "I don't know what to say really ...", and proceeds to say it perfectly. On the eve of Germany's World Cup semi-final against Italy one can only hope that the talismatic "Golden Bomber" Jürgen Klinsmann has similar words of wisdom for his inspired troops.
"Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small. I Mean one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches, that's going to make the difference between winning and losing."
Watch the video ...
Labels: film, sport, video
At 700+ pages
Life a User's Manual (1978) by French author Georges Perec is a solid long read but well worth it if you are looking for a relatively hidden and delightful gem of 20th century literature. Critics see it as one of the most fascinating experiments in form ever penned.
Each of the 99 chapters tells the story of a flat and resident(s) in a fictional Parisian apartment block. Perec's method is based on formal arcana that orders and organizes every aspect of the novel's structure. For example the sequence of chapters, and hence flats, is determined by use of the Knight's Tour in which a knight visits every square of a chessboard only once in succession. In Six Memos for the next Millennium, Italo Calvino tells of how he spoke with his fellow member of Parisian literary group OULIPO (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentiel) on several occasions about the 42 different elements (characters, objects, situations, literary allusions, etc) that feature consistently in each chapter of Perec's text but Perec playfully revealed only a handful of the building blocks for the contructivist approach to writing his most celebrated work.
Perec died at the tender age of 45 in 1982 but many are now discussing him in the same class as Proust, Sartre and Duras as one of the greatest French writers of the 20th century. Next time you visit Paris or find yourself in a bookshop strong on classic literati pick yourself up a copy of this work of art into being.Labels: literature
Some of life's most valuable lessons are learned the hard way. No rocket science in that statement. But sometimes hard learned lessons don't offer much value at all. Like shopping for titles in an airport bookstore. No matter how many times I am disappointed by my choices I still turn up minutes before departure, make a snatch and grab purchase, and regret it the following week. The biggest problem is usually those damn top-ten bestseller fiction lists. Who buys those books?? Is it a similar phenomena to why truly brainless and predictable blockbuster films attract such massive audiences? Recently it was my great misfortune to pick up copies of
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka and
The People's Act of Love by James Meek. Here's a brief synopsis so you don't make the same mistake.
- A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is inexplicably supposed to be a funny book. That's why I bought it for a bit of light summer fare. Well if you think eastern-Europeans-trying-to-speak-english and asides on the flippy-floppy organs of old men are funny this is your book. It reads like a first novel in the sense of a weekly suburban meeting of amateur sparetime authors and less like a candidate for major literary awards. Tentative explorations into identity and gender are cliche and uninspired. I won't even bore you with the plot. The only problem is that after selling millions of copies we might have to brace
- The People's Act of Love is one of those strange books that should have been a movie first. It has all the elements of a terrific action-adventure big screen lollapalooza. Guardian journalist Meek has a real knack for translating words into visual imagination and the story ambles on convincingly enough. A critical plot device is the strategy of a Siberian prisoner to bring along a fellow prisoner on an escape plan so he can eat him when he runs out of food. Another is how a group of voluntary eunuchs relate to Czech soldiers led by a madman stationed in their town. There is plenty of romance, some sex, wars, escapes planned and foiled, magic, swordfights, children in distress, communists, czars, princes, revolutionaries, heroes and heroines. It's not that I didn't like this book it is just that I wasn't turning the pages with angst or hope. Like watching a blockbuster when introduced to the characters you could guess their fate. Coming soon to a Cineplex Odeon near you.
- ourselves for the release of The Long History of Tractors in Ukrainian sometime next year. If so I suggest we add reading this book to the banned list of human rights anti-torture laws emerging in the world courts.
Labels: culture, literature
For years pundits and analysts have been predicting that video will experience the same treatment as text and audio on the Internet. Social networking sites will dominate, copyrights will be infringed relentlessly, and memes will spread like wildfire. Everyday is seems a new site pops up offering users the web-based ability to upload and rate videos or embed code on sites to share. Some examples are
youtube,
castpost,
clipshack,
googlevideo,
dailymotion,
grouper,
ourmedia,
revver,
vimeo, and
vsocial.
In my travels across these sites I watched a lot of fun short clips. There is something for everyone and some of the originality in remixing is really creative. Like this video of George Bush mixed to show him singing U2's epic Sunday Bloody Sunday.
Labels: funny, internet, music, politics, video
