Artistic Antichrist Offensive
Antichrist Is the Most Beautiful Piece of Muddled Art You Might Never See
A divisive, offensive, artistic film — but no one knows what it’s about.
It’s rare that I find myself truly indifferent to a film — especially a film that is so clearly and openly divisive. But that’s exactly how I feel about Antichrist: completely indecisive. I see both sides, understanding the people who love it, voraciously devouring every lyrical moment, while simultaneously getting why people hate the living crap out of it. A deliberately offensive opus of shock, this film will at some moment find something disagreeable for everybody. But unlike most films that rely upon shock, director Lars von Trier has no intention of making you laugh. Quite the contrary. He wants to make you recoil. He wants to challenge your sense of morality and taste. And he wants to make you feel, one way or another.
But that’s not necessarily a good thing.
By now you’ve most likely heard about it. Widely panned at Cannes by some, praised by others, and completely spoiled in the press, especially on the Drudge Report in which its final scenes were spoiled in headlines splashed across the front page. It is not a nice film. It is dark, brooding, melancholy, and more than a little mean-spirited. Loaded from top to bottom with nudity, sexuality, and even a slow-motion shot that will itself ensure that this gets the dreaded NC-17 rating (as well it should for the level of adult content in this), it is at times a bit distracting. There’s so much nudity in this thing that I almost feel as if it should be renamed Lars Von Trier’s I Hate Pants!There are even a few scenes in which the characters lack pants for no good reason. But then again, there’s a lot of things in this that some would argue are here for no good reason. It is violent, bloody, and disturbingly sexual for a goodly portion of the film. Not in small doses. The majority of the film aims to offend you in one manner or another.
Ruscha Feted
Ed Ruscha Honored at National Arts Awards
By Andrew Russeth
NEW YORK—Balls of fire fell on a dark, deserted lake in a video by Kelly Richardson projected on a screen at Cipriani 42nd Street last night. It was an eerie sight, though few seemed to mind: Jeff Koons and Nancy Pelosi were chatting and posing for photographs together, just one of the unexpected friendships that seemed to blossom at theNational Arts Awards, which included an unusual mixture of representatives from the nation’s art, business, and political intelligentsia.
The ceremony, organized by Americans for the Arts, honored individuals for their contributions to the nation’s artistic life: Robert Redford, Salman Rushdie, philanthropist Sidney Harman, Bank of America (accepted by Chief Marketing Officer Anne Finucane), and Ed Ruscha, who seemed like an ideal — and definitively American — representative from the visual arts world.
Ruscha has wielded the American automobile as an artistic tool, making art from gas stations photographed on trips across the West and images snapped while cruising the Sunset Strip on a Sunday morning. His contributions to the 2005 Venice Biennale showed the exteriors of corporate office buildings and factories, the anonymous workshops of American capitalism.
Author James Frey, who commissioned from Ruscha a work that reads “Public Stoning” after being dragged through the media for his stretching of the truth in his memoir A Million Little Pieces, was similarly affectionate in a video tribute to the artist. “Ed Ruscha is the king of California!” he exclaimed. “Ed Ruscha is the coolest guy in the world.”
For his part, Ruscha seemed pleasantly bemused about the plaudits he was receiving. Handed his award, he pretended to struggle with its weight. “I think it’s a little ironic to pick someone who makes images using colored goo swabbed on with animal fur connected to a piece of wooden stick,” he told the crowd. “It boggles the mind.”
The Harlem Stride
Invisible Man
The pianist James P. Johnson was born in 1894. He played his first gig when he was 8 years old at a bordello in his Jersey City neighborhood. The patroness sat him down at the keyboard and told him to keep his eyes to himself. She paid him 25 cents.
So begins the tale the jazz faithful tell about the birth of jazz piano playing: That it began with Johnson’s reinterpretation of the rollicking two-handed style of his elders, which became known as Harlem stride, the earliest form of jazz piano.
You don’t hear Johnson’s music much anymore, but there is a group of stride pianists in New York who gather regularly to play in the style of that era. One of them is Spike Wilner, who is also one of the owners of Small’s, the basement jazz club on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village. He is an intense guy with dark curly hair who traces his ancestry back to a prominent 19th-century European rabbinical dynasty.
Edgar Allan Poe Gone
Allan Poe gets proper funeral
October 6, 2009
BALTIMORE—- It’s been a good 200th anniversary year for Edgar Allan Poe. The master of gothic horror has been celebrated at events in several cities to mark the bicentennial of his birth.
And on Sunday in Baltimore, he’ll get the funeral he never had.
Fewer than 10 people attended Poe’s funeral when he died in October 1849 at age 40. His cousin, Neilson Poe, never announced the great writer’s death publicly.
The Poe House and Museum will also host a viewing of a replica of Poe’s body on Wednesday.
Making Your Own Sausage
The case for homemade sausage
Making links or patties from scratch takes some patience, but your reward is sausage that suits your tastes.
(Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)
It’s a sausage lover’s world out there, right? Especially at this time of year, nothing goes better with a great [amber tea]. The crisp crunch of that first juicy bite, the perfect blend of fresh ground meat redolent with toasted spices and pungent herbs.
Granted, you can increasingly find some pretty good packaged sausages. But for the true fan, nothing compares to the texture and flavors to be found in great homemade sausage.
Sausage making is an art that spans almost every regional and ethnic cuisine, a craft carefully honed and perfected over thousands of years. For the first-time sausage-maker, the process can seem a bit mysterious. Not to mention daunting.
But make your own sausage, and you might never go back to commercial again. Make your own, and you’re limited only by your imagination. Choose what kinds of meat you want to use, and flavor the sausage to suit your tastes. Best of all? Made from scratch, the sausage is your creation and you know exactly what’s gone into it — no mystery ingredients here.
Distraught Reverend Lops Off Deputy’s Hand With Ax
Deputy’s hand, severed in attack, reattached
ASHLAND, Ala. – A deputy whose hand was chopped off by a suspect wielding a bush ax had it reattached in two operations, while the background of his attacker – a minister who was fatally shot in the confrontation – left those who knew him perplexed.
Sgt. Jason Freeman, whose hand was severed Friday, underwent surgery in Birmingham and had a pulse in all five digits of the reattached hand, Sheriff’s Capt. Steve Cotney said.
The Rev. Curtis Watts, who was shot and killed by a law officer after Freeman was attacked, was described in an obituary released by a funeral home as a longtime minister who started a church and sang gospel music with his family.
But authorities also knew him as potentially violent. His fatal confrontation with officers came just 10 days after his arrest on a charge involving domestic violence, according to sheriff’s officials in rural Clay County, located in east Alabama.
Authorities said they were attempting to arrest Watts on a new warrant signed by a relative when he began swinging the ax and cut off Freeman’s hand. The deputy has been with the department about three years and was leading a team of deputies sent to arrest Watts.
Watts was a logger and sawmill operator and worked for a cabinet company for years, according to an obituary from Benefield Funeral Home, and he became an ordained Baptist minister in 1988.
Watts, 48, helped establish and build Shining Light Baptist Church. With his family, he performed as part of the Watts Family Singers.
“He was a good Christian man. Something happened to him, but I don’t know what,” said James Crawford, 76, of Ashland.
The Farmer’s Daughter & The AK-47
Farmer’s daughter disarms terrorist and shoots him dead with AK47
An Indian farmer’s daughter disarmed a terrorist leader who broke into her home, attacked him with an axe and shot him dead with his own gun.
Kausar, 21, was with her parents and brother in Jammu and Kashmir when three gunmen, believed to be Pakistani militants, forced their way in and demanded food and beds for the night.
Their house in Shahdra Sharief, Rajouri district, is about 20 miles from the ceasefire line between Indian and Pakistani forces.
It is close to dense forests known as hiding places for fighters from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, which carried out the Mumbai terrorist attack last November.
Militants often demand food and lodging in nearby villages.
When they forced their way into Miss Kausar’s home, her father Noor Mohammad refused their demands and was attacked.
His daughter was hiding under a bed when she heard him crying as the gunmen thrashed him with sticks. According to police, she ran towards her father’s attacker and struck him with an axe. As he collapsed, she snatched his AK47 and shot him dead.
She also shot and wounded another militant as he made his escape.
Gehry Rising
A Gehry Tower Rises
Eliot Brown
Beekman: The Ratner/Gehry Project That Wasn’t Dropped
To anyone who treks west over the Brooklyn or Manhattan bridges each morning, a quick glance to the area just south of the Municipal Building will reveal a new addition to the Lower Manhattan skyline: a skinny, tiered concrete skeleton that’s rapidly climbing upward.
The apartment tower-to-be—67 stories as of Wednesday—is a high-end rental building developed by Forest City Ratner, the firm that is desperately trying to build a new Nets basketball arena and accompanying 16-tower development near Downtown Brooklyn. And it is also—as the distinct, undulating aluminum façade now rising on the building’s lower half might suggest—designed by Frank Gehry, his first residential high-rise.
Desert Lab Bobbles Ted Williams’ Frozen Head
Ted Williams’ Frozen Head Mistreated in Alcor Cryonics Facility, Says Book
Posted by Ryan Smith
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) Ted Williams was trying to get ahead of the game. But his efforts to have his frozen head thawed out by some future generation may have come to naught if the allegations of abuse in a new book are true.
Upon his death, the Red Sox Hall of famer had his head severed and frozen for storage in the hope that technology would one day be developed to revive him.
But now, the New York Daily News is reporting that his frozen head was mistreated at an Arizona cryonics facility he entrusted with his chilled cranium, according to details from a new book.
In “Frozen,” Larry Johnson, a former executive at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., writes that Williams’ head was abused at the facility. Johnson claims a technician took baseball-like swings at Williams’ frozen head with a monkey wrench.
