Log24

Continues. Click to enlarge.

(Continued)

The Cumberbatch Conundrum

A quote from Benedict Cumberbatch in this journal
on Nov. 15 last year:

"… this film’s been up my ass
      for the last five years.”

The quote, in connection with today's previous post,
suggests a check of this journal five years ago.

The check yields a paper at the new research site InvenZone.

(Continued)

And now for the musical!

From Ben Brantley’s July Fourth review of a British play —

“The friction and the possibilities of fusion” —

“Rubbin’ sticks and stones together
makes the sparks ignite…
Skyrockets in flight!”

(Continued)

From Between Two Worlds (Feb. 25, 2007) —
Nicolas Cage as Ghost Rider (2007):

More recently, Nicolas Cage as Big Daddy (2010):

The New York Times  as a guide for the perplexed:

“Go back to the flaming skull, Dad.”

(Continued)

For film and TV director Ted Post, who
reportedly died on Tuesday, Aug. 20.

See that day's post "Conversations with
an Empty Chair" and today's NY Times—

(Continued)

A May 27, 2013, Washington Post  story by Ellen Nakashima:

Confidential report lists U.S. weapons system designs
compromised by Chinese cyberspies

Related entertainment:

From Ayn Sof  (January 7, 2011): 

"You're gonna need a bigger boat." — Roy Scheider in Jaws

"We're gonna need more holy water." — Season of the Witch

Battleship —

Liam Neeson (right) and Taylor Kitsch

Holy Water —

Click to enlarge.

www.themenwhostareatgoatsmovie.com

Colorado Springs Gazette
movie reviewer Brandon Fibbs yesterday:

“Much of this is genuinely amusing.
So why then am I not laughing?”

See also Jeremiah Denton in Wikipedia.

Those for whom entertainment is God
may enjoy a film based on a book by Denton, 
"When Hell Was in Session," starring
Hal Holbrook and Eva Marie Saint.

Denton reportedly died on March 28, 2014.
See a Log24 post from that date, "Blazing Thule."

"You've got to pick up every stitch." — Donovan

(Where Entertainment Is God , continued)

In memory of artist Otto Piene — a news item from last May
at the ZERO Foundation website on an exhibition that closes tomorrow —

2014-05-15
Today is the opening of the exhibition ZERO — Zwischen Himmel und Erde
in Friedrichshafen. The Zeppelin Museum is showing wonderful artworks
all related to heaven and earth by various ZERO artists
such as Piene, Mack, Uecker, Klein, Luther, and Manzoni.
ZERO – Zwischen Himmel und Erde
Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen
15.05. – 20.07.2014
www.zeppelin-museum.de

“Oh, show me the way to the next whiskey bar”
— Song lyric from previous post

“In a technologically advanced 1939, the zeppelin Hindenburg III
arrives in New York City, mooring atop the Empire State Building.”

— Wikipedia on the first scene of the 2004 film
“Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow“

For a place where entertainment is not  God* —

This post was suggested by a passage in the Prasna Upanishad :

“That person who is to be known,
he in whom these parts rest,
like spokes in the nave of a wheel,
you know him,
lest death should hurt you.”

See Sept. 9, 2003.

* There are other sorts of places.

(Where Entertainment Is God, continued)

Sources: Ctrl  Alt  Del

Related material: A Log24 post from the release date,
September 10, 2013, for the DVD of "Delete"—

Moss on the Wall.

Where Entertainment is God continues…

And the joke of yesterday?

Related material:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qiyama

(Rhetorical question on the NY Times  online front page, 
10:01 PM May 23, 2012, in teaser for "The Stone" column
about Philip K. Dick, "Sci-Fi Philosopher")

Where Entertainment Is God…

Perhaps The Last Airbender ?

The NY Times  philosophy column "The Stone" is currently about gnosticism
and science fiction.

The Last Airbender  is about an avatar who is master of the four elements
air, water, earth, and fire. For a more sophisticated approach to gnosticism
and the four elements, see Irenaeus: Against Heresies.

See, too, Elements Diamond in this journal.

Where Entertainment is God (continued)

On the re-editing of a news story by The New York Times—

"…in the original versions of a Times report by Jeremy W. Peters, [the new executive editor, Jill Abramson] flatly declared: 'In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion.'" —The Daily Beast

The Times this afternoon—

See also a follow-up from last June
to this morning's "lost in space" quote—

NYT quote removal sparks web buzz

"It's obvious that an editorial decision was made to 'rectify' a quote that made the Times look foolish."

Not so, Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told POLITICO. “Space was clearly a consideration.”

Where Entertainment is God (continued)

MTV.com on an event last night in Chicago—

"He ended the night with a poem, which read,
 'I stand before you oh captain oh captain
 to most humbly praise you for this radical ripple
 this single cast stone….'"

Related material:

Today's New York Times  obituaries
and Ed Harris in "The Rock"—

See also in this journal "The Rock" and "Time in the Rock."

"'It is always
Nice to see you'
Says the man
Behind the counter"

– Suzanne Vega, "Tom's Diner"

Where Entertainment Is God  continues...

New York Lottery today— Midday 710, Evening 563.

This suggeests a scientific note from the date 7/10  (2009) and the page number 563 from Dec. 29—

Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society , October 2002, p. 563:

“To produce decorations for their weaving, pottery, and other objects, early artists experimented with symmetries and repeating patterns.  Later the study of symmetries of patterns led to tilings, group theory, crystallography, finite geometries, and in modern times to security codes and digital picture compactifications.  Early artists also explored various methods of representing existing objects and living things.  These explorations led to… [among other things] computer-generated movies (for example, Toy Story ).”

– David W. Henderson, Cornell University

For a different perspective on Toy Story , see the Dec. 29 post.

Other entertainments — The novel Infinite Jest  and two versions of "Heeere's Johnny !" —

            From Stanley Kubrick and from today's New York Times :

See also All Things Shining  and the lottery theology of Jorge Luis Borges.

On Kirk Varnedoe

"At 42– a professor with no museum experience– he was named curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. It was, and is, the most influential job in the fluid, insular, fiercely contentious world of modern art. Just two decades past his last Amherst game, the lineman from Savannah was sitting in the chair where the most critical decisions in his profession are made– 'the conscientious, continuous, resolute distinction of quality from mediocrity,' according to his Olympian predecessor Alfred Barr. The Modern and its chief curator serve the American art establishment as a kind of aesthetic Supreme Court, and most of their rulings are beyond appeal."

— Hal Crowther

On Quality

Entertainer of the Year

Frank Rich on the United States:

“… a country where
     entertainment is god”

In another country:

Question:

“Que pasa, pendejo?”

— Question in a music video,
   “You Save Me,” by last night’s
    Academy of Country Music
    Entertainer of the Year

Answer:

“Yolanda King founded and led Higher Ground Productions, billed as a ‘gateway for inner peace, unity and global transformation.'” —New York Times

“Yolanda King’s Lecture Performances are tailored to suit your company’s immediate need for a critical and timely message delivered with a high-level of entertainment value.” —Higher Ground Productions

From the five log24 entries
ending with “Dinner Theater?”
(linked to in yesterday afternoon’s
Perspective on the News):

Frank Rich has the last word:

“A ‘moral values’ crusade
that stands between a TV show
this popular and its audience
will quickly learn the limits
of its power in a country
where entertainment is god.”

Dinner Theater?

“Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday….”
— Bernard Holland in the New York Times of Monday, May 20, 1996

From an entry of last Monday,
“Lynchburg Law” — 

Critic Frank Rich in Wednesday’s Times on a recent televised promotion:

“… it was a manufactured scandal, as over-the-top as a dinner theater production of ‘The Crucible.’ “

From a Friday, Nov. 19, entry:

“the Platonist… is more interested in deriving an abstraction of the object into a universal….”

— Radu Surdulescu, Form, Structure, and Structurality

From El Universal online today:

“Meanwhile, [Mexico] continued to deal with the savagery of Tuesday night’s televised lynchings, with some saying the media had exploited the occurrence.

‘This is a new and worrisome phenomenon,’ security analyst José Reveles said in an interview… ‘It’s like the evil offspring of all the violent exploitation in the media.’  ‘It was Fuenteovejuna,’ he said, referring to the work by the Spanish golden age playwright Lope de Vega in which an entire town covers up the slaying of a corrupt official.”

Frank Rich has the last word:

“A ‘moral values’ crusade that stands between a TV show this popular and its audience will quickly learn the limits of its power in a country where entertainment is god.”