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Thursday, January 14, 2010

Annals of Wizardry, continued

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:28 am

In Julie Taymor's film version of "The Tempest" (now in post-production), Helen Mirren, in a gender switch, plays "Prospera."

See a recent interview, "Helen Mirren Talks About Playing Prospera in The Tempest" (ScreenCrave.com, Friday, January 8, 2010, 4:50 PM, By Mali Elfman)—

"With Prospero you can change it into a woman without changing much of the text, very little of the text has changed, only at the very beginning— the backstory. In fact, one of the most famous of Prospero’s speeches, it’s an invocation— brilliant, fabulous speech— is actually from 'Medea,' almost lifted lock, stock, and barrel from the play 'Medea' and it’s Medea’s speech and Shakespeare just took it. It’s incredible. Like three words have changed. So it’s actually a woman’s speech."

It's actually not from "Medea" (the play by Euripides), but rather from the version of Medea in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 7.

Related material: Blurring the Lines and Mutatis Mutandis.

See also Tuesday's entry on Taymor and theatre.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Annals of Wizardry

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:35 pm

Part I:

Last night's post for the birthday of
Nicolas Cage, which linked to a
description of his upcoming film–

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10/100108-SorcAppr.jpg

Nicolas Cage as Balthazar Blake

Part II:

From this morning's comics:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10/100108-WizardOfId.gif

The Nexus

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm
From Google today, some excerpts from the result of the search “define:nexus”–

  • link: the means of connection between things linked in series
  • a connected series or group
    wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
  • In computing, Nexus is the security kernel in Microsoft’s delayed NGSCB initiative. It provides a secure environment for trusted code to run in. Code running in Nexus mode is out of reach of untrusted applications.
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_(computing)
  • A Nexus is a place equidistant from the five elements as explained in the TV series Charmed. Using this as a point of reference, it is quite possible that there could be several Nexus points of power scattered throughout the world, though rare. …
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_(Charmed)
  • A line-mode browser is a form of web browser that is operated from a single command line.
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_(web_browser)
This search was suggested by a book review in today’s New York Times that mentions both the Harvard classic The Varieties of Religious Experience and some religious experiences affecting my own Harvard class– that of 1964.

Cuernavaca, Mexico, in August 1960 was the site of what Harvard’s Timothy Leary later called the deepest religious experience of his life.

For some other experiences related to Harvard and Cuernavaca, see a search on those two terms in this journal.

The book under review is titled “The Harvard Psychedelic Club.” My own experiences with the Harvard-Cuernavaca nexus might more appropriately be titled “The Harvard Alcoholic Club.”

Thursday, January 7, 2010

High Concept

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:00 pm

Balthasar Meets Blake

Happy birthday, Nicolas Cage.

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