Tarantino on Charlie Rose

The art of film has occupied my mind a good deal as of late and the luminous scenes of Quentin Tarantino's latest flick have me digging for more analysis and appreciation of his work in particular.

I've seen a lot of the interviews he's done recently in promoting Django Unchained but none that came close to his interview with Charlie Rose. Here he gets very candid in passionately explaining his artistic craft, especially the writing aspect of it, about which he emphasizes how important it is to remember his movies all start with a pen and paper. He also reveals that he's written book-length unpublished pieces of "subtextual film criticism" which sounds absolutely fucking awesome and only fans the flames on the "subtextual criticism" or interpretations I've been working on for a couple years now for a few different modes of art (if you read this blog at all, you'll know what I'm talking about).

Anyway, it's a lengthy interview (48 minutes) but uninterrupted by commercials and filled with legitimately great stuff from a masterful artist discussing his craft. Highly recommended.

(Video after the jump)

Reflections on Django Unchained

(Last night I got to see the new Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained for the second time in five days and so I've got many thoughts about it swirling around in my head which I'll attempt to elucidate here. Django's awesome theme song also continues to waltz in my head.)

The summer during which I turned 14 in 1999 was among the most memorable of my life. That summer I had my first job ever, working as a messenger for my mom's business in downtown Manhattan traveling around on foot picking up and delivering documents and paperwork, taking many breaks in between to explore what the city had to offer. Throughout that same year, members of the Wu-Tang Clan released their second round of solo albums and, as a devout Wu fan, I became a regular customer at the Sam Goody store located in the mall directly underneath the World Trade Center.

When the summer ended and I stopped working to begin my freshmen year of high school in Staten Island, I still had a bunch of soon-to-be-released Wu-Tang records reserved and paid for (at a discounted price) at that World Trade Center Sam Goody store. When each album was eventually released, I got a notification that it was waiting for me, and asked my mom to pick it up. Sometimes she'd have the regular messenger, a tall and very funny black man named Phil Jackson who had originally shown me the ropes, pick up the new CDs for me during his travels.

In September, Ol' Dirty Bastard's newest album was released entitled N***a Please. My parents were always giving me a hard time about my musical tastes anyway and now, as a 14-year-old white kid, I had to somehow defend this new CD I'd pre-purchased which had the words "Ol' Dirty Bastard" and "N*gga Please" scrawled in sloppy crayon across its cover. Phil Jackson was also less than pleased with the package he retrieved.

New blog about Finnegans Wake

Just a quick note that I've officially launched a new blog to be entirely devoted to Finnegans Wake.

It is called "Finnegans, Wake!" in reference to the title's imperative angle, calling the sleeping giant of civilization to rise up from slumber. The purpose is to awaken readers to the unfathomable, essentially infinite depths of the work which I believe is the greatest work of art of the 20th century.

It's become clear to me that the massive black hole that is Finnegans Wake was threatening to inhale the entirety of this blog plus it just makes more sense to have a separate home for all my blabberings about that most derided of obscure books.

I will, of course, continue to post plenty of material here and certainly won't cease discussion of the Wake around these parts, but all thorough explication, reflection, etc. will go on at the new blog from now on.

Unfortunately, since I'm heading out of town tomorrow for a holiday trip to the Bay Area, I probably won't have a chance to put up anything new either here or at the shiny new Wake blog until next year.

Until then, stare in amazement at this book cover artwork for the Wake done by Philip Smith. You can see more of his work here.

New piece in Slant Mag on Masta Killa

"I wrote this degree/
adjust ya eyes to the light/ so you could see"
- Masta Killa

Had a little piece published yesterday in Slant Magazine, my fourth for their them so far, a review of Wu-Tang Clan dart-throwing extraordinaire Masta Killa's new solo album entitled Selling My Soul. An unusually slick and soulful (and very short) batch of tracks that serve largely as a promotional showcase of Masta Killa's dexterity of flow and subtly striking poetics, essentially a preview to his long-awaited full length album Loyalty is Royalty.

(Expanded reflections on the career of Masta Killa after the jump...)

Wu-Tang is for the Children: Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews The Gza/Genius

Astrophysicist and generally good-natured eloquent guy Neil deGrasse Tyson had co-founder of the Wu-Tang Clan and generally brilliant guy Gza/Genius as a guest on his radio/TV show recently. Somehow, Tyson was not quite aware of the massive cultural influence Wu-Tang, especially Gza, has had on the world. Here he learns, much to his amazement, how young listeners of Wu music were consequently led to passionate interests in science.

Watching him get schooled by The Gza, who spun out a few eye-opening bars during the convo, makes for great entertainment. And if you happen to be someone who is not fully aware of how Wu-Tang has inspired two decades worth of young people to seek Knowledge, Wisdom, and Understanding, you'd gain a fresh perspective by checking out the show.

(Video and personal reflections after the jump...)

On Completing Finnegans Wake

"Booms of bombs and heavy rethudders"

- Finnegans Wake, p. 510

Welp, I've finished my first full reading of Finnegans Wake.

Took almost exactly six months, reading each chapter in a non-chronological order (detailed here) along with a few guides and some other relevant books. The experience was a rewarding and enlightening one, certainly. I had an awe and strong curiosity for the book before actually reading it and now those feelings have only deepened.

It's going to take a while for me to assimilate all of my observations and notes into a full piece about the experience and I will in fact be starting up a separate blog to be entirely devoted to Finnegans Wake stuff. But for now I'd just like to share a few reflections.

Potent Quotables: The Gutenberg Galaxy Edition

The year is quickly reaching its conclusion, the nights growing longer as the hours of sunlight decline daily. Going through some of the unwritten or uncompleted pieces I had intended to write this year, it occurs to me that a long-planned review of Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy just isn't going to happen in the way I'd hoped. So I'm going to do something different.

First, some background info:
This incredibly dense and thoughtful text occupied a good portion of my mental energy in the final months of 2011 and into early 2012. Though it sparked many new ideas for me that completely altered my perspective on things, I mostly found it as puzzling and challenging to get through as my first reading of Ulysses. It certainly lacks the pleasing poetic language of Ulysses, but is equally massive in its references and often cuts jarringly from one huge concept to the next. I approached it thinking it'd be like any other analytical academic text but it's something very different.

Album Review: Sophisticated Movement by Kevlaar 7 & Woodenchainz

"My vinyl voice so vintage, hear the *crackling* and the *clicking*"
- Kevlaar 7

With three high-quality releases in less than two years, Kevlaar 7 is arguably the most consistent purveyor of pure hip hop right now. This latest offering, Sophisticated Movement, is a 15-track collaboration with burgeoning beatcrafter Woodenchainz, an album bursting at the seams with soulfulness as the sounds of decrepit Detroit's underground hip hop/blues heart continues to pour out from the Wisemen camp.

The Importance of the O

Written by Wu-Tang's Gza/Genius, performed by Jim Jarmusch. (Not sure who produced it, though I believe it's Preservation). 

Here's a recent New York Times piece on The Gza/Genius and his new enterprise to teach science in public school through the use of hip hop rhymes. Wu-Tang is for the babies, in case you didn't know.

From the article:

Growing up in the Park Hill Houses on Staten Island, he was curious about the physical world but bored with school. Hip-hop became his outlet for showing off intellectually.

“It was always about crafting the best rhyme in the most articulate, witty or smart way,” he said. "For us, it was always about educating the listener."

It took him more than two decades to develop his curiosity about science into “Dark Matter,” an album now in the writing stage, which he hopes will bring his fans to astrophysics, starting with the Big Bang.

Ten Best Science Books of 2012

Trying to get back into the groove after an extended period away from doing any serious writing. My journey deep into the heart of Finnegans Wake has consumed me (increasingly so) for almost six months now. With just one chapter left until I've completed my first full go-round with the book, I'll soon have lots to say about it all. In the meantime, forgive my absence and enjoy perusing this wonderfully illustrated list of the ten best science books of the year via the essential Brain Pickings blog.

And here's a stunning cosmic photograph that appeared recently at the Astronomy Picture of the Day webpage.

The Known Universe

Pretty sure I've posted this before in the past, but certainly well worth a re-posting. It's a video showing the entirety of the universe as we comprehend it, set to the music of composer Hans Zimmer (actually, a funky remix of Zimmer).