Month: May 2014

1985, 1990, 1993, 1995, Music

Kleines Requiem fur eine Polka; Concerto for Harpsichord; Good Night (1995) by Henryk Gorecki, performed by the London Sinfonietta et. al

This is a rather arbitrary collection of Gorecki’s later “avant garde” works, featuring a concerto from 1980 and two chamber pieces from the 1990s. But putting the arbitrariness to the side, what we are left with is some very stirring music.

1972, 1975, 1979, 1981, 1994, Music

Miserere et. al (1994) by Henryk Gorecki, performed by John Nelson et al.

This is a collection of Gorecki’s choral music, mostly performed by choruses from Chicago. (Yet another release where the performers differ from track to track! I really need to get over this.) Fortunately, I wouldn’t have known that, if they didn’t tell me. So that’s something.

2012, Movies

The Factory (2012, Morgan O’Neill)

This is one of those “inspired by true events” movies where you know the screenwriters found out about a case with the “factory” of the title and then wrote their ‘idiot plot’ (to steal a phrase from Ebert) all around it. So we have the typical tired, spent cop pursuing a case that nobody else …

Beer, Food

The Beer Store Continues to Suck

I was reading The Grid‘s “Spring Beer” guide a little while ago and noticed that Flying Monkey had put out a new version of their cedar-aged Matador. This was exciting since I tend to like a lot of the Flying Monkey special edition beers, and I found the Matador extremely interesting, if not actually stellar. …

Philosophy

The Poverty of Ideology

This article on libertarianism says pretty much what I was trying to say in my book, only more rigorously (and with zero sense of humour). However, I think the general point of this article – that something like libertarianism is empty theory ignorant of human behaviour and human history – is actually a point that …

1994, TV

Baseball (1994, 2010 Ken Burns, Lynn Novick)

Burns and co.’s constant mythologizing is a lot more appropriate here than it was in The Civil War, and as such I feel like this effort is the more successful one, despite the greater historical importance of the first series. And to their credit, they only mythologize about certain things. For some examples, the game’s …

1988, Music

Symphony No. 8; Ballade; Slavonic Festival (1988) by Alexander Glazunov, performed by Various Artists

I really don’t like these arbitrary compilations, where there’s one major work fleshed out with other smaller works, and when the performances are by different orchestras / performers, it’s all the more frustrating.

2006, Books, Non-Fiction

Your Movie Sucks (2006) by Roger Ebert

I used to read Ebert a lot while he was still alive. It’s not that I necessarily agreed with him all the time – I find that he both overrates some well-made children’s movies, and falls into that typical critic’s cliche of thinking the values of his generation are universal (more on that in a …

1890, 1891, 1900, 1904, 1911, 1917, 1931, 1934, 2011, Music

The Complete Concertos (2011) by Alexander Glazunov, Performed by the Russian National Orchestra conducted by Jose Serebrier

I can be quite picky about compilations, especially when there is a supposed theme to them, such as “violin concertos.” I generally want my music to be at least of the same era – and performed by the same people – rather than a hodgepodge that some record exec thought was a good idea.

2013, 2014, Basketball, Sports

Your 2013-14 Toronto Raptors

A little while ago I wondered aloud whether or not this Raptors team would rank among the best ever. [Editor’s note: Post since deleted because a) it was just a listicle of good Raptors teams and b) 2019 happened.] Now that they have been eliminated by the Nets, I think we can say that they …

1966, 1983, 1985, 1989, 1991, 2008, Music

Complete String Quartets (2008) by Philip Glass, performed by the Smith Quartet

First off, this is no longer ‘complete’ if it ever really was – Glass has apparently written a 6th quartet. (Also, there are other pieces he has written for string quartet that do not appear here, but they are not numbered among his string quartets, apparently.)