Month: October 2015

1899, 1900, 1911, 1922, 1934, 2002, Music

Symphony in F; Suite No. 2; etc. (2002) by Gustav Holst, performed by Munich Symphony Orchestra conducted by Douglas Bostock

This is a collection of both short and long orchestral works by Holst. It’s a scattershot collection, like so many others.

2010, Movies

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2010, Andrei Ujica)

This film attempts to paint a portrait of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu simply by assembling and editing together excerpts from something like 1,000 hours of official footage. Because of the way it is assembled – just this footage, no talking heads, no narration, no obvious message – what you make of this movie appears …

1947, Books

The Portable Chekhov (1947), edited and translated by Avrahm Yarmolinksy

This is a pretty great collection of selected short stories from Chekhov, plus two plays (one major, one minor) and a few letters. I am not a man who cares about an author’s letters, so I won’t be discussing those.

2014, Movies

Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014, Ridley Scott)

Hollywood maybe the only film industry that could view Exodus as the premise for an action movie. And make no mistake, that’s what this is. Sure, we get attempts at making this about something else – faith vs. reason, appears to be a poorly stated theme, for example – and there is character development in …

2015, Music

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman Live at the Wintergarden Theatre, Toronto, Occtober 15, 2015

The last time I saw the Bad Plus they blew me away. But with Joshua Redman they are significantly more jazzy, significantly closer to the mainstream, far more within the tradition than I was expecting. It’s not that their old music wasn’t within the tradition – jazz musicians have been covering non-jazz songs since jazz …

1916, 1976, Music

The Planets (1976) by Gustav Holst, performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia conducted by Eugene Ormandy

Holst’s most famous work has become one of the most famous pieces of music of the 20th century. And though it has been featured in endless film and TV projects, and I am mostly just familiar with “Mars,” because of its cover by King Crimson (under the title “The Devil’s Triangle” for copyright reasons).

1897, 1900, 1903, 1905, 1906, 1911, 1921, 1927, 1980, 1988, 1989, Music

Holst: A Winter Idyll (1993) by David Atherton et al.

This is a collection of short orchestral pieces and excerpts of longer ones, by Holst. It is not performed by the same group throughout (as it’s a compilation) though, as far as I can tell (listening to a digital copy), the conductor is the same throughout (David Atherton).

1907, 1922, 1927, 1931, 1934, 1996, Music

Holst: Orchestral Works Including Hammersmith and Egdon Heath (1996) by London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Hickox

This is a compilation of some of Holst’s shorter orchestral works.

1898, 1904, 1907, 1908, 1917, 1929, Music

Gustav Holst: Vedic Hymns, Four Songs for Voice and Violin, Humbert Wolfe Songs, etc. [English Song Series 6] (2003) by Various Artists

This is a scattershot collection of 33 of Holst’s approximately 70 lieder, performed by various people from various times.

1958, Movies

Ashes and Diamonds (1958, Andrzej Wajda)

This is the first Polish Realism film I have seen and I must say I’m very impressed. It shares many characteristics with the great French and Italian realist/neo-realist films of the decade prior but, unlike (most of) those movies, it was made in a Communist country, and therefore feels like even more of a miracle …

1935, 1937, 1939, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1954, 1956, 1958, 2008, Music

The Definitive Collection (2008) by Billie Holiday

Full disclosure: I do not like vocal jazz (as you know). This is a compilation of 22 tracks over the course of Holiday’s career. I have no idea how definitive it actually is, as I do not know her at all, beyond her reputation as one of the great singers of the century, and “Strange …

2011, Movies

The Artist (2011, Michel Hazanavicius)

The hype around this movie was ridiculous and only increased with the Oscar wins (which are meaningless, but anyway…). I just want to address that before I actually tell you what I think of the movie. It’s not novel to take inspiration from silent films. Canada’s own Guy Maddin has been taking inspiration from silent …

2013, Movies

Are All Men Pedophiles? (2013, Jan-Willem Breue)

Putting aside the sensationalist title, there are a lot of interesting things that are discussed in this film, that might make for an interesting documentary. For example: the evolutionary imperative for males to seek out younger females in order to insure procreation. (And there are numerous others.) But this is not that movie.

1919, 1922, 1923, 2010, Music

Hindemith: The Complete Viola Music 2 (2010) by Lawrence Power

Part 2 of Power’s performances of Hindemith’s viola music focuses on the sonatas for solo viola, of which Hindemith also wrote three. Though these all lack the incredible, complex and difficult piano parts of their cousins, that doesn’t make them any less impressive and, not surprisingly, the viola parts are more complex.

2015

What Has Stephen Harper Done that Any Other PM of Canada Hasn’t Already Done?

Maybe this is a question you ask yourself because, oh, I don’t know, you’re excessively partisan, or you’re not paying attention. (Pardon my glibness, I’m just very…frustrated. Maybe I need to start again…)