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Tag Archives: Finnegans Wake
“I would rather use light to draw with instead of making thousands of drawings.” — Mary Ellen Bute
“There were so many things I wanted to say, stream-of-consciousness things, designs and patterns while listening to music. I felt I might be able to say [them] if I had an unending canvas.” pioneering experimental animator Mary Ellen Bute If … Continue reading
Posted in Directors, James Joyce, Movies, On This Day
Tagged animation, Finnegans Wake, Ireland, literary adaptation, women directors
3 Comments
Four Things About Thornton Wilder
“I was an old man when I was 12; and now I am an old man, and it’s splendid.” — Thornton Wilder on his 70th birthday It’s his birthday today. A couple stories: 1. Peter Hunt (once Executive and Artistic … Continue reading
Posted in James Joyce, On This Day, Theatre, writers
Tagged A Streetcar Named Desire, Finnegans Wake, Our Town, Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder
8 Comments
“[My function] in Scotland during the past twenty to thirty years [is] that of the cat-fish that vitalizes the other torpid denizens of the aquarium.” –Hugh MacDiarmid
The function, as it seems to me, O’ Poetry is to bring to be At lang, lang last that unity … — Hugh MacDiarmid, “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle” It’s his birthday today. He was born on August … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce, On This Day, writers
Tagged Finnegans Wake, Hugh MacDiarmid, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Scotland, Seamus Heaney, T.S. Eliot
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2018 Books Read
2018 Books Read 1. Tamburlaine, Part 1, by Christopher Marlowe I finished 2017 with Paradise Lost, in the mood to continue with rigorous challenging poetry. I decided to read the complete plays of Christopher Marlowe (re-read in most cases). The … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce
Tagged Animal Farm, Annie Proulx, books read, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Marlowe, Clifford Odets, Edgar Allan Poe, England, Evelyn Waugh, fiction, Finnegans Wake, friends, George Orwell, H.L. Mencken, Hunter S. Thompson, Ian McEwan, Ireland, Italy, Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, nonfiction, Olivia Laing, Pauline Kael, poetry, Poland, politics, Robert Kaplan, Romania, Ron Chernow, Russia, Ryszard Kapuściński, Sergei Kirov, Stalin, The Soccer War, Tom Wolfe, true crime, Truman Capote, Victor Serge, Waiting for Lefty
7 Comments
Year in Review: Running my mouth in 2018
Thanks, everyone, who hangs out here, who likes what I do, whether you’re an Elvis fan, a Supernatural fan, a general cinephile, a book-lover, or just someone who’s been checking in periodically for almost 16 years – WHAT? – I … Continue reading
Posted in James Joyce, Movies, Television
Tagged Anne V. Coates, Burt Reynolds, documentary, Doris Day, Dorothy Malone, Elvis Presley, England, Finnegans Wake, Frank Sinatra, Gena Rowlands, Germany, Gold Diggers of 1933, Grace Kelly, Hal Ashby, Howard Hughes, Ian McEwan, James Cagney, Joan Didion, Joaquin Phoenix, Julie Christie, Mexico, Minnie and Moskowitz, Natalie Portman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Play It As It Lays, Robert Altman, Russia, Sanaa Lathan, South Korea, Supernatural, Warren Beatty, women directors, Woody Allen, year in writing
10 Comments
For Film Comment: On Mary Ellen Bute’s 1966 Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
Well, this is a piece I was born to write. I can’t believe it came along. It was offered to me, too. That’s the weird thing. I got the assignment in January and immediately began a re-read of Finnegans Wake. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce, Movies
Tagged animation, drama, Finnegans Wake, Ireland, literary adaptation, reviews, women directors
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April 2018 Viewing Diary
Elvis Presley: The Searcher (2018; d. Thom Zimny) New 2-part HBO doc about Elvis. Grateful it exists now. Long overdue artistic redress. I reviewed for Ebert. Morvern Callar (2002; d. Lynne Ramsay) Re-watched in preparation for her latest, You Were … Continue reading
Posted in James Joyce, Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies, Television
Tagged Coen brothers, Costa-Gavras, documentary, Elvis Presley, Finnegans Wake, France, Handmaid's Tale, Japan, Jeff Bridges, Joan Blondell, Leo McCarey, Margaret Atwood, Martha Coolidge, Mervyn LeRoy, Norway, politics, Robert Duvall, Sebastián Lelio, Supernatural, women directors
8 Comments
Stuff I’ve been reading
Books Doing a deep dive into the work of Ellen Willis. She was the first “rock critic” hired by The New Yorker, and one of the only women writing seriously about rock music at that time. At least in a … Continue reading
Stuff I’ve Been Reading
— Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce Lordy be, batten down the hatches. I struggled through it years ago and am now reading it again. It’s going quite well. I read it out loud because so many of the jokes are … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce
Tagged A Streetcar Named Desire, Annie Proulx, Finnegans Wake, Russia, stuff I've been reading
5 Comments
“My Brother Thomas Will Now Recite For You The Entire Novel Finnegans Wake By James Joyce.”
That clip is 7:23 minutes long, and I found myself smiling ear to ear for the entirety of it. It is perfection. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem and Robbie O’Connell singing “Finnegans Wake”, with an amazing introduction. The whole … Continue reading