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When it comes to classical music involving pieces highlighting the Violin, a favorite performer of mine is Gil Shaham. One of the pieces I have listened to many times and seen live with him playing (I think twice) is Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor (#64). Here are each of the movements-- 1. Allegro 2. Andante 3. Allegro molto vivace A treat. -
Yes, but was he the best defensive SS since Mark Belanger? It's kind of sad when you win 8 Gold Gloves, and are only the second-best left-sided infielder on your team, arguably only the second-best defensive shortstop in your team's history (Luis Aparicio is more famous), and nobody even remembers who you are despite playing as recently as 32 years ago. (Of course, Belanger is (unfortunately) deceased, and also had a career batting average of something like .032.) It's okay, Mark - *I* remember you. What's interesting about Smith and Belanger (and no, I don't honestly think Belanger was as good as Smith) is that they both played very vertical - [brooks] Robinson and Simmons play more horizontally, if that makes any sense. Yeah, both SSs had excellent lateral range, but they just "looked" like they were playing up-and-down as opposed to side-to-side. [BTW, I welcome people who grew up loving other teams to write about them and their players. All views welcome here, and the more information, the better.] -
Well, "The Big Lebowski" is another picture that nobody can believe I'd never seen before, but I hadn't (this, and "This Is Spinal Tap" were the two I'd really been wanting to watch for a long, long time). I was really getting into this film - a great comedy to be sure - when the terrorist attacks hit Nice, and pretty much ruined it for me. Still, that doesn't lessen the movie - Jeff Bridges is brilliant, and so is just about everybody else. I don't think I've ever seen a Coen Brothers film that I don't like - they are geniuses in the mold of Matt Groening. I'm not up for a big, long write-up, but I'd love to discuss the movie with anyone who wants to. This Nice attack has pretty much wiped out any comedic effects the film had on me tonight; tomorrow I'll be better - I'm not going to let those assholes compromise anything about my life.
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For a very un-Trek like approach to moral issues, check out the Babylon 5 episodes "Believers" and "Confessions and Lamentations." Next Gen was Star Trek updated for the 90s; Babylon 5 is the gritty answer to Trek that Deep Space Nine tried to be but rarely succeeded. -
Having recently re-watched "The Candidate," Robert Redford's 1972 political satire about California politics, I decided to watch its "companion piece from the next generation," Warren Beatty's "Bulworth" from 1998. Thirty minutes into the film, it seems like a strange, love-child of "The Candidate" and "Network" (remember Howard Beale (Peter Finch) losing it, and screaming, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"). That said,"Bulworth" is going to have to get better for me to like it as much as either of those two films. I'm not going to write up a long review of this, but it really grew on me over time. I started out not liking it *at all*, but then I saw that Beatty was taking some serious risk, and not going for a wide audience - who, exactly, *was* his target audience? There's doubt in my mind as to what this movie was even about, other than a politician growing stones large enough to speak the truth - this one goes straight to my heart because I *don't* think it's parody that partisan politics is corrupt in *both parties*. The day everyone is required to be an independent, and the two-party system is done away with is 1) the day a snowball freezes in Hell, and 2) the day I begin caring about politics and politicians again. As for the ending(s), I had a troubled feeling, but I honestly don't think it changes anything, because the gist of the parody was in the middle of the film. My respect for Warren Beatty went way up for having the courage to make this movie - perhaps the best political parody I've ever seen because it went, in its own *very* quirky way, directly to what desperately needs addressing.
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A few years ago, I was preparing for a trip to northern Spain and southern/southwestern France, which was to include a visit to Bilbao, where I'd never been before. I've been an ardent lover for most of my life of the musical works produced by the collaboration of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, so naturally my thoughts turned to the "Bilbao-Song" from Happy-End. Googling it, or YouTubing it, I chanced upon a version of it translated into French and sung by the late French singer Catherine Sauvage. I don't know why I was unfamiliar with her work untl then, but I fell in love with her immediately, and have never woken from the dream. Here she is singing "Bilbao-Song". Here she is singing a French version of the Brecht-Weill song "Nannas Lied", their penultimate collaboration.* (I used a line from this in my signature here for a while: "Et en fin d'compte, mes réserves s'épuisent", although I might more poignantly have used "Et en fin d'compte, on n'a pas toujours dix-sept ans".) Catherine Sauvage is especially associated with the songs of Léo Ferré, as here with "Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent?". And here most wonderfully with "Paris-Canaille". And here. And stupendously here. *The refrain in the French lyric runs "Hier tu pleures, oí¹ sont tes larmes? Oí¹ est la neige qui tombait l'an dernier?" (Yesterday you weep, where are your tears? Where is the snow that fell last year?) Brecht's original is "Wo sind die Tränen von gestern Abend? Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?" (Where are the tears from yesterday evening? Where is the snow from last year?) These harken back, of course, to the repeated question in Franí§ois Villon's famous ballade: "Mais oí¹ sont les neiges d'antan?" which Dante Gabriel Rossetti put into English as "where are the snows of yesteryear?", in which he coined the word "yesteryear", not much used since except in The Lone Ranger.
