2007/08/28

My Songs Of The Week

Art Plays The Blues?

Yep, 2 songs this week.
I know that me playing the straight blues is as incongruous as Chebacca throwing out the first pitch. And yet, this week's track is a straight up blues created on the new Magic Garageband setup in the new iLife'08 suite of software. I was only fooling around with it when the urge to simply hit out and play the blues overcame me and this is the end result.

I know some of you have probably never heard me play a straight up blues in a long, long time, so this might be a change for pace.

Americans, Redux

My other track this week is a reworking of Americans.
This is the final incarnation of the version in C. Coelacanth is working up a new version in A for various reasons which boils down to Chella can sing it better in that key. So I'll be mixing an entirely new version in A, sometime soon.

In the mean time, I didn't really want to throw away the backing vocals and pharmakeus' lead guitar work, so I've worked up this version with me singing the main vocal line and playing bass and also the nylon-string guitar in the opening and closing section.

2007/08/24

Just Another Tricky Day

Fantasy League Updates
My AFL Combat Wombats are trudging through the loser's pool play-offs. So far it's been 1 win and a by, so it's 3 more wins to take out the Loser's trophy.

Amazingly my baseball Combat Wombats have crept up to third again. I can't say that my team has a shot at winning, but it is in some kind of contention, which is good.
I've picked up Joba Chamberlain and I've got Phil Hughes. I also have Melky Cabrera and of course his reputation is "The Melk-man always delivers!" I am so "The Yankees Prospect Guy", but that's okay. I'm building for the future. :)

On The Yankees
I went to see my parents a couple of nights ago. It was the day the Yankees lost 18-9.
My father looked glum. The first thing he said was, "Why can't the Yankees win when it counts?"
"Fred, they're the Angels. It's their *thing* to beat us in Anaheim. They're scrappy-good."
"Mussina can't pitch any more. He has no velocity."
"I agree there. He's looking cooked."
"But this new guy Hughes. He's a good pitcher. Young, but good. Still mentally young, but a very steady pitcher."
"Impressed?"
"Yes, but even better, there's this other rookie. Who's he? He's amazing! He's like a young Clemens. They should let him start instead of Mussina."
"They won't They're monitoring his innings. But he'll be a great starter next year."
"I think so. He's solid in the lower half of the body and his body snap is elegant and fast. He's just like Clemens."
My mother piped up and said "They really should have signed Matsuzaka."
"Gee Mom, they didn't have a chance. The red Sox paid $51,111,111.11 to not let him sign with the Yankees. He could only negotiate with the Red Sox and he wanted to play in the MLB so badly, he didn't care it was the Bosox""
"That's a tragedy."
"Yes Mom, it is, because a) he'd be much better than Moose right now, and b) he wouldn't be pitching for Boston. I know. But it's late August now. You really need to get over that thing with Matsuzaka."
"He just doesn't have any luck. If he were luckier, he'd be pitching for the Yankees."
"Yes Mom, but he's not."
"How much more of Mussina do the Yankees have?" my father asks.
"Through next year."
"He's an old fart. They should send him out to be knackered. But this Joba Chamberlain is good. What's the rotation going to look like next year?"
I did some quick guessing.
"Hughes, Chamberlain, Pettitte, Wang, and Kennedy, I think."
"Kennedy? Who's Kennedy?"
"He's the other one they drafted ahead of Joba."
"You mean they have an even better one?"
"Well, he looked better when they drafted him."
"So he sucks now?"
"No, it's just that they want to keep him in his starting routine this year. Joba's a special case."
"So no Mussina in the rotation next year?"
"Probably not in the rotation. He'd be the long man and at best the 5th starter when one of the young guys can't pitch."
"They should get him to the glue factory. He's as bad as Igawa. Igawa pitches like he's dancing the 'The Octopus Dance'. He's terrible. They should make BBQ octopus out of him and feed him to some sharks. I saw him pitch for the Hanshin Tigers and he was crap."
And with that he walked out the room.
"So do you think the Yankees can trade for Matsuzaka in the off-season?"
"No Mom. I think the Red Sox like him and we like Hughes, Chamberlain and Kennedy better."
My Mother nodded. "Matsuzaka has no luck. He said he wanted to pitch for the Yankees. Poor boy."
"I don't think he's crying about the 50million bucks he got from the Bosox, Mom."
This is what talking to my parents can be like.

The Jeter Tree
There is a vicious rumour going around that Jessica Alba has herpes and she got it from Derek Jeter. Some nasty people have since then, created this family tree of infection.


Yes, it is literally below the belt. But as you all of you know, I am not one to judge people by the actions from the waist down. If Jeter is indeed a Hepres-spreader, oh well. As long as he keeps his OPS in the .800-.850 neighborhood or above, he can still be my 'fantasy stud', so to speak.
As for Scarlet Johansson and Jessicas Biel and Alba, I'm sure I could work around that Herpes situation somehow, if indeed the occasion demands and arises. Yep, I'll be up for it. :)

2007/08/16

My Song Of The Week

My Conundrum

Many years ago when Pharmakeus, Chella and I were puttering around in a small land of the Sydney band scene, we had one killer number that would always slay them. Why? Because it was unadulterated "Power-Of Rock" sort of song that would allow us to unleash the most aggressive sonic assault on the audience. It's a pretty cool number.

It was written at a time when there was worldwide outrage and condemnation about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Even Frank Zappa was moved to compose a tune called 'Outrage At Valdez'. Well, this number was our little volley of anger at the world in (*gulp*) 1989.

As usual, a song like that just couldn't stay buried in time like some artifact so it has been resurrected for the Coelacanth project right here.

A Visit To The Writers Guild
Pleiades arranged for me to attend a seminar held by the AWG this week. The topic was 'Are Australian Films Different?" This question was lambasted off the stage by panelist Billy Marshall Stoneking who then went on to deliver a cross between a drama school seminar and a shamanic huckster act which had me sort of squirming in my seat. I didn't expect to land in somewhere that reminded me of the futility of script meetings at AFTRS.
Turns out Billy teaches there, so more power to the students going there these days.

It's remarkable that the the practitioners of film-making want to discuss the craft but always end up talking about distribution and exhibitors because bottom line, it costs money to make films, and you just have to factor it in.

The newly appointed head of the NSWFTO was making the point that funding had no political interference and that the market for independent cinema had shrunk considerably if Box Office was the only path to the audience - which she believes it is not. The outgoing head of the NSWFTO was far more slippery when discussing just what was what in terms of what an "Australian Film"or an "Australian Story" might be in the eyes of the funding bodies, while we all got a serving telling us that we as Creatives are way too dependent in our thinking on Government funding. And that we've got it good compared to other countries.
It's been what I've been saying for a while, but go figure that.

One of the more indicative things mentioned in the seminar was that Daniel Krieg's film 'West' was not shown in the Western suburbs of Sydney where it was set; 'Blacktown' was not shown in Blacktown. 'Suburban Mayhem' was not shown in the 'burbs. This was largely explained by the indifference of exhibitors who need to maximise profits and so don't want to screen any local product.
It's pretty fucked, but at least we know who to vilify next. :)

2007/08/13

The Yankees Update

4 Games Back!

With a sweep of the Cleveland Indians (and aided by 2 blown saves by Eric Gagne for the Red Sox), the Yankees find themselves only 4 games back in the Division race. That's right. It's a race now.

I know, I know. I wrote them off in May when they slipped to 14-1/2 games behind the hated Red Sox. I mean, wouldn't you if it was your team sitting that far back a very strong team that was playing .700 ball and only had to go 50-50 to get to 95 wins?

Make no mistake, the Red Sox are still in the driver's seat with 6weeks to go. They may win 100 in which case it just won't matter what the Yankees do. The Red Sox play the Devil Rays, something like 70games... Okay I exaggerate; but it is true their schedule is pretty easy compared to the host of contenders the Yankees still have to see off the Tigers, the Angels and have a healthy dose of Blue Jays and Orioles.
In determining this, I used Baseball Prospectus's third-order standings, which are based not on actual records but on underlying team performance. These theoretical standings, to give an example, see the Yankees as a 71–47 team, and the Cleveland Indians as a 62–56 team, which seems fair after this weekend. The Yankees may be only 1.5 games ahead of the Indians in the real world. But after Saturday's 11–2 shelling and the sight of Jhonny Peralta being picked off first with the bases loaded and none out while down by four yesterday, few would see the teams as equals, or as likely to perform equally well over the rest of the season.

These third-order standings show the Yankees as nearly equal to the Red Sox, and an order of magnitude better than any other team in the league, and thus as likely to stay hot enough to make it to October. The great variable in pennant races, though, especially in the era of the unbalanced schedule, is strength of opposition. If the Yankees and Indians each played nothing but .500 teams the rest of the year, we'd expect that the Yankees would play .598 ball, and the Indians .530 ball, based on how well they've played this year. As is, though, the Yankees will be playing teams with a combined third-order winning percentage of .526, while Indians opponents will be at .481.

This disparity means that, speaking roughly, the Yankees project to play .572 ball over the rest of the season, while the Indians project to play .549 ball. Combine that with their actual records to this point, and the Yankees' projected record comes out at 91–71, while the Tribe's is 90–72. Those April losses counted.

Unhappily for Yankees partisans, the same exercise shows the Red Sox finishing with a 100–62 record. More happily, it shows the Detroit Tigers ending the year at 88–74, with the California Angels grabbing the West title with a 92–70 record, and the Mariners ending up at 87–75. That would put the Yankees, Indians, Red Sox, and Angels in the playoffs, which certainly sounds reasonable enough. These aren't, though, large margins, and a bad week could well knock the Yankees out of the hunt.
Yankees may still fall out of contention for the Wild Card berth, let alone the Division in a bad week. On the other hand, one should not count on this but historically the Red Sox have been known to choke late in the season... :)

2007/08/08

756*

Mixed Emotions

Barry Bonds hit his 756th Home Run, thus passing Hank Aaron's mark as all time MLB Home Run King.
Here's ESPN's Jim Caple talking about it.
What makes the new record controversial is that we want the number to mean what the old number did. But that's also what makes baseball so special, so wonderful -- the way that what happens today is always connected to what happened yesterday. Bonds, of course, is the son of an All-Star and the godson of a legend. The pitcher he hit the record-breaker off, Mike Bacsik, is the son of former major league pitcher Mike Bacsik who pitched to Aaron when Hank had 755 home runs as well.
"If my dad had been gracious enough to give up a home run to Hank, we'd both have given up 756," Bacsik said. "I'm excited. We won the game and I got to see history. I dreamed about this when I was a kid. Unfortunately when I dreamed about it, I was the one hitting the home run."

After giving up a single and a double earlier in the game, Bacsik ran the count full to Bonds in the fifth. With the best hitter of his generation waiting at the plate and what felt like the entire city of San Francisco leaning in, Bacsik threw a fastball, trying to go down and away. Bonds had other plans.

One moment the baseball was heading to home plate in the mid-80s and the next it was rocketing the opposite direction much, much faster.

Bonds instantly knew the ball would land in the bleachers, which he should after hitting so many home runs. He raised both arms in jubilation and watched the ball clear the center-field fence, then circled the bases while fireworks exploded in the sky and fans cheered.

Fans elsewhere may have conflicting opinions of Bonds, but not San Francisco fans. They know what his 15 seasons with the team mean. There were fans who have attended Giants games practically since they moved to San Francisco and there were fans who were at their very first game (and won't they have something to tell their grandkids?). They clapped and whistled, hugged and slapped hands, laughed and cried.
Yep. There's always a knock on a guy passing a Home Run Milestone.
Roger Maris' 61 in a season? He didn't get it done in the old-style 154 game season, so 'asterisk that," they say.
Hank Aaron does it and there are people threatening him not to do it because *gosh* he's black.
I can remember when Sadaharu Oh hit 756. In fact, he went on to go to 868 over in the NPB, but boy they don't count because he didn't do it in the Major Leagues. "So let's not look at that too closely," they say.
Mark Maguire and Sammy Sosa were hitting 'juiced ball' when they broke Maris' record; and of course both have since been suspected of steroid (ab)uses.
Now it's Barry Bonds and he of course comes under that massive cloud called BALCO.

I don't really know how I feel about Barry Bonds after all these years. One part of me feels he's gotten bad press for his difficult personality, and even rampant racism on the part of mainstream America. One part of me feels he's just another self-important jock. Another part of me wants to applaud his persistence and application, because these milestones don't just happen. However, I'm also extremely wary about his alleged steroid use to get to 756. And another part of me says "innocent until proven guilty" and feels guilty for even trying to absolve him.
Truth is, I'm actually glad he's not my fave player. It would be hellish to reconcile these conflicting notions with a fan's love for their icon. As Robert DeNiro says in 'Analyze This', "I feel Conflicted."
Yet, if any of the above guys really needs an asterisk, it's Bonds' career number, Bonds' seasonal record, together with Maguire and Sosa's seasonal records.

Years ago, I used to tell people that I'd like to see an Olympic Games where everybody was allowed to use steroids just to see what ind of freaky records could be set by human beings. I didn't think the joke would come back to bite me by taking place in my favorite spectator game - but there you go. There's just too much darned money on the table for it not to go that way. If you ignore the fact that steroids are illegal in the USA, the MLB essentially were unwilling and/or unable to get the players' association to lay along and get steroids out of the game. And for the owners, the stars smacking historic proportions of long-balls was just too good a draw-card.
You can see how it all turned into a perfect storm of PR-shit-storm for the sport.

You can go to Baseball Think Factory and find any number of steroid discussion threads and Bonds' records are discussed at length. Some are adamant that it just doesn't matter, while others are totally condemnatory of Bonds, Maguire, Sosa and anybody and everybody who has been suspected or caught. All of the arguments have merits, but the one that sticks out for me is that if the MLB really felt the record books were so important, then they should have done something more pro-active to protect them.

The same go for the journalists who didn't pursue these athletes harder in the 1990s, when there were clear suspicions.
It also goes for us fans who nudge-and-a-wink, shrugged at the tumbling records.
We baseball fans, scribes, teams, front offices, farm teams, MLB, MLBPA, all fucked up, and now Barry Bonds, the BALCO-Chemical Frankenstein monster of our very desire to see records fall, has smashed the All-Time Home Run record as well as the credibility of the record book itself.

On thing is for sure, the way we look at the records won't ever be the same again, thanks to Barry. He will be a reminder to us all that sometimes our love for what we love can be so blind, we absolutely fuck it up. And for that lesson alone we should thank Barry. It's a painful lesson to swallow.

All the same, is this the end? Ah, ...no.
Or as David St. Hubbins so eloquently states in 'This Is Spinal Tap', "...that would depend on what you mean by 'The End', and that is my question to you."

Hope springs eternal. Go A-Rod!
1. Alex Rodriguez
Projected Career Total: 731
Chances of Hitting 500: 100%
... 600 HR: 85.6%
... 700 HR: 60.7%
... 755 HR: 46.1%
... 782 HR: 29.6%
... 800 HR: 27.5%
... 900 HR: 9.8%

Top Comparables: Robinson, George Brett, Willie Mays, Bonds, Aaron.

You couldn't do much better in terms of comparables if your goal is to break the all-time record. Nevertheless, we have A-Rod as even-money at best to pass Aaron's mark, and a decided underdog to surpass Bonds' eventual total. What gives? Think about all the things that have to go right for a player to hit 755 (or 782) lifetime home runs. He has to stay healthy. He has to resist the temptation of early retirement, even if he already has several lifetime's worth of money in the bank. He has to avoid any sudden declines in performance. He has to not only stay at the top of his game, but keep the particular skill of power hitting intact.

Rodriguez could "devolve" into being Brett, and that still wouldn't be enough momentum to get him past Bonds and Aaron. It all sounds so easy -- if A-Rod heads into 2008 with about 520 lifetime home runs, then all he has to do is average around 30 home runs per season through age 40 to claim the record from Bonds. But remember when everyone assumed that McGwire -- or Sosa, or Griffey -- would challenge the record?

Remember 10 months ago, when many assumed Rodriguez's best days were behind him? A-Rod's right on pace, but he's too far from the finish line to be conceding any records to him; it's inherently dangerous to be predicting that someone will do something that nobody else in history has done. We might have to deal with this Barry guy for longer than you'd think.
Yep. He's our boy.

2007/08/07

My Song Of The Week

Nobody's Looking Now

I don't know where my dark moods come from. They're like that black dog that suddenly lunges at you, but ("Hey-Hey Mama!") a 'Black Dog' is more depression. Maybe it's more like a Black Possum or a Black Wombat. When the black moods overcome you, you sort of spend days thinking there's absolutely no point to anything whatsoever and that the world is a cold, malicious place and people's best intentions look like outright acts of hypocrisy and bloody-mindedness - when clearly in retrospection, they're not.

Is it a mid-life crisis? Again? I've been having those since I was 16. Whatever the case, the best thing to do with these things is to turn them in to art; it doesn't matter if they turn into good ones or bad, just sublimate those moods!

Anyway, I've been working on this number for some weeks now because it's the first new song I've written on guitar since Astronaughty.
So here it is.

Check it out, or get attacked by the black wombats!

2007/08/06

Bomb Day

Look Back in Despair
About the only thing that seems to come of the commemoration of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is this sense that we lucked out in not blowing ourselves up during the Cold War. The impact of the two nuclear bombs was so hideous that it essentially helped stop war in Europe until the recent wars of the Yugoslavian disintegration.

The usual hoary argument that gets trotted out is that the bombs saved lives - Allied soldier lives because the bombs allegedly brought the Japanese decision maker to the peace table. The reality was the Generals were arguing furiously in for of a scorched-earth fight with the allies on the homeland and the Admirals were pointing out that they would be doing it without air-cover. By the time the bomb was announced, they were trying to figure out how to get the surrender message to the Allies.

Now, the Allies were not to know that, but it is incorrect (as in mistaken; as in wrong) to assert the bomb brought about the end of World War II. What it did do was to bring in the Cold War which really did end the process begun in the Napoleonic Wars. It's small comfort for the people of Hiroshima, then or now.
200,000 up in a flash - collateral damage.

2007/08/05

After The Wait

A-Rod Launches No.500

It took him 5 games but the man finally smoked it over the fence. it seemed like it would never happen as all the other guys on the team kept hitting them, but the man finally did what he does best: Smack homers. He became the third Yankee to hit a 500th homerun in pinstripes after Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle. I know he's going to be worth a lot of money, but how can you then walk away from the pinstripes when you paint yourself into their history?
Anyway, we'll see just how mercenary he can get this off-season.

Carving Through The Lesser Circuit
Coming out f the All-Star break, the Yankees had to win at a .700 clip, beating up on teams under .500, to get back into the race by 10 Aug. So far they are 17-7 since the break, which is .708, so you have to say they're doing it by the blueprint. As such they're now 1.5 games behind the Detroit Tigers in the Wild Card Race. The Mariners are ahead by 1 game, but they're actually not looking as good right now.

The real chance they've got this month is that they face the Tigers 6 times, so if they come out ahead there, thy might be able to dispatch the Tigers from the Wild Card race. Of course they must trek out to Anaheim again and that always seems to be a bummer for the Yankees; not to mention a 3 game set with th Bosox. By the end of the month, the Yankees may get the Wild Card lead. Or they may tumble out of contention for the last time this season.

So yeah, they're playing meaningful games in August after a horrendous start to the season.

2007/08/04

Trade Deadline Comes And Goes

On The Wilson Betemit/Scott Proctor Trade


Wilson Betemit hit a homerun in his first plate appearance as Yankee. You gotta like that. :) So belatedly, I'm talking about the Yankees' deadline trade here.
Last year there were rumours that the Yankees were looking to trade Scot Proctor for Wilson Betemit and my response was "do that in a heart beat!" Well, this year, Brian Cashman finally pulled that trigger and sent Scott Proctor back to the Dodgers for Betemit.

There's a piece of analysis on Betemit here.
Betemit's played the equivalent of one full defensive season at third, where he's been exactly average. That doesn't really help the Yankees much, because they have a fairly decent 3B already. However, as the area where's he's seen the most playing time it gives us more data that shows he's a bit better of a defensive player than his career numbers at 2B or SS would indicate.

Betemit was a good pickup who gives the Yankees an option who can play full-time should any one of Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano, or Alex Rodriguez get hurt. He's also a better hitter than Andy Phillips, so he can be used at first base. He hasn't played there yet in his career, but as an infielder he should be able to make the transition fairly well.

According to MLB4u.com, Betemit only had about 2 years of service time entering this year, so he'd be under club control for the next three years. He turns 26 in November, so he still has some potential upside as well.

As for the dearly departed Scott Proctor, he will be missed. He hasn't been great this year, but he's been pretty good, and he was a very important piece last season. His peripherals were all markedly worse this season, as K rate dropped and his BB rate has nearly doubled. He's giving up more fly balls this year and more HRs as a result. The Yankees probably did what they almost never do here, and sold high, while Proctor's perceived value is still pretty high. They'll look to replace him with some combination of Luis Vizcaino, Kyle Farnsworth, Joba Chamberlain, Edwar Ramirez and Chris Britton

At least on paper, this looks like a great trade for Brian Cashman.
I really love the analysis done by the guys at Replacement Level Yankee Weblog. It's a must-read blog for me. Anyway. The reason *I* wanted a trade for Betemit is much dumber than that. In the Sony PS2 baseball games I've owned and played each year, one of the first things I do as Yankee owner is ship out the dead-wood vets for prospects. Betemit's name as a ballyhoo-ed prospect has meant that I've always traded a Tom Gordon or a Farnsworth-less at the start of the season for Betemit and reaped decent rewards for it across his fictional career. Hey, it's cheesy, but true.

That's right. I'm basing my approval of Betemit on the basis that I've done it on the PS2 numerous times and it's always been good. Laugh away! :)
*That* and other things, mind you...
Looking under the hood of Wilson Betemit, prospect, is this history here.

The guys started playing in the Braves system at Age 15! he was in High A 19, and actually got called up by the Braves that year (2001) - where he had 3 ABs, and got a .400 OBP(!)
Okay, LOL, Extreme-Small-Sample-Caveat applies there but you then see him as a 22y.o. and hitting . 170/.230./.170 in 47ABs for the Braves. Of course in 2005, he hit .305/.359/.435 in 246ABs and then .281/.344/.497 for the Braves before he was shipped out to a pitcher's park in LA. In fact the NL West has 3 pretty extreme pitchers park in San Francisco, LA, San Diego so his 174 ABs in L.A. only produced a 241/.306/.437 line.

The point is, his numbers are good.
His peripherals tell an even more interesting story. His BB/K ratio is 0.66 this year, a huge improvement on the 0.35 last year and his career of 0.43. his Isolated power is .259 this year, and while the .231 Average looks bad, his BABIP was .268. If his BABIP regresses to the league mean of around .300, we're looking at a guy who would be a .270/.400/..530 sort of hitter. At age 25.
In fact, the projections by Marcel, Bill James, ZiPS and CHONE all have his BABIP higher than his current .268 to account for his speed. In other words, his upside is that we'd be talking about a .290/.420/.540 kind of player. Unlikely as that is because it's one of those best-case-scenarios, you'd buy that share for the price of a Scott Proctor.

2007/08/02

The Numbers Game

In Pursuit of Greatness


Barry Bonds has been knocking on the door of Homerun immortality with his number stalled at 754. A-Rod has suddenly lost his magic swing as he too has stalled at 499 Homeruns. Tom Glavine has been sitting on 299 Victories for some weeks now.

Then there is Craig Biggio, who is on 285 Hit-By-Pitches, 2 off from equaling the All-Time record. This is The Onion's take on that situation:
Biggio has not been struck by a pitch since July and has stalled at 285, while Hughie Jennings' awe-inspiring, much-revered record—set during a playing career that spanned the decade from 1893 to 1903—seems to be getting further and further out of reach.

"You guys perpetuated this by comparing me to Hughie day in and day out," said a chain-smoking Biggio, showing reporters from over 50 media outlets the bundles of hate mail he has received from baseball fans. "Listen to these people: 'Quit now before you break the hearts of fans everywhere, Craig.' 'Hey Craig Bitch, I'll kill you and your family if you break the record.' 'Jennings did it without an arm guard.' Do you think they had even heard of this guy before you people had my countdown on the front page every day? Jesus Christ!"

"More than anything, I just want to be hit by three more pitches so all of this will go away," said Biggio, who claims he has not slept in weeks and has developed multiple stomach ulcers. "Now I know why Don Baylor quit at 267."

Though Biggio has refrained from comment on what national media outlets have dubbed "The Chase" for the majority of the season, last night's outburst was more than likely a reaction to a special guest editorial in this week's Sports Illustrated. The Tom Verducci-penned piece stated that, no matter what numbers eventually appeared in the "total hit by pitch" column, Jennings and his "magical" 51 hit-batsman season of 1894 could never be dethroned as baseball's all-time hit-by-pitch king.

It gets funnier and better. Do check it out for a hearty laugh.

2007/08/01

Obituaries

Ingmar Bergman Passes Away

What can I say. We all mourn for the passing of a true great.
Ingmar Bergman, the master filmmaker who found bleakness and despair as well as comedy and hope in his indelible explorations of the human condition, died today at his home on the island of Faro, off the Baltic coast of Sweden. He was 89.

His death was announced by the Ingmar Bergman Foundation.

Mr. Bergman was widely considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history. For much of the second half of the 20th century, he stood with directors like Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa at the pinnacle of serious filmmaking.

He moved from the comic romp of lovers in “Smiles of a Summer Night” in 1955 to the Crusader’s death-haunted search for God in “The Seventh Seal” in 1957; from the harrowing portrayal of fatal illness in “Cries and Whispers” in 1972 to the alternately humorous and horrifying depiction of family life a decade later in “Fanny and Alexander.”

Mr. Bergman dealt with pain and torment, desire and religion, evil and love. In his films, “this world is a place where faith is tenuous; communication, elusive; and self-knowledge, illusory at best,” Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times Magazine in a 1983 profile of the director. God is either silent or malevolent; men and women are creatures and prisoners of their desires.

For many filmgoers and critics, it was Mr. Bergman more than any other director who brought a new seriousness to filmmaking in the 1950s.

“Bergman was the first to bring metaphysics — religion, death, existentialism — to the screen,” Bertrand Tavernier, the French film director, said. “But the best of Bergman is the way he speaks of women, of the relationship between men and women. He’s like a miner digging in search of purity.”

He influenced many other filmmakers, including Woody Allen, who once called Mr. Bergman “probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera.”

Mr. Bergman made about 50 films over more than 40 years. He centered his work on two great themes — the relationship between the sexes and the relationship between mankind and God. Mr. Bergman found in film, he wrote in a 1965 essay, “a language that literally is spoken from soul to soul in expressions that, almost sensuously, escape the restrictive control of the intellect.”

In a Bergman film, the mind is constantly seeking, constantly inquiring, constantly puzzled.

Mr. Bergman often acknowledged that his work was autobiographical, but only “in the way a dream transforms experience and emotions all the time.”
Way back when, when I was in the last days of being a largely unsuccessful medical student, I was dragged out to see a couple of art house films. One of them was 'Last Year In Marienbad' which left quite an impression, but the other was a more insidious mind-warp of a film called 'The Ritual', which was by Ingmar Bergman. I guess it was one of those nights that auger for one's future because by the same time next year I was studying film production at North Sydney TAFE.

During that time I would hang out a lot at Jeronimus' place and watch late-night films on SBS and of course one of the films I watched was 'The Virgin Spring' which s based on a Swedish saga. I kind of digested it without thinking about it too much, but of course, the key symbolism of the Crow and Odin and the pagan stuff stayed in my head. When I went to apply to the Australian Film Television and Radio School and got an interview, they showed me the first 10minutes of 'The Virgin Spring' and asked me to analyse it. Of course, being a bit of a Norse Saga buff as well as a Bergman buff I was able to bullshit my way into convincing them I knew *all about it*, which is always what you want to do in interviews.
So in a sense Bergman and his films not only pointed me towards Film, he helped me walk right into AFTRS.

At Film School, I read 'Bergman on Bergman', which was probably the most important interview book I read with regards to directing. In it he is asked about semiotic theory and how it applies to his films and he dismisses it quite harshly. In the interview he says the theory means nothing to him and bears no relationship to film-making. It wwas clear that Bergman wanted to draw a definite line between critical thought/practice and film-making thought/practice. Being in an institution that constantly wanted to blur the one into the other, it was the most revealing exchange. To this day, I value critical theory, but I have directed with full knowledge that directing theory is another thing altogether. And for that I thank Ingmar Bergman.

Even if weren't for any of that, then there is this image from 'The Seventh Seal' which we will always have:

Max Von Sydow playing chess with death in an attempt to prolong his life, and see out his journey home. The image reaches out to us from the recesses of Medieval consciousness. This isn't a showy explanation like 'Name of The Rose', this is the image itself, made to move. The rawness of that formation is still there when I see it, even with the symmetrical formal composition, the image bleeds with a passion rarely seen in cinema these days.

Michelangelo Antonioni Passes Away Too

Not to be outdone, the equally monolithic art-house director of the 1960s, Michelangelo Antonioni has died.
Tall, cerebral and serious, Mr. Antonioni, like Mr. Bergman, rose to prominence at a time, in midcentury, when filmgoing was an intellectual pursuit, when purposely opaque passages in famously difficult films set off long nights of smoky argument at sidewalk cafes, and when fashionable directors like Mr. Antonioni, Alain Resnais and Jean-Luc Godard were chased down the Cannes waterfront by camera-wielding cinephiles demanding to know what on earth they meant by their latest outrage.

Mr. Antonioni is probably best known for “Blowup,” a 1966 drama set in swinging London about a fashion photographer who comes to believe that a picture he took of two lovers in a public park also shows, obscured in the background, evidence of a murder.

But Mr. Antonioni’s lasting contribution to film came earlier, in “L’Avventura” (1960), “La Notte” (1961) and “L’Eclisse” (1962), a trilogy that explored his tormented central vision that people had become emotionally unglued from one another.

It was a vision expressed near the end of “La Notte,” when his frequent star Monica Vitti observes, “Each time I have tried to communicate with someone, love has disappeared.”

In a generation of rule breakers, Mr. Antonioni was one of the most subversive and venerated. He challenged moviegoers with an intense focus on intentionally vague characters and a disdain for conventions like plot, pacing and clarity. He raised questions and never answered them, had his characters act in self-destructive ways and failed to explain why, and sometimes kept the camera rolling after a take in the hope of catching the actors in an unscripted but revealing moment.

It was all part of his design. As he explained, “The after-effects of an emotion scene, it had occurred to me, might have meaning, too, both on the actor and on the psychological advancement of the character.”
Until VHS came along, one of the hardest films to get to see was 'Zabriskie Point'. I didn't get to see it until I was actually a student at AFTRS. I still can't tell you for certain what it was about except it featured music by Pink Floyd, which was the original motivation to watch the damned thing.

These idiosyncratic directors like Antonioni, Resnais, Godard have left a legacy of the enigmatic Art House film, and the sad part is that because of the way the film industry is now structured , we may never see such things again.
Or perhaps not? Certainly there is great scope and promise in digital cameras - but as we are finding out each day the means of distribution has replaced the meas of production as the big bottleneck for films to reach out to the world.

The films of Antonioni promise agreat deal of potential in cinema itself. Films being films, motion pictures is given a great sense of meaning in his films such as 'Blow Up'. Sometimes you would see his shots and wonder what the hell was going on on set. Other times, you would be struck by the sublime quality of the shot or performance. It's still a mixed-bag of experiences when I reflect upon his films, but one thing is clear. They are totally unlike the completely stage-managed experiences provided by the cinema today.

At the ed of all this reflection I can only say that Antonioni looms larger today than he did 15-20 years ago, partly because there are so many munchkins posing as giants in the cinema today. All in all, his was a most mysterious, perplexing, challenging body of work.

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