tumbly.

It’s very pretty,” a statement that is to art as using “bring” when you mean “take” is to the beauty of language.

Renée, p. 199 The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery

Hee.

“Every object, however near the eye, has something about it which you cannot see, and which brings the mystery of distance even into every part and portion of what we suppose ourselves to see most distinctly.”

from Modern Painters I, John Ruskin

20 minutes later, I came across the following in The Elegance of the Hedgehog:

Some people are incapable of perceiving in the object of their contemplation the very thing that gives it its intrinsic life and breath…

Okay, I know all those words, but in that order, they make my head fizz.

Sars responding Stephen King’s comparison of AC/DC and…William Faulkner in Anti-Word Of The Day: “rave-up”. Hee.

The explicit and implicit messages, though, occupied the slippery slope between realpolitik and genocide. [Lincoln] had recently shown that as the vehicle of his people he was pledged to affirm the national will by military force.

p. 344, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, Fred Kaplan

I like the look of the word “realpolitik”
The wildly different perception and proposed treatment of slaves vs. Indians (put down mostly to Lincoln’s personal/familial history and participation in wars with the Indians) is the most frustrating thing about this book (and era).

Blah blah modern-sensibility-cakes, but come on! It’s gross.

The Racist Breeding Grounds of Harvard Law School

Hold your fists of rage for a second.

In the comments, I found this:

How to Tell People They Sound Racist

“Because the ‘what they are’ conversation is a rhetorical Bermuda triangle, where everything drowns in a sea of empty posturing until somebody just blames it all on hip-hop and we forget the whole thing ever happened.”

Love it.

Okay, fists of rage: go.

When [the A-10] fires, it makes a ripping sound like someone is tearing the sky in half.

Evan Wright, The Killer Elite, Part Two

Everything about Southland is well-done. The everyday, the dealing-with-shit, even chasing bad guys, none of it is tarted up, we’re not told what to think of it. It shows, it doesn’t tell.

The way they cleared that house this week? Kudos to them! It was slow, deliberate, and very quiet.

And Michael Cudlitz’s Cooper cracks me up. “I’m not an addict. I’m not one of these people like your mother’s friends up in Beverly Hills with their ennui, and their Vicodin, and their white wine.”

Ennui! White w(h)ine! So. Good.

[Ouroussof] raises the specter of nostalgia only to demolish it, a one-paragraph tempest.

Why Nicolai Ouroussoff is Not Good Enough, Alexandra Lange for Design Observer (via John)

“A one-paragraph tempest”! Come on, you guys; that’s great.

Mr. DiCaprio, having grown perhaps overly fond of his accent from “The Departed,” brings it along for the ride, and it spreads through the movie like a contagious disease. Teddy’s partner (pahtnah), Chuck Aule, played by Mark (Mahk) Ruffalo, is supposed to be from the Pacific Northwest but he seems to have left all his R’s back in Seattle.

All at Sea, Surrounded by Red Herrings, A.O. Scott, NYTimes

Cracking up over here. My favorite part of the review might be “Something TERRIBLE is afoot.” You and I both know all-caps like that is a set-up and he follows through quite well.

And then Fanny cuts her hair off and walks the heath, in the snow, reciting a Keats poem and weeping. Campion could have saved that bit by cutting to credits after the affecting wide shot of Fanny crossing a lea and her teenage brother dutifully trailing her, but she didn’t, so the movie squanders its promising beginning with a conclusion straight out of a term paper.

Bright Star « Tomato Nation

Yes, that. Straight to credits would have, for me, made the too long, too heavy scenes…worth it? Less noticeable at the very least. Fanny reading his work is something we already know she does: that groundwork’s been laid; on the heels of his death, she’s sure to continue but we don’t need to see it.

…you can’t just say, ‘Oh, I can’t work, I’ve got to go and cook a meal.’ You have no choice but to address the demons.

Sade re: writing “Soldier of Love” with the band in the studio. (via goldenfiddlr)

So good (go listen). Looking forward to getting the album.

What color were dinosaurs? Well, at least one of them had a feathered mohawk tail in a subdued palette of chestnut and white stripes.

Study Offers Insight Into Dinosaur Colors

THAT is an intro paragraph. (:

Jack Bauer will want to return for another season of 24 just so he can download schematics and track vehicles on it. Bond will have one. Jason Bourne will have one. Some character, in a Tron like way, might even be trapped in one.

Stephen Fry, iPad About.

I would like to know how it feels for my desperation to get louder.

Bill Withers (“Still Bill” trailer) after reciting the Thoreau quote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

I kept thinking, how am I going to produce a human being who has arguably the greatest single idea that any human being has ever had? And I slowly realized I couldn’t. Because he was the grandfather of evolution and I’m an actor. But I do know about loss and madness. Those are the things I share in common with Charles Darwin. I know what it feels like to lose people.

Paul Bettany (Hero Complex: ‘Legion’ Star Paul Bettany raids the mini-bar.)

That.

tumbly. by dotsara!