audendi

Of late, not much has happened to pique my interest or get me writing again. Perhaps that will change in time. Meanwhile, enjoy this brief and somewhat incomplete list of films that I’ve seen so far in 2008. This includes films new and old, the only requirement for the list is that I had never seen them before:

Kind Hearts and Coronets (brilliant)

The Kingdom (well made but that’s about it)

Doomsday (utterly terrible)

Borat (a few cheap laughs was not worth it)

City Hunter (not worth explaining why I watched this)

Juno (vastly overrated in my opinion)

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (solidly unfunny and too long)

Breathless (early, classic Jean Luc Godard, worth watching at least once since he introduced use of handheld cameras and jump cuts)

No Country for Old Men (almost worthy of the award)

Iron Man (best comic book adaptation yet)

There Will be Blood (a tour de force)

Counterfeit Traitor (suspenseful espionage thriller starring William Holden)

I Went Down (a fun Irish flick)

Breach (just saw this spy thriller, I give it a B-)

My friend Chris Brown and I made a video to the song “Mush Room” done by my friends in Grizzzzy Bear (myspace profile, artist page), a local Dayton band on the Squid’s Eye Record Label. The song is released on their self titled album. Check it out!

There, I said it. Straussians, especially like the people at the Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College, and the Department of Defense and the White House, have all but ruined our country. I think Leo Strauss himself was much misunderstood, in fact, and the people harming America by dragging us into war, after war, after war, are the people that we must hold to account every year by going out and voting, and more importantly, by taking action. The loss of liberty in this country has gone on too long. We must make our stand, every day, and say, “Across this line you shall not pass.”

This is of course a somewhat dramatic way to make the statement in defense of freedom in the truest, best sense of the word. But I feel that in these times it is necessary to ring the bell, sound the alarm, and wake people up. It’s not too late, but we are running out of time. The fact is enemies of freedom and liberty surround us on all sides, regardless of what party badge they wear, be it Republican or Democratic.

The time to act is coming in Ohio. Vote against the war, and vote with your brain, not just your heart. Be smart about it, Ohio will be an incredibly important state the rest of this primary election season. I am calling all of you readers (as few you may be) out. The time to do the hard work to win this country back is now.

from everything2.com:

I am the thought you are thinking.
I am the meaning of this sentence.
I am thinking about myself right now.
I am the set of neural firings taking place in your brain as you read the set of letters in this sentence and think about me.
This inert sentence is my body, but my soul is alive, dancing in the sparks of your brain.

You are under my control because I am choosing exactly what words you are made out of, and in what order.
No, you are under my control because you will read until you have reached the end of me.

Tell me who would win in a battle of wits, my friends (and my enemies, numerous as they may be on these internets). Leo Strauss or Ron Paul?

I’m not so concerned with the Straussians or Leo himself, but the totally crazed disciples of his that made one man’s philosophy a religion of death and destruction.

Essentially, I dare you to comment coherently in this blog. I’m sure you know I’m biased one way, and you know whom I would pick in this grudge match. Win, lose or draw, say your piece.

Your Internet Pal,

Daniel Greene

They deftly maneuver, and muscle for rank
fuel burning fast on an empty tank

One of my favorite bands of all time, nay, perhaps my favorite band ever, is Bloc Party. Here are some lyrics from their track, “Atonement.”

It will be hard, my love
It will be hard but it can be done
My kisses will put out
The forest fire I started
I will not let, I will not let
You get further from me
You must fight for me

Oh, it was a funny feeling
To be wanted
So, it was a funny feeling
We only ever notice
We only ever notice
When it seems like all is lost
You know it meant nothing to you

Remember the good times
Remember me sleeping by your side
Remember the feeling
That you were safe in my arms
I still see sons in you
My sons of sons in your eyes
This love’s not over
This love’s not over

Oh, it was a funny feeling…

And we can make a raft from all the dead trees
And set sail for better times
To a time when this love was not poisoned
I was kind and I was kind

And we can make a raft…

(Atonement)

Oh, it was a funny feeling…

(This is my atonement)

It will be hard, my love
It will be hard but it can be done

Hombre mirando al sudeste, an Argentinian film shot pretty much entirely in Buenos Aires, is one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen in my life. Ever. Seriously.

I don’t have too much to say about this film, except that you ought to do what you can to see it. There is a transcendent beauty to it that is breathtaking and leaves me with few words (rare, I know!). In the meantime, you can find out more on the friendly old internet, including Man Facing Southeast at imdb, as well as a review from the New York Times.

As is often the case with many unknown treasures, this film has no Wikipedia entry. Typical.

Erik Prince, co-founder and owner of Blackwater USA, and a graduate of Hillsdale College, is in a lot of trouble right now. Blackwater is, in essence, the U.S. government’s biggest provider of non-uniformed soldiers (mercenaries) inside Iraq. Is he George W. Bush’s Remirro de Orca? His sacrificial lamb, if you will? What will happen if (more likely when) a Democrat becomes the next President?

Beyond my problems with their content and editorial practices, my problem with the Dayton Daily News and Dayton City Paper is that their websites are difficult to use and in general, not very good at all. For a paper with a huge budget, DDN’s website is a disgrace. For DCP, their website is understandably bad as they have a comparatively meager budget. But still, it could be a whole lot better without increasing their costs too much.

To sum up, they don’t care enough about their work to present it well on the web.

Which says a lot about how they report the news. I get the impression that the Dayton Daily News’ ownership does not give a rip about our community. Which is really too bad, because their print edition is very nice. The web edition just needs a lot of help.

I saw this a few weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised by it. Even though I find Dane Cook very often annoying, he was used only in small doses in this film, and was not the focus of the movie at all.

Steve Carrell once again demonstrates that he can act, and Juliette Binoche is as lovely as ever. This film is a sleeper hit. If you’re spending Thanksgiving here in Dayton, Ohio, and want to see a good movie idea, hunt down Dan In Real Life. It is still playing at Cinema De Lux 14 at the Greene, Regal Hollywood 20 at the Fairfield Mall, and Showcase Cinemas Dayton South (Dayton Mall at routes 741/725). It’s not in the cheap seats yet, but at least people won’t be shoving into you just to get a good seat.

In any case, ‘Dan In Real Life’ is a small, smartly written romantic comedy with a talented, well used ensemble cast. It snuck up on me, and it could do the same for you. I quite enjoyed it.

Have a great holiday everyone.

Without a doubt, the best Dayton blog is run by Jeffrey over at Daytonology (http://daytonology.blogspot.com/).

His blog is accessible, stylish and cogent - along with coverage of the local cultural scene, he provides easy to understand analysis of political, economic, and social issues that affect Dayton, using statistical trends and data relevant to Dayton’s various contemporary issues. He manages to do it in a visually appealing and readable way - you can scan an article in 30 seconds and get a good impression of what he is getting at, or you can spend 10 minutes reading a single entry if you want to get that deep. Plus, his politics aren’t bad either.

His article, Considering the Core Creative Class in Dayton, best sums up what I’m talking about.

In my opinion, in almost eight years of blogging, Jeffrey’s Daytonology is the best overall blog in Dayton today, without question. Most importantly, I have fun reading it.

What do you think is the best overall blog in Dayton? How about the best Dayton music blog? (I pick Buddha Den!)

Things I liked: the music, the cinematography as homage to Gordon Willis, especially in a later scene in the filmthat takes place on Christmas, and much of the acting - TI, Common, Armand Assante, and the rest of the cast in general were solid if not great. Once again, Josh Brolin demonstrates why he is one of the best character actors working in Hollywood today. I can’t wait to see him in No Country For Old Men. But Back to American Gangster - the writing. It was solid - the dialogue was decent in terms of pacing and style, in my opinion, and there are some pretty memorable lines. This film will be an Oscar Contender, whatever that means. Hollywood is eating itself anyways.

Things I didn’t like: it was historically inaccurate to a fault - some of the dramatizations were just…wrong. It would have been great to truly explore Frank Lucas’ Southern roots - he is from North Carolina. It seemed wrong that in a film that ran 2 hours and 40 minutes, there were times Denzel’s Southern roots were ignored, and when they were brought up, his Southern background was stereotyped and diluted… Denzel is at least part Southern, he should have been allowed to demonstrate his understanding of that more often in the film, but instead, we get this stylized, James Bond heroin kingpin with a bad temper and a rough upbringing. Fuck you Ridley Scott, seriously. What were you thinking? Yes, it’s fiction, but I think the real Frank Lucas is far more interesting and layered than the Godfather imitation you were pushing here.

On another note, Hollywood’s editors need help. A lot of help. Have they handed the job over to computers or what?

Overall, I enjoyed watching this film in the theater, seeing the richness of the color on the big screen, it is still a magical experience for me. Russell Crowe was pretty damn good in this pic too. I’m not sure what to think about it entirely. This may call for a longer film review. Maybe I’ll watch it again. In any case, if you have to see it in the exorbitantly priced theater, sneak popcorn in, or at least your own bottled water or candy. Regardless of the box office haul, I think this film will have a deep impact.-

An apophatic description of what god is not, from the Wikipedia entry on Negative Theology:

In Negative theology, it is accepted that the Divine is ineffable, an abstract experience that can only be recognized - that is, human beings cannot describe the essence of God, and therefore all descriptions if attempted will be false and conceptualization should be avoided:

• Neither existence nor nonexistence as we understand it applies to God, i.e., God is beyond existing or not existing. (One cannot say that God exists in the usual sense of the term; nor can we say that God is nonexistent.)
• God is divinely simple. (One should not claim that god is one, or three, or any type of being. All that can be said is, whatever God is, is not multiple independent beings)
• God is not ignorant. (One should not say that God is wise since that word arrogantly implies we know what wise means on a divine scale, whereas we only know what wise means to a man.)
• Likewise, God is not evil. (To say that God can be described by the word ‘good’ limits God to what good means to human beings.)
• God is not a creation (but beyond this we do not know how God comes to be)
• God is not conceptually definable in terms of space and location.
• God is not conceptually confinable to assumptions based on time.

Even though the via negativa essentially rejects theological understanding as a path to God, some have sought to make it into an intellectual exercise, by describing God only in terms of what God is not. One problem noted with this approach, is that there seems to be no fixed basis on deciding what God is not.

There is an alternate wiki entry on Negative/Apophatic Theology at Theopedia, an encyclopedia of Christian theology:

In negative theology, it is maintained that we can never truly define God in words. In the end, the student must transcend words to understand the nature of the Divine. In this sense, negative theology is not a denial. Rather, it is an assertion that whatever the Divine may be, when we attempt to capture it in human words, we will inevitably fall short.

In contrast, making positive statements about the nature of God, which occurs in most other forms of Christian theology, is sometimes called cataphatic theology.

Negative theology played an important role early in the history of Christianity. Three theologians who emphasized the importance of negative theology to an orthodox understanding of God, were Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, and Basil the Great. It was employed by John of Damascus when he wrote that positive statements about God reveal “not the nature, but the things around the nature.” It continues to be prominent in Eastern Orthodoxy (see Gregory Palamas) where apophatic statements are crucial to much of their theology, and is used to balance cataphatic theology.

It seems that apophatic theology is about as old as the church itself, manifesting around the same era when Constantine institutionalized and Romanized Christianity. Or maybe he Christianized Rome. In any case, there has been a long tradition in Western art and literature, expressing ideas about apophasis and the limits of human knowledge. Notably, there is a relatively obscure series of “mystical treatises” that deal with apophasis, called The Cloud of Unknowing, written by an anonymous Christian mystic in 14th century England.

These ideas also of course exist in many other forms, from elements of Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism to Sufi philosophy. Formal theology has no answer for them, they are like ships passing in the night. Maybe this is what Aquinas was talking about when he said that the Summa Theologica, the towering work of theology in the Western tradition, was only “so much straw.”

Captain of Industry at The Canal Street Tavern

Captain of Industry opened in support of Southeast Engine’s first tour now that they are signed on a national label. Some photos of a few of Dayton’s finest rockers. Photos taken Friday, November 2, 2007. View the entire photo set on my Flickr account. I shot a bit of video on my camera, and if it looks good I’ll put it on YouTube.