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Weekend Film Recommendation: The Charmer

February 8, 2019 By Keith Humphreys @KeithNHumphreys 2 Comments

The movies have been good to British novelist and playwright Patrick Hamilton (1904-1962), who might otherwise not be remembered at all even though he produced some good work and claimed some significant admirers before depression and heavy drinking dissipated his gifts. Hitchcock’s Rope, two versions of Gaslight, and Hangover Square all remain eminently watchable today. But instead I am going to recommend what I believe is the most recent adaptation of Hamilton’s work, the six-part 1987 television mini-series The Charmer.

The plot: In 1930s Britain, Ralph Gorse is a suave chancer who desperately wants a life of upper class ease, but has no interest in working honestly for it. Better to use his charm, wits, and ruthlessness to secure wealth and status. If some people — particularly women — are harmed or even killed along the way, so be it. Posing as a worldly ex-army officer with connections to high finance, he enchants and then mulcts Joan Plumleigh-Bruce (Rosemary Leach) an older, lonely, widow of means. This act enrages stolid businessman Donald Stimpson (Bernard Hepton) who had long been hoping for Joan to notice him. Even before Gorse has dumped Joan, he begins pursuing an upper class sexpot he actually cares about (Fiona Fullerton, at her pouty best) as well as some other women that he really doesn’t. As Gorse does increasingly horrible things to serve his sociopathic wants, Stimpson mercilessly follows his track, all the while frustrated that Gorse’s female victims continue to pine for him.

Women viewers swooned over the handsome Nigel Havers when this series was broadcast. Havers carries off Gorse’s aristocratic pretensions well, which is not surprising given that the actor is from a very posh background himself. The other elements of his performance are serviceable, but not in the league of the other leads. The late Rosemary Leach brings Plumleigh-Bruce alive as a woman caught between what her heart and head tell her about Gorse. She gives Joan an underlying strength such that even when she is conned and humiliated, she manages to retain some dignity. Bernard Hepton is just as good at slyly revealing Stimpson’s fundamental self-deception: He isn’t really a noble crusader, he’s just jealous as hell that Gorse gets all the things he himself yearns for but will never have.

The production mostly stays indoors, I presume out of need to recreate the period on a television mini-series budget. Those sets feel authentic, as do the clothes, cars, and music. I had not heard of Director Alan Gibson before, who sadly died young just after making this series, but his work here is solid. Finally, Alan Prior’s script is well-turned, even though he changed the ending in the source novel (Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse). If you want to know what that change was, read on.

SPOILER ALERT STOP HERE IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE ENDING

In the book, rather than getting dumped by Joan Plumleigh-Bruce at the end as in the television series, Stimpson dumps her and runs off with her housemaid. Because that fits with my read of Stimpson as a much worse person than he sees himself as being, I prefer the book ending. At the same time, Leach really nailed the ending in the series, so it has its own pleasures.

Filed Under: Film

Why you can skip the SOTU

February 5, 2019 By Michael O'Hare 14 Comments

The word considerable does not mean what most people think it does. It means “needing or deserving of consideration” , not “big”  or “a lot” .  It means what everything Donald Trump says is not, and tonight’s speech (and the post-speech tweets and flailing about by flacks and shills that will follow) will be more proof: Trump’s discourse is not considerable and should just be ignored as such. 

One significance of the Jewish ceremony of Bar Mitzvah is that the principal is now responsible for what he says: when an adult says he will do something, the odds that he will should go up, and in general people can depend on that and make corresponding commitments. What Trump says he will do has no such significance: his statements of intent are vacuous and ephemeral, as Mitch McConnell and the dozens people he has stiffed in business can attest.

When grownups assert facts about the world, the assertion has some bearing on what you should believe, though of course some are better informed than others or smarter.  When Trump says practically anything, his relentless, terrier-like, purposeful ignorance means it has no informative value whatever, whether he’s noodling about climate, Iran, the border, or trade data.

A third kind of discourse enlightens us about the speaker’s values: “I’m a Christian” is shorthand for a bunch of actions in the world one can expect the speaker to try to perform or not.  Trump’s value statements are as vacuous, and as labile—whether odious or decent–as his fact discourse. 

It’s not just a matter of mendacity, though his endless, insouciant lying about big things and small have a lot to do with this. He doesn’t misrepresent his values; he just doesn’t have any (except his own ego). If there were money to made from it, and he had permission from Laura Ingraham and Putin, he would as readily get on a climate alarm jag as he does about immigrants.

All of which has been a paralyzing problem for all of us and especially for the press.  Deference to his office, and long journalistic tradition, seems to require that when the president says “A is B”, the fact that he said it requires reporting, perhaps with a quote from another source who says “no, it’s not!” But when this president says absolutely anything, the event is not like any other president, or any other important public official saying something.  It has no bearing on anyone’s belief, on what he will do in the future, or on our views of him: it’s not considerable. It’s like a horserace prediction based on a dice roll. We’ve had two years of our press trying to treat Trump’s discourse as the utterances of a responsible, more-or-less-informed, responsible adult: it’s time to stop. The word lie is, thankfully, starting to be used to characterize his mendacities, but why tell us about something that will be inoperative or a passing fancy by the next news cycle?  We need a completely new convention, recognizing that the presidential utterance process has been replaced with an inconsequential–not considerable—model, and treating it like the “speech” of a parrot or random artificial speech generator.

Not considerable: how to listen to tonight’s speech, or why you can just ignore it.

Filed Under: Domestic Politics, Journalism, Language, President Trump

Weekend Film Recommendation: Bullitt

February 1, 2019 By Keith Humphreys @KeithNHumphreys 3 Comments

In 1967, a then-unknown British director named Peter Yates helmed a taut crime caper that included a hair-rising car chase. The movie, Robbery (RBC Recommendation here), didn’t do much business in the United States, but did come to the attention of the right person: Steve McQueen. After an incredible run of hits in the 1960s, McQueen had the money and influence to start his own production company (Solar Productions) and he was looking for the right project to launch it in partnership with Warner Brothers. He had an excellent script in hand by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner, and when he saw Robbery, he knew he had his director. The result was this week’s film recommendation: Bullitt.

The plot: Politically ambitious District Attorney Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn) has secured devastating legal testimony from a stool pigeon witness for an upcoming trial against the bosses of organized crime. Chalmers charges the San Francisco Police, in the person of Lt. Frank Bullitt (McQueen), to protect the witness, but things go terribly awry. Bullitt has to crack the case while simultaneously stopping Chalmers from ruining him.

The first time through, of course what stays with most people about this film is the legendary high-speed car chase through the streets of San Francisco. If you watch carefully, you will notice how cleverly and economically the sequence was filmed. The slow-driving green VW bug that keeps appearing is the tip-off: The same incredible driving stunt was filmed from many different angles and then seamlessly edited by Oscar winner Frank Keller to look like an entire series of death-defying maneuvers. And it certainly didn’t hurt this jaw-dropping 11 minutes of cinema that superstar cinematographer William Fraker was willing to be strapped to the outside of the car to take incredible hand-held camera shots!

But this movie has much more to offer than that unforgettable sequence. Steve McQueen is magnetic in one of his very best roles (the completely original Junior Bonner, which Solar Productions made later, is my other favorite). It’s a testament to McQueen’s presence that he could play a sweater wearing cop with short hair during The Summer of Love and still come across as the coolest of cats (The film gave him some help by making every bad guy look like a 1950s dad). McQueen didn’t have the range to be called a great actor, but he was a great movie star and the part of Frank Bullitt was right in his sweet spot. He is a man detached. With loud, free and colorful 1968 San Francisco all around him he is quiet, controlled and dark. Bullitt has closed himself off emotionally to cope with the horrible things he sees as a police officer. As a result he is almost completely alone in the world (In this sense, the character is not unlike McQueen himself).

Yates also draws strong performances from the rest of the cast in parts large and small. Robert Vaughn does some of his very best work here, almost seeming to compete with McQueen over who can underplay his part more. Jacqueline Bisset, in addition to being easy on the eyes, delivers the goods in her dramatic scenes as the one person to whom Bullitt is willing to be somewhat vulnerable.  Lalo Shifrin’s jazzy score is another major asset of the film.

Bullitt works as a detective story, as an action film, and as a character study all at once. And it holds up very well under repeated viewings, so even if you’ve seen it before you can treat yourself again to a classic piece of American cinema.

p.s. This would make a good double feature with another prior RBC recommendation from the same period that demonstrate how American crime films were fundamentally changing in terms of how they portrayed graphic violence, and, how they staged and edited action sequences: Bonnie and Clyde.

Filed Under: Film

An aspirational goal for teaching (more music)

January 29, 2019 By Michael O'Hare 6 Comments

Andy Narell frequently plays and teaches with young people. Here he is visiting with the UNT steel band, playing with their admirable jazz ensemble. Everyone here is making music at a high level, but compare the affect–expressions, body language, everything–of the kids on the left side of the screen (who are actually wearing uniforms, symbols of identity suppression and servility) with those on the right (who are not). Which would you like your students to display?

How do we make this happen in, say, a statistics class?

Filed Under: Art, Education, Learning, Music, Students Around The World, The Arts

Cannabis News Round-Up

January 27, 2019 By Daniel Harvester Leave a Comment

Weed delivery officially legal in California. Marijuana is legal in California. So why is the California Highway Patrol arresting delivery drivers? Legalization of marijuana off to sluggish start in Sonoma County, California. Weedmaps’ grip on the high-flying California pot market.

Marijuana taxes are exceeding revenue projections in most states.

New Illinois governor touts legal marijuana, but will he remove roadblocks to expand medical pot? Illinois, there are red flags on legalizing recreational pot. Groups urge Illinois lawmakers not to legalize recreational marijuana. Cook County, Illinois prosecutor supports marijuana legalization, will expunge misdemeanor convictions. What does Michigan legalization of recreational marijuana mean for drug-sniffing dogs?

South Carolina officials call marijuana ‘addictive, dangerous’ in push to prevent legalization. Latest bill to legalize New Mexico marijuana gains momentum. West Virginia cannabis moving toward legalization, legitimization.

Oregon Democrats top recipient of 2018 marijuana industry money, study finds. Alaska governor picks shake up board regulating marijuana.

New York college to offer classes on growing marijuana. Jefferson County, New York seems unlikely to ban sales of recreational marijuana for now. Chautauqua County, New York fights against the legalization of marijuana. Long Island municipalities ponder marijuana opt-out. Legalize recreational marijuana in New York, but answer these questions first. Bloomberg: Trying to legalize New York marijuana is “perhaps the stupidest thing anybody has ever done”.

New Jersey marijuana legalization: Promises about legal weed benefits are false. Critics urge New Jersey to pump brakes on increasing access to marijuana. New Jersey Certified Public Accountants split on legal marijuana. New Jersey marijuana legalization: Is decriminalization a better option? Washington DC mayor considers how to legalize marijuana sales in light of Congress’ block. Councilman wants voters to decide whether Philadelphia legalizes recreational marijuana usage. Pennsylvania governor announces town hall sessions on legalizing marijuana.

Rhode Island governor to propose marijuana legalization as neighboring states launch programs. Connecticut legislators have introduced the first legal marijuana bill of 2019. Here’s what it would do. Five reasons some in Connecticut are saying “no” to legal marijuana. Vermont governor shares thoughts on legalizing marijuana. Maine marijuana legalization timeline goes up in smoke.

Nebraska Attorney General says marijuana industry behind legalization effort. Poll shows Wisconsin majority in favor of marijuana legalization.
Wisconsin should speed up legalization of marijuana. Minnesota legislators begin pushing marijuana legalization measures.

Veterans look to Congress for legal cannabis. Young people in liberal states use more cannabis, but have lower rates of dependence.As marijuana legalization expands, the NFL clings to prohibition. For now. Joe Montana joins investment in legal marijuana operator. Why 2019 could be marijuana’s biggest year yet.

Trump’s Attorney General nominee may shift policy on marijuana enforcement. The dangers of health and safety: Marijuana legalization as frontier capitalism. Does marijuana use really cause psychotic disorders? A state-run bank for marijuana money? Not so fast. The pitfalls of weed legalization.

Legal Canada marijuana sales top $40m in first month. Lawmakers in Portugal debate two marijuana legalization bills.

Filed Under: Everything Else

Learning about pedagogy from art and kids

January 27, 2019 By Michael O'Hare 2 Comments

A few weeks ago, surfing around on YouTube, I came upon a video of a performance by the Sant Andreu Jazz Band, or maybe a small group drawn from it. Following it to other posts down the right side of the screen, I was hooked in ten minutes and didn’t surface for at least a couple of hours. This operation is an orchestra of six- [sic] to sixteen–year-olds, based in a music school in Barcelona and led by Joan Chamorro, who seems to be some kind of genius, or prophet. Listen for yourself; search YouTube for Chamorro or Sant Andreu. They have several CDs on Spotify, but watching their faces and body language is half the experience. I’m plugging this operation because I think it embodies value way beyond the performances.

It’s not your ordinary youth band, or even a jazz version of El Sistema [see below for more on this]. These kids don’t play like kids in organized programs, who often have amazing technical chops but tend to play the notes on the page without a lot of insight or musicality, let alone attend to each other the way jazz musicians do. They are obviously having a great time, and they swing, with none of the “frozen in aspic” quality of, say, early Stephanie Trick or the Lincoln Center Jazz Museum Orchestra. The band has generated a couple of soloists who have agendas and gigs (like Andrea Motis) and who also seem to play more than one instrument, and sing. Finally, girls are up front and central to the performances; they sing, but also play frontline, and solo on sax, trumpet, bass, etc.

They also play a lot of different kinds of music; straight-ahead pre-bebop, dixieland, and even Brazilian and jazz manouche. International jazz stars join them on stage. There is a documentary (PAL, so you can’t play it on a US TV, but it works fine on a computer) that is charming and illuminating, with look-ins to Chamorro’s pedagogy. Along the way, we get unexpected look-ins, like a trumpet player who appears to be about eight disassembling and cleaning her instrument, and all the kids splashing around in a swimming pool like, um, kids.

The most interesting aspect of the program is that Chamorro has the students pick up instruments and play before they get into notation, theory, transcription, solfege, etc., and they listen to a lot of recorded jazz. This way the musical machinery becomes solutions to problems the students have (or, better, tools with which to seize opportunities: jazz is an improvisatory form) rather than a new bunch of problems they don’t want.

So in addition to enjoying some great listening, I think I’m onto a source of insight–and, importantly, demonstrated efficacy–about teaching and learning. Theory C teaching is nothing new in the arts. Apprentice painters may have begun by grinding colors for their teacher, but that didn’t mean they learned anything useful about painting from the task; that was tuition payment, along with sweeping out the studio and making coffee. Art teaching has always been Theory C (for coaching), with three standard steps: (1) Assign students a task somewhat beyond their abilities (2) Students do the task (3) Everyone discusses what happened and how it could be even better. There’s a role for didactic telling, but it’s always responsive to the roadblock (or overlooked opportunity) the students have run aground on.

I have always been amazed at how high students–even college students whose courage has been squeezed out of them in twelve years of conventional education–will reach when invited to try new things. No, a roomful of grade schoolers will not discover all the theorems of statistics if just turned loose in a Montessori classroom; teachers are not chopped liver and structure is important. But we don’t learn to sail a boat by passing fluid mechanics courses about sails and keels first: we jump in a boat, sail it awkwardly, and struggle back to the dock with questions.

This model is the core of my current favorite teaching scheme, an elaboration of Theory C called PBL, for project-based learning. PBL originated in K-12, but if we are creative and experimental, it translates to higher education, and Rick Reis’ indispensable Tomorrow’s Professor blog has a good riff on this coming up in the next edition. After all, the graduate education delivered to PhD students is PBL: “can we figure out why the mice who got oats for breakfast ran their mazes faster? Stephanie, go learn about oats and tell us what you find out and what we should do next; George, see what happens with rats; Eddie, you like birds, anything going on with oats and pigeons?”

I have learned from experience that PBL entitles students to learn things that are not only not in the syllabus, but which I don’t know. and if I can convince them that my ego is not as delicate as they fear, they will do it. Mark Moore used to ask colleagues, rhetorically, “what entitles you to hold the chalk?” and realizing that the answer is not that I know more than the students about the official course content, but that I know how to get them to (allow them to?) learn what they need to know is the beginning of wisdom. Not the same thing, not at all. It’s not irrelevant that jazz is different from classical music in an important sense: every one in a combo is expected not only to play from a chart and comp the soloist, and not to reflect exactly what Gershwin intended when he wrote “Summertime”, but bring his own take on the standard they are improvising from and take a solo of his own, with riffs and phrasing that have never been heard before, and from which the bass player can leap into another unexplored space.

I inquired at our music department; we teach performance and have several great ensembles to prove it, but we apparently have no faculty engaged in research about how to do it! This seems odd, because amateur musicians–and not just a bunch of guitar players–are the most promising source of the audiences all sorts of music needs, especially as music education in schools continues to atrophy. Maybe that’s a monopoly of the education school, watch this space. This can’t be left to Berklee and Juilliard.

In any case, I’m more and more convinced that a major cost of professors never watching each other work is that all of us who don’t teach arts practice, in whatever medium, are deprived of learning Stuff We Can Use, and Should. Colleagues, check out Chamorro’s operation and see what you think. The exploration is not only free but has negative cost, because you will hear some great stuff along the way.

Filed Under: Everything Else

Collusion

January 25, 2019 By Stuart Levine 1 Comment

Here’s the Roger Stone indictment. Paragraph 12 of the indictment provides that:

After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.

Only four people could have directed a “senior Trump Campaign official” to take the action described: Manafort, if the senior Trump Campaign official was his subordinate, Gates, or one of the following: Trump, Trump, Jr., or Kushner. If that person was Trump, Jr., or Kushner, that person will be indicted. Trump will, in due course, pardon that person and be forced to leave office. If that person was Trump himself, well, let’s see what Congress does.

Filed Under: Everything Else

Weekend Film Recommendation: Les Yeux Sans Visage

January 25, 2019 By Keith Humphreys @KeithNHumphreys Leave a Comment

In the decades immediately following the war, French film makers didn’t produce many horror movies, but when they did they took more risks than studios in other countries who simply revived classic monsters or reworked hoary ghost stories. Among the most compelling and influential of such productions shocked audiences when it was released in 1960 and is my film recommendation for the week: Les Yeux Sans Visage.

The story opens with a shot of a lone woman, played by the elegant Euro-superstar Alida Valli, driving down a dark highway in fear. The audience worry for her: Is she being pursued? Can she please get away? But then the film roils our emotions for the first of many times by showing us that in fact “our vulnerable heroine” is on her way to dump a mutilated corpse into the river. As the bizarre story unfolds, we learn that Valli’s character is the slavishly devoted partner of the brilliant Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur), a surgeon who is guilt-wracked over a car accident that disfigured his daughter Christiane (Edith Scob, who impressively manages to convey rich emotion while wearing a smooth mask). But if Génessier can capture a similar enough looking woman and force her to undergo a radical surgery, could a face transplant restore Christiane’s beauty? Grade A+ shocks and chills follow.

French director Georges Franju made this one of a kind horror film with a talented group of artists who implemented his vision. The legendary Boileau-Narcejac writing team adapted Jean Redon’s novel, implementing substantial changes to make the story more cinematic, and, approvable by censors (no mean feat in those days). Maurice Jarre composed the score and the famously innovative Eugen Schüfftan contributed pristine cinematography. Various film critics have placed the stunning result in the tradition of fantastique, surrealism, poetic realism, and even German-style Expressionism (even though it’s nowhere near as experimental as prior RBC recommendation Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). I don’t know enough about the history of French film to arbitrate that debate, so I will use the less cultured term Art House Horror to roughly categorize this movie.

Les Yeux Sans Visage recalls prior RBC recommendation Suspiria in that the visuals rather than the plot largely drive the movie and command the viewer’s attention. Dr. Génessier’s lair, to which the kidnapped young women are taken, is one of cinema’s most terrifying “second locations”, with ferocious dogs in weirdly shaped cages, tortuous passageways, and an underground surgical suite where you would never want to be a patient (roses for production design and art direction to Marie and Auguste Capelier). The horrifying, deathly, beautiful, dreamlike, series of images of this film’s last five minutes may never leave your mind.

At the time of its release, Les Yeux Sans Visage was not universally appreciated, but its reputation has deservedly soared since. Among its artistic descendants are Halloween, Face/Off, and yes, that Billy Idol song.

Filed Under: Film

Condorcet’s Brexit trainwreck

January 23, 2019 By James Wimberley 17 Comments

Let’s stand a little back from the Brexit trainwreck – the kind you get when Dr. Evil hacks the signalling at Clapham Junction  in rush hour. I have no choice, since as an expatriate I, and a million like me, get no vote.

 

 

 

The options are:
A – Exit with no deal
B – the May deal
C – A softer Brexit (“BINO”) on Norway or Jersey lines; undefined, but probably with staying in most of the EU single market, few restrictions on movement from EU countries, and no say in the rulemaking
D – Remain.

The estimable Simon Wren-Lewis estimates the current factional breakdown of the House of Commons (n=630) over Brexit:

Brexiters – No Deal                                               100
May loyalists – No freedom of movement       200
People’s Vote [second referendum]                  150
Corbyn loyalists                                                       30
Soft Brexit                                                               150

This leads to the following first-choice vote predictions:
     A: 100 for, 530 against
     B: 200 for, 430 against (actual vote was 202 to 432)
     C: <180 for, >450 against
     D: <150 for, >480 against

There is a large majority against anything at all. A neater real-life example of the Condorcet paradox you couldn’t get. Continue Reading…

Filed Under: Britain, Political Science

The opioid crisis and the border Wall

January 22, 2019 By Mark Kleiman @markarkleiman 2 Comments

One of the sillier talking points in the Wall debate is that we need a physical barrier to keep opioids from coming into the country from Mexico.  Various commenters have pointed out that: (1) The fentanyls, which are the fastest-growing segment of opioid use and overdose deaths, mostly come directly from China; and (2) What does come across the U.S./Mexico border comes through overwhelmingly by common carrier at ports of entry; it isn’t backpacked through the desert by immigrants.

A point I haven’t seen made, and didn’t know about until Kevin Drum posted this graph based on data from the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, is that the crisis isn’t concentrated anywhere near Mexico. All of the hardest-hit states in terms of opioid mortality rates are east of the Mississippi and north of the Tennessee, about as far as they could be from the Rio Grande. Of the four states that actually border Mexico, New Mexico and Arizona are in the middle of the pack, while California and Texas rank 45th and 47th.

So Trump’s Wall remains a solution in search of a problem.

Filed Under: Drug Policy, Everything Else, immigration Tagged With: border wall, Fentanyl, heroin, Mexico, opioids

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