Links for the Day (January 15th, 2008)

1. Berlin Alexanderplatz, chapter by chapter. At his blog Only the Cinema, Ed Howard has recently finished an unusual adventure in TV recapping, writing about all of Berlin Alexanderplatz, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's fifteen-hour adaptation of the 1929 novel by Alfred Döblin, which aired on German television in 1980 and was recently made available on DVD via Criterion. Parts I-II; Parts III-IV; Parts V-VIII; Parts IX-XI; Parts XII-XIII; Epilogue. See also: House contributor Rob Humanick's review.

["Berlin Alexanderplatz is a drastically extended character study, with Fassbinder taking full advantage of the large canvas available to him to delve deeper than ever before into his recurring fascination with the way societal factors shape and alter the individual. In Franz's case, this shaping is often literal, physical, as well as mental, and it encompasses political, social, and sexual dimensions. Franz Biberkopf is the ultimate Fassbinder hero, a tragic figure who suffers greatly for not fitting comfortably into the societal roles allotted to him, and who dies and is reborn only when he realizes his own role in accepting the oppressing structures around him. It's an overwhelming film, impossible to summarize here, sweeping in its scope. I readily accept that even the lengthy comments I've recorded here thus far only scratch the surface of this infinitely rich film."]

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2. "Harold, Kumar and Eisner go to SXSW." By Michael Jones of Variety. Wherein the 2008 South by Southwest film lineup is announced; among the premieres is Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, which no doubt will ask and answer the question, "Is it possible for enemy combatants held incommunicado to get really, really baked?" See also: FilmInFocus interview with SXSW programmer Matt Dentler about the festival and his blog. Hattip: GreenCine.

["Other films announced include Stuart Townsend’s “Battle in Seattle,” Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely, and Emily Hubley’s animated The Toe Tactic. Added to the fest’s conference schedule is A Conversation with Michael Eisner, which will have the former Disney head “discussing his past, present and future endeavors, as he builds new companies and models for entertainment consumption.”"]

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3. "Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama Call Truce." By Michael Saul and Helen Kennedy of The New York Daily News. In which the Democratic frontrunners attempt to squelch rhetorical fires that have singed them both. Related: "Tight Race in Snowy Michigan."

["Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama called a surprise truce Monday to halt increasingly ugly racial sniping that threatened to spin out of control and divide the Democratic Party. 'We have to bring our party together,' Clinton told New York's building service workers union at a Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration and rally in midtown. 'We may differ on minor matters, but when it comes to what is really important - we are family.' Clinton's last-minute appearance was added to dial down the controversy that began simmering with comments she made that were seen as slighting King. On Sunday, it boiled over when a Clinton backer made a not-so-veiled reference to Obama's admitted teenage drug use. Although the union has endorsed Clinton, she was greeted by scattered boos from the largely black crowd, a sign of how nasty things were getting. Campaigning in Nevada, Obama called a news conference to praise Clinton, saying he wanted to put an end to the sudden "unfortunate" tone in the Democratic contest. 'I think that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have historically and consistently been on the right side of civil rights issues. I think that they care about the African-American community,' Obama said. 'I just want to make sure that this doesn't end up personal...We've got too much at stake at this time in our history to be engaging in this kind of silliness.' "]

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4. "Val Lewton Blog-a-Thon." Hosted by Michael Guillen of The Evening Class, and keyed into the Turner Classic Movies premiere of Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows, directed by film critic Kent Jones. Posts include Guillen's own lengthy interview with Cinema Now author Andrew Bailey, who counts Lewton's I Walked With a Zombie among his favorite films.

["Bailey: [I Walked With A Zombie is] an eerie, beautiful, confounding, enigmatic film that you can watch time and time again -- like Cat People before it -- and take something new each time. There's a certain -- and I say this in a good way -- "witchery" about it. It's a mysterious film. There's something deeper beneath the surface that we can't quite touch. It opens up an interest that I have in films that convey a certain uncanniness, where you can't quite put your finger on what they're trying to say. [I Walked With A Zombie] and Cat People both do it splendidly."]

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5. "ER Waits Dangerously Long in US: Study." From Reuters.

["Patients seeking urgent care in U.S. emergency rooms are waiting longer than in the 1990s, especially people with heart attacks, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday. They found a quarter of heart attack victims waited 50 minutes or more before seeing a doctor in 2004. Waits for all types of emergency department visits became 36 percent longer between 1997 and 2004, the team at Harvard Medical School reported. Especially unsettling, people who had seen a triage nurse and been designated as needing immediate attention waited 40 percent longer -- from an average of 10 minutes in 1997 to an average 14 minutes in 2004, the researchers report in the journal Health Affairs. Heart attack patients waited eight minutes in 1997 but 20 minutes in 2004"]

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Quote of the Day:

"Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get." -- George Bernard Shaw

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Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Photograph of a battlefield amputation being performed during the American Civil War, circa 1860s, photographer unknown.


For more such images, visit the website for the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

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Clip of the Day: "Do not attempt to enter without my permission!" Introduction to Orson Welles' 1962 film version of Franz Kafka's The Trial.

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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.