The House Next Door

1. "Roe and the Culture War": Ross Douthat of The Atlantic responds to Damon Linker's New Republic post "How to End the Culture War."

["There's been a lot of interesting conversation inspired by Damon Linker's long post on ending the culture war, and specifically his suggestion that overturning Roe would lead, eventually, to greater political peace on the abortion issue. ... Overturning Roe, then, would have a double effect on pro-lifers - it would simultaneously remove the alienating impact of a legal regime that tries to read our views out of the political debate entirely, and enable us to put our theories about American public opinion on abortion and what kind of legal restrictions are possible to the test. Whether this would de-escalate the abortion wars in the long run is obviously hard to say. I suspect that the Linker thesis is correct, and that a short-term spasm of abortion politicking would give way to greater calm on the issue; certainly, I imagine that I would personally feel a lot calmer about the issue if it were de-constitutionalized, whether or not doing so led to the kind of legal gains that I think pro-lifers can reasonably hope for. But there's no way to know for sure."]

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2. "Teenage Flashback": Girish Shambu posts the precocious scribblings of one Adrian Martin.

["This was my first published piece, in the Australian magazine Cinema Papers no. 19 (January-February 1979) – a review of the book Authorship and Narrative in the Cinema by William Luhr and Peter Lehman (who later became specialists of Blake Edwards). I was 19, and had just dropped out of university education; I got the gig through my teacher-mentor (and eventually friend), Tom Ryan. Although the tone of the piece is somewhat righteous and finger-wagging – a typical ’get with the program’ rhetorical pose of the time – it raises at least one issue in film aesthetics that, thirty years later, I am still trying to resolve: the gap between thematic and formalist approaches (one can easily read my own ambivalence, poised as I was between ‘traditionalist’ and ‘progressive’ identifications). As for the book under discussion (I still have my review copy), published in 1977, it makes for instructive reading today as a ‘transitional’ text, although it has been little referenced in the intervening years; its context of aesthetic theory is one I did not exactly appreciate or give a decent account of in this review, because it did not look like anything that was new or radical in the late ‘70s. But the book is also of its time, in a very charming way: its ‘frame captures’ are meticulous, finely-textured pencil drawings! (30/01/09)."]

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3. "BRUCE!!!" (Hattip: Eric Henderson)

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4. "BALE!!!" (Hattip: Ryland Walker Knight)

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5. "A Video Compilation Portraying the Evolution of Al Pacino’s Yelling and Speaking Voice": From Unreality Magazine.

["I think we can all agree that Al Pacino has a reputation for being a yeller on film. But when did this reputation become so intact? At what point were all the comedians imitating his on screen outbursts? When can we conclusively say that if you’re a director and you want to hire a guy who screams a lot that you call Al Pacino? In fact there’s even an article that teaches you how to yell like Pacino! Granted Pacino yelled in his early days, I don’t think he really developed his signature “almost to be made fun of” yelling style until Scent of a Woman. However I think that Sea of Love and Glengarry Glen Ross really began this train of “automatic” outbursts on film. But then something really weird started happening to his “s” pronunciation as he got much older. And now he just sounds strange. It’s like he’s impersonating himself. The proof is in Two for the Money and Ocean’s Thirteen and it’s very disturbing. There’s also hints of it in The Insider (where I think the “s” stuff originated). In any event, here is a compilation of videos that display how Pacino’s voice has developed over the years. It’s truly remarkable."]

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Quote of the Day: Dustin McLean, from "Head Over Heels: Literal Video Version" (embedded above).

"You have really big glasses."

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Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Awwwwwwwwww shit ... "Black History Mumf" is back at Big Media Vandalism. (Odie "Odienator" Henderson, Simpsonized, below.)



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Clip of the Day: Best Superbowl ad, hands down...


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"Links for the Day": A selection of Links that will hopefully spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.