Weekend Reads: "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Doctor Who," Disney, Year-End Lists, Breakdancing, Harold Budd
Recommended weekend reading for December 12, 2020.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Ang Lee’s martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was released 20 years ago, and Scott Tobias reflects on the film’s impact and legacy.
For many in the English-speaking world, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a mainstream introduction to a wuxia tradition that had been mostly relegated to cultists who haunted repertory circuits or picked up bulk VHS dubs of classics by King Hu, Tsui Hark and the Shaw brothers. Lee wanted to be faithful to that tradition — he insisted that his longtime screenwriter, James Schamus, stay true to the tenor of the dialogue in Hu’s films — but Crouching Tiger isn’t a simple act of mimicry or an attempt to sell an authentic version of Chinese cinema to an international audience. It’s something much more audacious, an effort on Lee’s part to infuse the genre with his own preoccupations with repressed love and culture clash.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was one of 2000’s most acclaimed films, winning Oscars for “Best Foreign Language Film,” “Best Art Direction,” “Best Original Score,” and “Best Cinematography.”
While it was a hit with Western audiences and critics, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon received a much cooler response in China due to video piracy, political shenanigans, and its approach to martial arts action.
The Doctor Who theme is arguably one of the most iconic and recognizable TV themes of all time. This website serves as a comprehensive overview of how it was composed and who composed it.
Created in 1963, the Doctor Who theme was one of the first electronic signature tunes for television and after nearly five decades remains one of the most easily recognised. The original recording of the Doctor Who theme music is widely regarded as a significant and innovative piece of electronic music, recorded well before the availability of commercial synthesisers.
Via Kottke. Numerous versions of the Doctor Who theme have been released over time, and back in 2009, I highlighted some of my favorites.
At their annual investor call, Disney announced a ton of new movies and TV series that will be released in the coming months and years. The various titles include: new Star Wars series about Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka Tano, and Lando Calrissian; a Guardians of the Galaxy holiday special and a Fantastic Four movie; and a slew of Pixar and Disney releases including a Buzz Lightyear movie, a Big Hero 6 series, and the return of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers.
During this meeting, Marvel’s Kevin Feige also announced that Chadwick Boseman’s character of T’Challa would not be recast in Black Panther 2.
“I wanted to acknowledge the devastating loss of a dear friend and member of the Marvel Studios family,” Feige said. “Chadwick Boseman was an immensely talented actor and an inspirational individual who affected all of our lives professionally and personally. His portrayal of T’Challa the Black Panther is iconic and transcends iteration of the character in any other medium from Marvel’s past.”
Boseman died this past August after a four-year battle with colon cancer; he was 43 years old. Work on Black Panther 2 has already commenced, with Ryan Coogler returning as writer and director. It is currently scheduled for release on May 6, 2022.
‘Tis the season for year-end lists. Both Pitchfork and Treblezine have posted their top albums of 2020. Meanwhile, Bandcamp have been posting their favorite albums in various genres, including metal, punk, and hip-hop. Speaking of Bandcamp, they’ve announced a change to their upcoming year-end lists: they’re no longer ranking albums.
It was a lot of fun in previous years to say, “This record is 54, but this one feels like a 55,” but this year, we just couldn’t shake the arbitrariness of it all. And once we started pulling at that thread, we soon found ourselves interrogating the whole process. In the end, we were left staring at the conclusion that the whole affair was founded on profoundly misguided ideas about art. For years I’ve argued that what you’re really trying to do with any Best of the Year list is to tell a story—which I still believe is true. But if all of the albums taken together tell the story of the year, why does it matter the order in which they are presented?
Note: I’ve been working on my own year-end list as well, and will be posting my favorite songs of 2020 on January 1.
These days, brands need to worry about more than just copyright and trademark infringement. They need to worry about being coopted by extremists across the political spectrum.
Black Rifle Coffee found itself the subject of unwanted attention recently when Kyle Rittenhouse was spotted wearing a T-shirt touting the brand. Rittenhouse had just posted bail; he’d been in jail since October 30 after being charged with killing two people and injuring one other when a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, turned violent last August.
[…]
But Hafer’s attempt to distance the company from an alleged gunman earned him some new enemies: Rittenhouse supporters who believed the company was capitulating to political correctness. This included the right-wing paramilitary group the Proud Boys, who accused the company of trying to cater to “genderless college students.”
Ben Sixsmith reflects on the recent downfall of Hillsong pastor Carl Lentz, who was fired after he was caught cheating on his wife, and what it says more broadly about the interplay between Christianity and the broader culture.
This case also asks questions about the church itself. I have no doubt that Hillsong NYC, under Lentz’s leadership, enriched thousands of lives. Even young Mr Bieber has avoided legal controversies and settled down with his wife since joining Hillsong. Good luck to him! Still, it seems to represent what I call the ‘…with a twist of Christianity’ trend. There is mainstream culture, celebrities, fashion, music, modish political activism and a message of self-love, but with a twist of Christianity. Most people stick with mainstream culture because they can have all those things and pre-marital sex.
Also on the topic of Lentz’s downfall, David French has written an excellent column on “the crisis of Christian celebrity.”
It’s tempting to simply cite Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous maxim that the doctrine of original sin is “the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith,” note that every class of person is susceptible and vulnerable to sin, and move on. Celebrities are human, and we know that human beings are fallen, and thus there will always be spectacular falls from grace.
Yes, but must they be so frequent? Must they be so constant? Is there something about celebrity itself that makes the fall more likely? After all, in many of these folks, it’s quite apparent that something changed. Very few people embrace a life of public ministry as part of a plan for sexual conquest. They begin with a sincere desire to preach and teach and transform lives.
But they also don’t know who they truly are. They’re untested. They’re untried.
Coming soon to the 2024 Summer Olympics: breakdancing.
Breakdancing will be called breaking at the Olympics, as it was in the 1970s by hip-hop pioneers in the United States.
It was proposed by Paris organizers almost two years ago after positive trials at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires. Breaking passed further stages of approval in 2019 from separate decisions by the IOC board and full membership.
In Paris, breaking has been given a prestige downtown venue, joining sport climbing and 3-on-3 basketball at Place de le Concorde.
Via 1440.
You know that mix of listlessness, boredom, and anxiety that you might be feeling these days as the pandemic goes on and on (and on)? It has a name: acedia.
Now, the pandemic and governmental responses to it create social conditions that approximate those of desert monks. No demons, perhaps, but social media offers a barrage of bad (or misleading) news.
Social distancing limits physical contact. Lockdown constricts physical space and movement. Working from home or having lost work entirely both upend routines and habits. In these conditions, perhaps it’s time to bring back the term.
From the Blog
This week, the coronavirus took one of the world’s great minimalist and ambient composers: Harold Budd.
Harold Budd is best known for his lush, atmospheric style of playing the piano, which he termed “soft pedal.” Although his compositions are often sparse and minimal, the individual notes are bathed in so much delay and sustain that they seem as vast and endless as the Mojave Desert in which Budd grew up — and yet, his music never loses any sense of intimacy, elegance, or warmth.
I recommend 1984’s The Pearl (a collaboration with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois) and 2003’s Translucence / Drift Music (a collaboration with John Foxx) as starting points if you’re unfamiliar with Budd’s music. With a discography stretching back to 1971, there’s a lot of gorgeous music to explore.
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