Weekend Reads (Oct 28): Richard Roundtree (RIP), Cocteau Twins, Spotify, Microsoft Word, Hugo Awards
Recommended weekend reading for October 28, 2023.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Richard Roundtree, best known for his portryal of John Shaft — aka, the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks — died this week after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 81 years old.
Roundtree’s creation has had a profound effect on a generation of filmmakers.
Quentin Tarantino’s entire filmography is steeped in his love for blaxploitation. Kerry Washington’s character Brunhilde von Shaft in Django Unchained not only shares a name with Roundtree’s hero but was written by Tarantino as an ancestor of John Shaft.
In 2000, Shaft was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. It was cited for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Shortly thereafter, Shaft was named one of the best films ever made by the New York Times.
The opening minutes of Shaft are filled with enough swagger and attitude for any ten films thanks to Roundtree’s cooler-than-cool vibe. And of course, Isaac Hayes’ iconic theme song.
Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien, director of such acclaimed films as The Assassin, Three Times, Café Lumière, and Millennium Mambo, has retired from filmmaking due to struggles with dementia.
Along with the late Edward Yang, Hou was one of the leading lights of the Taiwanese New Wave in the 1980s, helping to make the small nation one of the world’s great exporters of cinema right at the moment that it was democratizing after decades of authoritarian rule by the Chinese Nationalist government, which had been exiled to the island when the communist People’s Republic of China took control of the mainland in 1949. For instance, Hou’s film “A City of Sadness” was the first time that the February 28 Incident was ever mentioned in a Taiwanese film — that was an event in 1947 when, as the Chinese Civil War raged and anti-communist hysteria boiled over, the Nationalists massacred thousands of Taiwanese civilians. Until that point, the government’s censorship would have made mentioning it impossible.
I have limited exposure to Hou’s films — something I keep meaning to change — but what little I’ve seen has been absolutely beautiful, filled with lovely visuals and a deep humanism. As I wrote in my review of 2003’s Café Lumière: “What I realized most… was just how well Hou captures the inherent mystery of individual human beings.”
Kimberly Nelson reflects on the not-so-glamorous life of being a movie extra in movies like Ocean’s Eleven and The Dark Knight.
Being an extra on a major studio movie set may sound glamorous, but the reality involves painfully early (or overnight) call times, folding tables of stale doughnuts, and hours of waiting around, all for minimum wage. In many ways, it’s like jury duty, but with a higher chance of seeing someone who’s been on the cover of People.
Via 1440.
I’m always fascinated when I read about the arduous recording sessions for Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden, but what’s particularly remarkable is realizing that most artists would never enjoy that sort of latitude from today’s record labels.
The Colour of Spring was the first step towards the more refined and meticulous production that defined the subsequent albums, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock. The album was far from esoteric but showcased a Talk Talk more confident in their identity. Still bristling with propulsive singles, the album was a commercial success, reaching number eight on the UK Albums Chart and remaining there for a total of 21 weeks. Crucially, “Life’s What You Make It” was an international hit, consolidating a swelling fanbase across the Atlantic.
Following such success, EMI granted Talk Talk an uncapped budget to explore their deepest musical whim, no matter how long it might take. Of course, such treatment appears remarkable from the modern perspective, but these were times of comparative solvency in the music industry. It would appear labels were apt to invest in art for art’s sake rather than art for money’s sake.
Cocteau Twins’ sophomore album, Head Over Heels, turned 40 this week, and Darran Anderson reflects on its aesthetics and impact.
Emerging from post punk, Cocteau Twins were placed, unwillingly it would seem, into gothic then shoegaze, dream pop, ethereal wave or whatever category dreamt up by cultural taxidermists. There was no real need for such confections. While there were trace elements present (Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, The Cure etc), Cocteau Twins were themselves, their own category, their own cosmos. Part of this was due to Nigel Grierson and Vaughan Oliver’s 4AD covers, which were tantalising and suggestive. You could almost decrypt the images on the sleeves, but they always remained just out of reach. Mostly it was down to the environments of their sound. The aerial acrobatics of Fraser’s voice. The architecture of sound that came from Guthrie’s effects-treated guitars; not just the often-cited often-derided “cathedrals of sound” but all manner of sunken ballrooms, tunnels, factories, attics, foundries, observatories, caverns. If any category was required, Cocteau Twins could have been placed within symbolism, a hallucinatory death-rattle of romanticism in the industrial age, when all that had been discarded returned in dreams and decadence, orgiastic excess, disembodied spectral heads and ornate altars, lonely demons and alluring succubi, jewels and masks and apparitions, all the minutiae of things that the steam engine and the printing press had yet to fully exorcise.
If you’ve been thinking about canceling your Spotify subscription, then now might be the time to do so: the streaming giant is considering changes to its royalties system that could negatively affect new and upcoming artists. While some of Spotify’s planned changes are intended to combat “fraudulent activity,” the major change — “a threshold of minimum annual streams before a track starts generating royalties on Spotify” — could tip the balance more in favor of established artists, i.e., those who already benefit the most from Spotify.
Note: I realize the irony of criticizing Spotify while also offering Spotify playlists to subscribers. Starting in November, new playlists will also be available on Apple Music, and I’m exploring other playlist options, too. If a song in one of my playlists catches your ear, then I sincerely hope you’ll actually buy the album; that will always be the best way to support artists.
Also turning 40 this week is Microsoft Word. With its success and ubiquity, Word has had a subtle yet significant effect on how we write and think about language and information.
Word’s superpower was using smart, simple design choices to make such features accessible to a global audience, not just techies. Its “What You See is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) design philosophy is now commonplace in software and on the internet. Word introduced line breaks, along with bold and italic fonts on screen. It revolutionised typeset-quality printing, as well as the use of templates. And it was in these templates that Word’s early impact on communication emerged.
“Word templates led people to use the same formatting in communications, and eventually, this has become instantiated as a norm,” says Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, where she studies human-computer interaction. If you work in finance, there’s a specific way reports are expected to be laid out. Letters follow a set pattern, memos are largely formatted in the same way. “Users know where to find information in these standardised documents; they don’t need to spend time trying to find what they need.”
If you take this idea of professional conformity a step further, Word has also been significant in helping establish English as the global language of business. While it would be an overstatement to say Word alone made English the dominant language, as a US firm, Microsoft’s mother-tongue is American-English. When this is coupled with Word’s ubiquity, it at least reinforces this dominance.
Via The Retro.
The winners of the 2023 Hugo Awards have been announced, including wins by The Expanse and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time series won the “Best Series” award. I really enjoyed his Final Architecture trilogy, which wrapped up earlier this year with Lords of Uncreation, so I guess Children of Time ought to be one of my next reads.
From the Blog
Amidst the chaos of Musk-era Twitter, as millions of frustrated users seek out alternatives, most of the attention has been focused on Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky. As a result, one platform that fell through the cracks was Pebble, a promising platform developed by some ex-Twitter employees — promising, that is, until it decided to shut down.
From the beginning, Pebble’s stated goal was to be as close to the “original” Twitter as possible while serving as a “kinder, safer, more fun public square.” Or, as Oh put it earlier this year: “We really do want to create an experience that allows people to share what they want to share without fearing risk of things like abuse and harassment.” Unfortunately, that experience won’t be around much longer: on November 1, Pebble is shutting down.
Pebble’s impending demise notwithstanding, there are a host of Twitter alternatives currently available. And while that’s a good thing — in that competition is a good thing — it should also be a reminder that, if you really care about your online presence, then it’s best to build your own platform.
This post is available to everyone (so feel free to share it). However, paying subscribers also get access to exclusives including playlists, podcasts, and sneak previews. If you’d like to receive those exclusives — and support my writing on Opus — then become a paid subscriber today for just $5/month or $50/year.