Reading List: October

Fiction: 

John Ajvide Lindqvist: Let the Right One In.
Michelle Tea: Valencia.
Heinrich Böll: Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum.

Non-Fiction:

Sara Marcus: Girls to the Front. The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution.

Films: 

Objectified (2009, Gary Hustwit) ***.
Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (2008, Uli Edel) **. 
Die bleierne Zeit (1981, Mararethe von Trotta) ****. 
Deutschland im Herbs (1978, u.a. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, Egar Reitz, Volker Schlöndorff) ****. 
Die dritte Generation (1979, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) **. 
Carlos (Parts I-III) (2010, Olivier Assayas) ****. 
Howl (2010, Rob Epstein/Jeffrey Friedman) ***.
The Good Shepherd (2006, Robert De Niro) ***. 
Det sjunde inseglet (1957, Ingmar Bergman) *****.
Låt den rätte komma in (2008, Tomas Alfredson) ****.
Jackie Brown (1997, Quentin Tarantino) ****.
The Aviator (2004, Martin Scorsese) ***.
The Social Network (2010, David Fincher) ***.
The Descent, Part 1 (2005, Neil Marshall) ***.
The Descent, Part 2 (2009, Jon Harris) **.
Land of the Dead (2005, George A. Romero) ***. 
Diary of the Dead (2007, George A. Romero) ***.
Survival of the Dead (2009, George A. Romero) ***.
Day of the Dead (1985, George A. Romero)  ****.
Martyrs (2008, Pascal Laugier) *****. 
Haute Tension (2003, Alexandre Aja) ** / ***. 
Frontiere(s) (2007, Xavier Gens) ****.
Caché (2005, Michael Haneke) **.
Funny Games (2007, Michael Haneke) *.
Les Filles du Botaniste (2006, Sijie Dai) ***.
The Burning Plain (2008, Guillermo Arriaga) ****.
Winter's Bone (2010, Debra Granik) *****.
Meek's Cutoff (2010, Kelly Reichardt) ****. 

Series: 

Futurama, Season Six.
Doctor Who, Season Four.

Linkliste unbehandelter Themen

"Der engagierte Einsatz für mehr Transparenz steht jedoch im krassen Widerspruch zu der eigenen Öffentlichkeitsarbeit von Wikileaks: Denn viel mehr als diese vagen Informationen gibt die Organisation über ihre internen Strukturen nicht preis. Zwar dient dieses Stillschweigen auch dem Schutz des eigenen Projekts. Zugleich ist für Außenstehende damit aber nicht nachvollziehbar, wie unabhängig die Aktivisten tatsächlich über Veröffentlichung und Zeitpunkt eingereichter Geheimdokumente entscheiden."

Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik: Wikileaks: Macht und Verantwortung

"What is clear is that the current arrangements have not been able to prevent the population as a whole from being exposed to – and quite often persuaded by – claims that are not true. Any tally of media failures has to include Iraq, of course. It should also include the coverage of the financial sector over the last 30 years or so. Financialization, deregulation, and the reorganization of the enterprise have all taken place to a background of steady applause from the major media. In the face of escalating criminality – most glaringly in the mortgage markets - the same media maintained a dignified silence."

openDemocracy: The Media, the crisis, and the crisis in media

Pop: 

Kathleen Hanna talks to GRITtv about the difference between zines and blogging.

Radical Act is a 1995 documentary about women in rock that is completely unavailable to me but sounds so interesting that I will probably spend the next year looking for it. Does the fact that it was just re-released hint at a renewed interest for the ideas and movements of the early 1990s or am I only noticing it because I am always looking out for even the smallest sign of it?

SyFy announced the cancellation of Caprica yesterday. The remaining episodes will be aired next year, so that I can comfortably review two episodes of Skins and one episode of Caprica every single week. Yay. I saw it coming - usually when a show reaches the point that I am amazed at every new episode, it means that it's a goner (see Dollhouse, T:TSCC). It's kinda like jeans which are also most comfortable just before they start to fall apart.

In other vaguely Battlestar Galactica related news, Katee Sackhoff and Tricia Helfer are documenting their motorcycle ride from LA to New Orleans (for charity). Their Vlog is pretty amazing.

A show that I am very much looking forward to is The Walking Dead, which is based on the comic series by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. It will start airing on Halloween, and The A.V. Club has an interview with producer Frank Darabont.

The Seattle Stranger reviews some of DJ Shadow's greatest tracks.

Celebrate Anachronism

Sony stopped producing the Walkman. This Slate article outlining the history of the Walkman (some of the earlier stuff is really intriguing, like the fact that they used to have two headphone jacks) uses a picture of the model I have, which spent the last five years lonely and forgotten in my drawer for lonely and forgotten things (I've had one of those in every apartment I've ever lived in). I decided to take it out, really not expecting it to still work because the cassette decks on my stereo broke years ago - but it only took two batteries to find out that I was wrong. It still works perfectly. There is a much younger iPod in the very same drawer that broke only two years after I got it. There is a Minidisc player (I was very fond of) which has since stopped working. There's even an chunky Discman, but it starts skipping about ten minutes into every single CD. But the Walkman still works. Maybe I'm getting old, but I would trade in some of the features of the fancy new gadgets for some reliability and longevity (the tape, by the way, contains the concert that first introduced me to Kante and Blumfeld).

I run a big foundation now.

"Mr. Clinton sees Mr. Obama being in the same position he was in after two years in office; as he tells it, they both took painful actions to fix broken economies but it took time for Americans to feel the results. “There’s always a gap between when you start fixing things and when people feel fixed,” he told a crowd earlier in the day in Ann Arbor, where he stumped for Representative John D. Dingell.
The frenetic campaigning brings Mr. Clinton full circle again in his perpetual cycle of defeat and comeback. After the incendiary comments and hard feelings among Democrats two years ago, Mr. Clinton is now perhaps his party’s most sought-after campaigner, going to parts of the country where Mr. Obama does not venture these days, including Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi and, on Monday, in his 105th event of the year, Texas."

NY Times: Clinton Battles Repeat of ’94 With Twist on ’08, October 25, 2010

You were born too late / I was born too soon.

"Talking to these girls, I began to understand that I didn’t have to be miserable. Maybe being a teenager was always going to be a bloodbath to some extent, but it did not have to be this particular bloodbath. Its severity and the specific tone of its miseries were political, which meant they were mutable. I felt powerless not because I was weak but because I lived in a society that drained girls of power. Boys harassed me not because I invited it but because they were taught it was acceptable and saw that no one intervened. These things weren’t my fault, and we could fight them all together.
For the first time in years, I knew that I was going to be okay." 

Sara Marcus: Girls to the Front. The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, p. 8.

Ich habe schon lange kein Buch mehr verschlungen (genau genommen nicht mehr seit letztem Februar, als ich vollkommen verschnupft und kaputt Daughter of Hounds das erste Mal gelesen habe). Wenn ich mir einen Ort und eine Zeit aussuchen könnte, zur der und an dem ich lieber gewesen wäre, dann diese Zeitperiode in Washington State (und, was für mich eine vollkommenen neue Info aus dem Buch war, in Washington DC). Sara Marcus beschreibt objektiv aber wahnsinnig mitreißend das Gefühl, mittendrin zu sein: Die Musik, die Treffen, die Gespräche, die Idee, den Mut zu finden und etwas eigenes aufzubauen - und das mühsame "netzwerken" vor der Verbreitung des Internets. Die erste Hälfte des Buches ist so fantastisch, und dann kommt dieser Wendepunkt in der Geschichte, in der die Beteiligten realisieren, dass sie überhaupt keine Kontrolle über das mediale Bild ihrer Bewegung haben, und die ganze Frustration dieser Erkenntnis trifft den Leser (genau so wie die unvermeidbar erscheinende Aufsplitterung, der Vorwurf, vorwiegend middle class und white zu sein, die Uneinigkeiten). Ich hätte Girls to the Front mit 14 oder 15 gebraucht, und es wäre fantastisch, wenn die (sich schon einige Zeit lang abzeichnende) 90s-Nostalgie nicht nur die Kleidung und die Marken zurückbringen würde, sondern auch einige der Ideen.

Linkliste unbehandelter Themen

Politics:

The UNFPA (United Nations Population Fond) published a report titled "From Conflict to Crisis to Renewal", which focuses on the specific and devastating effects of sexual violence which is used strategically during armed conflicts.

Wikileaks published documents about the war in Iraq. Apparently, it is more intriguing to consider its role in journalism ("asymmetric journalism") than what was actually revealed in the documents.

BUDGET BUDGET BUDGET.

Pop: 

This is old but it fits perfectly because I was meaning to mention my strange fascination with The Weakest Link and the host Anne Robinson (this reminds me of Martin Blumenau's Bonustrack on FM4, which I haven't listened to in ages: you kinda, sorta listen for the crashes.). It started this summer, when repeats of the show on BBC Entertainment matched the half-time breaks of the afternoon games during the World Cup. This is a Doctor Who Special from 2007, featuring, among others, David Tennant, John Barrowman, K-9 and the voice of the Daleks. The winner is somewhat surprising.

The A.V. Club interviewd director Olivier Assayas about Carlos, a movie that is also showing at this year's Vienna Film festival: the long version is a three-parter (and about five hours long). It tells the story of the Venezuelan terrorist from the late 1960s until his arrest. It's extremely well-made - and features dialogue in German, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Hungarian (it's somewhat ironic that a movie which captures the multilingual nature of a globalized existence is about terrorism). The German cast includes Katharina Schüttler, Nora von Waldstätten and Julia Hummer (as Nada, one of the terrorists involved in the 1975 attack on the OPEC building in Vienna, which makes up about one third of the whole movie).

I barely ever talk about Glee, mostly because I find the cast charming, but the writing and character development lacking - but the controversy about a cover shoot three of the stars did for GQ is very interesting. (also tragic, because the “I’d be in a treehouse, in a wild costume, war-paint and I’d be playing with my pet dragon" Dianna Agron proposes instead sounds incredibly awesome compared to what she actually gets to do both in the show and while advertising it.)

Corin Tucker talks about Twilight in an interview. "I was a big fan of those books—I am a big fan of those books. I really related to the voice of Bella." I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

Enver Gjokaj is being considered for Torchwood. It's either his incredible talent, or that guy from that teenie soap one of my friends watches (also, JANE ESPENSON IS GOING TO WRITE FOR THE NEW, AMERICAN SEASON. When fandoms collide indeed.)

"Battlestar Galactica: Blood And Chrome will take place 10 years into the first Cylon war, when the “brash rookie viper pilot” William Adama receives his first assignment aboard the Galactica, and soon the “talented but hot-headed risk-taker” finds himself leading a dangerous secret mission." [The A.V. Club]

This is reassuring in case Caprica doesn't get renewed: instead of getting all the history before Battlestar Galactica in one show, it's split up in at least two.

The fifth (and final) season of Friday Night Lights will start airing next Wednesday. 

And the Democrats might lose their Majority Leader.

"The final nine days of the midterm election are unfolding across a wide landscape, with several dozen House races close enough to break either way, determining whether the election produces a Republican wave that reaches deep into the Democratic ranks. In the Senate, Democrats were bracing to lose seats, but the crucial contests remained highly fluid as Republicans struggled to pull away in several Democratic-leaning states.
[...]
In the House, 28 Democratic seats are either leaning Republican or all but lost to Republican candidates, according to the latest ratings of Congressional races by The New York Times, while 40 seats held by Democrats are seen as tossups. To win a majority, Republicans need to pick up a net of 39 seats; to reach that threshold they will probably have to win at least 44 seats now held by Democrats to offset a handful of projected Democratic victories in Republican-held districts."

NY Times: G.O.P. Is Poised to Seize the House, if Not the Senate, October 23, 2010

And the madness starts yet again

This is the first trailer for Skins USA: 

I am vaguely amused by the amount of hatred the trailer got, since it is almost an exact remake of the first episode of the UK version: Tony making a phone call that introduced us to all the other characters. I kind of like the idea that the show is going to stick to the original (apart from the fact that Maxxie is now a girl) and then slowly start to find its own way in the course of the season. And weirdly enough, fake Baltimore suburbia happens to look exactly like actual Bristol.

I am actually excicted about having to write two reviews each week. Yay, January.

Das Lied zum Sonntag

Amy Ray - Laramie



We hit snow on the road to Laramie
We all heard about that mess
But that town ain't nothing different
Than the rest

Poor man do the bidding for the rich man
Those rednecks just doing
What the classy fuckers thinking
And tolerance it ain't acceptance
I know you wanted it to be
When you're out in Laramie

Hey all you jokers
Hunting seasons over
Hey coalition
Lay down your mission
Hey all you jokers
Hunting seasons over
Hey coalition
Lay down your mission
Yeah
Lay it down now

What we need is a little addition
Ounce of prevention and the weight of a law
Cause without something you could
Put your finger on
Somewhere somebody's gonna call
Call out Laramie

Hey all you jokers
Hunting seasons over
Hey coalition
Lay down your mission
Hey all you jokers
Hunting seasons over
Hey coalition
Now lay down your ammunition
Hey mother fucker
Hunting seasons over
Hey coalition
Time to lay down your mission
Oh lay it down now

Hey all you jokers
Hey all you jokers
Hey all you jokers

[on "Stag", 2001]

...it would be absurd to plan for the future

"If not for humor and a miraculous resilience, many Lebanese would have gone crazy by now. We liberated our land from both the Israeli and Syrian armies. We thought we had achieved democracy and independence after the Cedar Revolution of 2005 that followed the assassination  of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and we managed to win the support of the international community through the U.N. Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which was set up to investigate Hariri's murder.
Today all that is lost, and the Lebanon we hoped for is slipping away. What went wrong? And why are we still here, in this mad country, fighting for it?"

Slate: In Lebanon, We Dance in a Minefield, October 16, 2010

Linkliste unbehandelter Themen

Politics: 

Foreign Policy on finding a historical metaphor to explain Iranian politics / Foreign Affairs on Financial Re-Regulation (the small steps rather than the large ones) now that the crisis does not make the headlines every day / Eurozine and the Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik on France's deportation of Romas / SWP on the very likely independence of Southern Sudan after the referendum in January 2011. 

Pop Culture: 

Neil Gaiman talks to the NY Mag's The Vulture about Twitter Etiquette and a lot of other interesting stuff (sadly not Doctor Who, though) / Slate on the resurrection of GIFs (animated ones) on the internets but the article doesn't really link the phenomenon to fandom (they are like emoticons that also give an insight into the pop cultural identity of whoever uses them, not that I do, but I know which one I WOULD USE if I did) / Foals play a Daytrotter session / SyFy just picked up a Steampunky webseries called Riese / Talking about webseries and how they are sometimes way better than tv shows: Out with Dad which just finished its first season is a really good example / Belle and Sebastian's new record Write about Love is accompanied by a series but more importantly, the title track features vocals by Carey Mulligan. File under "when awesome things collide". Also, how does almost all of this somehow link back to Doctor Who? (in other news, Lily Loveless apparently scored a guest role on The Sarah Jane Adventures. If they somehow work in the Doctor and Amy Pond, my head will quite possibly explode.)

My memories hardened and are bright as chrome

I miss Dollhouse, especially now that the reviews of the first season are almost finished. The video for Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen's "Remains", which was originally used in Epitaph One, is just stunningly beautiful. It's sad that this aspect of the premise was never really examined on an individual level.

[via io9]

Gut Reaction.

27%
Well, fuck.

Außerdem, Relativierung des "großen Verlierers" (wegen fehlender Briefwahlstimmen with a grain of salt zu genießen):

[via Standard]

Bin gespannt auf Bezirksvertreterergebnisse und die Wählerstromanalyse.

random mixtape - dreaming about my unwritten book

 

[tumblr] 

various production feat. gerry mitchell. THE UNWRITTEN BOOK. johnny cash. GOD'S GONNA CUT YOU DOWN.  sonic youth. KISSABILITY (live). the xx. CRYSTALISED. amy ray. LARAMIE. heavens to betsy. WHITE GIRL. sleater-kinney. BANNED FROM THE END OF THE WORLD. the corin tucker band. 1,000 YEARS. pj harvey. THE DEVIL. cat power. BACK OF YOUR HEAD.

Linkliste unbehandelter Themen

Apart from being a terrible, man-made tragedy, the toxic red sludge that has killed at least four people in Western Hungary also leads to photographs that look like the end of the world. 

Austrian interior minister Maria Fekter signed a so-called "Rückführungs-Abkommen" with Kosovo, guaranteeing that Austria could deport migrants without a residence authorization, now that Kosovo is a safe third country.

A fake national team from Togo played a match in Bahrain (I had no idea that this is where former Austrian  national team coach Hickersberger went): what sounds like a funny story is actually a horrible tale of corruption and violence. 

Last week created a strange associative chain in my head: after police in Stuttgart used pepper spray and water cannons against protestors, a German tv network decided to air Uli Edel's Der Baader Meinhof Komplex the day before the 20th anniversary of German unification, which starts with police violence during the demonstration against the Iranian Shah in 1967 (after being very surprised by the nuanced performance of Martina Gedeck and Johanna Wokalek as Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin, I also watched Fassbinder's Die Dritte Generation, the collaborative project Deutschland im Herbst and Margarethe von Trotta's Die bleierne Zeit), and finally, Verena Becker's trial began in Stuttgart-Stammheim.

Also: The A.V. Club has an interview with Hutch Harris from The Thermals, and Caprica is finally back and it is so awesome an filled with relevant lines and interesting ideas that my head still hurts (how will I ever finish the review for cellar door?)

Oh, right, and here's a preview for Thorne, a three-part crime series based on Mark Billingham's novels. The first part called Sleepyhead is airing this Sunday and supposedly has Lily Loveless in it. She is billed as Chloe on the imdb-page for the film but there is no character with that name in the novel (which I read because, erm, I really like crime novels / am a huge nerd) - so SUSPENSE, yay [actually it's a three parter and she isn't in the first part, so EVEN MORE SUSPENSE]. 

I felt nothing for centuries

I like every single song on this record.

The Corin Tucker Band - Riley

The Corin Tucker Band "Riley" from What Rabbit on Vimeo.

Excitement.

I'm watching Objectified and it's so interesting. I know absolutely nothing about design, and it is probably a film meant for people who don't already have in-depth knowledge, but it's really well-made. 

I also listened to a couple of songs from Corin Tucker's, or rather, the Corin Tucker Band's first record and I've been going back to this song at least eight times. I know why: It's very reminiscent of Sleater-Kinney, reminding me of how much I missed the voice. She's come such a long way since Heavens to Betsy. 1,000 Years comes out on October 5 but NPR is streaming the album in its entirety here.