Reading List: November

Fiction: 

Chuck Palahniuk: Survivor.
Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie: Lost Girls.

Films: 

Boarding Gate (2007, Olivier Assayas)  ***.
Demonlover (2002, Olivier Assayas) ***.  
Es kommt der Tag (2009, Susanne Schneider) ***.
Sturm (2009, Hans-Christian Schmid). ****.
Marseille (2004, Angela Schanelec) *****.
Die Frau am Ende der Straße (2006, Claudia Garde) ****.
Jargo (2004, Maria Solrun) ***.
Der Knochenmann (2009, Wolfgang Murnberger) ****.
Chatroom (2010, Hideo Nakata) ***. 
Easy A (2010, Will Gluck) ***. 
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (2010, David Yates) ****. 
Don't Need You - The Herstory of Riot Grrrl (2005, Kerri Koch) ***.

Shorts: 

Harun Farocki - Nicht löschbares Feuer. 
Harun Farocki - Erkennen und verfolgen.  

Series: 

Forbrydelsen II.
Im Angesicht des Verbrechens.
Being Human, Season Two. 
Lost Girl, Season One.

Linkliste unbehandelter Themen

Claire Denis spricht mit dem A.V. Club über White Material.

Corin Tucker spricht mit Writers on Process über die Arbeit an 1,000 Years.  

Kathleen Hanna talks with The Fader about everything. 


Ich wollte was über Sexismus in The Walking Dead schreiben, aber andere haben das schon viel besser und ausführlicher getan.

Was auch immer gerade in Korea passiert: besorgniserregend!

This is a sad, sad reflection of our times

"I always hoped that Buffy would live on even after my death.  But, you know, AFTER.  I don't love the idea of my creation in other hands, but I'm also well aware that many more hands than mine went into making that show what it was. And there is no legal grounds for doing anything other than sighing audibly. I can't wish people who are passionate about my little myth ill. I can, however, take this time to announce that I'm making a Batman movie.  Because there's a franchise that truly needs updating. So look for The Dark Knight Rises Way Earlier Than That Other One And Also More Cheaply And In Toronto, rebooting into a theater near you.
Leave me to my pain!  Sincerely, Joss Whedon."

E!: Joss Whedon Reacts to Buffy Movie News: "I Have Strong, Mixed Emotions"

There is now a video accompanying one of my favourite songs ever.

Mirah - The Forest

"We dug up the roots of all the stories, put 'em in a pot / and brought them to a fiery road.
We fed on these things without a worry, / never gave a thought to the coming of the winter storm."

I think there's a list somewhere of "people who could read the phone book to me and I would still find it beautiful" and Mirah is on that list.

Schön, wenn Sachen mal so funktionieren, wie sie sollen

"Weiters nimmt sich der Provider mit den neuen AGBs das Recht heraus, Stammdaten (Namen, Adresse, Kontaktdaten) zur "Durchführung von Meinungsumfragen im Rahmen unserer Marktforschung" zu verwenden und die Nutzer "telefonisch oder per E-Mail" zur Teilnahme an Meinungsumfragen einzuladen.
Außerdem erklären sich Kunden den neuen Bestimmungen nach damit einverstanden, dass Stammdaten und das Geburtsdatum "für Bonitätsauskünfte an gesetzlich dazu befugte Kreditschutzverbände, Kreditinstitute und Auskunfteien" übermittelt werden können."

DerStandard: Umstrittene AGB-Änderungen bei UPC, 23. November 2010

Einverständnis widerrufen, ich hatte innerhalb einer Woche die Bestätigung. Kurzfristig hat da aber doch ein mulmiges Gefühl à la "mein Internet-Serviceprovider weiß mehr über mich, als es mir genehm ist" hervorgerufen.

...

"Statt Innenschau und Hollywood-Zufällen gibt es in Angela Schanelecs Film „Marseille“ von 2004 die Draufsicht auf ein ziemlich realistisches Leben, in dem am erstbesten Bartresen leider nicht der Mann oder wenigstens der Job des Lebens wartet. Und: Es gibt das Gesicht von Maren Eggert, die diese Frau spielt. Ein Gesicht, in dem es ständig arbeitet. Es öffnet das Deutungsspektrum, statt den Zuschauer in klar definierbare Empfindungen hineinzugängeln: Ein Glücksfall für alle, die Film und Theater als emotionale Anstalt verstehen, dennoch nicht vollständig ihre Hirnzellen an der Garderobe abgeben wollen."
Der Tagesspiegel: Maren Eggert - Der Job des Lebens

Marseille von Angela Schanelec ist neben Christian Petzolds Gespenster, wenn er Julia Hummer folgt, die beste Darstellung meines Innenlebens, die mir jemals begegnet ist.

Linkliste unbehandelter Themen

Politics: 

Germany is expecting to be the target of a terrorist attack. Meanwhile, Realtest-Koffer is on its way to becoming the UNWORT DES JAHRES.

A couple of days before the Presidential elections, Haiti continues to fight an outbreak of Cholera that has cost more than 900 lives so far. Demonstrations against the UN forces and the government have reached Port-au-Prince. 

A couple of weeks after revealing a budget that avoids the idea of an administrative reform, the Austrian's People's Party is insisting that the responsibility for teachers be transferred to the Länder (cutting the county-level in the process), since the one thing that is clearly going to save money is transferring responsibility to megalomaniac Landesfürsten.

Ireland's economy isn't doing so well, but the Irish government isn't exactly ecstatic about the EU and the IMF stepping in.

"The public finances are in a dreadful mess. The government is on track to spend 12% of GDP more than it takes in taxes this year, even after spending cuts and tax rises worth €14.5 billion ($19.6 billion). The deficit will be a staggering 32% of GDP once injections of capital into broken banks are taken into account. The total cost to the state could rise to €50 billion, or 30% of GDP. Anglo Irish Bank, a reckless property lender taken over by the government in January 2009, would account for two-thirds of that."

The Economist: Threadbare, November 18, 2010

Pop Culture: 

Spike Jonze shot a video for Arcade Fire's The Suburbs. It captures the strange mixture of suburbia and apocalyptic visions perfectly. 

Misfits is back. I watched the first, six-episode long season this January and thought it was pretty fantastic, but the two episodes of the new season so far have been stellar. It's about five people who get struck by lightning while doing community service and get different powers - but the show doesn't have to figure out new ways to disarm them to avoid a deus ex machina, because they can't really control their powers, and they don't have any aspirations to become superheroes either. 

Spielfreude etc.

Wild Flag, apart from being one of the most anticipated things currently on my list of pop cultural stuff that I look forward to (as you might have guessed, actually getting to see the beginning to the epic end of Harry Potter and the next season of Skins UK / the first season of Skins US, are also featured prominently on that list), is also a very interesting example for a discussion of how music is now distributed / how fandom works when you can read about concerts a couple of hours after they've taken place, see pictures, watch videos of new unreleased songs months before the record is actually coming out. I have never actually looked forward to the first record of a band before, because I am not involved in the local music scene, and while I do sometimes catch bands before they become famous, it is never this early into the process. I look forward to Wild Flag because Sleater-Kinney will always be my favourite band, and I did keep track of the individual band members' new projects after the "indefinite hiatus". 

The first trace of Wild Flag, although hints of a band containing more than one member of S-K were probably visibile before this, was Carrie Brownstein's farewell note on Monitor Mix: "Finally, I have a new band called WILD FLAG." This picture shows all the members of the band: Carrie Brownstein, Janet Weiss, Mary Timony, Rebecca Cole.

They are currently touring the West Coast of the United States, starting from Olympia (where most of Carrie Brownstein's musical adventures have started, as she stated at the first show), and it will probably be months before their first record comes out, and years before they will ever tour Europe. Still - the internet provides the possibility of ALMOST being there, in spite of the geographical distance. Other people tell their stories to those who can not be there. Shaky videos with insufficient audio provide a hint of what is to come - and this specific kind of energy, of drive, of talent, doesn't get lost just because the quality of the recordings isn't that great. If anything, the shakiness provides for an additional layer of immediacy, of somehow being close to what is happening.

Of course it helps that I have been obsessed with the idea of a 1990s revival that doesn't just focus on the surface of things, but on the ideas, on the energy, the DIY spirit of claiming the right to go on stage and tell stories.

...

I FUCKING HATE HOSPITALS.

Here, have some music.

Warpaint - Elephants



"They call me a thief / Call me a thief"

Das Lied zum Sonntag

Sleater-Kinney - Good Things



Got this feeling when I heard your name the other day.
Couldn't say it, couldn't make it go away.
It's a hard place, can't be friends, we can't be enemies.
It's just too much, feel the weight crushing down on my face.

The hardest part is things already said,
getting better, worse, I can not tell.
Why do good things never wanna stay?
Some things you lose, some things you give away.

Broken pieces, try to make it good again,
is it worth it, will it make me sick today?
It's a dumb song, but i'll write it anyway.
It's an old mistake, but we always make it, why do we?

The hardest part is things already said,
getting better, worse, I can not tell.
Why do good things never wanna stay?
Some things you lose, some things you give away.

This time, it'll be alright.
This time, it'll be okay.
this time, it'll be alright.
This time, it'll be okay.

The hardest part is things already said,
getting better, worse, I can not tell.
Why do good things never wanna stay?
Some things you lose, some things you give away.
Some things you lose, some things you give away.

[on "Call the Doctor", 1996]

Manchmal gibt es Tage, an denen dieser Song als Beschreibung vollkommen ausreicht

The Mountain Goats - No Children



I hope it stays dark forever  / I hope the worst isn't over  / And I hope you blink before I do  / Yeah I hope I never get sober

This is an accurate description of my year back home.

"The story unfolds leisurely, almost listlessly. Aura, carrying a pet white hamster that registers as a token of her vulnerability, slips into her postgraduate routine. She reunites with a childhood friend, Charlotte (Jemima Kirke, funny and appalling), goes to a party, gets a job as a restaurant hostess [...] She wanders about the loft, padding around in her pajamas like a toddler and standing (in awe or confusion) before the gleaming white cabinets and wall of books that look like the monument to success they are. Nothing happens, and then something does."

NY Times: Tiny Furniture, November 11, 2010

Was auf dem Papier gut klingt...

Das ist ja, wie vielleicht vorhersagbar, meine Traumkoalition. Strache malt furchtbare Alpträume für Autofahrer an die Wand, ich überlege, ob es in Zukunft vielleicht leichter sein wird, am Sonntag von einer Seite Wien (wo ich wohne) zur anderen (wo meine Eltern wohnen) zu kommen, ohne Auto, und ohne an den jeweiligen Busstationen mindestens 15 Minuten zu warten, weil ja am Sonntag "eh niemand mit den Öffentlichen fährt", und alle, die am Rande von Wien wohnen, sowieso darauf eingestellt sind, selbst die kürzeste Strecke mit dem Auto zurückzulegen (vor einigen Monaten war ich zu Hause, um zu betreuen, und der einzige zu Fuß zu erreichende Supermarkt wurde renoviert - ergo KEINE verfügbare Nahversorgung. Nein, nicht am Land. In der Stadt.) 

Wie derStandard.at außerdem erfuhr, wird Alexander Van der Bellen nicht in den Wiener Gemeinderat wechseln. Er wird im Nationalrat bleiben und zusätzlich ehrenamtlicher Wissenschafts- und Universitätsbeauftragter der Stadt Wien. Er ist in dieser Position dafür zuständig, den Kontakt zwischen den Unversitäten und der Stadt zu verbessern. Häupl: "Es freut mich sehr, dass er dieses Angebot angenommen hat". 

Standard: Wien wird rot-grün - Vassilakou bekommt Verkehrs- und Planungsressort und wird Vizebürgermeisterin, 12. November 2010

Ein bisschen Vorfreude vor der unvermeidbaren Ernüchterung gestatte ich mir dann doch noch. Nebenbei, vor zwei Tagen Der Knochenmann gesehen und mir überlegt, wie ich diesen Film wahrnehmen würde, wenn ich den Dialekt nicht verstehen würde und mich auf Untertitel verlassen müsste. Ist das spezifisch Österreichische an dem Film vermittelbar (etwa ein Witz wie dieser)? Das ist ein Film mit einem Einspielergebnis von etwa 4 Millionen Euro, in dem ein paar Minuten lang nüchtern über die medizinischen Fakten einer Geschlechtsumwandlung gesprochen wird.

Falls das alles noch Sinn macht: der Titel von Dirk Stermanns neuem Buch ist atemberaubend treffend für das Thema: Sechs Österreicher unter den ersten Fünf. Cue etwa zweihundert Erinnerungen an winterliche Sportnachrichten im Radio.

I don't have words to express how excited I am about this.

"We are Wild Flag. We've never played a show outside our practice space so thanks for coming to this one."
Those were Carrie Brownstein's first words at the first show for her new supergroup, featuring 90s indie icons Mary Timony of Helium, the Minders' Rebecca Cole, and Brownstein's Sleater-Kinney bandmate Janet Weiss. The location? Olympia, Washington, the city where many of the era's finest riot grrrl bands formed. As Brownstein noted, "I'm pretty sure 90 percent of my bands played their first show in Olympia. It's nice to continue that tradition."

Spin: Indie Supergroup Wild Flag Debut in Olympia, November 11, 2010

Rechte Einigung

"Hintergrund des geplanten Zusammenschlusses der beiden rechtsextremen Parteien sind finanzielle Probleme und sinkende Mitgliederzahlen. Laut Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz hatte die NPD Ende 2009 rund 6800 Mitglieder, zwei Jahre zuvor waren es noch 7200 gewesen. Die Zahl der DVU-Mitglieder wird auf rund 4000 geschätzt.[...] Die NPD soll künftig den Zusatz "Die Volksunion" im Namen tragen. Sie erhofft sich nach der Vereinigung bessere Chancen bei den Landtagswahlen im kommenden Jahr."

Die Zeit: Zusammenschluss am äußersten rechten Rand, 6. November 2010

Die DVU

Die NPD

There is no relation whatsoever between exhibit A and exhibit B

One: Trailer for Every Oscar-Winning Movie Ever

"Interest in your bold rejection of social norms as evidenced by your dyed hair"

I love how it starts out reasonable and then goes on a completely ridiculous tangent, much like a number of movies that shall not be named. 

Two: Trailer for Restless, the upcoming Gus Van Sant film featuring Mia Wasikowska

Amusing things to prepare for the more serious issues.

"In 2006, a dermatologist named Shelley Sekula-Gibbs became an official write-in candidate to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Most of the voters in her Texas district cast their ballots using an electronic machine called the Hart InterCivic eSlate, which requires that you spell out a write-in candidate's name by using a dial to select letters from a full alphabet. The machines don't accept a hyphen, so Sekula-Gibbs removed the punctuation from her campaign materials. The eSlates were programmed to correct certain expected misspellings of her name, but more esoteric variations had to be reviewed. A bipartisan panel eventually came up with a 28-page list of acceptable aliases, including Kelly Segula Gibbs, Snelly Gibbr, Schikulla Gibbs, Sheila Gibbs, Shelly Schulla Gibbs, Shelly Gibkula, ShelleySkulaGibbsssss, and SSG. Variations on "Sekula" included Sektula, Sequila, Sedoko, Sedoka, and Shecola. The phrase "Shelly DraculaCunt Gibs" was also accepted by officials because the intent of the voter was deemed obvious."
Slate: What Happens If You Misspell Murkowski?, September 17, 2010

Note that he still voted for her. 

This is a more entertaining oddity of the political system than the fact that a minority has the power to block every single vote which considerably weakens the efficiency of a legislative body.