Πόλεμος και βιντεοπαιχνίδια Από τον Σουν Τζου στο Xbox

By book From Sun Tzu to Xbox is now available in Greek! With an even more bizarre cover.

According to Google Translator, here's what one reviewer had to say about the translation:

One such book is indispensable to those who have children (especially in childhood and teenage age): what he says - which achna recoverable here-giving clear the extent of a phenomenon that is not a phase of maturity and therefore has much yet to impose. In the current phase has affected (though it has not changed) behaviours, relationships, interpretations, decisions. Chances are that the impact on downstream will be greater. As for the completeness of the issue, has everything to the translator main Nektario Kalaitzi, carried on the language in our clearest way the original and had the patience and courage to complete his efforts with a glossary explaining the efficiency and definitions concerning video games.

Link: Βιβλιοπωλείο Ψαράς, Εκδόσεις Δίον, Βιβλία, Ελληνική λογοτεχνία, Έλληνες συγγραφείς, βιβλιοπωλείο online

Famous Amos

My godchild Tiana's birthday is coming up this weekend (turning five!). So I bought some more books for her as a gift--The Red Balloon, The Story of Ferdinand, Harold and the Purple Crayon, a weird and wonderful Maurice Sendak-illustrated obscurity called A Hole is to Dig: A First Book of First Definitions, and finally this gem pictured above.

Experimental cinephiles will recognize Amos Vogel as founder of Cinema 16, early shaper of the New York Film Festival and author of the definitely not-for-kids-book Film As a Subversive Art. Sendak also did artwork for advertisements for Cinema 16's children's shows. Kino-geeks take note: one of the stores on the street is called "Marcia's"--no doubt after Marcia Vogel, Amos's wife and co-runner of Cinema 16--and the film society itself hangs its shingle a little ways down the block!

On the Marks

Touch: Sensuous Theory and ... - Google Book Search

In Exile

Noted typomane Mike Atkinson announces blogwise that Exile Cinema: Filmmakers at Work Beyond Hollywood is finally hitting the shelves of your local bookstore, virtual versions included.

I happened to hold a physical copy of this tome myself this past weekend while meandering through the academic press book-faire set up within the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Philadelphia. I should have snapped a phone-pic to document my findings, which felt something like a Bigfoot sighting for this long-rumored release. The design looks good and the book feels solid in the hand in that wonderfully durable heavy-glossy-paper academic-publishing way, even if its contributors have fewer Ph. D's and more Certificates of Survival from film criticism's School of Hard Knocks (or is it a School for Scoundrels? My diploma has become too smudgy to tell).

Here's the redoubtable table of contents from the SUNY Press site:

Table Of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction Michael Atkinson Part 1: Rockets from East Asia 1. Double Trouble: Tsui Hark & Ching Siu-tung Howard Hampton 2. Bullet Ballet: Seijun Suzuki Jonathan Rosenbaum 3. Kuala L'Impure: The Cinema of Amir Muhammad Dennis Lim 4. A Kurosawa Kiyoshi Kit B. Kite 5. The Bong Show: Bong Joon-ho Ed Park Part 2. On the European Outskirts 6. Beyond the Clouds: The Films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan Geoff Andrew 7. Pawel Pawlikowski: Dreaming All My Life Jessica Winter 8. Bela Tarr Jonathan Romney 9. Blunt Force Trauma: Andrzej Zulawski Michael Atkinson 10. Sharunas Bartas Laura Sinagra Part 3. Documentarians and Mad Scientists 11. Ken Jacobs David Sterritt 12. A Few Moments of Arousal in a Film by Martin Arnold George Toles 13. Ross McElwee Godfrey Cheshire 14. Judith Helfand: Secret Stories, Video Diaries, and Toxic Comedy Patricia Aufderheide Part 4. Lost between Genre and Myth-Making 15. The Beardo: José Mojica Marins Guy Maddin 16. Dellamorte Dellamore and Michele Soavi Maitland McDonagh 17. Guy Maddin Mark Peranson 18. James Fotopoulos Ed Halter 19. Christopher Munch: For Those We Have Loved Graham Fuller Part 5. Defiant Lions of the New Wave Generation 20. Pleasures of the Flesh: Walerian Borowczyk David Thompson 21. Chris Marker: The Return to Work at the Wonder Factory Joshua Clover 22. Moebius Dragstrip: Monte Hellman Circles Back Chuck Stephens 23. The Not-Too-Long Discourses of Chantal Akerman Stuart Klawans List of Contributors Index

The Problem With Brother Sam

Three hot pickups on 6th Avenue today.

Light Reading

Here's an interesting folio I found whilst gallivanting through eBay tonight: Still Light, a limited edition tome by Robert Beavers from 1971, offered for sale out of the Netherlands, complete with an autographed letter, signed by Beavers to John Gielgud (!) (?). I assume the book comprises notes on his film of the same name. At almost $300 it's far beyond my book budget, but that price is more than half what a seller on Amazon is asking.





More on Beavers by J. Hoberman, an issue of Millennium Film Journal on Robert Beavers and Gregory Markopoulos from 1998, and extensive notes from the programme "To the Winged Distance: Films by Robert Beavers" at the Tate. I've written various reviews of his work over the years as well.

On Criticism

This is from a while back, but the folks at The Spectator posted this excellent take-down of mediocre critics:

We therefore very often find, that Persons the most accomplished in Ridicule are those who are very shrewd at hitting a Blot, without exerting any thing masterly in themselves. As there are many eminent Criticks who never writ a good Line, there are many admirable Buffoons that animadvert upon every single Defect in another, without ever discovering the least Beauty of their own. By this Means, these unlucky little Wits often gain Reputation in the Esteem of Vulgar Minds, and raise themselves above Persons of much more laudable Characters.

If the Talent of Ridicule were employed to laugh Men out of Vice and Folly, it might be of some Use to the World; but instead of this, we find that it is generally made use of to laugh Men out of Virtue and good Sense, by attacking every thing that is Solemn and Serious, Decent and Praiseworthy in Human Life.

Oriental Electrical Psychology, or, Give Peas a Chance

Things Kept Secret from the Foundation of the World

Copyright 1922 and Published by
THE SOCIETY OF TRANSCENDENT SCIENCE
Masonic Temple, Chicago, Ill., U.S.A.

Hello My Name Is...

Dogme et rituel de la haute magie par Eliphas Levi

Dogme et rituel de la haute magie

Little Boys Blue

Ace Star paperback, 1965.

Strangely, the book isn't much of a pulp read. Rather, the author parries various arguments religious, philosophical and psychological against homosexuality. The prefatory quote is taken from Karl Popper; peppered within are bits from S. I. Hayakawa, Bruno Bettelheim, Kurt Godel, Max Planck, and "Ernst and Gellner, two authorities on the chimpanzee." Quite a heady read for something that was probably taken home in a brown paper bag.

Vicious Circle

This one is for Ed P. at The Dizzies.

From the inside of the book: "The ouroborous, the snake with his tail in his mouth, is the prototype of the vicious circle. What could be more vicious than to bite yourself, with a view, presumably, to eating yourself. Furthermore, this is impossible."

Earth's Crystal Tears

1980

Thought of the Day

"Consider: naturalistic fictions are parallel-world stories in which the divergence from the real is too slight for historical verification."
-- Samuel Delany, "About 5750 Words" (footnote 3), 1971.

ESP Forewarnings

Click on the images to enlarge them; it's definitely worth looking closer at those little illustrations of real individuals saved from disaster by the powers of ESP.

Twisted Sister

Another find from the Housing Works sale: a first edition (tho' slightly banged up) of My Sister and I, the infamous forgery of Nietzsche's late-life diaries, which purported to support theories of the philosopher's incestuous relationship with said sibling. See a bit by philosopher Dennis Dutton on the kerfluffle.


But lo! What is this? Seems the book used to belong to renegade sociologist Ned Polsky, the author of counterculture classic Hustlers, Beats and Others. Did he pencil this annotation?

"$am Roth" refers to booklegger Samuel Roth, who famously pirated Ulysses in the US while it was still contraband. Roth, who was Jewish, also penned Jews Must Live, an anti-Semitic tract that, if googled, will today lead you to any number of white power websites, where it lives on in digitized samizdat, polluting a new generation of wingnutten sheissekopfs.

Smarties!

Went to the Housing Works sale today with T_____ and brought back a couple of boxes of fine books. Among them was this gem from 1955: Keen Teens, 101 Ways to Make Money by Stookie Allen. Each page has a Ripley's Believe-it-or-Not style cartoon box with a bio of a real money-making teen from the 1950s...and look who turned up! It's none other than future feminist science-fiction author Joanna Russ!

Seems that Stookie Allen was also a noted WWII sketcher and illustrator of men's pulp mags.

Here's some other keen teens:

Babs and Marianne were the founders of Caedmon Records, which was profiled by NPR a few years back as pioneers of the audiobook industry.

Wilde Too Lazy to Write

Recent Acquisitions & Updates

Noted for their cover art.