Alle sombere berichten ten spijt, de wereld is ook in 2008 niet vergaan. Ditmaal naar verluid vanwege elektronische problemen. (BigPicture)

Gespeeld en genoten in 2008:

Toneel

De Theatercompagnie maakte met De Eenzame Weg (tekst Arthur Schnitzler, regie Theu Boermans) de beste voorstelling van het jaar. En ja, de Theatercompagnie moet blijven.

Toneelgroep Amsterdam was ook in 2008 het beste ensemble, heeft meer dan ooit de beste verzameling acteurs en heeft met Jacob Derwig bovendien de allerallerbeste acteur van het land in huis.

Muziek

Van een eerder jaar, maar Anders Trentemøllers The Chronicles (Amazon) was zeer te genieten, evenals de herontdekte knappe lichtvoetigheid van Moby. Een uiterst trage uitvoering van Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem (Amazon) uit 1947, door de Wiener Philharmoniker met Elisabeth Schwarzkopf o.l.v. Von Karajan, zorgde voor de stemmige en opgewekte noot in het afgelopen jaar. De uitvoering is bovendien bijzonder geschikt om fijn mee te zingen. NRK was tot slot volgens de teller van iTunes het meest beluisterde radiostation van 2008.

Film

Batman: The Dark Knight en Milk waren prima films uit 2008, maar de oudjes Casablanca, Ikiru, Ladri di biciclette en Persona waren ook dit jaar weer favoriet. Natuurlijk was Il Conformista ook in 2008 de beste film ooit.

Opera

Leoš Janáček, Kát’a Kabanová door De Nederlandse Opera.

Podcast

This American Life maakte in samenwerking met Planet Money tot tweemaal toe een podcast zoals radio ooit was bedoeld. Informatief, zeer onderhoudend en spannend: The Giant Pool of Money en Another Frightening Show About the Economy.

Boeken

Charlotte Mutsaers schreef met Koetsier Herfst de beste nederlandstalige roman van het jaar. Steven Nadlers Spinoza (Amazon) was goed en ook bij de zoveelste herlezing had ik plezier van Amsterdam ten tijde van Spinoza. Geld en vrijheid van Henry Méchoulan. Spinoza kreeg dit jaar overigens een enorm lelijk Wilhelmina-look-alike beeld aan de monding van de Amstel.

Kranten en Tijdschriften

Het Financieele Dagblad was prima op dreef en The Economist was heel prima op dreef, maar de NRC werd helaas steeds slechter. Kranten bevatten in 2008 voornamelijk oud nieuws op oud papier, en zijn dan ook nog eens voorzien van een overdaad aan trivia en columns. – Analyse is zeldzaam en opinie goedkoop. Anekdotes spreken niet voor zichzelf en verklaren niets en vooral: sinds wanneer is polemiek het allerhoogste goed?

Amsterdamse Middenstand

Marqt is dagelijkse kost, maar na de feestdagen a.u.b. geen muzak meer. Ook in 2008 prima middenstanders: Meeuwig, Caulis, ‘t Vlaams Broodhuys, Ton Overmars en de Boerenmarkt op zaterdag.

Restaurant

Bordewijk van Wil Demandt is in 2008 al 25 jaar het beste restaurant van de stad.

TV

Ascent of Money. Niall Ferguson vertelde ook op tv de geschiedenis van het geld. Meer aardige economen op tv: de optredens van Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini (foto) en Willem Buiter.

Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives (YouTube) was een mooi verslag van E, van de band Eels, op zoek naar sporen van zijn geniale vader, de quantum mechanicus Hugh Everett. (bonus).

Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escapes was het smakelijkste programma op tv. Van de Nederlandse tv was geloof ik niks de moeite van het onthouden waard. UKNova was overigens ook in 2008 de plaats om UK-televisie te downloaden.

Rood Jurkje

Victor en Rolf: “No”. Collectie Fall/Winter 2008/2009.

Kunst

De Kunstvlaai heeft sowieso een voorsprong vanwege de toplocatie, zoals Rijksacademie Open vanwege het talent.

Dooddoener in 2008 in alle kunsten: alle schedels.

Eerdere versies: 2005, 2006, 2007.

“Livestation, the previously invite-only streaming television player, has released its free desktop client for all platforms. The app cites an available 1,275 channels, but the majority are—how should we say—not essential viewing. Still, there’s live CNN, BBC, NBC News, Bloomberg, and a smattering of local stations. The full-screen “carousel” view is pretty slick, as is reducing the player to a corner and having it always stay on top. After creating your account, you can also watch live streams from Livestation’s web site, and send twitters marking what you’re watching. All in all, a pretty decent solution to quickly pulling up news and information while you’re at your desktop. Livestation is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems; requires a free sign-up to use.”

Livestation

Web 2.0 Expo 2008: Clay Shirky (blip.tv) – ‘A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken.’

Clay Shirky, Gin, Television, and Social Surplus:

“I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she’s going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn’t what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, “What you doing?” And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, “Looking for the mouse.”

Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won’t have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan’s Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.”

The Wire – Omars Day. (YouTube)

Obit Magazine, Off-Beat Obit: “A Man’s Gotta Have a Code”:

“BALTIMORE – Omar Little, the veteran stick-up artist who inspired fear and fascination in drug-plagued neighborhoods across the city, was shot and killed in a west-side convenience store yesterday. Police said the assailant remained at large.

Famed for his brazen robberies of area drug dealers, Mr. Little had retired from what he called “the game” a year ago, moving to the Caribbean with a new romantic partner. But he apparently returned to Baltimore this winter to seek revenge following the brutal murder of a beloved business associate.

Mr. Little’s efforts to hunt down Marlo Stanfield, the man he blamed for the killing, were unsuccessful–an unusual stumble in a celebrated career. He injured his leg jumping out a window during what sources said was a firefight with alleged Stanfield associates. As a result, witnesses said, the once intimidating figure was reduced to limping along city streets on an improvised crutch. (…)”

(via)

Nota Bene: “MANY ARE TRAPPED FOR HOURS IN DARKNESS AND CONFUSION.”

“This ain’t Aruba, bitch.” – Bunk (The Wire: Unconfirmed Reports.)

Entertainment Weekly, ”The Wire”: Bright Lies, Big City:

“Last night’s epigraph – ”This ain’t Aruba, bitch” – was delivered by a slurring Bunk at the bar. All those black bodies found in the rowhouses aren’t enough to warrant a continued investigation, and Bunk, McNulty, and Lester tried to drink away their disgust. Perhaps if those bodies had been white; better yet, if just one of those bodies had belonged to a white teenage cheerleader who had gone missing on an island spring break. Now that would warrant front-page news despite being a cold case for months now.”

(Zie ook: Missing white woman syndrome.)

Tegenlicht uitzending: De toekomst van ons voedsel: landbouw of laboratorium? (maandag 28 januari 2008, 21:00 Ned 2)

“On HBO’s The Wire, actor Michael K. Williams plays Omar Little, a stick-up guy who robs only drug dealers.

Omar has a scar running down his face. That’s not a prosthetic scar; it’s real. Williams tells Terry Gross the story behind his scar — and lots of other stories about himself and Omar.

Williams’ other TV credits include Law & Order, CSI, Boston Legal and the TV movie of Lackawanna Blues; he’s appeared on the big screen in Gone Baby Gone.

Williams tells Terry Gross that he initially had a hard time figuring out how to be as hard and frightening as the script calls for Omar to be.

“Anybody that really knows me … knows that’s very far from my character, so I just had a hard time finding a believable state of mind to execute the character,” he says. “I just kept going to laughter.”"

“We are looking at something that probably not one of us has ever seen before. We are staring in perfect colour close-up at the slow, rhythmic uncoiling of a slimy proboscis. But what are we to make of the strange and oddly beautiful sight before our eyes? The camera pulls back a fraction. The answer is revealed. We are looking at a snail. A familiar garden snail. And as our recognition dawns, the background music, a gently impelling blend of harps and violins, fades slightly, and we hear the characteristic hushed intensity of one of the most famous voices in the world. “We don’t often see a snail that way”, says David Attenborough. “And that’s because we’ve only recently had the tiny lenses and electronic cameras we need to explain this miniature world.”

We are entering, burrowing into, the first part of Attenborough’s most recent BBC series, Life in the Undergrowth: by the time the five episodes are over another four hours of screen time will have been added to the ninety or so hours of extraordinary television footage that he and his various teams have compiled for television viewers over the last 30 years.”

“Did he wonder whether he was exploiting the painter Francis Bacon by showing him drunk? ‘But we were both drunk! Plastered. By the end of the day the room was spinning. We had started drinking at 9am when he came out with Bollinger, then we carried on drinking and filming over lunch and into the evening. But curiously I was asking things that were OK. I looked like, well, what I looked like, but I thought keep it in, keep it in.’”

Timewatch’ Omaha Beach in CGI. (YouTube – via)

Timewatch:

“One of the most fun parts of filming is for the computer graphics (CGI) sequences. Timewatch has its own team dedicated to CGI (Neil Wilson, Steve Flynn and Colin Thornton) who have come out to Normandy with a car laden with Rangers’ uniforms and fake plastic guns.”

Omar Little. Played By Michael Kenneth Williams.

Het vierde seizoen van de Amerikaanse tv-serie The Wire (wikipedia) wordt niet zelden ‘de beste serie ooit op tv uitgezonden’ genoemd. Onnodig overdreven, maar niet eens heel ver bezijden de waarheid. Hoe dan ook, vandaag 6 januari begint het vijfde en laatste seizoen:

“The fifth and final season of ‘The Wire’ centers on the media’s role in addressing – or failing to address – the fundamental political, economic and social realities depicted over the course of the series, while also resolving storylines of the numerous characters woven throughout the narrative arc of the show.

Explains series creator David Simon, “It made sense to finish ‘The Wire’ with this reflection on the state of the media, as all the other attendant problems of the American city depicted in the previous four seasons will not be solved until the depth and range of those problems is first acknowledged. And that won’t happen without an intelligent, aggressive and well-funded press.”"

In Nederland is The Wire overigens niet anders dan via bittorent te volgen. (Leesvoer en kijkvoer na de klik.)

Leesvoer:
The Atlantic, The Angriest Man In Television:

“Fiction can explain things that journalism cannot. It allows you to enter the lives and motivations of characters with far more intimacy than is typically possible in nonfiction. In the case of The Wire, fiction allows you to wander around inside a violent, criminal subculture, and inside an entrenched official bureaucracy, in a way that most reporters can only dream about. And it frees you from concerns about libel and cruelty. It frees you to be unfair.”

Slate in 2006, Analysing The Wire, the best show on television:

The Wire, which has just begun its fourth season on HBO, is surely the best TV show ever broadcast in America. This claim isn’t based on my having seen all the possible rivals for the title, but on the premise that no other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature.

The Baltimore Sun, ‘The Wire’ loses spark in newsroom storyline:

“Writing about the past four seasons of HBO’s The Wire has been one of the great pleasures of this job. But reviewing the fifth and final season, which begins next Sunday on the premium cable channel, is more of a mixed blessing.

(…)

The complicating factor for me is that creator David Simon turns his lens to the media this season – with a particular focus on a fictionalized version of The Sun newsroom. (Though some scenes were shot on Sun property, the paper did not review the scripts or have any involvement in the production.)”

The Wire eerder hier gelinkt: tag/the-wire.

Kijkvoer:

The Wire – McNulty and Bunk, the famous crime scene – fuck. (YouTube)

dinks… and i’m outie 5000. (YouTube)

Omar Hits Barksdale Stash House. (YouTube)

The Wire – How to Move a Desk. (YouTube)

The Wire season 4 – Michael learns how to kill. (YouTube)

Wat voorafging:
The Wire Season 1 Recap
The Wire Season 2 Recap
The Wire Season 3 Recap
The Wire Season 4 Intro

“Continuing to describe The Wire’s visual differences from conventional TV, Chappelle moved to the subject of lighting. “We’re not afraid to let people go into shadow, we seldom have edge lights or give the ladies a beauty light. You know all the things you’re supposed to do, well we usually don’t.” The look of the show is ‘real,’ he said. “You walk into a room and it’s a harsh, fluorescent light. If it goes a little green, it goes a little green. The downlights on some of The Wire’s sets are pretty much ‘practicals’ – of course they’re re-tubed but on sets like the Police station or (Police) headquarters that’s the (florescent lighting) look we’re going for.”"

(via)

Fox News Porn:

“Warning. All clips used in this video were taken from Fox News broadcasts.”

Update: Zie ook Larry Lessig, The weird world of “indecency”.

Op bezoek bij David Letterman is David Byrne nerveus én grappig.

Talking Heads on Letterman ’83 Pt. 1
Talking Heads on Letterman ’83 Pt. 2 I-Zimbra

Jonathan Miller geinterviewd door Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers interviewt Jonathan Miller naar aanleiding van diens BBC-serie A Rough History of Disbelief uit 2005, binnenkort in de VS door PBS uit te zenden. De 3-delige serie is in fragmenten of integraal ook hier (wederom) te bekijken. Bijzonder de moeite waard.