August Deaths
Aug. 30th, 2012 08:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedsitter23A couple of people passed away and felt I should mention something as I usually do.
Gore Vidal passed away. For brevity, go here for 26 great quotes by the man.
Vidal's life reads like "the most interesting man in the world'. on top of that, the Right attacked him as a gay socialist, and Vidal never ran away from his life or politics, instead embracing the barbs pointed at him.
I became a fan after seeing his interviews. He had an epic interview on Real Time with Bill Maher which a certain Box Office channel continually is taking down. you will have to do with only a snippet.
I read Vidal when he was in my 20s with a book a couple of friends loved, Live from Golgotha. I liked the idea, but didn't really get into the book that much. Comedy blasphemy is fine, but I felt like others (life of Brian, Christopher Moore's Lamb) have done it better.
I went back to Vidal after his Maher interview and read Burr, a book in his Narratives of Empire series. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It reminded a bit of Michener in the way the book developed (my experience with Michener is admittedly limited, so correct me if I am wrong), but it had all these great characters and moments.
I plan on revisiting Vidal in both his nonfiction prose and his other Empire stuff again down the road.
Of course, the big news the media took was that intellectualism was dead, and all these great minds who were huge celebrities- Vidal, Mailer, Capote- are all now dead and gone. I don't quite believe that- their are still a lot of great authors who are well known (. It's just their audiences (no surprise The Daily Show is a big booster) are just a tad bit smaller in a cable world.
I also felt I should say something about Tony Scott. I was a fan of his. I don't know that I share the love for Top Gun the rest of my generation does, but I did really like The Hunger, which may or may not be terrible. You have True Romance on the list as well, but you have a lot of movies that may not be classics, but were solid enjoyable films from the last decade or two (Man on Fire, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State).
My feelings for Scott are caught by his last film Unstoppable which was an exciting film despite having a plot that you knew from the beginning. The other reason I will always appreciate Scott (That is brother is Ridley, probably doesn't hurt) is that he may have put together the nine finest minutes of celluloid ever captured.
The Hire for BMW films
Apologies to defFrog who covered both of these deaths better already here and here.
There's plenty of more Vidal content on the web if you have time for it. I would start with Democracy Now's remembrance.
Gore Vidal passed away. For brevity, go here for 26 great quotes by the man.
Vidal's life reads like "the most interesting man in the world'. on top of that, the Right attacked him as a gay socialist, and Vidal never ran away from his life or politics, instead embracing the barbs pointed at him.
I became a fan after seeing his interviews. He had an epic interview on Real Time with Bill Maher which a certain Box Office channel continually is taking down. you will have to do with only a snippet.
I read Vidal when he was in my 20s with a book a couple of friends loved, Live from Golgotha. I liked the idea, but didn't really get into the book that much. Comedy blasphemy is fine, but I felt like others (life of Brian, Christopher Moore's Lamb) have done it better.
I went back to Vidal after his Maher interview and read Burr, a book in his Narratives of Empire series. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It reminded a bit of Michener in the way the book developed (my experience with Michener is admittedly limited, so correct me if I am wrong), but it had all these great characters and moments.
I plan on revisiting Vidal in both his nonfiction prose and his other Empire stuff again down the road.
Of course, the big news the media took was that intellectualism was dead, and all these great minds who were huge celebrities- Vidal, Mailer, Capote- are all now dead and gone. I don't quite believe that- their are still a lot of great authors who are well known (. It's just their audiences (no surprise The Daily Show is a big booster) are just a tad bit smaller in a cable world.
I also felt I should say something about Tony Scott. I was a fan of his. I don't know that I share the love for Top Gun the rest of my generation does, but I did really like The Hunger, which may or may not be terrible. You have True Romance on the list as well, but you have a lot of movies that may not be classics, but were solid enjoyable films from the last decade or two (Man on Fire, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State).
My feelings for Scott are caught by his last film Unstoppable which was an exciting film despite having a plot that you knew from the beginning. The other reason I will always appreciate Scott (That is brother is Ridley, probably doesn't hurt) is that he may have put together the nine finest minutes of celluloid ever captured.
The Hire for BMW films
Apologies to defFrog who covered both of these deaths better already here and here.
There's plenty of more Vidal content on the web if you have time for it. I would start with Democracy Now's remembrance.
