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  Peter Reavy 9:35 pm on March 29, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  Liberal cinema 

  This archived Tyler Cowan article examines the damage done to the French film industry by protectionism. It seems very likely that he is correct. One snippet of hope:

  Eric Rohmer, the French director of such popular art house comedies as My Night at Maud’s and Claire’s Knee [...] perceives Hollywood as a danger, but he is not a cultural protectionist. As he told The New York Times, “I say to people, `I am a commercial film maker’….I am not supported by the state; I am for free competition.”

  There aren’t many like him.

  I liked Rohmer’s film, The Lady and the Duke. It was controversial in France since it was set during, but sceptical of, the Revolution.

   

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  Peter Reavy 8:56 pm on March 29, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  What the internet understands 

  Tim Berners-Lee was in the Economist the other week (subscription is required for the article):

  Analogies between the web and the brain have long played a profound role in Sir Tim’s thinking. He is the son of two mathematicians who worked on the team that developed the world’s first commercial, stored-program computer, the Manchester University Mark 1, which was commercialised by Ferranti, a British company, in the 1950s. He remembers his father reading books on the brain, looking for ways to make computers able to identify connections between things, as the brain does.

  This line of thought has stuck with Sir Tim and is at the core of one of his most enduring passions, the semantic web. Whereas the web today provides links between documents which humans read and extract meaning from, the semantic web aims to provide computers with the means to extract useful information from data accessible on the internet, be it on web pages, in calendars or inside spreadsheets. Such data—much of it stored in databases that can be queried by humans via the web—is part of what is referred to as the “deep web”, and cannot be accessed by the web-crawler programs used by most search engines.

  No one knows exactly how much information is in the deep web, but estimates range from hundreds to thousands of times more than in the “surface web” that search engines currently index, which is thought to contain over 10 billion pages. If semantic-web technology can help computers access even a fraction of this hidden data, and make sense of it, it could make possible new forms of searching and would even allow software to retrieve information and make deductions from it.

  This is the clearest explanation of “semantic web” I’ve read.

  We think of the internet as there to serve us, but it only works as well as it does because someone thought of a way to order information in a way that a machine can understand. In this view, improving machine comprehension is still the way forward, rather than a solved problem.

   
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  Peter Reavy 9:18 pm on March 23, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  Ten orchestras 

  A few weeks ago the FT asked how good orchestras can become great. Can a great conductor turn a decent orchestra around in a matter of a few years, or is there more to it? After throwing out the paper, I was pleased to find the article online. Their critic ends with a list of his 10 favourites.

   
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  Peter Reavy 8:51 pm on March 23, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  One hundred recordings 

  A kind American gentleman has listed Gramophone’s 100 Greatest Recordings. They’re broken up into four batches. Here are the first 25.

   
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  Peter Reavy 4:59 pm on March 14, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  Neue Sachlichkeit 

  

  I’ve been meaning to post about the exhibition Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s (in New York, now ended) since reading about it a few weeks back.

  It features portraits in the style known as New Objectivity. Wikipedia has just informed me that this is a translation of Neue Sachlichkeit.

  I like the style partly because of the glitter and doom and also because it’s like early oil painting from Northern Europe – detailed and almost photographic but grotesque.

  The only paintings of this school that I’ve ever seen in real life were when I visited the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, but I can’t find any examples of the paintings I saw then on their site. Despite these being the paintings I liked most at that museum.

  This semi-obscurity seems to be typical of the fate of the poor Neue Sachlichkeit. But perhaps one day I will be able to see a show like the one that was on at the Met.

  
  

   
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  Peter Reavy 4:58 pm on March 14, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  Ornette Coleman: Sound Grammar 

  

  At the weekend, I read it was Ornette Coleman’s 77th birthday, so I thought I’d buy his most recent release. It’s a live recording. He’s in good form. Someone once called him a composer of short melody of genius. There is still some truth to that. He’s still coming up with great melodies to start each piece with. Whether the humble listener can follow where each leads is another question.

  The opening track, Jordan, has plenty of pace. The next track, Sleep Talking, hangs together well and everything runs along nicely after that. Call To Duty is pretty fierce. Then Once Only has a noodle-y intro and the album loses focus a bit. A violin turns up and outstays its welcome. The album finishes on an intense note with Song X, which goes back to Ornette’s fiery Pat Metheny collaboration in the 80s.

  Maybe this CD is not the best intro to Ornette Coleman, but it captures his sound as well as anything else of his I’ve heard and he’s still blasting away.

   
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  Peter Reavy 4:58 pm on March 14, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  Rachmaninov: Symphony no. 2 / Kurt Sanderling / Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra 

  

  Rachmaninov wrote his second symphony in 1907. This classic recording of it was made in the 50s. It’s in mono. The sound quality is acceptable although a little strained at certain moments, such as during loud brass playing. The playing from the Leningrad PO is very committed and convincing. The conductor Kurt Sanderling is an interesting figure. A Jew who fled the Nazis, but oddly, to the Soviet East.

  Rachmaninov’s music is late-Romantic, but not in the more tonally challenging manner of Richard Strauss. It’s easy on the ear without being predictable or dull. The whole piece is about 55 minutes long, so a hefty symphony. Nothing else on the CD, though. Apparently Rachmaninov was not always taken that seriously as a symphonist but this is a good listen, if a little meandering to my ears, with some lovely tunes scattered through it. Recommended.

  DG 449 767-2