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      News — Recommending

      Recommending: Jim O'Rourke


      Halfway to a Threeway EP by Jim O'Rourke (Drag City)



      Insignificance LP by Jim O'Rourke (Drag City)

      These two records (yes, I still say records) are really excellent artifacts from the great indie rock years that were the 1990s (well, mostly the latter part. And technically Insignificance is from 2001, so there is spillover). Go out to your local record store and get these (or--I guess--download them).

      This Poe House

      Daguerreotype taken in Richmond, VA Sept. 1849, 3 weeks before he died

      Daguerreotype taken in Richmond, VA Sept. 1849 (3 weeks before he died in Baltimore)

      If you know me (and well really, you probably don't), you know that I'm a big fan of Edgar Allan Poe. I grew up reading him and was born outside of Baltimore and moved to Virginia as a kid, eventually ending up at one time living across the street from the house where a good friend of Poe's lived and is known as the last place where he recited "The Raven" (the house is called "Talavera" at 2315 West Grace Street). Really we thought of it as the "cat house" because there were a million cats lingering around there, but i've digressed enough for now.

      The house where Poe lived in Baltimore is in danger of closing due to a loss of funding by the city and it must become self-sufficient by July 2012 or face closure. This will be difficult as it's not in the most desirable neighborhood to visitors and lacks any adequate parking. On top of that it doesn't have the range of artifacts of say, the Poe House in Richmond (which has a great collection, but the house itself--while historic--is not a place Poe actually lived and wrote in). What makes this building special is that one of America's greatest writers really did live and write within its walls. It is the place itself precisely that matters.

      Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, Baltimore, MD

      Poe struggled with poverty his entire life and all of his homes are modest in size and bare in decor. His letters are littered with desperate appeals for money to keep him going and also to help him start his never-realized literary magazine, The Stylus. The fact that one of his houses faces financial difficulties is apropos (say it out loud for a fun pun) and certainly shows us that our history is alive and not always well.

      There is no official website or blog or twitter that I can find for the house (although the EAP Society of Baltimore has a great site on Poe in Baltimore), but there is a petition on the Poe bicentennial page to send to the Mayor of Baltimore to keep funding alive for the Poe House. It's a small thing and there are certainly bigger and more important issues happening, but history is always worth fighting for and hopefully the city adds this relatively small item back in their budget so we all have the opportunity to visit.

      The Petition is here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/save-the-poe-house-and-museum-in-baltimore/

      More info on the threat here: http://www.eapoe.org/threat.htm

      L.A. Times article about it here: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-poe-house-funding,0,2353983.story

      Film Diary: Ugetsu

      To mark the occasion of the Film Diary being back in-print, we thought it would be fun to start a regular blog post talking about some of the movies we watch, since our love of movies is what got me started on the idea of making a film journal in the first place. I'm no professional when it comes to talking about film and I get annoyed when reviews give away too many plot points (I don't even like reading the Netflix summaries), so I won't get into the movies too much, but just put in a plug for the ones I really enjoyed.

      I picked up the Criterion release of Ugetsu at the library because I had heard of it, but didn't know anything about it besides that it sounded familiar as something we should see (turns out it was on the list of top 100 films that we've been trying to get through). I didn't make the connection that we had been watching a couple earlier films by the same director,  Kenji Mizoguchi. All the same, the movie just sat there in the pile, feeling a little bit like homework. You know those movies that you should watch, but are never in the mood for, but it turns out Ugetsu is his masterpiece and it really is a pretty stunning work. When it comes to Japanese directors as household names, he doesn't seem to be too well-known, and while I don't agree with Godard's assessment of him as "quite simply one of the greatest of filmmakers," I do think that Ugetsu and Sisters of the Gion are worth watching for his storytelling and composition, the acting, and unusual material.