Sunset and evening star,
   And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
   When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
   Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
   Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
   And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
   When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
   The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
   When I have crossed the bar

Roger Ebert: Why I Hate 3-D Movies

3-D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension. Hollywood’s current crazy stampede toward it is suicidal. It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience. For some, it is an annoying distraction. For others, it creates nausea and headaches. It is driven largely to sell expensive projection equipment and add a $5 to $7.50 surcharge on already expensive movie tickets. Its image is noticeably darker than standard 2-D. It is unsuitable for grown-up films of any seriousness. It limits the freedom of directors to make films as they choose. For moviegoers in the PG-13 and R ranges, it only rarely provides an experience worth paying a premium for.

…

“Although art as magic is not art proper, Collingwood accords it the greatest respect. He dismisses more brutally and contemptuously even than Wittgenstein the patronizing view, held by Frazer, Lévy-Bruhl, and other anthropologists of his time, that religion and magic simply amount to bad science, so that the “savage mind” is one lacking the most elementary knowledge of cause and effect. He also dismisses the ludicrous Freudian view that magic is a kind of neurosis in which the patient supposes that by wishing for a thing he can bring it about. Instead, Collingwood insists, surely correctly, that the end of magic is the raising and channeling of emotion: ‘magical activity is a kind of dynamo supplying the mechanism of practical life with the current that drives it.’ Its true purpose is not, say, to avert natural catastrophes, but to ‘produce in men an emotional state of willingness to bear them with fortitude and hope.’

“This attitude gave Collingwood an uncommon sympathy with religious ritual and practice, and a much more realistic understanding of its ongoing place in human life. He also enables us to see why the majority of people, including those like myself who have no religious attachments, are nevertheless embarrassed at the dogmatic contempt poured on religious practice by our more militant atheists. Every sane person recognizes at some level that dance, music, poetry, and ritual may be just what you need as you prepare to face a battle, or desolation, failure, grief, or death.”

Blackburn isn’t uncritical, though.

If Collingwood is as acute and interesting as I have suggested, how does it happen that he is largely a minority interest? He has his devotees, certainly; but I doubt if he is more than a ghost in the footnotes to syllabi across the Western world. The comparison to Wittgenstein might help. It is difficult to pick up a page of Wittgenstein without being seduced: whether you understand it or not, the sense is overwhelming that something of the highest importance is being addressed with a rare detachment and intelligence. With Collingwood, there is assertion and bravado instead of seduction. Wittgenstein shows that he is a wonderfully and originally reflective thinker; Collingwood cannot help telling you that he is. Wittgenstein is silent about his being capable of other things as well; Collingwood boasts of it. You can read all of Wittgenstein without knowing of his genuine heroism during World War I. One cannot help feeling that had Collingwood done anything like that, it would have cropped up on every other page. All this is off-putting, and Collingwood’s readers have to learn to shake their heads with a smile rather than toss the whole thing into the bin.

I just finished listening to Neil Gaiman reading his own The Graveyard Book. I won’t say a lot about the book itself. You can follow the link, or if you know Gaiman already, you’ll know it’s worth a read.

But, like Chabon and Summerland, Gaiman does his own reading on the audiobook version of Graveyard, and the result is just as wonderful. Obviously he knows the material, but he’s simply an excellent reader, with a collection of character voices that are just plain fun to hear.

While I’m on the subject of audiobooks, I’ve been meaning to mention that Steve Toltz’s A Fraction of the Whole (Booker shortlist) is a fine novel and exceptionally well read, not by Toltz but by two readers, Colin McPhillamy and Craig Baldwin, who are respectively the voices of a father and son, Martin and Jasper Dean, in more or less alternating chapters. Baldwin/Jasper starts off, and I was taken with the reading. When McPhillamy/Martin took over my first reaction was hey, I want more Jasper, but McPhillamy and Martin stole the show.

It’s one of the pleasures of audiobooks, the extra contribution that a really good reader brings to the party.

This is my current copy, 1962 US Fawcett (Crest Books), Greenwich CT. There are some themes: movie stills, skin, Nabokov, plain brown wrappers.

Have a look. Fascinating.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

The attribution is all over the web, but with no source, and it doesn’t really sound like him, does it? Hard to prove the negative, but you’d think that someone would mention where he had written it, or when he had said it. The same source (again via Sr J) produced another:

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”

Even less Jamesian, wouldn’t you say? But this time The Google was more helpful, and it turns out that it is Jamesian—just not William Jamesian. It’s from Clive James, q.G.

There are historical figures that seem to be (mis)attribution magnets: Shaw, Churchill, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde. James, not so much, I wouldn’t have thought. But there you are.

You Missed It: Most Unfairly Overlooked Movies Of The Decade

… These are the other guys, the great films you missed through circumstance or stupidity, through studio stumbling or simply bad timing. The best movies don’t always get seen, the best movies don’t always win the awards. This isn’t a list of critically acclaimed indies which didn’t do well at the box office, or films with huge fan followings which couldn’t get anyone else to turn out (sorry Serenity). Nor is this a list of movies which flopped at the box office but later found cult success. These movies fell between the cracks and never really found the audience they deserved. When you’re thinking back on the aughts, you won’t think of these films, but maybe you should. Consider giving these movies a second chance. Unique and strange, funny and weird, challenging and sexy; they’re the most unfairly overlooked movies of the past decade. …

As for Shakespeare—Baker has an idea, put into the pen of his character Paul Chowder, that iambic pentameter is basically a waltz, the five beats being supplemented by a rest at the end of a line.