Go out on one of those boats that take you to look at dolphins or whales. Seriously, the human vocalizations on this video of people getting a look at a "super-pod" of dolphins — "a rare dolphin stampede" — are simply horrifying to me. Even if I were deaf, I would resist this activity, because I don't enjoy intruding on animals, but maybe if you paid me, I'd go along. But I'd rather listen to fingernails on a blackboard than hear human adults squeal over the dolphins and shout inane things like "They're coming over to us" and "I can't believe it."
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Tuesday, 22 January 2013
Friday, 4 January 2013
Dubbing in movie musicals fell into disrepute.
Present-day preference is for "real" screen actors, with an acceptance of their vocal imperfections. But in the old days:
Anyway, the new move "Les Miserables" has the actors singing, not lip-synching to their own or somebody else's vocals. Some people are annoyed by the low-quality singing, and I don't know how bad it is. I think my taste is for real actors singing, but I doubt if I'll see this movie. (I have seen the stage show.) My problem isn't the way actors sing. It's the way actors act. I don't know exactly why, but over the years, I grew less and less interested in seeing human beings pretend to be characters, and at some point, I started to find it actively annoying. I especially dislike long, tight closeups — as if every mediocre actor should be treated like Falconetti in "The Passion of Joan of Arc."
Actually, I can pinpoint the beginning of my awareness of this annoyance: a particular film that came out in 1997. Once you let yourself see that maybe you don't like something that you've assumed you love — people love movies — then all sorts of distracting perceptions disrupt your pleasure. The end stage is: You anticipate these disruptions and become so averse to them that you resist the experience altogether. The question becomes: Why should you spend time at the movies? Time is precious. The default position is: No.
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Classically trained singers like Betty Noyes, Betty Wand, and Marni Nixon made careers out of singing for some of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, including Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron. One of the greatest movie musicals, West Side Story, dubbed three of its leads—Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, and Rita Moreno—because their voices weren’t trained for the operatic score. The film was better for it. (Russ Tamblyn and George Chakiris, whose singing was not dubbed, had less challenging vocal parts.) Similarly, the men behind Singin’ in the Rain, a movie partly about dubbing in the movies, had no problem dubbing Debbie Reynolds for a couple of songs. The King and I, Gigi, and My Fair Lady are other prominent musicals that used dubbing without shame.Everything in those old movies was more "false," but within n comprehensive environment of falseness, it made sense. It's false that people are singing at all. There's falseness to any stage show. But in a stage show, the actors are really singing, not lip-synching. I'd rather not watch lip-synching, whether it's the actor's own voice or not.
Anyway, the new move "Les Miserables" has the actors singing, not lip-synching to their own or somebody else's vocals. Some people are annoyed by the low-quality singing, and I don't know how bad it is. I think my taste is for real actors singing, but I doubt if I'll see this movie. (I have seen the stage show.) My problem isn't the way actors sing. It's the way actors act. I don't know exactly why, but over the years, I grew less and less interested in seeing human beings pretend to be characters, and at some point, I started to find it actively annoying. I especially dislike long, tight closeups — as if every mediocre actor should be treated like Falconetti in "The Passion of Joan of Arc."
Actually, I can pinpoint the beginning of my awareness of this annoyance: a particular film that came out in 1997. Once you let yourself see that maybe you don't like something that you've assumed you love — people love movies — then all sorts of distracting perceptions disrupt your pleasure. The end stage is: You anticipate these disruptions and become so averse to them that you resist the experience altogether. The question becomes: Why should you spend time at the movies? Time is precious. The default position is: No.
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
The Clinton clot plot thickens... or thins... with anti-coagulants.
So we were just talking about the oddities of the Clinton clot story. We noted that no sooner was it said that Hillary Clinton would testify, as Secretary of State, on the Benghazi attack, than there came an announcement that Hillary Clinton had entered the hospital with a blood clot. The coincidence raised suspicions of an effort to engineer an evasion of this testimony.
And we weren't told where the clot was, which is a crucial bit of information when assessing how serious this health scare is. Clinton had recently suffered a head injury, which makes one think the new problem would also be located in the head, but she'd also had a blood clot in her leg years ago, which makes that alternative seem plausible. If the clot were in the leg, withholding that information suggests a strategic choice to incline the public to view the problem as more serious than it really was.
Later, Clinton's doctors released a statement saying that the clot was in a vein inside her skull, and that she's "making excellent progress" and likely to "make a full recovery." The Washington Post repeats the information that she's being treated with anticoagulants. You may remember that the analysis I discussed at that first link contained the assertion that "anticoagulation is never given to persons with clots around the brain." But that WaPo story says: "The conventional treatment is an anticoagulant drug for at least six months."
I know some of my readers are doctors. Can you help us out with that inconsistency about the anticoagulants? [ADDED: Here's what Dr. Pogo says. And here's some useful detail. I think the crucial distinction is whether the clot is in the brain or in the space between the brain and the skull.]
And, by the way, I've gotten some pushback in email and on the web, saying that it was "shameful" and "appalling" for me to tie Clinton's health problems to a possible intent to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Let me tell you that a core motivation to my blogging — and I've been going at this for 9 years now — is to stand tough against people who try to cut off debate with this kind of shaming. So I'm glad that this performance of outrage was directed at me. I know it when I see it, and it fires me up. You want silence? You want backing down? You want me not to dare say a thing like that? That's how you want to control political debate in the United States? Thanks for reminding me once again how deeply I hate that and for giving me an (easy) opportunity to model courage for the more timid people out there who are cowed by the fear of shaming.
ADDED: Here's something I would dearly love to do with this blog: I want to make it so that emotive, intimidating outrage like that backfires. I want people to learn that they can't get away with empty assertions like "I am aghast" or "You are despicable." You have to give reasons for what you think. Even if you really feel those feelings. And, of course, many of these hack writers don't actually feel the feelings they scribble about. They just don't want to have to talk about the actual issue. They want to make it something that everyone feels they'd better not talk about. But that should be a loud signal: We need to talk about it!
And let's get back to basics: What we need to talk about is Benghazi.
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And we weren't told where the clot was, which is a crucial bit of information when assessing how serious this health scare is. Clinton had recently suffered a head injury, which makes one think the new problem would also be located in the head, but she'd also had a blood clot in her leg years ago, which makes that alternative seem plausible. If the clot were in the leg, withholding that information suggests a strategic choice to incline the public to view the problem as more serious than it really was.
Later, Clinton's doctors released a statement saying that the clot was in a vein inside her skull, and that she's "making excellent progress" and likely to "make a full recovery." The Washington Post repeats the information that she's being treated with anticoagulants. You may remember that the analysis I discussed at that first link contained the assertion that "anticoagulation is never given to persons with clots around the brain." But that WaPo story says: "The conventional treatment is an anticoagulant drug for at least six months."
I know some of my readers are doctors. Can you help us out with that inconsistency about the anticoagulants? [ADDED: Here's what Dr. Pogo says. And here's some useful detail. I think the crucial distinction is whether the clot is in the brain or in the space between the brain and the skull.]
And, by the way, I've gotten some pushback in email and on the web, saying that it was "shameful" and "appalling" for me to tie Clinton's health problems to a possible intent to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Let me tell you that a core motivation to my blogging — and I've been going at this for 9 years now — is to stand tough against people who try to cut off debate with this kind of shaming. So I'm glad that this performance of outrage was directed at me. I know it when I see it, and it fires me up. You want silence? You want backing down? You want me not to dare say a thing like that? That's how you want to control political debate in the United States? Thanks for reminding me once again how deeply I hate that and for giving me an (easy) opportunity to model courage for the more timid people out there who are cowed by the fear of shaming.
ADDED: Here's something I would dearly love to do with this blog: I want to make it so that emotive, intimidating outrage like that backfires. I want people to learn that they can't get away with empty assertions like "I am aghast" or "You are despicable." You have to give reasons for what you think. Even if you really feel those feelings. And, of course, many of these hack writers don't actually feel the feelings they scribble about. They just don't want to have to talk about the actual issue. They want to make it something that everyone feels they'd better not talk about. But that should be a loud signal: We need to talk about it!
And let's get back to basics: What we need to talk about is Benghazi.
Happy New Year!
Are you up early, like me, or are you sleeping off last night's festivities? Personally, I don't get too revved up about the shift from one year-number to the next one. I think we live in days, and when life is good, normal days are the best, and the truth is, we live in days:
But if our lives are to have meaning, don't we need to knit those days together?
If we should take account on an annual basis — to put the Ann in annual — why should it be on this outwardly imposed occasion, this flip of the calendar from December to January?
"Yeah, I can get with that!"
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But if our lives are to have meaning, don't we need to knit those days together?
If we should take account on an annual basis — to put the Ann in annual — why should it be on this outwardly imposed occasion, this flip of the calendar from December to January?
"Yeah, I can get with that!"
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