The trailer for Oliver Stone‘s new documentary on Hugo Chavez, South of the Border, just popped up on YouTube. I see Stone co-wrote it with Tariq Ali, the New Left Review editor (and inspiration for the Stones’ Street Fighting Man), so expect the usual shitstorm of controversy. And who’s that behind the camera? How nice—Gimme Shelter‘s Albert Maysles!
In the LAT: Oliver Stone Heads “South Of The Border” To Chat Up Chavez And Others
In reference to Rudy Wurlitzer‘s ‘69 debut, Nog, none other than Thomas Pynchon said: “The novel of bullshit is dead.”” A not bad start for Wurlitzer, the sole member of the piano-making clan who never saw a dime (or not many) from his family name.
Tracing the often-psychedelic wanderlust of its title character who was either insane or drug-addicted (or both), Nog brought Wurlitzer a certain degree of fame as a novelist, but he’s perhaps best known, and celebrated, for his screenwriting. His collaboration with Sam Peckinpah yielded the Bob Dylan-scored Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Two years before that, though, he and Monte Hellman pulled off one of my all-time cinematic favorites, Two-Lane Blacktop.
Starring James Taylor and Dennis Wilson (both looking shockingly boyish) as eternally drifting drivers, Two-Lane featured sparse dialogue and even sparser performances. Visually, though, it’s pure poetry, and, to me, a still-vital piece of American existentialism—especially in its final moment. The trailer for Two-Lane follows below.
And just up at Chuck Palahniuk‘s website, an excellent, yet typically elusive, interview with Wurlitzer where he discusses everything from Dylan to Pynchon. Regarding his new-ish novel, The Drop Edge of Yonder, Wurlitzer also addresses, politely, “l’affaire de Jim Jarmusch.” Apparently, the director “pillaged” from Wurlitzer the raw material he’d later shape into Dead Man. You can read the interview here.
See also in Arthur Magazine: ON THE DRIFT: Rudy Wurlitzer and the Road to Nowhere
More news from the “death from above” front: Boeing just announced the successful testing of their Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL). Not familiar with the ATL? Well, according to Wired‘s David Hambling here’s what it can do:
The Advanced Tactical Laser, weighing twelve thousand pounds and mounted in a Hercules transport plane, is intended to give Special Forces Command ‘ultra-precision strike capability’ against a wide range of ground targets. Its power is somewhere in the hundred-kilowatt range. According to the developers, the accuracy of this weapon is little short of supernatural. They claim that the pinpoint precision can make it lethal or non-lethal at will. For example, they say it can either destroy a vehicle completely, or just damage the tires to immobilize it.
But that’s not even close to what’s got the military so hot and bothered about this baby’s capabilities. Hambling asserts that Boeing’s ATL “will allow Special Forces to strike with maximum precision, from long distances—without being blamed for the attacks. ‘Plausible deniability’ is how the presentation put it.”
Or, in simpler terms, the ATL can carry out covert assassinations with zero accountability. Cause of death, forensically speaking? Struck by lightning.
From The Register: Secret U.S. Spontaneous Human Combustion Beam Tested
Alisa Opar from Audubon Magazine says,
For the first time in nearly 70 years, an Amorphophallus titanum, dubbed the ?
Japan’s next prime minister might have been nicknamed “The Alien” (because of his prominent eyes) but he’s got nuthin’ on his wife who claims to have had a close encounter of the third kind! From Reuters:
“While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus,” Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama, wrote in a book published last year.
“It was a very beautiful place and it was really green.”
Yukio Hatoyama is due to be voted in as premier on September 16 following his party’s crushing election victory over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party Sunday.
Miyuki, 66, described the extraterrestrial experience, which she said took place some 20 years ago, in a book entitled “Very Strange Things I’ve Encountered.”
When she awoke, Japan’s next first lady wrote, she told her now ex-husband that she had just been to Venus. He advised her that it was probably just a dream.
“My current husband has a different way of thinking,” she wrote. “He would surely say ‘Oh, that’s great’.”
Your current husband is obviously a fine politician, Yukio-chan!
Like a bad case of Republican herpes, Sarah Palin is the gift that keeps on giving…
Hopefully Sarah Palin realizes she’s been invited to Hong Kong almost certainly as a practical joke.
CLSA, the Asia-focused broker who invited Mrs. Palin as keynote speaker for an Asian investment conference, is well known for their cheeky takes on investment research.
In the past, they’ve polled Asian fortune tellers for index targets, hired anime cartoonists to draw Japanese research, and generally love to push the boundaries between entertainment and analysis. They are a real research firm, it’s just that they love to sprinkle in some hilarity every now and then as a smart marketing gimmick.
Sarah Palin is this year’s big laugh for them. Her invitation as keynote speaker in Hong Kong is so ridiculous that its absurdity can’t be accidental.
