New York and equal marriage

The Flag of Equal Marriage needs updating. Hooray for New York and New Yorkers. Hooray for the twenty-nine Democratic and four Republican legislators who voted for the Marriage Equality Act. And hooray for the Democratic governor who signed it.

This detail from a New York Times article is telling:

With his position still undeclared, Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo who had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage, told his colleagues he had agonized for months before concluding he had been wrong.

“I apologize to those who feel offended,” Mr. Grisanti said, adding, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.”

[The flag will be updated when the law goes into effect: July 24, 2011. I’ve corrected the Times quotation: “to those,” not “for those.”]

Peter Falk (1927–2011)

Peter Falk, in A Woman Under the Influence (dir. John Cassavetes, 1974), a great film of marriage and madness. Elaine and I watched it last night. Falk and Gena Rowlands give amazing performances. In my ideal republic, they and Cassavetes would have won Academy Awards for this film.

Peter Falk dies at 83 (Los Angeles Times)

Clouzot, Les Diaboliques

[“Don’t be devils! Don’t ruin the interest your friends could take in this film. Don’t tell them what you have seen. On their behalf, thank you.”]

One more from Henri-Georges Clouzot: the 1955 film Les Diaboliques [The Devils], starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, and Paul Meurisse, with a wonderful turn by Charles Vanel as a retired detective who, like Dickens’s Inspector Bucket, seems to have been a model for television’s Lieutenant Columbo. I won’t tell you anything more about what I have seen, except to say that Les Diaboliques is suspenseful and frightening and a masterpiece. It’s not for the fainthearted. The film is available (with its alternative title Diabolique), beautifully restored, from the Criterion Collection.

That concludes this week’s Clouzot spree. Reader, I hope there’s a film here that you’d like to watch, or watch again.

2:03 p.m.: Sad news: Peter Falk, who played Lieutenant Columbo, died yesterday in Beverly Hills.

Clouzot x 4
Le Corbeau
Le mystère Picasso (Elaine’s post)
Quai des Orfèvres
Le salaire de la peur

Another college prez plagiarizing

Another college president in the news:

Dr. Danny Lovett, president of Tennessee Temple University and co-pastor of Highland Park Baptist Church, admitted today [June 22] that he plagiarized sections of another pastor’s work, an action sources say led to his recent resignation [as president].

In his book Jesus Is Awesome, Lovett plagiarized the work of one Buddy Murphrey. Says Lovett, “I didn’t know copyright laws at the time, and I should have checked more thoroughly.“ Murphrey says that when he contacted Lovett about the plagiarism, Lovett explained that he was “under the impression that [Murphrey] had passed away or that [the book] was no longer in print when he used it.” That’s some reasoning.

Lovett was born in 1953. Jesus Is Awesome was published in 2003. You’d think that Lovett would have figured out by then a very simple rule (just four words!) regarding other people’s stuff.

More presidential doings
What plagiarism looks like (Jacksonville State University)
Another college president plagiarizing (Malone University)
“Local Norms” and “‘organic’ attribution” (Southern Illinois University Carbondale)

[Lovett’s book is said to be “used as a textbook” at TTU. Perhaps the only thing more unseemly than requiring that students buy your own book is requiring that they buy the school president’s book.]

Blue, Bloop, screwed

Jay Maisel, whose photograph of Miles Davis appears on the cover of the 1959 recording Kind of Blue, threatened to sue Andy Baio, the maker of Kind of Bloop (an 8-bit version of Kind of Blue), whose cover is a pixelated version of Maisel’s photograph. Maisel’s attorneys asked for “statutory damages up to $150,000 for each infringement at the jury’s discretion and reasonable attorneys fees or actual damages and all profits attributed to the unlicensed use of his photograph, and $25,000 for Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) violations.” Baio settled out of court for $32,500.

In a post on the matter, Kind of Screwed, Baio makes a compelling case that his use of the cover photograph falls under “fair use.” (Maisel’s conduct, I would suggest, falls under “heartless.”) Baio also wonders what he might use for new cover art. I’d suggest the muted post horn of Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49. The image might suggest here both Miles Davis’s trumpet and the ways in which copyright law can wrongfully inhibit creative efforts.

[Image via Wikipedia.]

CBS Evening News: Attack of the Clones

[Bob Schieffer and Scott Pelley. June 22, 2011.]

When Elaine and I saw the two profiles, we went a little crazy.

A related post
Plus ça change (Schieffer and Pelley, front views)

Clouzot, Le salaire de la peur

Next in our Henri-Georges Clouzot spree: the 1953 film Le salaire de la peur [The wages of fear]. The premise is simple: somewhere in South America, the American-owned Southern Oil Company signs up four unemployed Europeans to drive two truckloads of nitroglycerin to the scene of an oilfield fire. The route is primitive and exceedingly dangerous: the slightest mishap can cause the cargo to explode. Minute for minute, Le salaire de la peur is one of the most nerve-wracking films I’ve seen. The above still is one small bit of evidence: each truck must back onto this partly rotted platform to make a sharp turn.

Le salaire de la peur made me think at many points of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (dir. John Huston, 1948), another film in which desperate men try to find their way out of the misery in which they’re stuck. Clouzot’s film also made me think of Homer’s Odyssey, another story of skillful intelligence applied to unforeseen challenges. Here though it seems that all gods, not just Poseidon, are angry.

Le salaire de la peur is available, beautifully restored, from the Criterion Collection. With Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter Van Eyck, and Folco Lulli as the drivers, and Véra Clouzot as a cantina worker.

More Clouzot
Le Corbeau
Quai des Orfèvres
Le mystère Picasso (Elaine’s post)

[My choice for most nerve-wracking film: probably Inglourious Basterds (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2009). Yours?]

On an Austerlitz photograph

Rick Poynor on the source of a photograph in W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz: On the Threshold of Sebald’s Room.

[I’m making my way through Austerlitz.]

Pocket notebook sighting

The second film in our Henri-Georges Clouzot spree: Quai des Orfèvres (1947). It’s partly a story of desire and jealousy, and partly a police procedural. In the above scene, Inspector Antoine (Louis Jouvet) takes notes as he questions Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair) and Maurice Martineau (Bernard Blier): “Do you mind? I have a memory like a sieve.”

Quai des Orfèvres is out of print at the Criterion Collection.

More Clouzot
Le Corbeau

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Cat People : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Extras : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The House on 92nd Street : The Lodger : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : The Palm Beach Story : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Union Station

Pinboard is down

The bookmarking service Pinboard is down, and is keeping its users posted on the problem via Twitter: “Errors with our ISP seem ongoing despite sweet promises.” Before the site went down completely, I managed to catch this page:

[Muhammad Ali v. Sonny Liston, May 25, 1965.]

A service that respects its users and has a sense of humor about itself is a service I’m happy to support.

2:57 p.m.: Pinboard is back. The status page reports that “the site is running on a backup server with reduced capabilities . . . . All bookmarks are intact.”

8:25 p.m.: The circumstances behind the outage are the subject of a New York Times article.