Tuesday, October 23, 2007

2nd\NE Quadrant 10/29 '07

The Approval Matrix: Week of October 29, 2007


Tilda Swinton in "Michael Clayton"







Her [Tilda Swinton] character, Karen Crowder, is an attorney, lead counsel for a company that faces a $3 billion class-action lawsuit over a toxic agrochemical it manufactures. She is under enormous stress because so much is at stake and because she feels, as a woman and being new in the job, that she must be perfect.

We first see Karen falling apart in a restroom stall before a presentation — a scene that Clooney identifies as one of his favorites. It certainly grabs your attention, but Swinton builds the character in layers, from lots of tiny bits.

"That's my talent," she said after the groomers had been dismissed, going on to describe the "detective work" that goes into assembling the pieces of a character. "I thought that what I could provide is subtext," she said. (Houston Chronicle\Eric Harrison)

Plot Summary for "Michael Clayton": Michael Clayton is an in-house "fixer" at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York. A former criminal prosecutor, Clayton takes care of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen's dirtiest work at the behest of the firm's co-founder Marty Bach. Though burned out and hardly content with his job as a fixer, his divorce, a failed business venture and mounting debt have left Clayton inextricably tied to the firm. At U/North, meanwhile, the career of litigator Karen Crowder rests on the multi-million dollar settlement of a class action suit that Clayton's firm is leading to a seemingly successful conclusion. But when Kenner Bach's brilliant and guilt-ridden attorney Arthur Edens sabotages the U/North case, Clayton faces the biggest challenge of his career and his life.
(Warner Bros. Pictures\via IMDb)


Matt Taibbi's Election Coverage


Matt Taibbi (born 1970) is an American journalist. Currently he works at Rolling Stone where he authors a column called "Road Rage" for the print version, and an additional weekly online-only column called "The Low Post." He is best known for his coverage of the 2004 US presidential election, and for his former editorial positions at newspapers the eXile, the New York Press, and the Beast. (Wikipedia)


Bill Watterson














Friday's The Wall Street Journal featured a review of "Schulz and Peanuts," David Michaelis's intermittently brilliant biography of Charlie Brown creator Charles M. Schulz. What makes this review notable above all the other recent reviews of this title is the author: Bill Watterson. Yes, that Bill Watterson: the famously reclusive creator of "Calvin and Hobbes," who shut down his strip in 1995 and disappeared so completely into his hometown of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, that the Cleveland Scene made a great "Roger & Me"–style piece out of just trying to find the guy.

How much contact did the Journal's staff have with Watterson? Did edits go through the syndicate, or did someone get to talk to him on the phone? Lasswell [deputy books editor for the Journal] demurs from going into too much detail but does allow, "It was not something that required a lot of editing. Let's leave it at that." (New York)


"Gustav Mahler" Tags

















A strange graffiti tag is being peppered across the city's east end.

For at least two weeks, somebody has been spray painting the name "Gustav Mahler" on several businesses in the areas of King Street East and surprisingly, on an old Gardiner Expressway pillar in the Lake Shore Boulevard East and Leslie Street area.

Why anyone would want to scrawl the moniker of the Austrian composer is baffling business owners who are stuck cleaning the culprit's mess.

Mahler was known as one of the leading orchestral and operatic conductors of his time. He was born into a Jewish-European family in Germany on July 7, 1860 and died on May 18, 1911. He completed nine symphonies, with his most famous works being "Songs of the Wayfarer," "Songs on the Death of Children" and "The Song of the Earth."(24 Hours)
(Photo of Mahler tag on the wall next to the Ontario Design Centre building, near King and Sherbourne courtesy of Flickr\Dave Till)




11,000-year-old Wall Painting












Reuters\via Yahoo News - French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old wall painting underground in northern Syria which they believe is the oldest in the world.

The 2 square-meter painting, in red, black and white, was found at the Neolithic settlement of Djade al-Mughara on the Euphrates, northeast of the city of Aleppo, team leader Eric Coqueugniot told Reuters.

"It looks like a modernist painting. Some of those who saw it have likened it to work by (Paul) Klee. Through carbon dating we established it is from around 9,000 B.C.," Coqueugniot said.

No comments: