Van Gogh, Prague, &Fra Angelico at the Met

If you can afford $15, then you can enjoy the pleasures and treasures of Europe. The Metropolitan Museum in New York is holding three exhibits this month that are well worth visiting for anyone who will be in Manhattan through the month of December. In just a couple of hours and for only a few dollars, anyone can travel from Amsterdam to Florence to Prague.

In Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings, more than one hundred of van Gogh's drawings are collected, offering a glimpse into the development of this genius' art over his brief decade long career. The single most impressive period of creativity was his time in Provence, France. Effectively wielding a reed pen he carved himself, van Gogh creates series after series of drawings that utilize his familiar (pen) strokes, which establish perspective through bold lines and shrinking dots of ink. The repetitive dots are as much homage to his pointillist friends like Signac as his palette colors were to the impressionists. In the two series, Street in Sainte-Maries-de-la-Mer and Cypresses, hung with both ink drawings and oil paintings, side-by-side, one witnesses Vincent's bold vision and how he translated that vision from one medium to another. His vision is neither reduced nor changed, but reinforced for one to the other. One can only wonder what Vincent van Gogh might have created had he not taken his own life in 1890.

The second spectacular exhibit takes you to Prague, capital of the modern Czech Republic and the ancient Kingdom of Bohemia and at one time seat of the Holy Roman Emperor. Prague, The Crown of Bohemia, 1347 - 1437, presents the art from a century long golden age in the city that was built as the Paris of the East. King Charles IV of Bohemia and later Holy Roman Emperor, celebrated his reign, his faith, and his family through art. Of particular beauty are the magnificent reliquaries, created by goldsmiths to house the sacred remains of important saints both local and universal. Often created in the image of the saint, the reliquaries offered artisans the opportunity to demonstrate both their skill and devotion. Those from Prague now on view at the Met are as good as anything in Rome. Painters of the age were granted to forums for their talent, illumination and altar pieces. The illuminated manuscripts are of the highest quality and beauty, unmatched even by those in the British Museum.

Finally, Fra Angelico features the first major showing of the beatfied friar's work in the US and the first anywhere since 1955 in Florence. Mostly a collection of panels and altar piece created by the Dominican master heralding the beginning of the Renaissance, one is delighted by the many pieces which are housed in private collections and almost never seen in public. Though the frescoed walls of San Marco monastery were not moved to New York, faithful photographic reproductions give the visitor just a glimpse of what awaits them in Florence. If only for the dazzling lapis luzuli blue used by Fra Angelico, go see this exhibit.

New Harry Potter Movie...Books Are Better

There is no question that new comer Mike Newell's exceptionally dark and wonderfully eerie version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a hit. Just look at the numbers: It raked in over $104 million dollars in its opening weekend. It should not surprise anyone if GoF pushes close to a billion dollars in revenue, bringing it into the top ten of all-time highest grossing movies.

As the third director on this project, Newell is forced to make the best of what others left behind. From Christopher Columbus he inherited some brilliant actors, both young—Rupert Grint—and old—Maggie Smith et al, but he was saddled with a somewhat wooden lead (Daniel Radcliffe) who looks the part and muddles through, much like his character. Alfonso Curon contributed and darker look and a hightened sense of sexual tension between the leads, but he also set a precedent by interpreting Rowling's text in a less faithful way than Columbus. Mike Newell picks his way through the best of the two to create a strong interpretation of Rowling's Goblet of Fire.

First, Newell's casting is spot on—Viktor Krum (Stanislav Ianevski), Cedrick Diggory (Robert Pattinson), and even Allastor Moody (Brendan Gleeson) seem to have stepped right out of the pages of book. Certainly they were better than Michael Gambon's Dumbledore who is worthy of carrying Richard Harris' hip flask, much less replacing the revered Irishman.

SPOILERS—SPOILERS—SPOILERS—SPOILERS—SPOILERS—SPOILERS—SPOILERS

All the major scenes—the Quiditch World Cup, the dragons, the merpeople, the bubble bath, the yule ball—accomplish their task, advancing the story and conveying the mood. The triumph of the movie, though, is the climatic graveyard scene where He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named returns after thirteen years. Ralph Fiennes embodies Voldemort in his terrible totality; he looks, sounds, moves, and terrifies the audience as only the Dark Lord could. The tenderness of Lily and James Potter's return in the Prior Incantatem would bring even one of Gringott's goblin to tears.

In order to reduce GoF's 752 pages to a little over 150 pages of movie dialogue, much of what makes JK Rowling's story so much fun must be shorn away. Dobby didn't make the cut; neither did Winky nor Ludo Bagman. Hagrid's Blast-end Skrewts never see the light of day, and Percy Weasley never replaces his boss in judging the competition, thus having the opportunity to prove himself a complete git. Sirius Black apears for only a few moments in a fire place, but he is never forced by Dumbledore to shake hands with Snape. The Dursleys had not a chance (though Dudley lolling about with an engorged tongue sounds like everyone's idea of fun). SPEW and Weasley Wizard Wheezes never even made it to the editing room's floor.

Steven Kloves, the writer who adapted the GoF for the screen, may have the most difficult job in the world. How does one choose what stays and what goes? Add his to the list of jobs you that originally sounded good but turn into a nightmare. Kloves announced in an interview with the LA Times that he will not continue with the Harry Potter movies; it cost him six years of his life and several personal projects. Wish him good luck, and let's hope the next guy is half as talented with what can only be the three most difficult of the novels.

John Berendt's City of Falling Angels

Following up his megahit, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt has found another oppulent city populated by the bizarre, the brazen, and the bored. A second true life crime story, The City of Falling Angels begins with the 1996 fire that gutted La Fenice, the eighteenth century Venetian opera house that premiered some of opera's greatest works including Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress.

Berendt moved to Venice just after the fire, investigating what the locals thought happened, following the case in the courts, and learning about the real Venice along the way. The star of Falling Angels, though narrated in the first person, is not the author but rather the city of Venice itself—the ancient city of Carnival with its requisite canals and palazzos with their piano nobile. According to Berendt, it is not the uniqueness of its architecture or even beauty of Murano glass but of its people that reveals the real Venice.

The City of Falling Angels is obstinsibly about the fire at La Fenice, and though that thread runs through the book offering a modicum of cohesiveness, it is really just a book about the inhabitants of Venice. But what a colorful book it makes. Characters like the Plant Man, who every day tries to hock his greenery to the locals while singing, "Have you got a house?" or the Rat Man, whose concocts rat poison from parmesan cheese (for Italian rats) or weiner schnizel (for German rats), are just the beginning. Revealing the strange twists and turns in the life stories of important expatriates like Ezra Pound and Peggy Guggenheim, Berendt's magic is passing on gossip like it's fact. One of the most entertaining episodes is that of Save Venice, an NGO working to restore the magnificence of Venice while suffering a major meltdown among the many type personalities on its Board of Directors.

Somehow, everyone (or everyone but Jane and Philip Rylands) was willing to speak to John Berendt, revealing secrets they would never speak publicly. Beware though, according to Count Girolamo Marcello, "Venetians never tell the truth. We mean precisely the opposite of what we mean."

When I finished reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, I wanted to visit Savannah as soon as possible. It took a couple of years, but finally I did it. "The book" as Midnight is known there, was everywhere. The City of Falling Angels has had the same effect. I can't wait to go. Maybe I'll bring back a plant!

France vindicated, sort of...

In a brilliant piece in Foreign Affairs, Robert S. Leiken of the Nixon Center analyzes the greatest threat in the war on terror, European Muslims. European nations are faced with rising Muslim populations that have not been integrated into the culture of their European host countries.

[I]t is estimated that between 15 and 20 million Muslims now call Europe home and make up four to five percent of its total population. France has the largest proportion of Muslims (seven to ten percent of its total population), followed by the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Italy. Given continued immigration and high Muslim fertility rates, the National Intelligence Council projects that Europe's Muslim population will double by 2025.

Some (a number unknown but certainly small) members of the second and third generations of European Muslims, born in Europe but raised in isolation from European culture, are being radicalized and recruited by al-Queda and other terrorists.

Leiken recounts in gripping detail the life of Mohammed Bouyeri, the recently convicted murderer of Theo van Gogh, avant garde film maker and descent of painter Vincent van Gogh. Educated and receiving state benefits, Bouyeri is representative of what Leiken terms the insider jihadists.

The insiders, on the other hand, are a group of alienated citizens, second- or third-generation children of immigrants, like Bouyeri, who were born and bred under European liberalism. Some are unemployed youth from hardscrabble suburbs of Marseilles, Lyon, and Paris or former mill towns such as Bradford and Leicester. They are the latest, most dangerous incarnation of that staple of immigration literature, the revolt of the second generation. They are also dramatic instances of what could be called adversarial assimilation -- integration into the host country's adversarial culture.

European nations have been slow to respond to this simmering threat. Even Britain, the US's staunchest ally in its war on terror, has allowed radicals to proselytize and recruit jihadists under the protection of British citizenship; the infamous shoebomber Richard Reid was recruited under just these circumstances. Only after the July bombings in London's underground did the Blair government finally start to crack down. The much maligned France, though, has not succomb to its neighbors blindspot for the sepratist multi-culturalism that encourages European terroristism.

Well before September 11, France had deployed the most robust counterterrorism regime of any Western country....To prevent proselytizing among its mostly North African Muslim community, during the 1990s the energetic French state denied asylum to radical Islamists even while they were being welcomed by its neighbors. Fearing, as Kepel puts it, that contagion would turn "the social malaise felt by Muslims in the suburbs of major cities" into extremism and terrorism, the French government cracked down on jihadists, detaining suspects for as long as four days without charging them or allowing them access to a lawyer. Today no place of worship is off limits to the police in secular France. Hate speech is rewarded with a visit from the police, blacklisting, and the prospect of deportation.

The riots that have plagued the French for the last two weeks are not the result of civil rights laws that coddle radicals but instead the xenophobia of French citizens who refused, after the loss of their empire in the 1950s, to truly integrate their Algerian and Morroccan colonials into French culture and society. For both France and Britain—with its growing Pakistani Muslim population—nineteenth century imperialistic policies are still haunting the twenty-first century.

Online Freedom of Speech rejected by House

Last night, the House of Representatives voted 225 - 182 in support of HR 1606, the Online Freedom of Speech Act. The bill failed because of House rules requiring a 2/3 majority to pass. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) issued this statement:

"Today’s action marks a sad day for one of our nation’s most sacred rights: freedom of speech. The federal government seeks to control and regulate the Internet, but the last thing this Congress should be doing is trying to stifle public debate online. This bill would have kept the hands of the federal government off of Internet speech and protected the online debate that’s underway. Our world has evolved and grown more technologically savvy. Lawmakers need to adjust to these changes. Unfortunately, opponents of online speech have decided to punish our changing technological world. It’s especially unfortunate that Democratic Leader Pelosi voted no to free speech. This bill will come back under regular order, and I encourage all those who support free speech on the Internet to make their voices heard."

When the Congress passed campaign finance reform legislation in 2002, it did not specifically address the Internet. Recently, a federal court mandate the Federal Election Commission to draw up rules to govern the use of the Internet for political purposes. Defenders of the Online Freedom of Speech Act argue that restoring the exemption of Internet speech will not open loopholes in campaign finance laws because Internet communications (namely in the form of blogging) make negligible expenditures in real dollars.

Blogging has begun to return democracy to the people, removing it from the lucre-filled hands of PACs and billionaires like George Soros. This was the very intention of campaign finance reform, and free speech on the Internet must be protected.

Contact your Representatives and encourage them to support HR 1606 when it is brought forward again for a vote in the House.

UPDATE: Redstate.org has some clarification of the bil from Michael Toner, the Vice Chairman of the Federal Election Commission.

Wynton Marsalis in Boston

Nobody, not even the archangel Gabriel, can wail on a horn like Wynton Marsalis. This past Sunday, Marsalis brought his horn, his quartet, and his favorite jazz tunes to the Sanders Theatre at Harvard as part of the Bank of America Celebrity Series. Joined by piano, bass, sax , and drums, Marsalis produced an intimate sound suitable to a smoke-filled club, but with 1100 in the audience, the spontaneity of clubs like New Orleans' Snug Harbor was lost.

Drawing greatly from The Magic Hour, Marlsalis' first release on his new label Blue Note, the evening showcased the diversity of Marsalis' style. Whether it was the lightening quick notes of the title track, the soulful strains of "Rosie Rose-Rosalee," or the latin rhythms of "You and Me," Marsalis proves he is the world's greatest living trumpeter.

Critics may complain that Marsalis' treats jazz as moribund art only home in a museum, but no one can make that argument about his playing. As a matter of fact, Marsalis understands jazz better than anyone. It should not be an academic experiment; it needs to be experienced viscerally. After a heart pounding rendition of the jazz standard "The Blues," Marsalis told the audience:

"When they come from Mars, they won't wanna know about our technology. They'll wanna know about BBQ and the Blues."

Jazz is about the experience, and the showman in Marsalis provides his fans with just that: a powerful experience to be savored and remembered for a lifetime. Each song in the evening's repertoire was designed to exhibit Marsalis' command of his instrument, yet never have I witnessed someone so utterly devoid of ego. He literally steps out of the spotlight when he's not playing in order to allow the band the opportunity to shine.

Two highlights of the evening, besides Marsalis' trumpet, were Dan Nimmer on piano and vocalist Jennifer Sanon. The twenty-three year old phenom from Milwaukee, Nimmer, wailed on the piano with dexterous simplicity creating tension in the negative space he generated between notes. Living in the highest two octaves on the keyboard, Nimmer lovingly accentuated every note played by Marsalis and saxophonist Walter Blanding, Jr complementing their sound, creating a tapestry of auditory colors. Sanon, even younger at only twenty, reminds one of the young Ella Fitzgerald swinging on songs like "Lucky So and So," "Azalea," and "Them There Eyes."