(P1) Philosophical
Scorsese Rules! I need to say something to Martin Scorsese:
"Marty, you are my choice for both Best Picture and Best Director for your vastly entertaining The Departed. But then, with the possible exception of Gangs of New York, you're always my choice. Interesting that you and Clint Eastwood were born and grew around the same time. I loved The Unforgiven and would probably choose it every time you're not up against it. What is it about Hollywood that eschews your non-gratuitous violence? Let's review: Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Aviator, and Taxi Driver- You, sir are a generous genius full of everything good about the cinema and of history, music, celebration, and the brightness of the dark side.
"So, my strongest advice to you is that, if small minds select anything or anyone at all over you or over your film, this time, you get up in front of the press and declare in the loudest possible voice you can muster, 'I'm pissed off, and I'm not going to take it anymore. I will have nothing further to do with the Academy, and if you ever attempt to offer me a Lifetime Achievement Award, I will tell you precisely where you can stick it! Amen.'
"But I believe in justice and in art, and I'm convinced that this will be your rightful turn."
PS - Let me also pay due respect to your lighter sided efforts including The Last Waltz, Kundun, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, Casino (OK, pretty wonderfully dark), The Last Temptation of Christ, T he King of Comedy (yes, I know), and New York, New York.
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(P2) Poetical
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass
- Ezra Pound-
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(P3) Political (and Ecological)
U.S. Forest Service May Not Be the Big Warm Fuzzy You Thought
I've recently come to enjoy the humorous travel and ecologically friendly books of Bill Bryson.
Here are some eye-opening comments about the Forest Service that
Americans might want to know:
"The Forest Service is truly an extraordinary institution. a lot of people, seeing that word forest in the title, assume it has something to do with looking after trees. In fact, no--though that was the original plan...In fact, mostly what the Forest Service does is build roads. I am not kidding...378,000 miles of roads in America's national forests...it is eight times the total mileage of America's interstate highway system. It is the largest road system in the world in the control of a single body...It is the avowed aim of the U.S. Forest Service to construct 580,000 miles of additional forest road by the middle of the next century.
"The reason the Forest Service builds these roads, quite apart from the deep pleasure of doing noisy things in the woods with big yellow machines, is to allow private timber companies to get to previously inaccessible stands of trees. Of the Forest Service's 150 million acres of loggable land, about two-thirds is held in store for the future. The remaining one-third--49 million acres, or an area roughly twice the size of Ohio--is available for logging. It allows huge swathes of land to be clear-cut...
"...By the late 1980's--this is so extraordinary I can hardly stand it--it was the only significant player in the American timber industry that was cutting down trees faster than it replaced them. Morevover, it was doing this with the most sumptuous inefficiency. 80% of its leasing arrangements lost money, often vast amounts. In one typical deal, the Forest Service sold hundred-year-old lodgepole pines in the Targhee National Forest in Idaho for about $2 each after spending $4 per tree surveying the land, drawing up contracts, and, of course, building roads. Between 1989 and 1997, it lost an average of $242 million a year--almost $2 billion all told...This is all so discouraging..."
Bill Bryson A Walk In the Woods (Anchor Books, January 2007)
