Burn! and The Hour of the Furnaces

I may be up to my neck in work, run­ning, and the Phillies right now, but I’m real­ly excit­ed to check out The Hour of the Fur­naces tonight at Inter­na­tion­al House. The last movie I saw out there was Chris Mark­er’s amaz­ing 240 minute doc­u­men­tary, The Grin With­out a Cat. The Hour of the Fur­naces is a 260 minute epic released in 1968 that cov­ers left­ist strug­gle in South Amer­i­ca. If you’re curi­ous you should check out this essay about the movie over at Sens­es of Cin­e­ma. I’m hop­ing to be real­ly thrilled by tonight’s screen­ing of The Hour of the Fur­naces. It sounds like I won’t be disappointed.

I watched Gillo Pon­tecor­vo’s Burn! as a warm-up, no pun intend­ed. I’ve been mean­ing to see it since it was released on DVD some years ago, but sim­ply had­n’t got­ten around to it until last week when I final­ly mailed Cal­i­for­nia Split back to Net­flix after hav­ing it for over a month.

Burn! may not be as amaz­ing as Pon­tecor­vo’s Bat­tle of Algiers, but it’s a pret­ty effec­tive state­ment about busi­ness inter­ests superced­ing all oth­ers, star­ring Mar­lon Bran­do. Most inter­est­ing, Bran­do does­n’t Sean Penn it up and draw so much atten­tion to his char­ac­ter that it drowns out the mean­ing of the film. Pon­tecor­vo does­n’t beat you over the head with mes­sage either. The sto­ry, if you’re will­ing to hear it, explains itself: sug­ar cane more or less cursed the Antilles in the colo­nial era. Thanks free trade!

(As a quick aside, did you notice that Greenspan almost recant­ed his Ran­di­an beliefs in tes­ti­mo­ny yes­ter­day? It’s amazing!)

One of the rea­sons I had­n’t seen it soon­er, despite hav­ing an inter­est in the top­ic, was the pack­ag­ing and pro­duc­tion of the DVD, as DVD Savant wrote at the time of its re-release near­ly three years ago. Movies like this can either be lav­ish pro­duc­tions direct­ed almost exclu­sive­ly at the snooty movie mar­ket, or they end up cheap­ies in the cut-out bin. This def­i­nite­ly leans more toward the lat­ter, as the print and pack­ag­ing are a lit­tle lack­ing and the extras are nonexistent.

Stuff like this is a dis­ap­point­ment to those of us who wait patient­ly for left­field clas­sics to be reis­sued on DVD, only to find no rea­son to actu­al­ly buy the prod­uct. Film buffs will spend mon­ey for a good prod­uct. It pays to cater to them! As DVD sales decline and stu­dios waste mon­ey bulk­ing up their Blu-Ray library, it might be a good idea to talk to experts about the clas­sics that are just lay­ing around. If the music indus­try is reis­su­ing albums that came out six months ago, would it be impos­si­ble to lav­ish some atten­tion on movies that the stu­dios already own but are just col­lect­ing dust?

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 1

Marathon Training Update: Gaining Speed

I’m final­ly get­ting there. I’m up to Week 13 of Hal Hig­don’s Inter­me­di­ate II pro­gram and things are going great. When I start­ed run­ning 18 weeks ago, I had no idea how to approach “race pace” runs. I was so out of shape that I could­n’t even imag­ine where I’d end up for the marathon. I dreamt of run­ning a Boston qual­i­fi­er in my first marathon, but that did­n’t seem very like­ly, even on a friend­ly Philadel­phi­an course.

Today I test­ed myself to find out what I might be able to accom­plish and I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised. I ran 10 miles in 1:12 and change, which put me at a 7:12/mile pace, three sec­onds ahead of the 7:15 I’d have to main­tain to qual­i­fy for Boston. With a lit­tle more than a month to go before the Philadel­phia Marathon, I’d like to think that, bar­ring injury, I might even improve a bit on that pace.

I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself though. I’m run­ning my sec­ond 20 mile run tomor­row morn­ing from the usu­al start at 21st and Poplar out to For­bid­den Dri­ve and back. I’m going to see if I can get the Garmin Vir­tu­al Part­ner fig­ured out to help me main­tain an 8:15/mile pace tomor­row. I want to be very con­sis­tent and care­ful now that the mileage is reach­ing a peak to pro­tect myself from injury.

It’s a real treat to get out­doors and enjoy the fall weath­er along the Schuykill and Wis­sahick­on. It’s a lit­tle chilly when I leave the house, but feels com­fort­able by the time I get warmed up.

Fast for­ward 24 hours from the pre­vi­ous four para­graphs: I just got back from run­ning 20 miles in 2:41 and change, rough­ly 12 min­utes faster than my last 20 mile time. I tried hold­ing 8:15 miles, but found myself rip­ping off 7:45 and faster splits from the 14 mile point onward. I feel great. I hope I’m not peak­ing too soon, but I think if I keep chal­leng­ing myself over the next month, I’ll be in great shape for the marathon.

I feel like I have a Boston qual­i­fi­er in me if I run smart. Do you think I can do it? If any­one has qual­i­fied for the Boston Marathon and can share train­ing insights, espe­cial­ly with respect to the taper, let me know in the comments!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay

The Phillies Win!

Today is just unbe­liev­able. Helen and I drank our fill (phill?) at the Mem­phis Tap­room after the game end­ed. It was sim­ply amaz­ing. I can’t believe they’re real­ly going to the World Series. They should do this way more often.

Helen and I will be at Game 4! We can’t wait!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 1

Dub Colossus — A Town Called Addis

When two of my favorite crit­ics rec­om­mend some­thing, I lis­ten. First Matt Cibu­la, my favorite world music crit­ic, tipped me to Dub Colos­sus’ new album, A Town Called Addis. Now Jeff Weiss has sec­ond­ed that rec­om­men­da­tion. I’ve lis­tened to the album once and liked what I heard. I’ll be spend­ing more time with it this after­noon as I prep for tonight’s cov­er­age of the third and final Pres­i­den­tial debate for comcast.net’s elec­tion blog.

Be sure to check Mat­t’s blog, Cave 17, for a thor­ough­go­ing review and Jef­f’s for a taste of what Dub Colos­sus are about, mp3-style.

(This post is mak­ing me miss what Sty­lus Mag­a­zine offered in a big, big way.)

Posted on by J T. Ramsay