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Midweek Miscellany

The reluctant Daniel Clowes has a website. What the hell?

The Day The Movies Died — Mark Harris, author of the fantastic Pictures at the Revolution, on Hollywood blockbusters and the death of the great American movie. A really good read:

Which brings us to the embarrassing part. Blaming the studios for everything lets another culprit off too easily: us. We can complain until we’re hoarse that Hollywood abandoned us by ceasing to make the kinds of movies we want to see, but it’s just as true that we abandoned Hollywood. Studios make movies for people who go to the movies, and the fact is, we don’t go anymore—and by we, I mean the complaining class, of which, if you’ve read this far, you are absolutely a member. We stay home, and we do it for countless reasons… The urgency of seeing movies the way they’re presumably intended to be seen has given way to the primacy of privacy and the security of knowing that there’s really almost no risk of missing a movie you want to see and never having another opportunity to see it. Put simply, we’d rather stay home, and movies are made for people who’d rather go out.

You Can’t Learn Taste — A profile of Richard Russell, boss of London-based independent record label XL Recordings,  in The Guardian:

This, after all, is a label that is thriving in an industry that is supposed to be dying.

“It’s not dying . . . it’s changing,” says Russell. “But then it always has been, as is the whole world. I just don’t think about the future at all. It’s not my responsibility.”

Really? He doesn’t have a strategy?

“Yeah – put good records out. That’s it. I’m sure there are people thinking about stuff like copyright and downloading, but . . . you don’t want an author to be thinking about Kindles and shit like that, do you? I mean, we do our best, but we definitely don’t offer any solutions for the music industry.”

And there’s the problem. You can’t learn taste.

Also in The Guardian, Barry Miles, author of London Calling: A Countercultural History of London Since 1945, chooses his top 10 books about London’s counterculture.

And finally…

Alan Arkin’s video for his new book, An Improvised Life, published next month by Da Capo:

Nice.

(via Jacket Copy)