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ejp626
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Posts posted by ejp626
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Actually a 4 Blu-Ray set of Fellini films - https://cultfilms.co.uk/product/federico-fellini-four-films/
No question Criterion has better extras and has the edge in terms of transfers but this looks fine to me so far. 8 1/2, La Dolce Vita, Juliet of the Spirits and I Vitelloni currently for 18 pounds! Note that this is Region B!
Based on what Cult Films has the UK (and EU???) rights to, it looks like it is a new incarnation of Mr. Bongo Films.
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Sonic Boom in Toronto is doing curbside pickup plus other delivery options for GTA. https://www.sonicboommusic.com/collections/jazz/Vinyl
Now at the moment it doesn't look.like they list used LPs on website (and I know they aren't buying used vinyl right now). So I only order very, very sparingly.
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Sometimes you just get lucky.
I've had good experience ordering directly from the UK from BFI and now Cult Films. The shipping prices were reasonable, and I think in both cases actual shipping time was under a week.
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11 minutes ago, jazzbo said:
Shipping via DHL is not cheap via cdjapan either and in "normal" times there are less expensive options but not now, still total shipping via DHL for 8 to 10 cds is about 28 dollars, so ordering that many is not exorbitant imo. Especially as they arrive in three or four days. That fuse I think was a victim of the first shut down of regular postal service from Japan and got lost in the shuffle until recently. I have in fact ordered other discs from Japan from private sellers when the price was right and though a little patience is required, there have been no real snafus.
24 minutes ago, Brad said:That’s what CD Japan does and the big companies probably have a corporate rate because of volume. Unfortunately, the small sellers don’t and to ship something by DHL can be prohibitively expensive.
Maybe there was some discount for 1 or 2 CDs, but I'm sure I didn't pay $28 for shipping. No question smaller merchants are getting squeezed.
My cousin just mailed a book from Brooklyn to Canada, and it cost him $20! That is by far the most outrageous I've seen (and I think he was screwed by USPS). Still, if this becomes the new normal, I won't order anything from the States going forward. And so our worlds become that much smaller and closed off...
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50 minutes ago, Brad said:
Except for ordering from CD Japan, I’ve given up on buying anything from Japan because of postal restrictions. For that matter, anything from Europe as well. Back in November I ordered a book from Amazon UK. It just arrived last week. In late December I ordered several records from a German audiophile company called In and Out Records. Who knows when they will arrive here. The tracking hasn’t changed since it was shipped. Patience, extreme patience, has to be the watchword.
I was pleasantly surprised at how fast the shipping from Amazon.co.jp was. They were using DHL and it usually made it to Canada in a couple of days. I don't order from Japan often (and try not to even look most of the time so there is less temptation), but it wasn't really a hassle.
On very rare occasions the shipping from the UK to Canada is a bit cheaper than to the US (I guess the Commonwealth connection
), and certainly a lot of UK (and EU) vendors won't bother anymore with shipping to Canada, but once in a while there are still deals to be had (probably because vendors have forgotten to update previously set foreign shipping rates...).
That said, I certainly order less than I used to and have mostly gone digital, and this is probably overall a good thing. Certainly my children will agree if there is even less junk/stuff around for them to have to deal with...
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I assume it doesn't matter if it is released or still pre-released in terms of getting paid, but there are Bandcamp Fridays that bracket the release date (April 16) of All Knavery & Collusion. Upcoming Bandcamp Fridays are - March 5th, April 2nd, and May 7th.
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Was tipped off to a number of very interesting projects on Bandcamp last Friday. Most of which I bought, but a few I'm just streaming for now.
The Puerto Rican guitarist, Gabriel Vicens's The Way We Are Created caught my attention - https://gabrielvicens.bandcamp.com/album/the-way-we-are-created
You can order all three of his current recordings as a package deal, which I took advantage of.
UK drummer/percussionist Will Glaser has released the third album of his Climbing in Circles project on Ubuntu Music.
https://willglaser.bandcamp.com/album/climbing-in-circles
I spent a little time poking around on the Ubuntu site and ran across the Chet Baker Live in London sets from 1983 (but the recordings were not actually cleaned up and issued until 2016). These probably have been discussed here previously, but they are new to me and are quite fine.
https://chetbaker.bandcamp.com/album/live-in-london
https://chetbaker.bandcamp.com/album/live-in-london-volume-ii
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1 hour ago, romualdo said:
just fascinated to know why they are/have been called "The Bastards/Da Bastards "
I believe it is because those Bastards are so skilled at separating you from your money, but maybe someone has a different etymology.
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Exploring some of the bonus features in the Monty Python Blu-ray set. On the Season 4 disc, there are some commercials that the Pythons did including a 25 minute industrial film for Birds Eye Peas! This was shot during Season 3 so it has John in it. It really is not that far different from a full-length show but with a very narrow focus on making peas "younger." As far as I know, no one has interviewed anyone from Birds Eye Peas to see if they got what they thought they were getting.
Other random thoughts - the Most Awful Family in Britain sketch from "Party Political Broadcast" seems very much the template for The Young Ones. Maybe the next time through watching The Young Ones I will feel that it is somewhat derivative.
Also watching The Oscar Wilde skit from Season 3 I misremembered that as being from Black Adder.
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Hemingway's The Torrents of Spring.
What an odd book. It is deliberately written as a parody of the style of some of Hemingway's fellow writers in Paris. Sherwood Anderson is name checked in the introduction, and my understanding is that Hemingway was also poking at Ford Madox Ford as well.
Does it really stand on its own (like a Flann O'Brien comic novel)? No, not particularly. Would I read this a second time? Certainly not. Once is enough.
Still reading lots of poetry for a project. Mostly starting with the New York School (Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Kenneth Koch, etc.) but also Kenneth Rexroth and David Ignatow. Then working backwards and forwards.
Will probably be getting back to Don Quixote after a long layoff later this week.
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Actually unissued (not a reissue) live tracks from 1964, but still seems to fit better here. Ian Carr/Don Rendell Blue Beginnings is available as a pre-release on Bandcamp: https://jazzinbritain1.bandcamp.com/album/blue-beginnings
with full release expected April 21.
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3 hours ago, Dan Gould said:
Nice, and congratulations, Mark. The on-demand option is a good idea and I think I will take advantage.
Agreed. It is quite odd but still interesting to plug in to concerts (jazz or classical) that are far from "home." Live concerts are still strictly forbidden in Toronto.
I am finding myself tuning in to Vancouver Symphony Orchestra livestreams (where I have at least some connection to that orchestra). Obviously there is a limit on how much one can listen to, but I will consider this marathon, as well as a DSO-sponsored concert by Regina Carter and Xavier Davis on Feb. 12.
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1 hour ago, Captain Howdy said:
>getting offended on behalf of Martians
SJWs. SMH.
Given how many times he works in the N word (and indeed has someone say the Martians are genetically related to Africans!) I think it is safe to say quite a few people would be offended, not just people who care about the ethical treatment of Martians.
Twain's Huck Finn and maybe Conrad's novel may or may not survive in today's cancel culture, but this much slighter effort might not.
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PKD's Martian Time-Slip
This cover is hilarious. Makes it look like a Heinlein juvenile...
There was quite a lot I didn't care for, particularly when Dick kept conflating autism and schizophrenia, which I didn't appreciate (to say nothing of how crudely the Martian natives were discussed by the settlers), but he did stick the landing.
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Exciting news. I believe this Friday is another Bandcamp Friday, so this looks like it will be added to the list...
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Just now, sidewinder said:
Well, my opinion so far is that the music in this set is actually superior to any of the commercial Paraphernalia LP releases that I have. Audio quality is very good, as typical of the BBC FM broadcasts of the era. Really digging this BBC box and it makes a great accompaniment to enjoying Barbara’s very down to earth bio.
I am tempted, and I'll probably eventually order it. But I am not quite read to pull the trigger. Thanks for the review though.
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On 12/21/2020 at 11:21 AM, sidewinder said:
An exceptional month for Barbara Thompson fans. Not only does she have her autobiography published but there’s also a box set 14CD issue of her BBC recordings.
https://barbara-thompson.co.uk/product/barbara-thompson-live-at-the-bbc/
I'm holding off on this (for now), but I did order The Last Fandango from her store on Amazon.co.uk. Somehow they sent me 2 sealed copies! I'll see what they want to do but pretty much anything is going to be a bit of a hassle or perhaps costly.
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I stumbled across Big Miller and a whole album of songs by Langston Hughes. Was pretty interesting: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112757312
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1 hour ago, Rooster_Ties said:
Children, and buildings too...
Different loophole used as late as 1988 to mail bricks to Alaska - https://apnews.com/article/281d3e682569b2cc5edd890bf600d17e
I actually remembered hearing of this one at the time.
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Saw Night of the Iguana for the first time.
Definitely interesting. I had seen the play many years ago. I hope to again some day, though it is not staged all that often. At any rate, I went through the script to see what Huston had changed or more typically rearranged. Williams' play is more direct about several things that are left a bit ambiguous in the movie, and the play also contains a couple of Germans who are Nazi supporters (!) (wisely left out of the film). Huston also seems to have moved the setting up to the early 1960s whereas the play is set in the 40s. I thought the rearranging of the very final scene worked pretty well, though there are certainly those who feel the stage version ends better.
The special features were pretty nice, especially the color shots of the set (and apparently Huston pulled a Herzog, long before Herzog, building a set in a completely remote area where everything had to be hauled up a small mountain). And some clips of Elizabeth Taylor hanging out with the cast -- her presence was particularly scandalous as she was still married to Eddie Fisher...
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On 2021-01-30 at 10:12 AM, RogerF said:
I see that the Canadian company Return To Analog has reissued on vinyl the very rare Lansdowne recording Afro-Jazz by Guy Warren which features the Rendell Carr Quintet plus Amancio D'Silva on guitar. Return To Analog
I briefly considered ordering this, as it is a Canadian outfit, but even shipping within Canada ranges from $13-16, and I assume it is considerably higher to send outside Canada. Hoping that it is released more widely in another format and/or digitally...
Actually, I see that Sonic Boom here has a few of their LPs in stock and may be doing curbside pickup. I may weaken...
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On 2021-01-30 at 10:01 AM, ejp626 said:
I've extended the library loan on Emberton a couple of times, but am going to finish it this weekend.
This starts off well with strong shades of Kafka's The Trial & The Castle as the protagonist goes off to work at eerie Emberton Tower where the Emberton Dictionary is published but midway through it turns into a weird (and not very good) metaphysical fantasy where the essence of language is distilled into a liquid that can make dyslexic people read but at a cost of sucking words out of the world outside the tower. I probably should just drop it at this point, but there isn't much left and I do want to get it back to the library.
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I've mostly been reading poetry for a project I've been working on. A lot of old favorites, but also exploring poets I'm aware of but not that up on their work - Richard Wilbur is a good example. I also stumbled across Michael Heller during this process.
I've extended the library loan on Emberton a couple of times, but am going to finish it this weekend.
I really should get back to Don Quixote after that. You'd think I'd find the time, since I really don't get to leave the house, but I still find it hard to focus.
The USPS SUCKS
in Miscellaneous - Non-Political
Posted
Surprisingly reasonable (after the shock of Amazon.co.uk base shipping). Now again, that was to a Commonwealth country...
Anyway, I wouldn't hesitate to order directly from them again.