This revealing, staccato biography of the sometimes mythic retaker of Jerusalem and uniter at times of the Eastern, Arabic and Persian worlds, Anne-Marie Eddé tackles the subject in several phases: dry history, military strategies, religious aspects, myths of both the demonizing and lionizing kind. Oblique at times, Saladin cannot be perceived as a complete narrative biography (events like the siege of Acre are only partly described, stories of places like Tyre are left unfinished) but it searches for deeper meaning with a variety of views. For a time, Saladin's realpolitik empire spanned deep Egypt to beyond Syria and Beirut, and it required an as yet unseen mastery of both diplomacy and risk. Many gestures divided enemies and allies, deftly. Aspects of duty, taxation, customs, even seasonal challenges like winter storms halting sea-trade are laced with personality and conflicts. Poetry, diaries, contracts are all cited to great effect. Several oft repeated tales drive the effects home, including the determinism to die poor: at death he had only a few dinars left. Nuances like short histories of the sultan/Seljuk title, interspersed, are amazing. At times a travelogue tragedy. An ocean of desert at night for a knife at throat bedouin raid, the march of entire cities leaving every valuable behind while others are left untouched. In between slaughter is chivalry, common good will, suicidal assasin sects, wholesale ransoming, pilgrimages, somehow proof humans achieve their sense of greatness only on a vast scale. And in human cost. Extensive quotes from William of Tyre.  The cover above is from the french original.   Translated.  Harvard-Belknap Press.

Saladin's Palace, Syria

An unusual article from the Washington Post.

This scant black and white masterpiece photo book, like another black and white photobook Wisconsin Death Trip, is composed of entirely found negatives, culled from historical, industrial and governmental archives (the defense industry is well in evidence). Evidence, made of some of the greatest late 20th century images of American photography, is precisely how future anthropologists will asses our near past. Specifically it will be an introductory map to our various archives of visual data which will acompany the factual data, in a time/era without very much filming/taping ability. Each image the tip of an iceberg of thousands upon thousands of negatives. Services might even rebuild motion events from a series or even a single still of an experiment, and discover what really went wrong. Documentary movies will probably be made from stills in the future, tracking algorithms can spot each speed of a street in motion's objects, render them for seven seconds. The blur has micro blurs in the negative. Evidence will come to life. First published in 1977 (the equally great Wisconsin Death Trip was published 1974). Reprinted recently.

An excellent tech-piece in Gawker.

The X-47B, skychief without a human master. Lands on carriers.

so who's accountable? from the L.A. Times.

"It is about avoiding a 1930s moment, in which inaction, insularity, and rigid ideology combine to cause a collapse in global demand," IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in prepared remarks before the German Council of Foreign Affairs in Berlin [AM Monday January 23]. "A moment, ultimately, leading to a downward spiral that could engulf the entire world," she said.

Buster's five reel masterpiece was set in in the environs of a local movie theater and then migrated to the insides of a fantasy about film while Buster's projectionist dreamed of possibilities beyond 1924: talkies, transubstantiation and magical motorbikes. His onscreen/onscreen detective solves an impossible crime with impossibilities while just onscreen his lost love does the real detective work he's unable to improvise.

Keaton films a 40 second continuous take of a refrigerated railroad escape hatched exit (trap door), then as the train takes off Buster walks opposite the train's direction, he remains centered, leaping between trains, until at the end he simply jumps onto a water chute's chain, grabs it in mid-air and takes it down to the ground, finally awashed in a deluge. He simply gets up and walks away from the camera as a hand-operated car slides into frame with two men, who are then drowned. The take is obviously a masterpiece inside one. Later, in the dream sequence, Buster is lured up a stairs and exits a trap door that's then locked. Then a wide shot from the ground, as Keaton appears above only as the villain slides into a redlight. Keaton comes to the roof's edge, and leaps on an upright railroad crossing gate, and rides it down, right into the villain's rear seat. A mimic of reality's railroad gag.

"Keaton showed us the impossible to show that it was impossible. Distinguishing between life on the screen and life in nature - and for all that, between screen life and stage life - Keaton defined the form as no analyst had before him had done, marking out its liberties and limitations precisely. But not as theory. He made the contradiction visible. Before Buster penetrates the screen in Sherlock, Jr., he must step onto the stage in front of it."

Walter Kerr The Silent Clowns Knopf 1975

Below images: to prove he's inside the film of his dreams, Keaton steps into the dressing mirror without commentary, then (not shown) later he jumps first into a dress he's suddenly wearing, then (illustrated) he leaps impossibly into his assistant. From Silent Clowns.