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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Independent Film Review: "The King's Speech" (2010), by Payman Akhlaghi

King's Speech (2010, Released 2011)
Directed by Tom Hooper
Music by Alexander Desplat, with original music by Beethoven, Mozart, et al
Cast includes: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Thimothy Spall, Derek Jacobi, et al.

I had avoided the film in its theatrical release, amid or because of the huge publicity surrounding it, followed by 12 Oscar nominations, winning 4, for Best Picture, Best Actor (Firth), Best Director, and Best Original Script (Seidler). I had avoided it, despite my admiration for the production team, including composer Alexander Desplat, most of whom I had long privately registered as consistently reliable in their art and craft. Not even an interesting interview I watched at the time convinced my doubts to vanish. But a few minutes into the DVD version of the film, I realized that fortunately, I couldn't have been any more wrong. To put it succinctly, here was a touching dramatic work, in a way, despite all odds, beginning from the true story behind it, to the carefully crafted script, to the sensible and sensitive ensemble performance, to the music, and to the gestallt of its cinematic experience.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Maimonides' "The Guide for the Perplexed" Translated to Persian by Ms. Shirin-Dokht Daghighian

Maimonides: A Guide for the Perplexed
Translated to Persian byShirin-Dokht Daghighian
Commentaries in English and Persian by the Translator
Published by
Persian Maimonides Foundation, Los Angeles (2011)

راهنمای سرگشتگان، اثر بزرگ فلسفی هارامبام
برای نخستین بار به زبان فارسی
برگردان، معرفی، نقد و حواشی از شیرین دخت دقیقیان
به همت بنیاد ایرانی هارامبام، 2011، لس آنجلس

The Persian translation of Maimonides' (Rambam's) most famous philosophical book, "The Guide for the Perplexed", or as known in its original Arabic, دلالت الحائرین, has just been completed by the Iranian American Jewish scholar, Ms. Shirin-Dokht Daghighian.

برگردان فارسی مهم ترین کتاب فلسفی هارامبام، "راهنمای سرگشتگان" سرانجام توسط دانشمند برجسته، خانم شیرین دخت دقیقیان، به پایان رسیده است. این اثر در 4 مجلد و همراه با حواشی و مقدمۀ مترجم فرهیخته توسط بنیاد ایرانی هارامبام  در لس آنجلس به چاپ رسیده است و به زودی در معرض ابتیاع عموم قرار خواهد گرفت. دکتر میر حمید سالک نقدی خواندنی بر این اثر نوشته اند که در سایت ایران امروز به چاپ رسیده است. 

Uncertainty as a Common Thread in 20th Century Philosophy, Science & Music: A Short Original Essay by Payman Akhlaghi (2011)

Uncertainty as a Common Thread in 20th Century Philosophy, Science & Music
A Short Original Essay by Payman Akhlaghi [Revision 2]

© 2011, Payman Akhlaghi. The following is a slightly modified version of a Foto-Note, first Published on October 1st, 2011, at Facebook.com/PAComposer under 
Uncertainty as a Common Thread in 20th Century Philosophy, Science & Music. . The following is copyrighted material at the time and by the virtue of its original creation. Proper citation is required. Thank you. [*This post was updated on 12.28.2014 to mend the links and this notice.]

A thread on John Cage's chance composition, "Indeterminacy, Part 1", initiated by Thomas Monteforte and Andy Green, led me to summarize some of my longstanding thoughts on the subject of probability in 20th century music, philosophy, and the little I know about physics.

By now for decades, John Cage has continued to provoke, inform, and fascinate me by way of his compositions, poems, interviews, and the very air of his being. That could be true for his striking "music of silence", i.e  "4'33"", a string quartet in the tonal style, a piece for percussion group which I heard live, his "sketching" over Dvorak's 9th Symphony, a movement from his "Lectures", his composition for an ensemble of radios, or his book of highly structured poetry, "Composition in Retrospect".