2012-02-07
post/17187970125
2012-01-24
An Oscar Reply
Seriously, though, last year was a parade of remarkable films; that’s not something you would conclude from these nominations.
War Horse???? It’s ET with a horse. Horse runs home.
Midnight in Paris? It’s a postcard extended to two hours.
Moneyball? A baseball movie where the audience’s attention span is the only meaningful antagonist.
Tree of Life: There’s a reason why the best movies tell stories. Visual poetry that’s more than two hours needs to be serialized.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: Schtick.
What a disappointing year for film-making.
What about the stuff that didn’t get nominated? More along the lines of Tree of Life as beautiful, heartbreaking films - but ones with more of a narrative - there are Melancholia and Norwegian Wood (although I don’t know if the latter counts for 2011, and it may fall into the Foreign Film ghetto anyway). Drive was a little flawed but definitely interesting and well made. Charlize Theron was unfairly overlooked for Best Leading Actress for Young Adult (although I accept it probably didn’t deserve a Best Film nomination), and although Gary Oldman represents Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the nominations for him and for Best Adapted Screenplay are far from enough recognition for that picture.
Perhaps it’s not so much a disappointing year for films as a(nother) case where you shouldn’t trust the MPAA to be your guide in what to see.
2011-12-19
post/14470226871
evalilith, replying to my Lego post.
I don’t assume girls don’t like Lego; I’m sure there are plenty (perhaps even a majority) who love it, or would given the chance to play. (I have a nasty feeling that as the older brother I hogged the bricks when I played with my sister as a child.) I love to hear that friends have bought their niece one of the Creator sets.
Perhaps think the point I was trying (and probably failing) to make is that, as the article makes clear, that there are parents (and perhaps girls) who have decided that Lego is somehow for boys, some children’s imaginative reuse of minfigs notwithstanding. Their own sales figures and market research back that up.
I don’t particularly like it any more than the thousands of people who’ve commented on the Friends launch, but I am maybe more forgiving of Lego-the-corporation in making an effort to design, and (yes) market, products for a part of the population who aren’t buying as much of their stuff.
2011-07-27
post/8116432692
The work of art in the age of Googled reproduction:
I don’t want to call these digital objects “image economies,” I want to call them something like Google Clusters. Or maybe Pergoogles: These are iconic images — per Google.
Even that is a bit of a cheat, because obviously Google is responding to the specific words I choose. (The title of each image here corresponds with the search term I used; I didn’t use quote marks in my searches.) It’s easy to capture “Mona Lisa,” harder to see what Google makes of Warhol’s iconic soup can, or Michelangelo’s David (see below).
Nevertheless, I’m rather pleased with the results, all in all.
I’d love to see all these printed crisply, and very large, and displayed in a high-ceilinged and white-walled gallery. Or museum. After all, I think a case could be made for these as “digital readymades,” a term whose origins I don’t know, but that I’ve read applied to the“Photoshop Gradient” pieces by Cory Arcangel. Those are supposedly one-click affairs, and the ones I’ve seen I quite like. (Though I’ve only seen them online.)
(via krislane)
2011-05-03
post/5164266632
As the Westfield Mall complex in the small area of Shepherd’s Bush grows in popularity, changes are required to deal with the ever increasing influx of shoppers. Many find it hard to navigate themselves through leafy Shepherd’s Bush, the many quaint stalls in the market and the independent, family run restaurants that profligate the area. As a result, Shepherd’s Bush station has been renamed Westfield Mall station with the exit relocated inside the Debenhams flagship store.
There’s more at the original Tumblr. Some obvious targets (for example, this), but still, nice culture jamming, even if they didn’t quite get the right weight of Johnston. (via Andy Mcfarland and James Bridle).
2011-02-03
post/3082652546
2011-01-06
post/2618814678
2010-03-06
The British Junk Food Report
rentzsch wrote an interesting post on some of the junk food he tried while in the UK for NSConference:
The absolute most-important thing for a U.S.-based traveler to the U.K. is knowing what junk food you should load up on while there. Here’s our report:
Kit Kat Chunky: DON’T BUY. There are far better things to spend 260 (!) calories on.
Really? I love Kit Kat Chunky, although I have a particularly soft spot for the allegedly limited edition Caramel variant. Maybe I’m just dull, or perhaps the mix of biscuit and chocolate is just more my sort of thing.
Wispa: BUY. This was the least-interesting bar to me, but came up the biggest winner.
Its very concept didn’t appeal to me: an “aerated” chocolate bar. More than anything, it seemed like a hack to give you less chocolate for the same price.
If you try only one chocolate bar while in the UK, I recommend Wispa.
Wispa has a competitor, Aero, which is more air, less chocolate. It also comes in a mint version. Personally I find them a bit too light, but occasionally they’re right.
Wheatabix: BUY. Apparently these are State-side, but I never noticed or tried them until I arrived in London. They’re like a fine-grained Shredded Wheat that dissolves much more rapidly in milk. Yummy, if you’re the kind who likes soggy shredded wheat (I do).
Minor correction: the product is called Weetabix. I don’t eat breakfast cereals, though, so I have no other comment.
(Tumblr is stripping the style attributes from the span tags. Sigh.)
2010-03-04
post/426161147
Jonathan Freedland, in a comment piece for the Guardian: The BBC is caving in to a Tory media policy dictated by Rupert Murdoch.
Some would argue that this is a reductio ad absurdum argument, but I think it gets to the heart of why I’m worried about the report: if the BBC is shrinking, where will it stop?
(My main disagreement with his piece is the blithe acceptance that online content can be scaled back, but I’ve covered that elsewhere.)
