This isn't a review of my own (I regret to say), but it is a pointer to a David Weinberger article that was published in the March 2007 issue of the Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization (JOHO). I've been a fan of his writing for years, and am sad that his newsletter has largely been replaced by his blog. I haven't quite evolved into the person I want to be -- a person who will be able to keep up with things in the blog world. But I'm trying.
Anyway, it's an interesting observation. It would be a good conversation starter, especially with some snacks nearby, and a glass at hand. You can read it here.
Showing posts with label Interesting Asides. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interesting Asides. Show all posts
12 March 2007
08 February 2007
Great quote from "Moonraker"
I've been doing a lot of James Bond film research for a client (don't ask), and came across a delightful quote from a movie I've never seen: Moonraker. Spoken by a character named Hugo Drax...
"James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season." Worthy of Patrick O'Brien, that.
d
"James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season." Worthy of Patrick O'Brien, that.
d
29 March 2005
Confessions of a Misfit Poster
As to Chris’s post regarding diminished participation on this blog (“Critical Mass?”) . . . I've been feeling a bit guilty, myself. Of course, Christy and I have that new baby thing going on (Leo says "goo" to you all) . . . but, on top of that, as you said, Chris, there haven't been a lot of new blog-worthy movies of late.
We are avid NetFlix junkies, but much of our renting is dedicated to television shows (and primarily older movies, which I suspect many have already seen, and probably don’t need to be belabored or even recommended). We have been crawling through the old, cold war spy series, Danger Man/Secret Agent Man with Patrick McGoohan, which we like very much (we were huge fans of The Prisoner). At times, John Drake's one punch knock outs and some of the other dated conventions are a bit funny, but this is more than made up for by the often fascinating take on cold war espionage and (colonialist) politics, which is so multifaceted and conflicting for the protagonist, that the creation of The Prisoner seems to be an inevitability). The show still seems poignant . . . especially with the "Come on back to the cold war" Bushites livening things up for those of us who don't remember what that whole fascism thing was about way back in that other era . . . in that other continent across that ocean.
Our most recent indulgence has been the HBO series, Carnivale. We just finished the first season on DVD, so we are a bit behind, but both Christy and I are enjoying it quite a bit. As someone mentioned in one of the Carnivale special feature interviews, this is potentially a great era for television, since much of the artistry previously reserved only for the novel can been spun into a complex and unusual series like Carnivale without commercial interruption (or corporate content meddling). In fact, this era of TV on DVD is immensely exciting for me, allowing me to increasingly see the tremendous potential in an excellent series for the development of complex issues and characters . . . a thing (rightly or wrongly) often thought to be an artistic weakness of the film genre.
Of course, there are still a number of shows that tend to fall apart under the burdens of a more "novelistic" style of creation. Alias comes to mind. It started very strongly, we thought, but lack of a long term vision and some eccentric silliness with a plot too twisted for the writers to untwist (brings back the X-Files let down all over again) have started to take their tolls . . . and now I hear the sound of grave shovels biting into the dirt. My comment (as of this season’s new opening credit sequence dedicated to Sydney Bristow’s abundant yet scanty wardrobe), to paraphrase the great Marge Simpson, was, “Alias turned into a soft porn show so gradually I didn’t even notice.”
J.J. Abrams’ new show, Lost, currently holds the most promise for our camp. But it has a tough (and winding) road ahead of it . . . so I’m not holding my breath.
The corporate mentality behind the television studios is frightening. In fact, it is a wonder to me that anything interesting and strange (like Lost) every gets made. When I see a show like Carnivale given a nice, glossy, and, I hope, patient treatment by HBO, I start to feel a little match head of hope flare up inside me. And this leads inevitably to my ultimate television fantasy: that HBO would hire Joss Whedon to make a show for them. If that ever came true, Christy and I might be forced to get cable.
My only comment on “livening up” the blogging here (of course, a larger community would help, too) would be to expand the range of potential input. For instance, as this post hints, television (past and present) could be included . . . and maybe even more along the lines of Ken’s “Is the Blockbuster the End of Cinema?” citation. We are film lovers, but because we are human, we have a relationship with the whole ecosystem of film that stretches beyond small, “quantitative” critiques and recommendations of the movies we’ve seen . . . stretches, maybe, to “how do our experiences of/with film inform our personal universes?”
I know I am specifically renowned for having a few philosophical and abstractly speculative bugs up my ass (so maybe I’m a poor example), but I find that I only rarely have a recommendation for or against a film. More often, I am interested in how the film “means” to me (and might mean similarly to others), in how the film affects or even restructures my life (or fails to do so) insomuch as I chose to participate with it.
Speaking now as an artist myself, I wouldn’t want people who read my poems to merely give them a thumbs up or down, nor even to simply like or dislike them . . . I would ideally want them to engage with them, wrestle with them, try to tie them to aspects of their own lives (not just academically to a “literary tradition”).
In general, that’s the way I try to engage with the art of others, as well . . . to lift the experience of that art out of the realm of my personal opinion and place it into the context of usefulness, association, connection to a web of humanness . . . and then only resort to judging that which isn’t substantial enough to live with relationally.
Of course, that’s pretty romantic . . . especially coming from a guy who likes bad kung fu movies (and has been known to utilize snake and crane method, drunken boxing, and monkey kung fu in mythic household battles against his dog) and feels he can somehow make a distinction in quality between The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (not so good),Van Helsing (a little bit better than not so good), and The Mummy (quite fun . . . in fact, we own it) . . . despite the fact that these movies are all up to a lot of the same things in a lot of the same ways.
Oh, also, I have mixed feelings about the comments being hidden beneath the facades of the original posts they are replying to. In some ways, it’s tidy, but it also limits the feeling of the posts functioning as a true dialog, or rather, multilog, of voices. I think it might decrease the spurring of reactions, instead nipping in the bud the process of communication which brings the films and thoughts about them to bear in our consciousness. But this is maybe just my lack of blogging experience outing itself. It’s not the convention I am most familiar with.
Whatever the solution may actually be, I hope The Usual Suspects keeps on truckin’.
We are avid NetFlix junkies, but much of our renting is dedicated to television shows (and primarily older movies, which I suspect many have already seen, and probably don’t need to be belabored or even recommended). We have been crawling through the old, cold war spy series, Danger Man/Secret Agent Man with Patrick McGoohan, which we like very much (we were huge fans of The Prisoner). At times, John Drake's one punch knock outs and some of the other dated conventions are a bit funny, but this is more than made up for by the often fascinating take on cold war espionage and (colonialist) politics, which is so multifaceted and conflicting for the protagonist, that the creation of The Prisoner seems to be an inevitability). The show still seems poignant . . . especially with the "Come on back to the cold war" Bushites livening things up for those of us who don't remember what that whole fascism thing was about way back in that other era . . . in that other continent across that ocean.
Our most recent indulgence has been the HBO series, Carnivale. We just finished the first season on DVD, so we are a bit behind, but both Christy and I are enjoying it quite a bit. As someone mentioned in one of the Carnivale special feature interviews, this is potentially a great era for television, since much of the artistry previously reserved only for the novel can been spun into a complex and unusual series like Carnivale without commercial interruption (or corporate content meddling). In fact, this era of TV on DVD is immensely exciting for me, allowing me to increasingly see the tremendous potential in an excellent series for the development of complex issues and characters . . . a thing (rightly or wrongly) often thought to be an artistic weakness of the film genre.
Of course, there are still a number of shows that tend to fall apart under the burdens of a more "novelistic" style of creation. Alias comes to mind. It started very strongly, we thought, but lack of a long term vision and some eccentric silliness with a plot too twisted for the writers to untwist (brings back the X-Files let down all over again) have started to take their tolls . . . and now I hear the sound of grave shovels biting into the dirt. My comment (as of this season’s new opening credit sequence dedicated to Sydney Bristow’s abundant yet scanty wardrobe), to paraphrase the great Marge Simpson, was, “Alias turned into a soft porn show so gradually I didn’t even notice.”
J.J. Abrams’ new show, Lost, currently holds the most promise for our camp. But it has a tough (and winding) road ahead of it . . . so I’m not holding my breath.
The corporate mentality behind the television studios is frightening. In fact, it is a wonder to me that anything interesting and strange (like Lost) every gets made. When I see a show like Carnivale given a nice, glossy, and, I hope, patient treatment by HBO, I start to feel a little match head of hope flare up inside me. And this leads inevitably to my ultimate television fantasy: that HBO would hire Joss Whedon to make a show for them. If that ever came true, Christy and I might be forced to get cable.
My only comment on “livening up” the blogging here (of course, a larger community would help, too) would be to expand the range of potential input. For instance, as this post hints, television (past and present) could be included . . . and maybe even more along the lines of Ken’s “Is the Blockbuster the End of Cinema?” citation. We are film lovers, but because we are human, we have a relationship with the whole ecosystem of film that stretches beyond small, “quantitative” critiques and recommendations of the movies we’ve seen . . . stretches, maybe, to “how do our experiences of/with film inform our personal universes?”
I know I am specifically renowned for having a few philosophical and abstractly speculative bugs up my ass (so maybe I’m a poor example), but I find that I only rarely have a recommendation for or against a film. More often, I am interested in how the film “means” to me (and might mean similarly to others), in how the film affects or even restructures my life (or fails to do so) insomuch as I chose to participate with it.
Speaking now as an artist myself, I wouldn’t want people who read my poems to merely give them a thumbs up or down, nor even to simply like or dislike them . . . I would ideally want them to engage with them, wrestle with them, try to tie them to aspects of their own lives (not just academically to a “literary tradition”).
In general, that’s the way I try to engage with the art of others, as well . . . to lift the experience of that art out of the realm of my personal opinion and place it into the context of usefulness, association, connection to a web of humanness . . . and then only resort to judging that which isn’t substantial enough to live with relationally.
Of course, that’s pretty romantic . . . especially coming from a guy who likes bad kung fu movies (and has been known to utilize snake and crane method, drunken boxing, and monkey kung fu in mythic household battles against his dog) and feels he can somehow make a distinction in quality between The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (not so good),Van Helsing (a little bit better than not so good), and The Mummy (quite fun . . . in fact, we own it) . . . despite the fact that these movies are all up to a lot of the same things in a lot of the same ways.
Oh, also, I have mixed feelings about the comments being hidden beneath the facades of the original posts they are replying to. In some ways, it’s tidy, but it also limits the feeling of the posts functioning as a true dialog, or rather, multilog, of voices. I think it might decrease the spurring of reactions, instead nipping in the bud the process of communication which brings the films and thoughts about them to bear in our consciousness. But this is maybe just my lack of blogging experience outing itself. It’s not the convention I am most familiar with.
Whatever the solution may actually be, I hope The Usual Suspects keeps on truckin’.
27 March 2005
Critical Mass?
Well, the blog has been around for a little over two months now, and I find even my own participation to be much less than I'd like.
I was wondering how people feel about it at this point. For the non-posters, do you think you might post sooner or later? If yes, great! If not, do you still like reading what does get posted (mostly by the inestimable Mr. Rolston)?
Maybe it's worth continuing, but perhaps it should be retitled. Maybe Cinema Rolstonisio? I'm going to try and do some short takes myself. I haven't stopped watching, but nothing I've seen lately struck me as particularly blogworthy.
I think if we had more folks involved, it might generate more energy on its own. So if anyone would like to nominate new members to the group, that's fine with me.
I was wondering how people feel about it at this point. For the non-posters, do you think you might post sooner or later? If yes, great! If not, do you still like reading what does get posted (mostly by the inestimable Mr. Rolston)?
Maybe it's worth continuing, but perhaps it should be retitled. Maybe Cinema Rolstonisio? I'm going to try and do some short takes myself. I haven't stopped watching, but nothing I've seen lately struck me as particularly blogworthy.
I think if we had more folks involved, it might generate more energy on its own. So if anyone would like to nominate new members to the group, that's fine with me.
09 February 2005
Is the blockbuster the end of cinema? [excerpt]
On blockbusters making their profits in the first weekend:
The big features now open on three thousand-plus screens, in order to maximize the benefit of their promotion. Before the word of mouth has made it around the block, the movie has already taken in, from the opening weekend, typically somewhere between twenty-five and forty per cent of its total gross. “Hulk” set a record with a seventy-per-cent decline in ticket sales between its opening and the second weekend, but the average drop-off for all movies is fifty per cent, and it is almost the definition of a blockbuster that the first weekend is a make-or-break proposition. Marketing costs for the “Matrix” sequels exceeded a hundred million dollars. The reason that those movies had such enormous grosses, despite terrible reviews and negative word of mouth, is that each opened on eighteen thousand screens simultaneously worldwide. As Shone says, about the typical blockbuster, “By the time we’ve all seen that it sucked, it’s a hit.”
Comparing 'successful' midsize films and blockbuster turds:
Every once in a while, there is talk about the return of the midsize film—the picture that costs twenty million or so to make, and that attracts interest and attention on its own merits. “Sideways” is this season’s poster child. “Sideways” is reported to have cost around sixteen million dollars to make (exclusive of marketing costs). After ten weeks, it had grossed twenty-two million dollars. You might be able to get Tom Cruise to walk across the street for twenty-two million dollars, but that’s about it. “Elektra,” a widely panned fantasy adventure which opened in the middle of January, the deadest month in the business, grossed twenty-two million dollars in two weeks. “Sideways” was unbranded by stars or title (and was not, in marketing parlance, “toyetic,” susceptible to merchandising deals). In those first ten weeks, it was shown on three-hundred and seventy screens. “Elektra” was based on a comic-book character, and it opened on thirty-two hundred screens. To put both pictures in true blockbuster perspective: “Troy,” which is considered a failure, has grossed just under half a billion dollars. The poor reviews for “Troy” didn’t matter, because seventy-three per cent of its box-office revenue came from overseas.
Summation and final paragraph:
The blockbuster is a Hollywood tradition, but blockbuster dependence is a disease. It sucks the talent and the resources out of every other part of the industry. A contemporary blockbuster could almost be defined as a movie in which production value is in inverse proportion to content. “Troy” is a comic strip, but what a lavish, loving, costly comic strip it is. The talent, knowledge, and ingenuity required to make just one of the battle scenes in that film, or one mindless James Bond chase sequence, interchangeable in memory with almost any other Bond chase sequence, would drain the resources of many universities. But why doesn’t anyone put more than two seconds’ thought into the story? The attention to detail in movies today is fantastic. There is nothing cheap or tacky about Hollywood’s product, but there is something empty. Or maybe the emptiness is in us.
The big features now open on three thousand-plus screens, in order to maximize the benefit of their promotion. Before the word of mouth has made it around the block, the movie has already taken in, from the opening weekend, typically somewhere between twenty-five and forty per cent of its total gross. “Hulk” set a record with a seventy-per-cent decline in ticket sales between its opening and the second weekend, but the average drop-off for all movies is fifty per cent, and it is almost the definition of a blockbuster that the first weekend is a make-or-break proposition. Marketing costs for the “Matrix” sequels exceeded a hundred million dollars. The reason that those movies had such enormous grosses, despite terrible reviews and negative word of mouth, is that each opened on eighteen thousand screens simultaneously worldwide. As Shone says, about the typical blockbuster, “By the time we’ve all seen that it sucked, it’s a hit.”
Comparing 'successful' midsize films and blockbuster turds:
Every once in a while, there is talk about the return of the midsize film—the picture that costs twenty million or so to make, and that attracts interest and attention on its own merits. “Sideways” is this season’s poster child. “Sideways” is reported to have cost around sixteen million dollars to make (exclusive of marketing costs). After ten weeks, it had grossed twenty-two million dollars. You might be able to get Tom Cruise to walk across the street for twenty-two million dollars, but that’s about it. “Elektra,” a widely panned fantasy adventure which opened in the middle of January, the deadest month in the business, grossed twenty-two million dollars in two weeks. “Sideways” was unbranded by stars or title (and was not, in marketing parlance, “toyetic,” susceptible to merchandising deals). In those first ten weeks, it was shown on three-hundred and seventy screens. “Elektra” was based on a comic-book character, and it opened on thirty-two hundred screens. To put both pictures in true blockbuster perspective: “Troy,” which is considered a failure, has grossed just under half a billion dollars. The poor reviews for “Troy” didn’t matter, because seventy-three per cent of its box-office revenue came from overseas.
Summation and final paragraph:
The blockbuster is a Hollywood tradition, but blockbuster dependence is a disease. It sucks the talent and the resources out of every other part of the industry. A contemporary blockbuster could almost be defined as a movie in which production value is in inverse proportion to content. “Troy” is a comic strip, but what a lavish, loving, costly comic strip it is. The talent, knowledge, and ingenuity required to make just one of the battle scenes in that film, or one mindless James Bond chase sequence, interchangeable in memory with almost any other Bond chase sequence, would drain the resources of many universities. But why doesn’t anyone put more than two seconds’ thought into the story? The attention to detail in movies today is fantastic. There is nothing cheap or tacky about Hollywood’s product, but there is something empty. Or maybe the emptiness is in us.
24 January 2005
re: good vs bad trailers
Kenny, the trailer to Fight Club was just horrible... kept me from seeing the movie for a year. The trailer made the movie look like some kind of wierd violent gang film. I loved the movie!
19 January 2005
Rotten Tomatoes' "%"s and *K*e*n*s*
In the spirit of inquiry...
Chris' post on BUTTERFLY EFFECT brought up the concept of personal tastes at variance with the mainstream. He referenced Rotten Tomatoes ratings as a point for comparison. [BTW: the Rotten Tomatoes webstie rates movies on a percentage scale of 'fresh', with 100% fresh very good and 0% fresh as not good in any way.]
I was surprised by the rough equivalence between the Rotten Tomatoes scores and my own *K*e*n*s* star rating scores. Rotten Tomatoes is a survey of film journalists [I think...] and probably not a particularly persuasive model of 'mainstream'. I think I'd measure mainstream in terms of box office. So I'm guessing Chris is thinking 'critical mainstream' in this context.
Anyway, I noted that my paradigm examples of horrible films received Very Low freshness scores.
Van Helsing [22%] :0
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen [16%] :0
[The emoticon ":0" represents 'no stars' on the *K*e*n*s* scale.]
An interesting case is NORTHFORK, a film I have loved and praised, and foisted upon Don. Northfork has the lowest freshness rating of any film I have praised [56%], and therefore may be a case to compare with Chris' appreciation of BUTTERFLY EFFECT in contrast to the mainstream critical response.
Below I append a long, tiresome list of my recently reviewed and recommended films, with freshness and *K*e*n*s* ratings. [I will go back and add these to previous posts, and will use them in future reviews, because it has been fun... so far.]
Being Julia [77%] ***
Hotel Rwanda [89%] *****
House of Flying Daggers [88%] **** Entertainment
I Heart Huckabees [60%] ***
The Incredibles [99%] **** Entertainment
National Treasure [42%] **
Sideways [96%] **** Entertainment
Spongebob Squarepants [68%] **
Vera Drake [89%] **** Exploration
A Very Long Engagement [78%] ***
The Woodsman [85%] *****
The Return [96%] *****
The Circle [93%] **** Exploration
Spring, Summer [96%] *****
Triplets of Belleville [96%] *****
Touching the Void [93%] *****
Zus & Zo [44%] ****
Medea [80%] ****
ExplorationHero [94%] **** Entertainment
Nowhere in Africa [84%] ***
Control Room [96%] *****
Chris' post on BUTTERFLY EFFECT brought up the concept of personal tastes at variance with the mainstream. He referenced Rotten Tomatoes ratings as a point for comparison. [BTW: the Rotten Tomatoes webstie rates movies on a percentage scale of 'fresh', with 100% fresh very good and 0% fresh as not good in any way.]
I was surprised by the rough equivalence between the Rotten Tomatoes scores and my own *K*e*n*s* star rating scores. Rotten Tomatoes is a survey of film journalists [I think...] and probably not a particularly persuasive model of 'mainstream'. I think I'd measure mainstream in terms of box office. So I'm guessing Chris is thinking 'critical mainstream' in this context.
Anyway, I noted that my paradigm examples of horrible films received Very Low freshness scores.
Van Helsing [22%] :0
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen [16%] :0
[The emoticon ":0" represents 'no stars' on the *K*e*n*s* scale.]
An interesting case is NORTHFORK, a film I have loved and praised, and foisted upon Don. Northfork has the lowest freshness rating of any film I have praised [56%], and therefore may be a case to compare with Chris' appreciation of BUTTERFLY EFFECT in contrast to the mainstream critical response.
Below I append a long, tiresome list of my recently reviewed and recommended films, with freshness and *K*e*n*s* ratings. [I will go back and add these to previous posts, and will use them in future reviews, because it has been fun... so far.]
Being Julia [77%] ***
Hotel Rwanda [89%] *****
House of Flying Daggers [88%] **** Entertainment
I Heart Huckabees [60%] ***
The Incredibles [99%] **** Entertainment
National Treasure [42%] **
Sideways [96%] **** Entertainment
Spongebob Squarepants [68%] **
Vera Drake [89%] **** Exploration
A Very Long Engagement [78%] ***
The Woodsman [85%] *****
The Return [96%] *****
The Circle [93%] **** Exploration
Spring, Summer [96%] *****
Triplets of Belleville [96%] *****
Touching the Void [93%] *****
Zus & Zo [44%] ****
Medea [80%] ****
ExplorationHero [94%] **** Entertainment
Nowhere in Africa [84%] ***
Control Room [96%] *****
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