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July 16, 2006
Sunday Afternoon Links
A few unrelated articles and random observations from the Barnes and Noble cafe:
- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an article reporting on college and university coaches asking (or in some cases requiring) athletes to take down or modify their Facebook and MySpace pages. There's nothing terribly unusual here: coaches are worried that the reuptation of their universities will be damaged by depictions of athletes engaging in underage drinking, to name one example. But the article might be useful in my media studies-themed composition classes this fall, especially in its treatment of the questions regarding public-private divide raised by these sites.
- John Anderson's New York Times article, which asks why documentaries primarily support a "liberal" or "left" politics. For the most part, the article seems to resuscitate stereotypes of liberalism and conservatism, but I also think it's worth asking how Anderson is defining "liberal" political documentaries, especially when film festival director Jim Hubbard identifies 19 of the top 20 docs as "liberal." While the numbers at Box Office Mojo would likely reinforce this claim, theatrical box office is a relatively misleading way of measuring the popularity of documentary films (especially given that docs often play at festivals, churches, cultural centers, and other places where tickets aren't necessarily sold).
- Finally, I happened to notice that multiple copies of John Linder and Neal Boortz's book promoting the flat tax (no, I'm not gonna link to it) were sorted on a "fiction" table here at Barnes & Noble. I've been trying to figure out if that's a quietly rebellious editorial commentary on the part of a B&N staffer, but it seems appropriate.
Update: Just wanted to add a pointer to this LA Times interview with Kevin Smith promoting Clerks 2. I happened to catch the original Clerks at precisely the right time, when I was working as a cashier at a Very Big Box DIY store. Reading the article, I also realize that I'm almost exactly the same age as Kevin Smith, and as a result, I shared many of the concerns articulated by Randal and Dante, the two clerks in the original film. In addition to promoting Clerks 2, Mark Olsen's article addresses and challenges Smith's reputation as a "lazy" filmmaker and discusses his ability to connect with his enthusiastic fan base. It also mentions that Smith worked with Richard Kelly on the graphic novel series written to accompany Kelly's latest film, Southland Tales.
Posted by chuck at July 16, 2006 6:08 PM
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