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March 31, 2004
Atlanta Desk
Just found out about Atlanta Desk, a blog that covers Atlanta and Georgia politics. I think this is a great example of what a political blog can do, and I look forward to following their coverage of a rather nutty political scene (thanks to Chris Martin for the link).
Posted by chuck at 11:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Movie Top Five
Just a few film articles to read while you enjoy your nightly glass of wine or morning cup of coffee:
- "Can He Have a Hellmobile?" Just one of the many stupid questions Guillermo del Toro faced while trying to adapt Hellboy. I'm still eager to see del Toro's The Devil's Backbone (via Bookslut).
- I'm a little late on Jon Ronson's Guradian piece, "Citizen Kubrick," in which Ronson tours Kubrick's estate and learns the extent to which Kubrick researched his films. His elaborate filing systems are absolutely fascinating even if many of his films (Barry Lyndon, especially) left me feeling cold.
- Salon's Charles Taylor in defense of Showgirls, based on his "love [...] for the disreputable." Like Taylor, I've got a fondness for the disreputable, but I didn't think that Showgirls really took me there or went quite far enough with its promise. I like the fact that the film avoids easy moralism and doesn't seek to "redeem" the Elizabeth Berkeley character (I'd also say that Berkeley has gotten a raw deal in Hollywood based on the failure of that one film).
- My goal for the weekend is to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, especially after seeing several good reviews from people I trust (sometimes you have to think big).
- I'm also curious to see the Dawn of the Dead remake. Anyone seen it? Is it worth seeing in the theater?
Posted by chuck at 10:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 30, 2004
Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting
Yeah, I've been blogging a lot lately. This is the first chance I've had in a really long time to "write ahead," to simply throw some notes together about ideas or concepts and see if any of them work.
I know the electronic voting issue is pretty well-covered by now. I'm very troubled by the use of e-voting, especially given the well-documented ties between Diebold and the Bush crowd. Georgia was one of the first states to go electronic, and I have to admit that in the recent Democratic primary, I found the use of e-voting kind of scary. No paper trail. Your voting booth faces the middle of the room. Bad stuff all around.
But I have a second motivation for linking to this Wired article, too. I'm thinking about focusing my English composition class this fall on election issues. I've done similar "current events" approaches (the semester of 9/11, in fact), and they've worked pretty well. My goal for the course, obviously, would not be to convert my students to my political viewpoint, but would instead be to look at other election-year issues, such as how voting is organized, who has access to "citizenship," that sort of thing. I've just started thinking about these issues today, so any suggestions would help immensely.
Update: As promised, here's a link to David Weinberger's blog entry about electronic voting (a draft of a commentary that ran on NPR).
Posted by chuck at 8:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Rewind to Yesterday
It sounds like something out of a Charlie Kaufman movie (which I still haven't seen). From Microsoft Research's Cambridge Laboratory comes SenseCam, which allows a wearer to document the day using "a badge-sized wearable camera that captures up to 2000 VGA images per day into 128Mbyte FLASH memory."
According to an article in The Feature, the technology could be used to help people remember where they left their eyeglasses or to remember a particularly enjoyable bottle of wine from a party several days earlier. Of course, this technology raises all sorts of ethical and legal questions, as Sunil Vemuri suggests:
"Computers have reached the point in which continuous, verbatim recording of an individual's life experiences is technologically feasible," Vemuri writes on his Web site. "The challenge now is turning vast repositories of such recordings into a useful resource while respecting the social, legal, and ethical ramifications of ubiquitous recording."
Via Anne at Purse Lip Square Jaw.
Posted by chuck at 7:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Campus MovieFest 2004
For the second year in a row, I attended Georgia Tech's Campus Movie Fest (sponsored by a popular local airline--click the link if you really want to know). The event organizers provide any interested Georgia Tech students with digital video cameras, editing equipment, some training, and then students have one week to make a short film (5 minutes or less), with the winners receiving valubale prizes (dinners, round-trip plane tickets, etc). So far, the event takes place on eight different Georgia campuses, including Emory, UGA, Georgia State, and the Atlanta University center.
Several of the movies, especially the night's winning team, showed some outstanding talent and creativity. I'll update later when I find the name of the winning film, but the work, in spirit and style, reminded me of Godfrey Reggio's "Qatsi Trilogy." Also nice to see several of my students participating in some of the films that were screened.
Posted by chuck at 4:40 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Summer Film Class
I've just received the wonderful news that I'll be teaching a 2000 (sophomore) level course in film studies this summer, and I've been searching for resources online to supplement the course. In the class, which is essentially an "Introduction to Film" course, I plan to use David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson's Film Art: An Introduction, a relatively popular film textbook.
So far, I'm still canvassing for ideas. During my search, I came across the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Resources page, which offers a section where people can submit resources for teaching, research, and scholarship on film and media. The SCMS just launched their new webpage, so it may take some time for the resource page to build up a collection of useful material, but it's something worth watching.
Right now, I'm trying to find ways of complementing the excellent treatment of film form in the Bordwell-Thompson book with a project that focuses on the material, social, and economic bases of film production. One possibility that I've considered is a collaborative project in which groups of 4-5 create a page focusing on (1) a specific decade of US/world cinema or (2) a specific technological or social development (the emergence of widescreen, the Hays Code, etc). I want to temper my ambitions somewhat because it is a summer class while still ensuring that students understand individual films in terms of their social, economic, and technological contexts. But any suggestions from people who have taught intoduction to film courses would be helpful. What assignments do you use to get students to think beyond film form? Will I be asking too much to encourage them to think beyond formal elements in such a limited time?
I'm really excited about getting a chance to teach this course again. I've enjoyed teaching similar courses at both Purdue and Illinois. There's usually a fair amount of enthusiaism for the course among students in the class, so it should be a fun way to make some cash over the summer.
Cross-posted at Pamlimpsest. Feel free to comment at either location.
Posted by chuck at 4:21 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
March 29, 2004
Breathless
A pollen count of 120 or higher is considered to be "very high." Guess where the pollen count currently stands in Atlanta?
5,156 and rising. I don't think I've ever seen it this bad. Normal breathing should resume in late April.
Turns out there's a reason for that.
Posted by chuck at 11:32 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
March 28, 2004
Georgia Conference on Information Literacy
I had a paper on blogging accepted a few days ago for the Georgia Conference on Information Literacy. I've just been to busy to mention it. The conference looks pretty cool. Instead of a short 20-minute presentation, it looks like they will be scheduling sessions of one to two hours (depending on the presenter's needs, etc), allowing for a much more in-depth discussion of pedagogical stratgies. I'll talk more about the direction of my presentation as it develops.
Posted by chuck at 8:29 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
I'm a Ramblin' Wreck
Nope, I'm not talking about my writing style (although the description may apply). The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets just made the Final Four! Woohoo!
Posted by chuck at 5:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ICFA 2004 Wrap-Up
Just returned from the 2004 International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts where I gave my frequently advertised paper on The Ring. Like George, I had a refreshing and rewarding weekend, one that will hopefully provide me with the spark to produce some new material for articles and my book project.
The weekend started just a little inauspiciously when my flight out of Atlanta was cancelled due to the failure of a sensor on the wing. I won't trash the airline in public for now because they gave me two round-trip tickets anywhere the airline flies for postponing my trip for one day. The delay also gave me the chance to catch up with one of my colleagues from Tech who was also going to the conference. Would have been nice to get one extra day by the pool (and the pool bar), but now I've got airfare to two more conferences.
I finally arrived late on Thursday afternoon, which gave me a chance to catch a panel entitled "Topics and Issues in Televised Science Fiction." J.P. Telotte's paper on Disney television shows from the 1950s was very cool. Telotte primarily discussed an educational Disney show in which scientists would come on to discuss aspects related to space travel. Other panelists discussed the racial allegories in cable sci-fi shows such as AlienNation. I was too tired from the plane trip to take very many notes, hence the scattered thoughts.
I spent most of the day Friday revising my paper. It wasn't quite done when I left Atlanta, and working on the plane seemed like a bad idea, plus I wanted to read William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, which seemed like a rather apt airplane read (so far so good). So I spend most of the morning and afternoon in the bar (no coffee shops within walking distance) and by the pool finishing my paper. Meanwhile, my panel chair (a friend from a previous ICFA) was nervously trying to track the rest of the panel so that he could give us a proper introduction. No sign of them anywhere.
Which led to me having an entire panel to myself. I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I really liked it. Sure, I would have enjoyed hearing two other papers on The Ring, and I would have enjoyed learning more about the politics of adaptation. But it was actually a wonderful opportunity to work through my project with a sympathetic audience concentrating on a single paper. I don't mean to sound too self-absorbed here, but I do feel like I learned a lot about addressing audiences through this experience. I also learned from the range of questions and comments that I received, and ultimately I was very satisfied with the paper.
With the paper done, I was able to sit back and enjoy the rest of the conference. A former colleague gave an interesting paper on the ways in which cyborg films (specifically Impostor, which I haven't yet seen) imagine the role of memory in defining the human. Her ultimate goal is to consider the ways in which many of these films are thinking how perceptions of Alzheimer's Disease effect these questions.
The paper that will likely most inform the future direction of my work was Becky DiBiasio's "Silent Film and the Fantastic: The International Language of Visual Narratives," which focused on films by DeMille, Méliès, and Murnau. In the paper, DiBiasio mentioned DeMille's Male and Female, which features a loose time-travel premise, one more akin to a dream or vision than physical time travel. Looking at this film, along with some other early films might open the early cinema chapter that I'm trying to develop in my book.
I also learned about Guillermo del Toro's interesting 2001 film, The Devil's Backbone. Other than that, the conference was very friendly. Good times.
Posted by chuck at 3:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 24, 2004
ICFA Paper Link
In working through my comparison between Blair Witch and The Ring, I may take some time to discuss how both films used the Internet in creative ways to market their films. For both films, websites about fictional places create the impression of local legends. Here's the website for The Ring:
Moesko Island Lighthouse.
Posted by chuck at 12:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 23, 2004
Busy-ness of the Long Distance Blogger
Like many of you (including George and Matt), I've spend most of the last few days putting out various fires, trying to revise a couple of articles (more details soon) and put together a conference paper. I've been working with students on getting their research papers rolling (so far so good--my students rarely fail to impress me). I've also been putting together proposals for conferences and future articles, including 1-2 conference papers that will hopefully allow me to indulge my desire to talk about documentary films. In short, I feel like I've been in a full sprint for the past month, unable to slow down at all.
This isn't a complaint, just context for a few passing thoughts I've recorded in my blog over the last few days. Weez comments that my references to a "blogging crisis" leave her "wanting more words." I know that one of my goals, when I started my blog, was to use it as a tool for working through research ideas and hopefully receiving a little feedback from my readers, but lately, because the blog hasn't felt very much like an extension of my research, I've been trying to reflect a little more on why I blog.
I just lost a huge chunk of this entry, and I don't have time to re-create it, but the main thrust was that I've been trying to work through how my understanding of my audience changes what I've been including in my blog and my dissatisfaction with what I've been writing about here lately. I'm not sure if I'll be able to restate what I'd said, but I think the hastily written entries that I've been writing lately don't seem to be quite as fulfilling as I'd like them to be. I'm not sure that's a critique of the medium as much as it is my use of it lately, the fact that my own understanding of my audience is in flux right now. If I get some time tonight, I'll try to work out these thoughts in further detail, but I need to spend the day revising my conference paper on The Ring and getting myself packed for my flight tomorrow morning.
Posted by chuck at 11:21 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 20, 2004
Three Reasons I Never Bet on Sports
- Nevada-Gonzaga
- Maryland-Syracuse
- Stanford-Alabama
Posted by chuck at 8:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 19, 2004
One Year
The war in Iraq began one year ago today. We still haven't found weapons of mass destruction. What else is there to say?
Posted by chuck at 10:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
MIT Blog Survey
Just a quick link and comment to the results of a blog survey conducted by Fernanda Viégas that attempts to map blogging habits. I'd guess that the results are somewhat complicated by the fact that the survey group consists primarily of people who are highly-educated (nearly one third have a graduate degree). Still, the survey seems to identify a few social norms that are beginning to develop among bloggers including a trend toward more personal, "rambling" entries and a tendency to avoid identifying one's employer in the blog.
Posted by chuck at 9:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 18, 2004
Evening Madness
I've been enjoying March Madness all day (one of the benefits of being a professor is definitely working from home). So far my bracket is generally holding up (no bracket busters).
The latest news: I knew I should have trusted my instincts with Michigan State. The Big Ten has been mediocre all year, and I saw this game as a potential upset. I chickened out at the last second, though. Bummer. At least I didn't see them winning a second game.
Everything else has been holding pretty much true. All three games right now are way too close. Go Dayton. Go Arizona. Go Tar Heels. I'll be really ticked off if the Tar Heels lose. That was another game where I came thisclose to calling an upset by Air Force (basically playing at home, they run a tricky offense).
And I'm still managing to get work done on my conference paper.
Posted by chuck at 10:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
More Madness
Maryland up by one, just a few minutes to go in the game. My bracket could be completely busted. Now I'm worried.
On the other hand, I did call Manhattan over Florida.
Update: I'm glad I had a last-minute change-of-heart on Syracuse. Derek's still winning, but things look pretty close, so far.
Posted by chuck at 2:42 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
March Madness Early Returns/Blog Ennui
Things are heating up in the NCAA Tournament, and here are my early observations about my picks in the "Bloggers pool": so far I'm glad I picked Manhattan over Florida. Maryland should hold on against UTEP (they'd better, I have them going a long way).
And I'm regretting my last-minute change of heart on the Texas Tech-Charlotte game. I'd originally picked TTU to win precisely because their coach, Bobby Kinght, is one of my least favorite people in college sports. But then I went and read too many one too many tournament previews and changed my pick against my instincts. Doh!
Still feeling a little blog-ennui (no perma-link, see the 3-18-04 entry titled "Busy"). I'm still trying to figure out why. It may be something like the "dry spell" described by Liz, but I think it has more to do with how I've been using the blog lately. I've focused less on using the blog as a research journal, which may explain why I haven't been as satisfied with it lately. I've also been doing a lot of writing outside the blog, which means a lot of quick link-and-comment entries rather than developed ideas. Perhaps this means I should change my expectations of what a blog should do.
More later, but I need to get back to my conference paper.
Posted by chuck at 1:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 16, 2004
Do Not Adjust Your Web Browser
Things are going to be pretty quiet at the chutry experiment for the next few days. Conference papers and journal articles beckon. Then, of course, the conference itself in sunny Fort Lauderdale (no computer access, so probably no updates from the conference).
Also, like George, I've been having my own version of a "blogging crisis." I'm not sure I can be much more specific, just need to think about why I'm blogging, stuff like that.
Posted by chuck at 8:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 15, 2004
Slacker Map
Via Jenny at Stupid Undergrounds: A link to a map of locations from Richard Linklater's Slacker. Really cool, interesting article on Slacker, one of the more important films in the indie film movement of the early 1990s. While I've never been to Austin, I've always appreciated Linklater's representation of a specific cultural moment in Slacker, one that appears to be virtually lost now. And seeing this map is certainly making me feel nostalgic for his films. Except The Newton Boys. And I just can't bring myself to rent School of Rock. Not sure why but I can only take Jack Black in very small doses.
Posted by chuck at 12:59 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
March 14, 2004
March Madness Blogger Style
It's time for March Madness. The NCAA gets a lot of things wrong (all the recruiting scandals, for one), but the national championship tournament is one thing they get very right. Exciting games, thrilling upsets. It can be very addictive. Of course the office pools make things a little more excting. Dmueller at Earth Wide Moth has set up this year's "blogging" equivalent. There's no cash at stake, just glory. Check out EWM for the details.
By the way, since the pool doesn't include the women's tournament, I'll send good vibes to my favorite women's team, the Purdue Boilermakers. Boiler up!
Posted by chuck at 10:46 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Pieces of April
Pieces of April (IMDB) is an entertaining Thanksgiving family comedy, a film I really enjoyed watching. Patricia Clarkson's performance as Joy, a fortysomething mother dying of cancer, is wonderful, playing the role with just the right degree of bitterness, and Katie Holmes is impressive as her frenetic (and estranged) daughter, April.
The plot is relatively simple: it may be Joy's last Thanksgiving, and Joy's husband (played by Oliver Platt) seeks to help reconnect April and Joy by allowing April (who lives in a tiny NYC apartment) to cook the dinner, and the film builds tension effectively as the family approaches NYC while April struggles to make the meal, creating some nice physical comedy. The film's use of photography (including photographs that become freeze-frames, or freeze-frames that are revealed to be photos) was very effectively done--too tired to discuss it in much detail.
One warning: Do not watch this film while you are hungry.
Posted by chuck at 2:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 13, 2004
TransATLantic
Quick advertisement for TransATLantic, an exhibition of Atlanta artists working in abstraction. The exhibition takes place at Gallery 24, a Berlin gallery for "autodidactic and undiscovered artists." If you're in Berlin and happen to read my blog, check out the exhibition.
Posted by chuck at 12:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
My Architect: A Son's Journey
Nathaniel Kahn's Oscar-nominated documentary, My Architect (IMDB), focuses on Nathaniel's attempts to understand the legacy of his father, Louis Kahn. Louis is considered to be one of the great architects of the twentieth century, but he also had an unusual private life in that he fathered children with three different women, a fact that many of his professional contacts did not know.
Throughout the film, Nathaniel, who was 11 years old when his father died in 1974, attempts to reconcile the many lives that his father led through interviews with his father's colleagues, other prominent architects, and several family members, all of whom remember Louis in vastly different ways. Some of the people Nathaniel interviews (including a Philadelphia city planner, Ed Bacon) remember him as stubborn, completely impractical and ill-equipped to deal with the pragmatic concerns of city life. Others, including I.M. Pei and Frank Gehry, remember him as a genius, although Pei gleefully acknowldeges Louis's stubbornness.
Other images of Louis capture a more spiritual side, including interviews with a former mayor of Jerusalem, with whom Louis had planned to build a synagogue. A recorded lecture captures Louis emphasizing the need to connect with the natural world when designing buildings. I was most fascinated by Louis's experiences in Rome, when he developed his vision as an architect (check out especially the breathtaking Bangladesh capital building), an intriguing mixture of modern and classical images, synthesizing the pure modernist forms with the ruins of classical architecture.
The build-up to the film's climax, Nathaniel's journey to Bangladesh, is actually quite effectively done. During one earlier sequence, Nathaniel shows some of Kahn's buildings while Beethoven's Ninth plays in the background. You begin to sense Louis's gifts, his sense of vision, and Nathaniel cuts to another architect who says "Let's not glorify the man." This sense of self-awareness is important. Nathaniel celebrates his father's work, but also manages to remain critical of him, to recognize the ways in which he failed to respect the women in his life. Architecture still comes across as primarily a boy's club, but I think the film is critical of that.
As Nathaniel approaches the Bangladeshi capital by boat, we begin to see the building as an amazing achievement, especially given the country's poverty in the years immediately after their war of liberation against Pakistan. Later, Nathaniel interviews Shamsul Wares, and when Nathaniel acknowledges that he'll only be able to devote ten minutes of the film to this building, Wares shakes his head and says, "That's not enough." And, at that point, I felt he was absolutely right. I wanted to spend more time in that building, experiencing that space. As an aside: I'm not sure that the film acknowledges in enough detail the ongoing poverty in Bangladesh, but of course that's not the point of the film.
Like many recent documentaries, My Architect addresses the knowability of the past, the extent to which we can know someone through images and interviews. The film manages to foreground this focus without pushing it. The film opens witha shot of microfiche copies of newspapers reporting Louis's death (in a train station). Later in the film, we get several shots of Nathaniel watching archived footage on videotape, including one shot in which we can see Nathaniel's face reflected in a screen. I think that may be the moment when the film completely won me over, drawing me in to Nathaniel's search.
Roger Ebert fleshes out some of the details about Louis's family life that I failed to mention in my review. Many of them (including the fact that Kahn's body went unidentified for two days after his death) add to his sense of mystery. Interesting to see how Ebert focused on such different details from the film (the Pop Matters review is also quite good).
Posted by chuck at 12:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 12, 2004
Media Deregulation in the Rhythm Nation
Just a quick link and comment on the current Congressional effort to craft tougher indecency standards in response to Janet Jackson's halftime performance. I don't want to get into whether or not JJ's actions were "appropriate," but it seems clear that the folks in Congress are overreacting to this one.
What I find interesting is the way they've begun to blame so-called "Big Media" for the declining standards. I strongly support stronger rules against media consolidation (as my FCC comments last summer suggest), but I have to admit, I find the logic here a little strange. I recognize that local control will allow stations to refuse to broadcast "offensive" television shows, but it might also encourage local broadcasters to take more chances in an effort to boost ratings. Still, if Trent Lott wants to prevent further deregulation, I won't stand in his way.
Washington Post articles here, here, and here.
Posted by chuck at 1:32 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 11, 2004
Pagels on The Passion
I haven't seen The Passion of the Christ, and I probably will not see it (for a variety of reasons that I'd rather not explain right now). But a friend alerted me to this New Yorker article on the film by David Remnick, who interviews theologian Elaine Pagels, who explains why she reads the film as anti-Semitic. I've read several of Pagels' books, and her arguments about the early history of the church were very important for me. The article is well worth a read.
Posted by chuck at 6:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 10, 2004
The Middle of March Sucks. You Should be Worried. Bad Things Might Happen to You.
Georgia educators are at it again.
Just came across this Atlanta Journal-Constitution article commenting on new study guides for teaching Shakespeare. The study guides are designed to introduce Shakespeare to students in a less threatening, more accessible way. Difficult words and phrases are replaced with more contemporary language.
I have mixed feelings here. I understand that reading Shakespeare is difficult, especially for high school students. Despite my declining memory, I still remember struggling through the plays. And, yes, some of the students are recognizing that Shakespeare's plays are pretty exciting, which is cool (as one kid put it, "It is a cool story — what with people making plans to kill one another"). I also really enjoy many of the recent film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays (but, of course, my enjoyment derives from the relationship with the original, not simply because it's a cool narrative).
But I'm a little troubled by the fact that schools are basically giving up on requiring students to work through the Shakespearean language. Like the UGA professor, I want to be careful to avoid calling it a "dumbing down" process, but I think we can make Shakespeare exciting without resorting to modernizing the language, and I'd agree with her that the new word choices fail to approximate the original. I don't want this to sound like I think the students are at fault (I don't think they are), and I don't think we've reached the point where Middle Elizabethan English is completely inaccessible to students (it hasn't been that long since I was in high school).
Strange metaphor: a GSU professor comments that "Shakespeare without language is like a movie without sound." I imagine Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton would see things a little differently. Also, check out the poll on the bottom-left corner of the page (kind of sad when you have to explain that joke).
Posted by chuck at 2:07 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack
One
One year ago today I started blogging on Blogger (scroll down for the evidence), primarily inspired by George and Patrick, both of whom spoke enthusiastically about blogging.
This week I've been focused on a conference article and a publication, both of which I need to finish by the end of the month, hence the light blogging. For the conference paper, a few observations:
- For my paper on The Ring, I've been trying to work through the concept of the "mediated horror" film, which led me to rewatch The Blair Witch Project (IMDB). The creep factor is somewhat diminshed on a second viewing, of course, but it's still a fascinating film, especially in its video verite style.
- Because The Ring seems to be "about" the practice of watching horror films, specifically videotapes, I've been thinking about spectatorship issues recently. I think that one of my main observations is that many people who theorize horror spectatorship seem to emphasize watching the films with an audience. Obviously home video complicates that, and the intrusive presence of the TV is crucial to the power of the film. Of course, it's nearly impossible to reduce the diffuse practices of private audiences to a singular televisual audience, but even several decades after the introduction of TV, audiences are still portrayed as passive recipients of the harmful presence of television (often associated with dangerous magnetic rays).
- It's well-documented that the shots in The Ring of the Morgan ranch were inspired by Andrew Wyeth paintings. The shots in the killer videotape conatin allusions to several Surrealist films. Not quite sure how that information fits my argument, but I don't want to read those details as mere postmodern pastiche (and those details seem pretty important).
Posted by chuck at 1:17 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
March 8, 2004
Final Destination
Just a quick note or two about Final Destination, a mediocre horror movie about a high school kid who has premonitions in which he is able to see that someone is about to die. The premonitions start when he has a vision that the airplane he's taking to Paris will explode soon after take-off. Because of his vision, he and five other passengers survive, but according to the logic of the film, they have "cheated death," essentially creating an aberrant timeline that must be corrected. Soon afteer the crash, the survivors begin to die with the kid, Alex, identifying a "pattern" that explains the order in which each survivor is destined to die.
I don't find the film interesting other than the model of time that it constructs and its strange emphasis on deaths by electrocution (perhaps an issue I could revisist), but the DVD itself includes some interesting special features. Most significantly, the DVD has a documentary on test screenings in which New Line employees discuss their methods for testing a film, explaining that they had originally produced a much different ending but that the original ending didn't appeal to "postmodern Scream audiences" (their words, not mine). Might be a useful way of talking about how high-concept movies are made or for thinking about horror film audiences more broadly.
One strange inclusion: a card prediction game, based on the Zener card test, in which the viewer tries to guess which of five symbols will randomly appear on a card.
Posted by chuck at 1:06 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
More SCMS
I'm still recovering from the sensory overload of the SCMS conference. I'll go ahead and mention that I was quite pleased overall with the panel--the three papers developed some useful connections regarding film and the digital. But after hearing at least two dozen papers in three days, I'm beginning to feel a little like Keanu Reaves in The Matrix while he's in training ("I know Kung Fu"). So many exciting papers, and I don't feel like I've assimilated half of what I heard. In general, I was impressed by the range of papers that I heard and really enjoyed the opportunity to meet other scholars with similar interests, and I'm planning to work through some of my conference notes at some point (Kathleen's conference notes are fantastic, especially her notes on Mark Crispin Miller's plenary address).
After our panel, a few of us had a delicious dinner at MidCity Cuisine (webpage may not be working), one of the better restaurants I've encountered in the city of Atlanta. MidCity Cuisine features chef Shaun Doty, and the menu focuses on "New American" cuisine (here's one review). The calamari appetizer was very good, and for the main course, I had a fantastic duck dish (wish I could describe it better, but I have a mediocre food memory/vocabulary). The experience was wonderful, though. I left the restaurant with a great sense of well-being. Then I had to ride the train home with a bunch of kids leaving the Linkin Park concert, which was a lot less fun (not that I'm a snob or anything).
Posted by chuck at 12:38 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 6, 2004
SCMS at Home
There's something incredibly strange about attending a major conference in your hometown. I still can't quite figure it out, and I'm too exhausted to put much effort into it. But I feel a little disoriented by the distinction between being at the conference and coming home to my "normal life" at the end of the night. It makes the conference feel a little less real than it otherwise might. Not that I'm complaining. I like the idea that I could stop off at "my" liquor store on my way home from the conference or that I'm able to enjoy the whole conference without paying for airfare or a hotel room. Still, it's a little strange to have these two aspects of my life crash into each other.
I think that what makes things doubly strange is that when I was a teenager, my parents' church denomination had their quadrennial convention in the Omni complex, and I keep having flashbacks to hanging out in the very same hotel lobby when I was fourteen years old. I'll have more to say about the papers later, but so far, I've enjoyed most all of the panels I've attended.
Posted by chuck at 12:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 2, 2004
SCMS Reminder
I just wanted to advertise the panel I put together for this year's SCMS, here in springy Atlanta, Georgia, home of lovely hotels and restaurants and a swiftly increasing pollen count (the sexual life of pine trees gives me fits).
I'm looking forward to hearing Kathleen's paper. Are any other bloggers planning to attend SCMS? Email me at charles.tryon [at] lcc.gatech.edu.
Below the fold I've included a few of the other panels I'd like to attend. Looks like there will be plenty of great papers this year. Should be a fun, if exhausting, conference. Thankfully, I'll have all of spring break to recover.
A6: It's Just Business: Institutional Strategies of Global Media Networks
Chair: Christine Becker (University of Notre Dame)
Jennifer Holt (University of California, Los Angeles), "Regulating Reality: The FCC and Industrial Design"
Mike Budd (Florida Atlantic University), "Private Disney, Public Disney"
Ling-Yen Chua (Nanyang Technological University), "Channel NewsAsia: The Role of Documentary in the Age of Global Television and New Digital Technologies"
Christine Becker (University of Notre Dame), "From High Culture to Hip Culture: Transforming the BBC into BBC America"
B2: In Focus: Close Looks at Directors and Texts
Chair: Leger Grindon (Middlebury College)
Katrina G. Boyd (Indiana University), "Brief Histories of the Present: John Sayles and the Clash of Cultures in Lone Star and Sunshine State"
Leger Grindon (Middlebury College), "Tracing an Influence: From Rocco & His Brothers to Raging Bull"
Burlin Barr (Bowdoin College), "Mobile Public Spheres in Marker's Le Fond De L'Air Est Rouge"
Adam Lowenstein (University of Pittsburgh), "A Second Look at Seconds: Rock Hudson and the Case of Retrospective Spectatorship"
C1: Home Screening: Digital Revisions of the Public and Private Spheres
Chair: Michele White (Wellesley College)
Fred Turner (Stanford University), "Digital Journalism and the Anxious Citizen"
Michele White (Wellesley College), "Public Privates: Representation of Women Webcam Operators at Home and in the Office"
Mark Andrejevic (University of Iowa), "Nothing Comes Between Me and My CPU: Wearable Computers and Mobile Privatization"
D2: WORKSHOP
Online Journals: The Future of Media Scholarship Publishing?
Chair: Lori Landay (Berklee College of Music)
Participants: Maureen Furniss (Savannah College, Editor, Animation Journal)
Ann Kibbey (University of Colorado, Editor, Genders)
Mark Williams (Dartmouth College, Editor, Journal of E-Media)
E7: City Places, City Times: Urban Subjectivities in Film and Media
Chair: Anne Friedberg (University of Southern California)
Amy Corbin (University of California, Berkeley), "In the Jungle: The Film spectator Navigates the Post-World War II City"
Maureen Turim (University of Florida), "Tokyo, Paris, New York: Women Alone in Urban Films"
John M. Frankfurt (Columbia University), "Benjamin's Urban Film: Building the City on Screen"
James Tobias (University of California, Riverside), "Locating Virtual Places: Tokyo in the Diary Film and the Weblog"
--or--
E8: Same Time Next Week: Liveness and Immediacy in TV Drama
Chair: Martha Gever (Florida Atlantic University)
Jan Richard Kjelstrup (University of Oslo), "Being There: The Aesthetics of Liveness and Immediacy in TV Drama"
Sharon Sharp (University of California, Los Angeles), "Repurposing the Past: Television, Technology and Nostalgia in American Dreams"
Gerald Sim (University of Iowa), "Film Events in Real Time: The Cinematic Paradigms, Audience Research and Product Differentiation of 24"
Martha Gever (Florida Atlantic University), "The Spectacle of Crime Digitized: CSI and Social Anatomy"
--or--
E9: Contemporary Documentary Filmmaking: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Cultural Politics
Chair: Nicole Fleetwood (University of California, Davis)
Veronica Pravadelli (Universita di Roma Tre), "Cultural Identity and the Politics of Form: Chantal Akerman's Performative Documentaries"
Casey McKittrick (University of Texas, Austin), "Capturing the Friedmans and the Documentation of Belief vs History"
Nicole Fleetwood (University of California, Davis), "Race Relations in Black and White: Flags Wars and Two Towns of Jasper"
Andy Opel (Florida State University), "Paradise Lost I & II: Documentary and the Monster of Justice"
F7: Truth, Memory, History: The Films of Errol Morris
Chair: Charles Musser (Yale University)
Jonathan Frome (University of Wisconsin, Madison), "False Histories: Uncertainty, Truth, and The Thin Blue Line"
Charles Musser (Yale University), "Memory & Truth, History and Actuality: The Documentaries of Errol Morris"
Devin Orgeron (North Carolina State University), "The 'Seen' of the Crime: Errol Morris and the Aesthetics of Memory and Denial"
G1: The Age of Reproduction: Technology and Visual Perception
Chair: Tara McPherson (University of Southern California)
Tara McPherson (University of Southern California), "Exhibiting Electronic Culture: Multimedia, IBM, and the Legacy of the Eames Office"
Janelle Blankenship (Duke University), "'The Beacon of Culture': The Imperialist Politics of Proto-Cinematic War Projection"
Cynthia Baron (Bowling Green State University), "Liveness in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: A Look Back at Raymond Williams' Observations on Fin-de-siecle Naturalism"
Michael Renov (University of Southern California), "The Work of Memory in the Age of Digital Reproduction"
J7: Playback: Reassessing Film Theory
Chair: Robert Burgoyne (Wayne State University)
Brendan P. Riley (University of Florida), "Modularity and Monsters from the Deep"
Tom Gunning (University of Chicago), "Rethinking Photographic Reference: What Difference Does an Index Make?"
James Morrison (York University), "Vachel Lindsay on Hollywood, Mass Culture and the Sublime"
Jennifer Hammett (San Francisco State University), "Against the Cinematic Subject"
K4: Media and the New Cold War
Chair: Terri Ginsberg (Rutgers University)
Christopher Sharrett (Seton Hall University), "9/11, The Useful Event, and the Legacy of the Creel Committee"
Claudia Springer (Rhode Island College), "Hollywood Returns to War: The Pentagon's New Media Mission"
David Clearwater (University of Lethbridge, Canada), "War Games: Militarism, Recruitment and the Emergence of the Video Game"
Amy Villarejo (Cornell University), "Activist Technologies: Big Noise, Think Again!"
--my panel goes here--
Saturday, March 6, 2004 8:00pm
SPECIAL EVENT
Bright Leaves (2003)
Ross McElwee
Introduced by Jack Boozer (Georgia State University)
Q&A with Ross McElwee following the screening
Posted by chuck at 8:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 1, 2004
Defending the Friedmans
A few days ago, I mentioned watching Capturing the Friedmans, Andrew Jarecki's fascinating documentary focusing on the child molestation case involving the Friedman family of Great Neck, NY. I'm thinking about writing a short paper about the film for a conference (more details forthcoming if the paper gets accepted), in part because the film has provoked such divergent reactions from the people who have seen it.
In that context, I found this Slate article about the film by civil liberties attorney Harvey A. Silverglate and paralegal/writer Carl Takei interesting. I think they are right that the film may not go far enough to defend the Friedmans against the accusations, which now appear to be false. But I'd suggest that documentary films and legal cases have much different goals, something the writers seem to ignore. There's a fruitful discussion about this topic at MetaFilter (including one comment by someone who was "friendly with" the family), where I found the article originally.
But right now, I need to get back to my paper on The Ring.
Side note: A few years ago, I wrote a strongly negative review of Silverglate's book, The Shadow University for The Sycamore Review (currently unavailable online).
Posted by chuck at 9:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Obesite C'est Moi
Found this Seattle-Post Intelligencer article, "Seattle is Closer to France than Texas," on Blogdex. The author, political cartoonist David Horsey, discusses the annual cartoon art festival in Carquefou, France, where he found that many of the children's prize-winning cartoons depicted strongly anti-American (and especially anti-Bush stereotypes). Included were mocking images of American fast food (some of which may have been cribbed from Triplets of Belleville), but others showed Uncle Sam running over the Statue of Liberty on a bicycle, or Bush riding a tank (Strangelove-style) into war.
I think I'd be careful before I took this event to indicate a pure hatred of America in Europe (something I think the author overstates). The situation, featuring liberal-left cartoonists such as Ted Rall, was probably at least a little self-selective politically. But to my mind, the event does illustrate effectively how much Europeans have invested in American politics.
The article shows 1-2 of the prize-winning cartoons. Anyone know where I can find more?
Posted by chuck at 10:05 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack