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December 30, 2006
Post-MLA Video Links
I may write a longer MLA wrap-up post when I get back to the 'ville, but for now, a couple of pointers to some interesting video links. First, The Washington Post has video footage (apparently taken from an Arabic television network) of Saddam Hussein being led to the gallows just before he was executed. It's rather gruesome stuff, even if the video doesn't show the actual hanging, but for some reason the footage reminds me of the Edison short, Execution of Czolgosz.
Unrelated: I've been planning to link to Steven's discussion of a couple of NPR reports (report #2) on YouTube, but because of MLA, I haven't had time. More later when I'm back in the 'ville where my wireless internet access is free and fast.
Posted by chuck at 2:44 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
December 29, 2006
The Morning After
Kathleen and Collin have already written up the MLA blogger meetup, and like them, I had a really good time. In addition to chatting with Kathleen and Collin, I was also able to catch up with Jonathan and Clancy.
It was also very cool to meet in person several bloggers I've been reading, often for years: Dr. B, Amardeep (congrats to Amardeep, btw, on the release of his book), Laura, John, and Amanda (apologies if I missed anyone).
Had some great conversations about blogging (surprise), television, and other assorted fun topics. I also had one too many beers, but that's probably no surprise, either.
Posted by chuck at 9:46 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
December 28, 2006
MLA Blogger Meetup/My MLA So Far
Via Kathleen, a reminder that the MLA blogger meetup will take place at SoleFood, which is located in the Loews Philadelphia, a very cool modernist hotel across from the Convention Center Thursday evening at 8:45 p.m.
Thus far, I've had the chance to attend one very cool panel, "Terrorism, Technology, and Visual Media," including papers by Jennifer Doyle on the art of Ron Athey, by Cynthia Fuchs on representations of torture in 24 and Battlestar Galactica, and by Cynthia Ann Young on representations of terrorism in The Unit. Later tonight I'll be attending the "Reportage, Class, and War" panel, which features a paper on Gunner Palace, as well as papers on journalism in the Spanish-American War and on the "technomechanization of the working class" in World War II and the Iraq war. More later, hopefully, if my allergy symptoms subside (and if I don't stay out too late with the bloggers).
Posted by chuck at 5:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 26, 2006
Pre-MLA 2006
Like many language and literature professors, I will be spending the next few days in Philadelphia where I'll be attending this year's MLA convention. I'm looking forward to this year's convention, in part because of the blogging panel, Meet the Bloggers: Blogging and the Future of Academia organized by Scott Eric Kaufman. As Scott McLemee points out in his pre-MLA article, the status of blogging in academia has changed quite a bit in the two years since MLA last met in Philadelphia, when Scott Jaschik's "Bloggers in the Flesh" profiled a gathering of academic bloggers, myself included, who met for drinks at the 2004 conference, so I'm very much looking forward to some sustained discussion of blogging and academia.
Also worth noting: IHE reported a few weeks ago on an MLA special committee that has proposed changes in the way English and foreign language professors are evaluated, especially when it comes to tenure. As the IHE article reports, the panel discussed moving away from the "fetishization" of the monograph and making tenure expectations clearer.
Hoping to have time to blog from the conference, but I'm not making any promises.
Posted by chuck at 12:07 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 23, 2006
Lazy Pre-Christmas Eve Media Links
A few links before my last-minute dive into the holiday shopping madness:
First, via Michael at Zigzagger, Virginia Heffernan's multimedia year in review, which is pretty interesting. As Michael points out, Heffernan pronounces reality TV, network news, and parent-child bonding shows such as The Gilmore Girls dead, while seeing a glimmer of hope for the sitcom. Related: Heffernan's NYT article.
A mildly interesting AJC article about Ted Turner's decision to purchase MGM/UA in the 1980s, which famously gave the media mogul access to MGM/UA's massive film library, which included Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, and Wizard of Oz, as well as RKO's Citizen Kane and the now annoyingly ubiquitous A Christmas Story (a movie I used to like before it was sampled in pretty much every Christmas commercial this year).
Finally, McChris linked to a post offering some interesting Nielsen Top Ten lists, including a list of the ten most time-shifted shows. The most time-shifted show happens to be Studio 60, followed by Heroes and Gilmore Girls, suggesting that these shows have prestige audiences but that these audiences are likely zapping through the commercials. Scroll down the Nielsen entry for other goodies such as the ten most cited Wikipedia entries (Web 2.0 is number one) and the top ten advertisers in "traditional" and online media (interesting to see where certain advertisers target potential customers).
Blogging will almost certainly be infrequent until after Christmas now that all the local coffeehouses (and their high-speed internet service) will be closed for the holidays. And then I'm off to Philly for MLA (where I may have some time to blog the convention).
Update: The Nielsen post also has the ten programs with the most occurences of product placement and the ten brands with the most cases of product placement on network TV. Perhaps unsurprisingly, reality TV shows dominate the first list.
Posted by chuck at 12:31 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 22, 2006
Top Ten Movies 2006
Because I happened to see Karina Longworth's contribution to the 2006 indieWIRE Blog Poll, I've decided to put together this year's top ten list a few days early. The indieWIRE blog poll invites everyone to contribute their top ten lists and selections in several other major categories. Once again, I can't help but notice that geography dictates much of what I see, so I'm well aware that my choices have several key omissions, including The Departed (which I have no excuse for missing), Old Joy, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, The Good German, The Good Shepherd, and Mutual Appreciation, among many others. My list is, once again, dominated by documentaries, but living in DC for much of the year and attending Silverdocs focused my attention much more heavily on docs than other categories. But here are my favorites from the last year:
Best Film: Black Sun, dir. Gary Tarn. I've never been comfortable identifying a single film as the "best" of the year, but Tarn's experimental documentary, based on painter Hugues de Montalembert's memoirs about going blind, was certainly the most engaging film I saw, exploring questions about vision and subjectiivty in complicated ways.
Nine Runners Up, in no particular order:
Iraq in Fragments, dir. James Longley.
Science of Sleep, dir. Michel Gondry.
The Inside Man, dir. Spike Lee.
The Road to Guantanamo, dir. Michael Winterbottom.
Unknown White Male, dir. Rupert Murray.
A Scanner Darkly, dir. Richard Linklater.
Three Times, dir. Hsiao-hsien Hou.
Our Brand is Crisis, dir. Rachel Boynton.
The Puffy Chair, dir. Mark and Jay Duplass.
Best Undistributed Film: The Hole Story, dir Alex Karpovsky.
Best First Film: The Puffy Chair.
Best Performance: I'll go with Helen Mirren's impressive perforamcne in The Queen, but Gael Garcia Bernal in The Science of Sleep (Karina's choice) deserves consideration as well.
Best Supporting Performance: Nick Nolte in Clean. I believe the film is a couple of years old, but since it just now found its way into US theaters, I'll go with that.
Best Director: tie, Spike Lee and Richard Linklater. Lee made two very different, but equally compelling films in The Inside Man and When the Levees Broke. Because Levees more or less debuted on HBO, it probably won't get the critical acclaim in year-end lists that it deserves, but it is one of the most important documents of the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina, while Inside Man, like Lee's 25th Hour, provides one of the best portraits I've seen of a post-9/11 New York City.
Linklater also made two very different films: the trippy, intellectual, rotoscope animation adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly (by far the best adaptation of a Dick novel since Blade Runner) and Fast Food Nation, an activist film that self-critically interrogates the role of activist films.
Best Screenplay: Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, dir Michael Winterbottom. Screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce. One of the funniest films I've seen in years and a fantastic adaptation to boot.
Best Documentary: Iraq in Fragments. I've already mentioned plenty of docs, but Jesus Camp, Shut Up and Sing, and Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore all came very close to cracking my top ten list.
Posted by chuck at 11:49 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 21, 2006
The Last King of Scotland
It was difficult for me to watch Kevin Macdonald's feature debut, The Last King of Scotland (IMDB) without thinking of (and wishing to rewatch) Barbet Schroeder's disturbing documentary about the brutal Ugandan dictator, General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait. In Schroeder's documentary, we see Amin as a strangely innocent and charming figure while also being forced to reconcile these images with the brutal dictator who was responsible for the deaths of at least 300,000 Ugandans. While most audience members will be unaware of the documentary, Last King depends almost entirely on Forest Whitaker's "chameleonic" performance as the mercurial despot, it was never entirely clear to me what story the film was trying to tell about Uganda or Amin.
The film views Amin through the eyes of a young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), who briefly takes work as a doctor helping Uganda's rural poor before being taken in as Amin's personal physician, in part because of Amin's admiration for all things Scottish (he even names his children Mackenzie and Campbell). Garrigan, as the Voice review notes, is a composite of a number of white advisors who helped Amin retain power, although in the film, Garrigan gradually becomes repulsed by Amin's actions and his own complicity in them (he even lies at one point to cover for Amin's assassination of a Ugandan bureaucrat).
I'm still sorting out what I didn't like about Last King, and I'm wondering if it isn't related to my response to Blood Diamond a few days ago. While I recognize there can be value in using the conventions of the Hollywood thriller to depict stories such as Amin's, I found that both films relied too heavily on stock characters that seemed to have the effect of leaving the politics of postcolonialism in the abstract. Instead of the idealistic reporter and the mercenary, Last King offers a naive doctor who is lured in by Amin's charms and by the pleasures of wealth and power. And, yet again, a story about Africa is told through the eyes of a white outsider, although, to be fair, it is interesting that Africa has become the subject fo so many Hollywood films.
Posted by chuck at 11:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 19, 2006
Makin' a List
Still blogging from suburban franchise coffeehouses, so this post will have to be relatively brief, but I've been intrigued by the discussions of ten best lists, starting with Andy Horbal's list of reasons why he doesn't like ten best lists (also see Jim Emerson's response to Andy). Keeping with my personal blogging tradition, I'll wait until after the holidays before I contribute my own top ten list, but thinking about this year's list has encouraged me to reflect on my viewing habits and how those habits were altered to some extent by moving from DC to North Carolina this year (of course, given that I had a chance to attend Silverdocs, this year, you can probably guess that once again, my list will be loaded with documentaries).
But as online video culture continues to evolve, I've also been thinking about what it might mean to start creating a "canon" of internet-based videos. Obviously, online video is still very much an ephemeral, nascent medium, but it would seem that such a young medium would stand to benefit from this form of preservation. As many film scholars have pointed out, most early films have been lost, in part due to the fragility of the film medium but also because not enough people recognized the importance of preserving this important part of our history. So I've been contemplating what it might mean to create a "ten best list" of online videos or whether it would even be plausible to compile a representtaive list when there is so much material out there. There's already one interesting Top Ten list out there, compiled by the folks at lulu.tv, which includes what I regard as one of the best online videos of the year, "George Bush's Imagine" (thanks to Virginia Heffernan for the link).
Of course a top ten (or twelve) list of online videos brings to the surface questions of taste and aesthetics that are far from established (the same might be said of top ten film lists, but critics' lists do tend to overlap quite a bit). The lulu.tv list is notable because the listmakers chose to list single films from a set of categories or genres (machinima, mashups, parodies, remixes, male and female vlogs) rather than simply choosing ten favorite videos, an approach that succeeds in depicting the diversity of material now available online. I'm not sure I'll have enough computer time until after the New Year, but I may try my hand at compiling a similar list or at least highlighting a few of my favorite online videos from the last year.
Posted by chuck at 9:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Distribution, Exhibition, Promotion
Hiding out at a well-known franchise coffeehouse catching up on some blogging and blog reading and just wanted to keep track of some links that have crossed my path. Via GreenCine, a discussion of teh distribution plans for John Sayles' Honeydripper, which just wrapped. The film's producers have set up a blog, where they discuss their intentions of fixing a broken distribution system while still working to see the filmmakers manage to see some profit from their hard work. More: Brendon Connelly compares the distribution strategy for Honeydripper to Steven Soderbergh's simultaneous distribution of Bubble in multiple formats. I'll be interested to see how this story unfolds (see also: the Emerging Pictures website).
Also from GreenCine, Stuart Klawans' review of Blood Diamond, which is pretty similar to my own.
Finally, and I'm very late in pointing to this one: Anne at the Risky Biz Blog has an interetsing entry on the potential (?) role for MySpace in promoting indie film. As she points out, MySpace is often dismissed as a dating or social site "for kids," but it can also be used for networking and promotion, as many musicians (and their publicists) have discovered. Her question: have there been any MySpace indie film "success stories?" She notes that Filmmaker Magazine has embraced the site, but while their MySpace friends are a who's who of indie films and festivals from the last year, I'm wondering what role MySpace has served in raising awareness of these films (or whether the social networking site is the best tool for promoting these films).
Posted by chuck at 11:02 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 18, 2006
Blogging in the Burbs
I'm back in Atlanta for a few days where I'm visiting my parents for the holidays. Because they have a 56k modem, blogging may be light to nonexistent until I fly up to Philly for a brief cameo at MLA. While it's nice to be back in Atlanta, which is more or less home for me, I inevitably think about change and loss every time I revisit a place where I've spent a significant chunk of my life. For example, I was saddened to learn that one of my favorite movie theaters, the Garden Hills Cinema, just below Buckhead, closed in October. Garden Hills is where I first discovered Kevin Smith, caught Winged Migration on a date that I remember rather fondly, and watched dozens of other films when I began making the transition to studying film rather than literature, so I hate to see that it's closed.
There are some other nice things about being in Atlanta. I still look forward to listening to Album 88, Georgia State University's excellent radio station, so much so that I found msyelf trying to tune it in every couple of miles as I drove into the city yesterday afternoon. And, of course, parents who take you out for a sushi dinner just hours after you've made a long, exhausting drive home are pretty cool, too.
Posted by chuck at 1:17 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
December 16, 2006
Fast Food Nation
Adapted from Eric Schlosser's investigation of the fast food industry, Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation (IMDB) weaves together three discrete narratives that reveal the dark underbelly beneath the shiny veneer of the fast food indsutry. Don Anderson (Greg Kinnear) is a Mickey's marketing executive sent to Cody, Colorado, to investigate high fecal content in Mickey's signature Big One burger (or as another marketing exec succinctly puts it, "there's shit in the meat"). In Cody, Don converses briefly with Mickey's counter-girl, Amber (Ashley Johnson), who dreams of going to college, in part because it will get her out of her stifling hometown. Even her ambition to become an astronaut seems more about a desire to escape than any specific interest in science. Finally, we are introduced to Raul (Wilmer Valderrama) and Sylvia (Catalina Sandino Moreno), a married couple who immigrate from Mexico to take work in Cody, where they inevitably wind up working for the town's giant slaughterhouse.
When the three plots intersect, they do so casually and conversationally, allowing characters to discuss the implications of the fast food industry, rather than lecturing us about the evils of fast food, which, deep down, many of us already know. In doing so, the film manages to be self-critical, questioning its own premise as an activist movie, a gesture often absent from overtly political films such as Crash (my reading here is not entirely original: Stuart Klawans, MaryAnn Johanson, and AO Scott both make this point in similar ways).
This self-criticism emerges in two pivotal scenes, the first of which features Bruce Willis as a cynical Mickey's executive working in Cody who openly acknowledges to Don that, yes, there is shit in the meat, but that "everybody needs to eat a little shit from time to time." [Note: the next few sentences reveal a major plot point.] Later, Amber, charmed and inspired by her free-spirited uncle (Ethan Hawke), chooses to take her own form of political resistance against the fast food industry. After becoming involved with a group of environmental activists at a nearby college, Amber picks up on the cynicism of Paco, who dismisses the group's plan for a letter writing campaign against Mickey's, instead suggesting that the group liberate the cows waiting to be slaughtered by opening the pens where they are confined. Of course, Amber's plans don't go as expected, and the students are confounded when the cows don't particualry want to be liberated, preferring the feed and comfort provided by the slaughterhouse.
While I have suggested that Linklater's film offers these moments of self-critique, his film, like Schlosser's notorious work of investigative journalism, does not shy away from depicting some of the more gruesome elements of the production of meat. Opening in a relentlessly cheerful Mickey's, the camera tracks into a hamburger patty, leading us, as it were, into the dark side of the industry. Several scenes were filmed in an actual slaughterhose, including one particularly graphic scene filmed on a kill floor, while Sylvia and Raul endure any number of hardships on the line, with several scenes in particular noting the degree to which illegal immigrant workers can be exploited by what one long-time rancher (Kris Kristofferson) aptly describes as the fast food "machine."
Linklater's "machine" metaphor complicates any simple notion of agency. Can Don risk sacrificing his career over his moral objections to the slaughterhouse? What effect can Amber and her fellow environmental activists have when "the bad guys" always seem t win every election? What are the alternatives available to Raul and Sylvia? While Scott and Klawans' reviews convey this political complexity, I get the impression that FFN was dismissed in other quarters as a political screed, condemning the supposedly intoxicating pleasures of fast food. However, instead, Linklater has offered something far more complicated than that, questioing the efficacy of political films while at the same time reminding us of their absolute necessity.
Posted by chuck at 10:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Shut Up and Sing
With the current opposition to the Bush administration's approach to the war in Iraq reaching 70% of the American public, it's easy to forget that in the days just before the invasion began, expressing opposition to the war, as Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks did during a concert in London, could provoke hostile responses ranging from accusations of a lack of patriotism to death threats. Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck's subtle, underrated documentary, Shut Up and Sing (IMDB), serves as a bracing reminder of how the Dixie Chicks became embroiled in the propaganda war that accompanied the US invasion of Iraq. Maines' offhand remark that she was ashamed the President was from Texas, of course, provoked outrage among the country music audiences that had made Maines and her bandmates, Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, the target not only of massive boycotts but also of astonishing levels of verbal abuse, with protestors holding up signs calling the group "traitors" while others gather to destroy copies of the bands CDs, and one mother eggs her small child to say "screw 'em." Kopple and Peck's film follows the band over the course of their 2003 tour and returns two years later to witness the band writing songs that will become Taking the Long Way.
While Kopple and Peck take some effort to show how the Bush administration built its case for war through key soundbites from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell, Shut Up and Sing is less a political statement than an analysis of the music industry itself through the experiences of Maines, Maguire, and Robison over the course of the last three years. The film opens with the Dixie Chicks performing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl and quickly moves from there to footage of Maines' now famous London concert, where her comment was picked up by The Guardian (I think this is the original concert review) and eventually repeated in the right-wing blog, Free Republic. Kopple and Peck show Maines and the rest of the band fascinated and perplexed by the hostility her comment provoked, and just as quickly, the band's manager, Simon Renshaw, begins to ask the group how they want to "spin" the controversy, which as Stephen Holden notes, makes the band appear as if they are being "marketed like politicians to targeted constituencies."
Eventually, of course, the controversy snowballed to such a degree that two of the massive country radio conglomerates refuse to play the Dixie Chicks because of fears that they will be subject to similar boycotts. As one astute DJ observes, most of his listeners would likely rather listen to hard rocker Marylin Manson than the former queens of country radio. This indictment of the music industry is underscored through footage of Renshaw testifying to Congress during some of the hearings on media consolidation, with Renshaw vividly depicting the silencing effect that media consolidation can have.
The film also depicts some of the more absurd responses the band faced, including an ongoing feud with conservative country singer Toby Keith, which included Maines wearing an "FUTK" t-shirt during one of her concerts and culminating, to some extent, in the notorious Entertainment Weekly cover and story where the band faced many of their critics head-on. And perhaps most dramatically, we see the band bravely playing a Dallas show soone after receiving a death threat.
These responses cannot be separated from the knowledge that the Dixie Chicks probably would not have been as widely criticized if they weren't women, a point made in the Village Voice review of the film. Many of the harshest comments have a distinctly gendered tone, with Bill O'Reilly insisting that Maines and her bandmates ought to be "slapped around," and Kopple and Peck are careful to depict the double standard that exists when it comes to musicians expressing their political views (Stephen Holden also touches on this in his Times review).
But I think that what made the film most compelling for me was how the band's music grew so explicitly out of their experiences as artists and public figures but also as wives and mothers. In this sense, the film reminded me quite a bit of the Metallica documentary, Some Kind of Monster in depicting a band at a kind of crossroads and, perhaps, working to redefine themselves in the face of negative publicity (Metallica, of course, alienated fans due to their testimony on music piracy). To the credit of the band members, the Dixie Chicks remained true to their country roots, producing a deeply personal record that took on the public outcry rather than avoiding it, a sentiment best expressed in the song, "Not Ready to Make Nice." While I've always been aware of the band's talent, these scenes deepend my appreciation of a group of talented musuicans.
Posted by chuck at 11:59 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 15, 2006
Blood Diamond
In one of the climactic moments of Blood Diamond (IMDB), Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), an American journalist righteously insists that if American consumers knew how our diamonds were obtained, we'd stop buying them. As Bowen lectures the ruthless mercenary Danny Archer (Leo DiCaprio, complete with Zimbabwean accent), I couldn't help but think about the ubiquitous jewely advertisements that have been airing on TV throughout the holiday season. Yes, those commercials do a fantastic job of masking the means of production (or perhaps, more precisely, procurement) that placed that diamond in the glass case at the local mall, and perhaps Blood Diamond does something to make that process more visible, but like Nathan Lee of The Village Voice, I was uninspired by the film's "facile politics and bad storytelling," Perhaps this disappointment is due to the fact that I watched this movie in a mall within walking distance of several jewelers whose commodities exist comfortably alongside the very film I was consuming. Perhpas it's mere holiday grumpiness. Or maybe I was just bored by half a dozen action sequences in search of a story.
To be fair, Blood Diamond makes some effort to dramatize the degree to which Western jewelers exploit, and sometimes even exacerbate, civil unrest in Africa in order to obtain diamonds (and, the film even implies, to ensure that diamond prices remain sufficiently high to ensure greater profit). And through the eyes of Maddy, we see American consumers caught up in the Monica-gate drama while the civil war raging in Sierra Leone received little attention. The film also dramatically depicts the rebel army's horrific practice of conscripting child soldiers. But the story itself is told with what seemed like a paint-by-numbers script featuring what Lee describes as the "holy trinity of African-adventure film" characters, the serious journlaist, the ruthless mercenary, and the righteous native, Solomon (played by Djimon Hounsou, who deserves better work).
The plot, such as it is, involves Solomon becoming forced into hard labor panning for diamonds, after being separated from his wife and children, including his son who dreams of becoming a doctor. When Solomon discovers a giant pink diamond, he manages to bury it but not before rumors of the diamond spread throughout the diamond trade, where they inevitably reach the ears of Danny. Maddy just happens to be in Sierra Leone to write a story about the "conflict diamond" trade when she meets Danny who clearly sees the "blood diamond" as a final big score before he "retires."
I think that what bothered me the most about the film was its depiction of the civil war in Sierra Leone. If Blood Diamond intended to be critical of the exploitation of Africans, it certainly seems to relish the bloody action sequences in which entire villages of anonymous Africans are slaughtered in a hail of bullets. There's little, if any, exploration of the politics that produced the civil war, which gives the violence a strange inevitability that I don't think the film intends. I'm probably being more critical than I ought to be of what appears to be a well-intentioned film, but because there's very little exploration of how the diamond industry operates outside of Africa (other than Maddy's long-shot photographs of Solomon selling the eponymous bood diamond to a European dealer), the critique ultimately felt a little thin.
Posted by chuck at 9:30 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Late Thursday Video Links
I caught Blood Diamond (IMDB) tonight, and my first impression of the film can be summed up in four words: Jewelers bad. Journalists good. Of course it helps when Jennifer Connelly is playing the journalist. Planning to have a longer review later if I can convince myself that the film is actually worth it. While you're waiting, check out these videos instead:
Nuckin' Futs: Jib Jab's sweet satirical take on 2006.
Also worth checking out: Ajit from TickleBooth's compelling video, 12 Verses in Water.
Posted by chuck at 12:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 13, 2006
The Lost Room Revisited
I'm still fascinated by The Lost Room, even if the inconclusive final scene was a little disappointing, as Peter points out, although the open ending no doubt leaves open the possibility of a Lost Room series as several fans of the show have speculated. I still think the basic concept is interesting, in which a collection of mundane "Objects" left in a hotel room in 1961 take on mysterious powers and groups of rival collectors compete to collect as many of the Objects as possible (for a variety of reasons, of course).
In part, I'm intrigued by the idea that the Objects represent artifacts of a lost past, a point that comes up in Virginia Heffernan' sreview of the show, recalling the old hotels and travelers who inhabited them. As Heffernan points out, "The series skillfully taps into the collector fever that has been kindled by that auction site, further conjuring a peculiar nostalgia for the isolation of the traveling loner in the days before cellphones, Internet and pay-per-view made motel rooms bearable."
Not sure I have much to add right now, but I'll be intrigued to see what happens with The Lost Room and whether it gets picked up as a regular seies.
Update: I also like John Joseph Adams' reading of the mini, particularly his comparison of The Lost Room to puzzle-oriented video games such as Myst and Resident Evil. [Updated a second time to add a link--perhaps I shouldn't blog when I'm so sleepy.]
Posted by chuck at 11:42 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
December 12, 2006
Tuesday Video Fun
Taking a break from grading for a day to work on some other projects that have been occupying my mind and came across some nice video and blog distractions. First, via GreenCine, a video of Eternal Sunshine director Michel Gondry solving a Rubik's Cube. With his feet. In less than three minutes. Which sorta trumps that Will Smith character in The Pursuit of Happyness.
I've also been planning to link to this "Addicted to YouTube" video for several days now, I think after I discovered it while reading the LonelyGirl15 article in Wired.
The LG15 narrative arc has me thinking about documentary, autobiography, and authenticity, topics that Girish touches upon in his recent post on Bill Nichols' discussion of documentary modes. Girish also points to Steve Shaviro's related discussion of blogging and "real" life.
Posted by chuck at 3:28 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
The Lost Room
Despite the fact that I'm currently getting crushed in my Weblog Awards category, I just wanted to mention that I found myself pretty engrossed in the new Sci-Fi Channel miniseries, The Lost Room, which debuted last night (the series runs through Wednesday). The series focuses on Police Detective Joe Miller (Peter Krause) who discovers a motel key that allows its possessor to open any door into the mysterious Room 10 of the Sunshine Motel, which serves as a kind of portal allowing you to travel virtually anywhere, with the room magically resetting every time the door is re-opened. As the Sci-Fi Channel plot summary reveals, the mundane contents of the room (a bus ticket, eyeglasses, and a ball point pen, among others) all take on unique powers. The bus pass, for example, allows its possessor to "zap" anyone who approaches out to a distant highway in Gallup, New Mexico.
Of course, possession of one of these Objects poses any number of psychological and physical risks, as Miller quickly learns. One of the subplots of the series is Miller's custody battle over his daughter Anna (Elle Fanning), who vanishes when the door to Room 10 closes and the room resets to its original state. Anna's disappearance sets in motion Miller's attempts to recover additional Objects that might allow him to rescue her. And because the Objects posseess such useful powers, other collectors seek to possess as many Objects as possible. The room's powers are, thankfully, never fully explained. There are some vague supernatural speculations, but at least in the first episode, the mystery is left relatively open.
My interest in the series derives in part from the vaguely nostalgic style of the series. Room 10, as the SciFi Channel's description suggests, suggests those lonely hotel rooms that dotted Route 66 between Chicago and Los Angeles during the 1950s and '60s, while Detective Miller, in some ways, recalls the hard-boiled detective of film noir (including some nice low-key lighting during several key sequences). I'm not yet ready to come to any conclusions about The Lost Room, but so far it's good pulpy fun. Also check out the Pop Matters review and the discussion at TV with MeeVee.
Posted by chuck at 10:25 AM | Comments (31) | TrackBack
December 10, 2006
Tentative Syllabus: A Request
Because one of my students in my spring semester graduate course, "Technology and the Language Arts Curriculum," requested that I provide her with a reading list in advance, I've put together a tentative syllabus (or at least a reading list) for the class. One of the stated goals of the course is to provide high school teachers with a few strategies for using technology in the classroom, and I've been working to balance theoretical debates in media studies with the specific, practical problems that my students will face in the classroom. I've added the reading list below the fold, and I'd very much welcome any suggestions my readers might have. And of course I'm very grateful for interesting courses by Kathleen and Scot (among many others) that have informed my thinking about this course.
To name one example, I'm considering spending one week of class discussing the debates about plagiarism detection services, drawing in part from Clancy's discussion of that topic a few weeks ago. But I'm very much looking forward to teaching this course, so I've enjoyed taking a break from grading today to put this reading list together.
January 16: Introduction to Course
January 23: Blogging and Writing Instruction:
Julian Dibbell, “Portrait of the Blogger as a Young Man.”
Charles Lowe and Terra Williams, “Moving to the Public: Weblogs in the Writing Classroom.”
Rebecca Mead, “You’ve Got Blog: How to Put Your Boy Friend, Your Business, and Your Life On-Line,”
Chuck Tryon, “Writing and Citizenship: Using Blogs to Teach First-Year Composition.” Pedagogy 6.1 (Winter 2006): 128-32.
January 30: Understanding Media Change
Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message,” Understanding Media. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994. 7-21.
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, “Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation,” Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999. 20-51.
Raymond Williams. “The Technology and the Society.” Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken, 1974. 9-31.
February 6: What is New Media?
Lev Manovich, “What is New Media?” The Language of New Media. Cambridge: The MIT Press 19-61.
N. Katherine Hayles, “Material Metaphors, Technotexts, and Media-Specific Analysis.” Writing Machines. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002. 18-33.
February 13: New Media and Authorship
Jay David Bolter, “Seeing and Writing.” The New Media Reader. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003. 679-90.
Lev Manovich, “Models of Authorship in New Media.”
Jill Walker, “Feral Hypertexts: When Hypertext Literature Escapes Control.”
February 20: Composition and New Media
Geoffrey Sirc, “Box Logic.” Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Ed. Anne Frances Wysocki, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Cynthia L. Selfe, and Geoffrey Sirc. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2004. 111-146.
Anne Frances Wysocki, “With Eyes That Think, and Compose, and Think: On Visual Rhetoric.” Teaching Writing with Computers: An Introduction. Ed. Pamela Takayoshi and Brian Huot. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. 182-201.
February 27: New Media Cultures
Richard A. Lanham, “Stuff and Fluff.” The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 1-41.
Lev Manovich, “Generation Flash.”
Jeff Rice, “21st Century Graffiti: Detroit Tagging.” CTheory.net. June 7, 2005.
March 6: Spring Break
March 13: Interactivity
Luis Arata, “Reflections about Interactivity,” MIT Communications Forum.
Dan Gillmor, “The Read-Write Web,” We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. Cambridge: O’Reilly Press, 2004.
Cass Sunstein, “The Daily Me.” Republic.com. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. 3-22.
March 20: Participatory Cultures
Henry Jenkins, “Why Heather Can Write: Media Literacy and the Harry Potter Wars.” Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 169-205.
March 27: New Media and Democracy
Henry Jenkins, “Photoshop for Democracy.” Technology Review. June 4, 2004.
Patricia R. Zimmermann, “Digital Deployment(s).” Contemporary American Independent Film: From the Margins to the Mainstream. Ed. Chris Holmlund and Justin Wyatt. London: Routledge, 2005. 245-64.
JibJab and other videos TBA.
April 3: Video Sharing
Joshua Davis, “The Secret World of LonelyGirl.” Wired 14.12 (December 2006).
Bob Garfield, “YouTube vs. Boob Tube.” Wired 14.12 (December 2006).
Christopher Conway, “YouTube and the Cultural Studies Classroom,” Inside Higher Ed, November 16, 2006.
Selected YouTube videos TBA.
April 10: Digging Through the Archives
Browse the following web resources:
American Memory Project
EDSITEment
Making MediaCommons
April 17: Wikiality
Brock Read, “Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?” Chronicle of Higher Education. October 27, 2006.
Alan Liu “Developing a Wikipedia Research Policy.” Kairosnews. June 29, 2006.
Jeff Rice, “Wikiality.” Yellow Dog. August 3, 2006.
April 24: Computer Classrooms and Writing
Richard Selfe, “Goals in Action: Student Workers at the Center of Things.” Sustainable Computer Environments for Teachers of English and Language Arts: Creating a Culture of Support.
May 1: Student Presentations.
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December 8, 2006
Birthday 2006
My yearly birthday post: Like last year, I've been agonizing about this birthday more than usual, perhaps in part because it has been a year of transitions and adjustments: a new job, a new "city," new students, new friends. Even some new research and teaching interests.
Most of these changes have been positive. It's nice to have a tenure-track job, certainly, but living in Fayetteville has been a learning experience, especially after several years of living in large cities. It's still very difficult not to feel disconnected from the independent movie cultures that were much easier to find in DC and Atlanta, but I think I would feel even more disconnected without the internet and especially without the blog communities in which I've participated. Of course, it's also hard not to feel like I'm window shopping, standing on a sidewalk looking at a beautiful but inaccessible window display when I hear about what's happening in the indie film scene in bigger cities.
And I think that in the end-of-semester grading rush (which, amazingly enough, is almost done), it's easy to forget that it has been a productive year for me professionally, both in terms of new publications and in terms of thinking long-term about my research goals. But I am glad that this very long semester is finally coming to a conclusion and that I won't have another birthday for another 365 days or so.
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December 7, 2006
Weblog Awards Voting Now Open
Shameless self-promotion here: voting in the 2006 Weblog Awards is now open. As I mentioned earlier, I'm a finalist in the Best of the Top 5001 - 6750 Blogs category, and if you're so inclined, you can vote for me once every 24 hours.
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December 6, 2006
Lazy Wednesday Links
Just a quick pointer to the latest installment of the Teaching Carnival curated by David of Silver in SF. As always plenty of great reading.
And, for your viewing pleasure, a "Scary Mary Poppins" trailer (thanks to Wiley for the tip).
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Don't Forget to Vote
Voting doesn't start until tomorrow, but it appears that I'm a finalist for a 2006 Weblog Award (I'm in the "Best of the Top 5001 - 6750 Blogs" category, which could use a more exciting name, but whatever). I'll provide a direct link to my category a few times next week just in case anyone feels inclined to vote for me.
Update: Some other cool bloggers including Bitch PhD, Michael Berube, and Geeky Mom are also finalists. Vote for them, too.
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December 4, 2006
Vampires in Mississippi
Via GreenCine Daily, news of an unproduced screenplay by William Faulkner about vampires, leading people to call the film, "William Faulkner's Nosferatu." Faulkner's daughter discovered the screenplay among the novelist's papers a few years ago, and producer Lee Caplin wants to make the movie, transferring the film's setting from Eastern Europe to the deep South. Sounds like the film is a long way from being made, but I'd be incredibly curious to see the film get made, if only because I wrote a master's thesis on Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.
In other Faulkner news (in the same article), Oprah Winfrey wants to film Faulkner's Light in August, which I think is a really bad idea. Not so much because it's Oprah but because I think a lot would get lost in adapting such a sprawling novel to the big screen. Okay, maybe I'm a little worried about Oprah.
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Teaching Media Literacy
Just wanted to mention that an article I wrote for the newly launched Re:New Media blog is now available. The article, "Teaching Media Literacy in the Age of YouTube," is meant to address some of the challenges media studies professors now face when it comes to teaching media literacy and reflects some of my recent interest in the role of YouTube clips in shaping political discourse (as well as my long-term interest in "homemade media"). In particular, it focuses on the tendency to treat video sharing sites as mere content, kind of a giant, virtual video library, rather than considering the discourses that have already grown up around video sharing and videoblogging (and how that, in turn, has come to reshape the contents of these sites).
Re:New Media is the new name for National Video Resources. The organization seeks to promote independent artistic production through a variety of venues incluidng public screenings and discussions, as well as other educational uses of independent media and, of course, the Re:New Media blog where my article was posted. It looks like a valuable resource for independent artists, as well as educators and audiences interested in independent media. Worth checking out: Neil Sieling's "Digital and Tangible: How DVDs Are Impacting Independent Media."
Thanks to Agnes for inviting me to contribute to this exciting new resource. Comments on the article are definitely welcome.
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December 3, 2006
Grading Marathon Links
I'm caught up in all the usual end-of-semester grading madness, but here are a few links worth checking out. First, Andy Horbal's Film Criticism Blogathon. Lots of interesting posts here, and if I get some spare time tonight, I might put up a belated entry myself.
Second, via Jesus' General, a very interesting video, The Coolest 8 Year Old In The World Talks About O'Reilly, in which an 8-year old girl takes on the Fox News talk show host. The girl is a natural performer, but as the General points out, her comments have provoked some rather disturbing responses (see the General's post for that discussion).
The video itself is from the group The Bastard Fairies and appears, in part, to be promoting their documentary, The Canary Effect (trailer), which explores the devastating effects of the US government policies on Native Americans.
There's a follow-up video featuring The Coolest 8 Year Old's Uncle that is also worth checking out. More later, when I've gotten some grading done.
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