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January 31, 2007

Bunker Hill Trailer

I'm still in heavy-duty writing mode but I just wanted to mention the trailer for Bunker Hill, a new film by Kevin Willmott, who made C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, one of the smartest and most thought-provoking films I saw last year. Bunker Hill focuses on a Wall Street banker, who after being released from prison, goes to the small town of Bunker Hill, Kansas, where his ex and their children are living. Soon after his arrival, an apparent terrorist attack takes place, leading the town to take extreme measures to protect itself. Given Willmott's past work in interrogating the politics of popular culture images, I'm really looking forward to seeing this film.

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January 26, 2007

Searching for Hillary Clinton

Interesting Washington Post article by Sara Kehaulani Goo about the attempts to refine video searching on the web, comparing video searching to the early days of the web when text searching "was clunky and largely incomplete." Goo notes that if you conduct a search using Hillary Clinton's name on one of the big online video search engines, her online video announcement will not appear among the top search results. I'm generally sympathetic with the idea that we need more sophisticated video search technologies, but I'm also intrigued by the "problems" that search engines are facing in terms of video search, in part because these problems speak to important questions about how web video will be defined and what kinds of videos will be privileged.

I tried the same search for Hillary Clinton on YouTube and with some minor tweaks--ranking by date instead of relevance, adding another keyword--her announcement moved to the top of the listed results. But what I found instead of Clinton's official announcement was far more interesting, in my opinion. There were already dozens of video mashups and other responses to Clinton's announcement, many of them deconstructing the language and the camera techniques used in the announcement. Others posted homemade commercials endorsing Clinton for President. While I'm not a big fan of Senator Clinton, I'm even less of a fan of her conservative critics, but it was interesting to see their (apparently homemade) videos ranked "above" hers in the YouTube search. This is something that will no doubt be lost if the monetizing potential of web video is privileged over other criteria.

I need to get to some other writing projects right now, but I just wanted to point to the article because I think it does raise some interetsing questions that we'll be thinking about for some time.

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January 25, 2007

Messiah Blogging

Joining the ranks of lonelygirl15 and Ze Frank, Brian, the messiah of The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Messiah, is now videoblogging.

I really enjoyed American Messiah when I saw it a while back, and now it's available on DVD. And Brian's first attempt at videoblogging is pretty fun, too.

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"Schindler's List with a Chinese Twist"

No time to write a longer post because I have to teach in a few minutes, but I thought that Thomas Heath's Washington Post article about businessman Ted Leonsis's decision to produce films with a social bent. Leonisis, who calls his concept "Filmanthropy," explains that "You raise the money around your charity and make something that can drive people to understand an issue....It brings together philanthropy and understanding how media works. You're going to see a lot of people doing this because a studio probably wouldn't do a story like this."

Leonisis's concept sounds a lot like Jeffrey Skoll's Participant Productions, which I discussed a little over a year ago (although Skoll's project explicitly invokes political activism). Not much to add right now. Obviously I'm not going to complain if Leonisis bankrolls a few good movies, but I think this connection between film and philanthropy needs to be investigated a little more carefully (especially when Leonisis describes his first film as "Schindler's List with a Chinese twist").

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January 24, 2007

Lazy Wednesday Links

Still exhuasted from a long day of teaching on Tuesday, but I just wanted to mention a couple of interetsing links. Via Tom Tomorrow's blog, Bill Moyers' 1987 documentary, The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis (full-sized version here). I haven't had time to watch the whole thing, but the references to the Iran-Contra scandal look interesting.

Also, an interesting New York Times article about attempts by several New York museums to rehabilitate the reputation of Robert Moses, the notorious "public-works kingpin" who stamped his vision irrevocably on New York City for over three decades, starving mass transit while building massive highways into the city. My perception of Moses is primarily informed by Robert Caro's exquisitely-researched Power Broker and by Marshall Berman's chapter on Moses in All that Is Solid Melts into Air, but it's interesting to see Moses's reputation being revisited at a moment when the city itself is undergoing significant changes.

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January 23, 2007

Oscar Nominees 2006-07

No major surprises among the nominees, as far as I can tell. I guess Dreamgirls missing the cut on best picture comes as a small surprise, and I wasn't expecting Paul Greengrass to get a best director nomination for United 93, but overall, the choices were relatively predictable. Sacha Baron Cohen should have been nominated for best actor, perhaps, but at least Borat got some recognition.

For the category I care about the most:

Documentary Feature: Deliver Us From Evil, An Inconvenient Truth, Iraq in Fragments, Jesus Camp, and My Country, My Country.

I'm a little bummed that Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore missed the cut, but I can't argue with these nominees. I'd like to see Iraq in Fragments or An Inconvenient Truth win the award, but all five films are worthy, which is a testament to the fact that documentary as a genre is continuing to thrive.

So what do you think? Any major snubs? Who's going to take home a golden statue?

Update: Go here for a discussion of the results.

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January 22, 2007

The YouTube Campaign

The Washington Post has an interesting article on the potential uses of web video in the 2008 elections. Obviously, one of the biggest benefits of web video is that it is relatively inexpensive. Candidates can post videos online for free, dodging the expensive ad buys on television, and political junkies can create their own videos, with one recent example being the footage of the 1994 Mitt Romney-Ted Kennedy debate, in which Romney expresses support for abortion rights and gay rights, positions members of his Republican base might find undesirable. Romney's campaign immeditely posted a response in which he distances himself from those positions (a similar advertisement by MoveOn.org attacking John McCain's position on the war has been making the rounds). Others have suggested that web video will provide something closer to "backstage access" to life on the campaign trail--kind of a web video version of The War Room or Journeys with George.

Of course, the potential effects of web video were dramatically illustrated by the video of George Allen using a racial epithet to describe one of his opponent's campaign workers. The video quickly caught the attention of cable news pundits and helped put Allen's record on race back onto the table. Similarly, footage of Rush Limbaugh mocking Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's symptoms may have helped galvanize support for Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill. I think it's reasonable to speculate that web video may even foster political participation in ways that television has discouraged.

But, at the same time, I wonder to what extent web video will give credibility to false attacks. Obviously the most famous recent example is the "swiftboating" of John Kerry's 2004 campaign, but even the Romney video is clearly an intentional distortion of his current positions on abortion and gay rights. And Romney's campaign is free to respond, just as Kerry campign should have responded to the Swift Boat ads. I'm a little uncomfortable with my skepticism here because I think it risks sounding undemocratic (and I'm not particuarly interested in shutting down new avenues of expression), but I have to wonder how web video's appearance of authentic, direct communication can be manipulated, especially by the campaigns themselves.

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January 20, 2007

Netflix Guilt Revisited

A few months ago, in response to a WSJ Online article, I mentioned the fact that my DVD watching habits had been radically altered by my Netflix subscription. Because of the paper I'm currently writing, I have been burning through lots of DVDs lately, but that remains the exception. I still let the DVDs I get from Netflix gather dust on my shelves, often for weeks or months at a time.

In the article I'm writing, I'm currently working through what Siva Vaidhyanathan calls the "paradox of abundance" made possible by TiVo, Netflix, and other similar services and happened to come across Brad Stone's concept of "Netflix guilt" and didn't want to lose track of it. Not sure I have much to add right now, but I still find these concepts useful for describing my own encounters with TV and DVDs.

Update: Not really related, but just thought I'd point to Bill Gates's comments about what he sees as the convergence of TV and the Internet. Not sure there's anything new here: broadcast TV will soon be abandoned because the internet is so much more flexible--you know the drill.

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Classroom Distinctions

A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog entry explaining why I don't like movies about teaching, but a recent NYT editorial, responding to the upcoming release of Freedom Writers, articulates the problem with these films far better than I did. In the editorial Tom Moore describes what he calls "The Myth of the Great Teacher," and I think he's right to criticize the film for portraying teachers as missionaries rather than professionals, willing to sacrifice themselves (and even financial compensation) for the sake of education. Not much to add here. I'm mostly blogging as a form of procrastination from the writing I ought to be doing.

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"You Can Watch a Country Eating Itself Alive"

Interesting Todd Gitlin review of Brett Morgen's documentary, Chciago 10, which mixes archival footage and animated sequences in retelling the story of the horrific events that took place in Chicago in 1968. Significantly, Gitlin reads the 1968 war protests against what he regards as the much savvier netroots actions during the current war in Iraq.

Morgen has done some interesting work in the past. His 2002 doc, The Kid Stays in the Picture was a fascinating look at a Hollywood mogul, so I'll be curious to see if Chicago 10 lives up to its Sundance buzz.

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January 19, 2007

American Idol, MySpace, and Micro-Celebrity

I've been planning to blog Lakshmi Chaudhry's Nation article on the role of YouTube and other video-sharing services in the "democratization" of celebrity but have been pretty distracted lately (she uses the term "micro-celebrity" to describe this phenomenon, which sounds about right).

Her article might compare usefully to the American Idol juggernaut (the ratings for last week's audition episodes beat all other major networks combined) that shows little sign of slowing down. On a related note, Michael has a pointer to the MySpace pages of some of AI's rejected performers. The blogger who tracked down all of these MySpace pages also has a fascinating narrative about (1) how he tracked down the performers' pages and (2) how dramatically his blog traffic spiked after several high-profile blogs linked to him.

Posted by chuck at 11:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Lazy Friday Post

I'm still in the midst of my writing project, but Michael has been blogging up a storm and points to a couple of articles I don't want to lose.

First, he mentions that Netflix is experimenting with offering streaming video service to its subscribers, amove that seems intended as a response to predictions of the company's eventual death.

Also worth checking out: Michael's "Notes on Web Video Form" is a useful reading of the form. This entry has the added bonus of a pointer to the very cool video, "Season 4 of '24' in 2mn30s" (all events in real time, of course), which as Michael implies, makes Mike Figgis's Time Code look like child's play.

My latest paper-related semi-addiction: streaming vids of the first season of Jericho, the CBS show about the aftermath of a nuclear attack.

Also, for future reference: this Chris Hedges article, "The Radical Christian Right Is Built on Suburban Despair." I've long admired Hedges' previous book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (I saw him speak on this topic at Emory several years ago), and Hedges latest project looks equally interesting.

Posted by chuck at 9:53 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 14, 2007

Democracy in Fifteen Seconds

I have a new column up on Flow. It's about a contest sponsored by CBS inviting participants to submit 15-second videos to YouTube, with the winning video possibly being aired on Super Bowl Sunday. I think the contest is an interesting one, but I'm not quite sure I'm satisfied with whether I adequately explained my reservations about how "participatory culture" has been framed recently.

As usual, there are a number of interesting columns in the current issue of Flow, several of which are pertinent to my current writing project, including Jennifer Warren's "The Final Frontier: Myth and Meaning in Science Fiction Television," Jean Anne Lauer's "'They finally killed off Kat': Battlestar Galactica's and the Limits of its Politics," and Hector Amaya's "Film is the New Low, Television the New High: Some Ideas About Time and Narrative Conservatisms."

Update: Just a quick pointer to my syllabus for my "Technology in the Language Arts Classroom" and the course blog. I decided to experiment with Google's page creator following Michael's advice. I found the page creator a little clunky, but like Michael, I wanted the page to be accessible to anyone and was looking for something relatively easy to use.

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January 13, 2007

Boston in April

Just found out that my panel was accepted to the Media in Transition conference, which will be held at MIT in late April. Thanks to David for inviting me to join the panel. Should be a fun conference.

Still working pretty steadily on the article, but the good news is that writing this article is giving me license to watch and re-watch lots of TV.

Posted by chuck at 2:56 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 12, 2007

Mobile Television

For the paper I'm writing:

Via the SciFi Channel's Tech blog: Live television streamed to cell phones. Includes a mildly interesting discussion of whether customers will embrace such a feature.

No time to write much more, but I've been interested in this topic for a while.

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January 10, 2007

Winter Hiatus

Major writing deadline in about three weeks, so I'll be keeping blogging to a minimum until at least February. Until then, check out some of the other excellent blogs in my blogroll.

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January 6, 2007

Lazy Saturday Night Reads

One or two other notes about the Bordwell blog entry I mentioned earlier. Like Jim Thompson, I was intrigued by Bordwell's discussion of the connections between storytelling techniques in film and in other media such as television and graphic novels. Both Thompson and Bordwell point to Jason Mittell's recent Velvet Light Trap article "Narrative Complexity in Comntemporary American Television", which addresses many of these concerns (more on the Mittell article later, hopefully).

Jim Thompson's pointer also reminded me to revisit Kristin Thompson's discussion of the various DVD versions of The DaVinci Code, where she explains that an extended version of the film is available pretty much everywhere except the US. But I was more intrigued to learn that Bordwell and Thompson are planning to include "recommended DVD extras" at the end of every chapter of the forthcoming edition of Film Art. I've been using Corrigan and White's The Film Experience recently, with some success, but I'll be very interested to see how these revisions play out. Like Chris, I've been thinking about film textbooks quite a bit lately, and I think that DVD extras can be used in the classroom in some very effective ways.

Completely unrelated to the above: I drove up to Durham last night to catch Old Joy (IMDB) at the Carolina Theater, based laregly on the recommendations of a few film bloggers whose taste I appreciate, and I'm really glad I made the trip, even if that meant driving over an hour back to F'ville in a monsoon. Kelly Reichardt's quiet, minimalist film follows two old friends, Mark (Daniel London) and Kurt (Will Oldham) as they travel to hot springs in the mountains. There is a gap between the two old friends who have drifted apart after Mark married and settled down while Kurt continues to drift from job to job and place to place. I shouldn't keep promising to write longer reviews, but I really liked this film and would like to encourage others to see it by giving it the attention it deserves. I'm just not sure I'll have time to do that with all of the syllabus prep and other writing I need to be doing this weekend.

Posted by chuck at 6:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 5, 2007

More Denby Links

Michael at Zigzigger tackles a few points I missed in my original bullet-point read of Denby's New Yorker article on the state of Hollywood (and, no, I have no idea why I called it "brilliant" in my original blog entry--blame it on the lack of caffeine).

In particular, Michael reminds us that Denby's article seems to ignore or misread some of the big changes in exhibition that have taken place since the 1970s. In praticular, Michael correctly takes Denby to task for "neglecting the boom in theater construction in the 1990s and early 2000s that has perpetuated and exacerbated opening-weekend mania." And, like Michael, I found the Denby piece most useful when describing digital viewing experiences.

Michael also points to a second Carpetbagger blog entry that more or less rips Denby's article to shreds. The Bagger offers an eloquent take on many of the holes in Denby's argument (movie theaters aren't the "graveyards" Denby imagines them to be, box office actually increased slightly 2007, Hollywood studios *know* the game has changed). But the Bagger's response to Denby is also helpful in its characterterization of corrupt studios and their relationship to a relatively compliant entertainment press. Not much to add right now, but these readings have complicated my original comments to some extent.

Also worth checking out: The New York Observer's "Stardust Memo" to Hollywood.

Update: AO Scott weighs in on the Denby discussion, concluding:

Moviegoing, though unlikely to disappear, will probably never again be the universal rite it once was. This is not a catastrophe, just a change of habit. Going to the movies may survive as an acquired taste, and also, therefore, as an activity through which taste is acquired.
Scott desrcibes the practice of taking his own children (ages 10 and 7) to a variety of movies over the last few months, reading the moviegoing ritual through Frank O'Hara's 1960 poem, “Ave Maria.”

Update 2: Jim Thompson also has an overview of this debate, and, even better, a pointer to David Bordwell's analysis of the structures of several recent Hollywood films. Bordwell's read on Fast Food Nation's rewarding use of the "network narrative" structure is especially helpful and underscores much of what I like about Linklater's film.

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January 3, 2007

Wednesday Morning Media Links

Two urelated links I don't want to lose: First, an article in today's New York Times about this year's Oscars finalists, noting that many of the films address controversial political topics (global warming, Iraq, free speech, etc). The article suggests that the finalists reflect "a shift toward gritty, guerrilla filmmaking, a willingness to tackle controversial subjects, no matter the obstacles." There's certainly no shortage of political docs getting national attention this year, but given the long history of political documentaries, including the work of organizations such as Newsreel since the 1960s, this narrative seems imprecise to me. Still, I'm happy to see a number of films that I admire getting national attention.

The Washington Post has an advertisement, I mean article, on SeenOn.com, a new website that allows TV viewers to purchase the clothing, accessories, and other items seen on their favorite TV shows. Dig "Ugly Betty's" sweater? You can now buy it through the magic of the internet. This kind of service isn't terribly surprising, I suppose. In fact, I'm somewhat surprised it didn't hapen sooner, but it probably does represent another means for television and cable networks to profit off of human attention in the age of TiVo.

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January 2, 2007

Star Trek Interactive Links

For an article I'm writing:

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The Future of Movies

Via David Carr's Carpetbagger blog, David Denby's brilliant and occasionally frustrating New Yorker essay on the potential changes in cinematic production and distribution, "Big Pictures: Hollywood Looks For a Future." I want to return to Denby's essay later, perhaps in another blog entry and certainly in my book, but for now, I'll mention a few immediate reactions:

While I don't agree with Denby's essay in its entirety (I see far more potential in the video iPod than he does, for example), it's a valuable read and worth discussing in some detail.

Update: Just wanted to point to some of the other responses Denby's essay has been getting. Bright Lights After Dark briefly mentions the essay, and Ryan at Cinematical favorably discusses Denby's treatment of the state of cinema in 2007, although I don't think Denby believes it's quite as bad as Ryan implies.

Finally, Eugene David, the One-Minute Pundit, is far more critical of Denby, in part because of his complicity with the industry in offering favorable reviews to mediocre Holywood product and because Denby favorably describes the new art house theater renovations by National Amusements, a theater chain owned by entertainment conglomerate Viacom. To be fair to Denby, he hardly seems like the worst offender in ad-blurbism (at least compared to certain other critics who are all thumbs), but I think the bigger problem here is David's dismissal of all things Hollywood. My read of Denby's piece doesn't leave me with the impression that movies are necessarily getting worse (Denby praises Million Dollar Baby and Brokeback Mountain among others) but that economic, technological, and social factors are changing the kinds of movies that get made as well as changing how we watch them, a far different kind of argument than the jeremiad David describes (even if Denby doesn't like the video iPod). Some of those changes, including teh reliance on tentpole blockbusters, are negative, of course, but I think Denby leaves a lot of room for showing how the "specialty" wings of the major studios can produce some interesting and innovative work.

David also implies that "the principal accomplishments" of the Web are The Blair Witch Project, Ain't it Cool News, and the Snakes on a Plane hype, but I think that overlooks a lot of the truly independent porductions that are promoted and distributed via the internet, including services such as Green Cine and Netflix that allow folks who live in cities and towns without an independent video store or art house theater access to far more film titles than they might otherwise have.

One more note: John Podhoretz also favorably cites Denby's article, echoing the observation that the internet is contributing to the decline of American movies.

Update 2: Annie Frisbie also discusses Denby's article in relationship to a rather unpleasant experience at a Dreamgirls screening.

Update 3: Did I say "brilliant?" I meant "obvious." David at Green Cine links to Anne Thompson's far more critical take on Denby's piece.

Posted by chuck at 11:52 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 1, 2007

Housekeeping

Recovering from four (generally good) days at MLA and the long drive from Atlanta to Fayetteville, but just wanted to mention a couple of planned posts that may happen later today. I've been invited to participate in the "five things" meme, which I'm planning to do a little later. I've also received a request for more personal entries here. Hopefully that will happen in 2007, but besides work stuff, there really isn't a whole lot happening right now.

Also wanted to mention that this year's annual family Xmas movie was the Will Smith drama, The Pursuit of Happyness, a Reaganite fable about a struggling hospital equipment salesman who takes an unpaid internship with a major stock broker with the hopes of becoming the one intern who stands out enough to secure a job at the film (I honestly can't remember which one, and I'm too lazy to look it up, plus they don't need me to do any free advertising for them, anyway). The Smith character, Chris, loses his apartment and is forced to spend teh duration of the internship living in homeless shelters with his young son (and, significantly, the film does little to question Chris's behavior). Maybe I'll have more to say about Happyness later, especially its treatment of the American Dream myth, but that probably won't happen.

Robert DeNiro's The Good Shepherd, a history of the early years of the CIA, was a bit more compelling, especially given its treatment of the paranoia and elitism of Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), whose story is used to convey this history. Wilson's scerecy and paranoia makes it almost impossible to identify with him as a character, but that's part of the point, of course. There's also a fascinating scene early in the film (reviisted at a couple of key moments) in which Shepherd links the secrecy of the CIA with the similar secrecy of Yale's Skull and Bones fraternity. There's a lot going on in the film, and I think it may merit a second viewing at some point. Also caught this film with my family (at least my dad and sister), which made for an intersting conversation because the images of bureacrcay in 1960s Washington reminded my father of his early career in DC.

Oh, I almost forgot. Sujewa has named my humble blog as one of the best film blogs of 2006, an honor that I deeply appreciate. I'm flattered to be in the same company as GreenCine Daily, Drifting, and other cool blogs. I'm also happy to see that Sujewa will be back behind the camera in 2007, and once again, will be working with Jennifer Blakemore, a major strength of Date Number One's ensemble cast.

Happy new year to all my readers.

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