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Cinema Stale, Passive, Needs Reinventing-Greenaway
Outlandish British film director Peter Greenaway wrote off today's cinema as formulaic and predictable, as he presented his latest bizarre visual feast on Saturday.
Greenaway, whose "The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story" is the first in a trilogy, also suggested film festivals like Cannes are obsolete.
"Most cinema today is an illustration of 19th century novels. A lot of it is disastrous, formulaic and predictable. The sense of pluralism has been curtailed," Greenaway said.
Advances in multimedia, the Internet and audience interaction means traditional cinema -- sitting quietly in a dark theater -- was dead, he told a news conference.
"There is a big sea change going on in cinema. What is the value now of a film festival? Maybe in 10 years time the Cannes festival will have no reason to exist," Greenaway said at the event he recently described "a vulgar showcase."
He is making full use of those advances. His trilogy is complemented by 92 DVDs which show nothing but the contents of the film's hero's 92 suitcases -- ranging from live frogs to blood-spattered wallpaper -- and also by endless Web content.
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Baghdad chronicles
Salon.com -- In a city where porn, drunkenness and radical Islam are on the rise, savvy students who despise both Bush and Saddam are putting out Iraq's only independent newspaper. Working with a $5,000 grant from the nonprofit peace group Voices in the Wilderness, 14 unpaid writers, editors, photographers and publishers labored for a month to create the debut issue of Al-Muajaha, the Iraqi Witness, which hit the streets a week ago.
Also see: Al-Muajaha online
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'Operation Wake The Fuck Up' Begins
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Bush equated with Hitler in 'Matrix' sequel?
from WorldNetDaily via FR:"I saw it. The TV monitors show Nazis, Hitler, and an atomic explosion, and somewhere in the midst of all that the face of George W. Bush can be seen for a second or so." "Why would such a peace-loving president so emotionally engaged with the struggle of the common man ever be included alongside such dark images?"What could the filmmakers have been thinking? Is it too late to start a boycott of this film? ... Maybe if enough pressure can be exerted, they can have the offensive image removed before they press the DVD!"I am speechless. I'll let the two gentlemen in question handle this one:
"There ought to be limits to freedom."
"We come not as conquerors, but as liberators."
-- George Bush
"Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."
"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation. We must take steps to insure our domestic security and protect our homeland."
"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death."
-- Adolf HitlerIrrational Reactionism: The Last War on Terror, by valis Texas TV stations pull CBS 'Hitler' miniseries "The Nazi concept, if you will, is still very real, and I think anything we do to give that particular thinking a venue, a format, is a mistake," Remy said.'Hitler' Exec. Producer Fired Over Remarks
American Rings Warning Bells, Sacrifices Job for Country"It basically boils down to an entire nation gripped by fear, who ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunged the whole nation into war," Gernon said in the interview. "I can't think of a better time to examine this history than now."
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A New Attempt to Monitor Media Content
After a television season in which two Fox reality shows included strong hints that contestants were engaging in oral sex, and profanities seemed to slip past network censors with ease, a group backed by business leaders and former government officials plans to announce an effort today to pressure the big entertainment companies to be more responsive to parents' concerns.
The new group, called Common Sense Media, is introducing a Web-based media ratings system, devised with help from the publishers of the Zagat guides, that will rank entertainment products based on language, violence, sexual content and adult themes. Eventually, the group would like to spearhead the adoption of easy-to-understand parental guidelines to television shows, movies, albums and video games, to replace a hodgepodge of systems overseen by the various industries.
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Chirac to Embarass Bush at G8
He said Evian's main goal would be "to build the institutions and rules of a global democracy, open and interconnected", a swipe at the American administration, which has little patience for such rhetoric.
How else can we embarass Bush? How about if Bob Graham were to pull a Daniel Ellsberg? We could hope for a situation where Bush appears in public without a script, but this seems unlikely. The latest edition of the collective American memory is about to pull the phrase "presidential press conference" from it's list. Bush can't appear at a real press conference because he's too stupid. Oh, but look at him swagger. He's sure full of something. Whatever it is, there is a minimum of a brain attached. And then, of course, there are the strings that lead back to the puppetmaster: Karl Rove.Yes, I believe Bush truly is dumb but the people surrounding him are not. They are vile, vicious, and evil. But not dumb.
But how can you embarass a man who cannot feel shame? How can you embarass a man who is incapable of feeling compassion for others?
No matter. As long as there are people who care about the truth, people like Karl Rove and his puffed-up frat boy will not win. A healthy appetite for the actual truth is the best antidote to their turbo-paced mendacity campaign. Embarass Bush by seeking the truth.
American Samizdat
Seek this.
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Bigfoot Spotted in Oregon Woods
A large, furry biped was seen in the Oregon Cascade mountain range Saturday, May 17, at about 5 p.m. Over ten witnesses saw the black, ape-like creature, which approached their "Drowning Rat" gathering in a reportedly aggressive manner. "He got real close," said one member of the Rat party, "He threw rocks at us, and pieces of wood. Then he got distracted and started humping a tree." One rare bigfoot photograph has been released so far; the photographer is apparently holding the others in a bidding war between CNN and MSNBC.
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Media Monopoly and the FCC
Tonight on Wednesday May 21, two dissident members of the Federal Communications Commission will host the final public hearing on the upcoming FCC rule changes on media ownership. FCC chairman Michael Powell is pushing an accelerated deregulation of media which will allow an unprecedented consolidation of media ownership into the hands of even fewer corporations. His new rules are due to be voted on June 2nd. Democracy Now! will be webstreaming tonight's event live between 6 and 10 p.m.The audio will also be archived on this page.
Dissident FCC Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps will both speak tonight at the event, "Media and Democracy Hearing: Where Are We and What's Next."
Other speakers include legal media expert Christopher Yoo of theVanderbilt University Law School; Amy Goodman, producer of "Democracy Now!"; John Sugg, Senior Editor of Creative Loafing; Jabari Simama, Director of the City of Atlanta's Office of Community Technology; and Loretta Ross, Director of the National Center for Human Rights Education. All of the panelists will discuss the impact of media ownership rules on diversity in programming, viability of independent production, the variety of editorial, cultural and ethnic voices and barriers to industry entry. Most importantly, public comment will follow the panelists presentation.
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A Spy Machine of DARPA's Dreams
It's a memory aid! A robotic assistant! An epidemic detector! An all-seeing, ultra-intrusive spying program!
The Pentagon is about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index all the information and make it searchable.
What national security experts and civil libertarians want to know is, why would the Defense Department want to do such a thing?
The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read.
All of this -- and more -- would combine with information gleaned from a variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person went, audio-visual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says, and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's health.
This gigantic amalgamation of personal information could then be used to "trace the 'threads' of an individual's life," to see exactly how a relationship or events developed, according to a briefing from the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, LifeLog's sponsor.
Someone with access to the database could "retrieve a specific thread of past transactions, or recall an experience from a few seconds ago or from many years earlier ... by using a search-engine interface."
On the surface, the project seems like the latest in a long line of DARPA's "blue sky" research efforts, most of which never make it out of the lab. But DARPA is currently asking businesses and universities for research proposals to begin moving LifeLog forward. And some people, such as Steven Aftergood, a defense analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, are worried.
With its controversial Total Information Awareness database project, DARPA already is planning to track all of an individual's "transactional data" -- like what we buy and who gets our e-mail.
While the parameters of the project have not yet been determined, Aftergood said he believes LifeLog could go far beyond TIA's scope, adding physical information (like how we feel) and media data (like what we read) to this transactional data.
"LifeLog has the potential to become something like 'TIA cubed,'" he said.
In the private sector, a number of LifeLog-like efforts already are underway to digitally archive one's life -- to create a "surrogate memory," as minicomputer pioneer Gordon Bell calls it. More ->
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Caltech helps put Einstein's writings online
Hundreds of Albert Einstein's scientific papers, personal letters and humanist essays are now on the Internet.
The documents, some dating back to Einstein's youth, can be found on a Web site run by the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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1000 Journals
1,000 journals are traveling the world. This site is an attempt to collect the stories and drawings from them. "The idea of passing the journals on can be traced to the Exquisite Corpse, a technique used by surrealists as a kind of collective collage of words or images."
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The Dullest Blog in the World
The dullest blog in the world is... well, pretty dull. Nice shoes, though.I was busy doing some things and began to wonder how much time had elapsed. I glanced at my watch and saw the time displayed, thus providing an answer to my question.Earlier on I heard something that I wanted to remember. I found a pen and wrote it down on a piece of paper. If I need to be reminded of the information at any point I will find the piece of paper and read it. |
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A New Slice on Physics
Is the world we see trapped on a thin membrane separating us from vast other realms? Some scientists say that would explain a lot.
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Spacetime wheel
As the spacetime wheel boosts, the spacetime coordinates (t, x) of a point on the wheel relative to its centre change, but the spacetime separation s between the point and the centre remains constant
s2 = - t2 + x2 = constant .
More generally, the coordinates (t, x, y, z) of the interval between any two events in 4-dimensional spacetime (a 4-vector) change when the coordinate system is boosted or rotated, but the spacetime separation s of the two events remains constant
s2 = - t2 + x2 + y2 + z2 = constant .
The invariant spacetime separation s between two events is a rock in the sea of relativity, a quantity that remains the same for all observers, whereas time and space themselves differ for different observers. As such, the spacetime separation s is of fundamental importance in relativity.
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Trinity gets root
hehehehehehehe.
So as the Trinity using nmap, sshing in, and getting root meme makes its rounds on the net, it's almost like the biggest disappointment of the film isn't the plot or the amazing fx, but that they used some 10.something ip address in that scene. Takes all the fun out for people who'd want to try for themselves. The film creators should've put a honeypot on a 'real' ip address just to see who tries to 0wn the machine. ->
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CORPORATE MOFO reloads THE MATRIX
Going into The Matrix: Reloaded, I wasn't worried if the fight scenes or special effects would measure up to the first film—it was the metaphysics that bothered me. The first Matrix was such a neat allegory of Gnostic philosophy, I was more concerned with how the Brothers Wachowski could successfully extend the metaphor into three films than whether they could pull off even more virtuoso examples of cinematic ass-stomping. What was mindblowing about the first movie, after all, wasn't the fight choreography or bullet time, but its brave assertion that the banal, day-to-day reality we live in isn't the real world. In that sense, all the wire-fu was just the candy coating on the red pill the filmmakers were offering to every high school student and cubicle slave in the world. (Though, since I study martial arts myself, I found the idea of kung fu as being metaphorical for something happening in hyper-reality, a la Thibault's mysterious circle, to be pretty darn appealing.)
Thankfully, Reloaded more than allayed my fears, even if it seems that half the reviewers either didn't understand what the Wachowskis were getting at, or else were only paying attention during the highway chase. Watching the movie, I was personally less impressed by the fists of digital fury than by the Brothers' evident familiarity with the Dead Sea Scrolls and the theology of Origen of Alexandria. Seen in the light of the books they're referencing, the movie's plot is brilliant; of course, to the non-initiate, the characters' actions and dialogue seems arbitrary and incomprehensible, and the exposition is just filler between car crashes. It would seem, therefore, that a bit of exegesis of The Matrix: Reloaded is warranted. But be warned: If you haven't seen the movie yet, don't read on. There are some major spoilers.
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Doomsday proponent kills her pets, urges others to do the same
Ms. Nancy Lieder, Reticulan ambassador for Planet Earth and author of the "ZetaTalk" book and web site, has been prophesying worldwide disaster on May 15 due to a pole shift caused by an approaching Planet X. Last week she admitted during an interview with KROQ radio that she killed her dogs so they won't starve or be eaten by hungry hordes of people in the ensuing chaos.
And she is still encouraging others to euthanize their own pets -- the Zetas have postponed the pole shift until May 27 after it failed to happen on the 15th. (See this site, which also recommends wearing a hard hat if you will be outside on that day.)
Also see: Audio, or Transcript.
That must be Los Angeles again in the background.
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Goldfish blender art
A Danish art museum director was acquitted of animal cruelty charges Monday after a court ruled that a display featuring goldfish inside working blenders was not cruel.
The display at the Trapholt Art Museum in Kolding featured 10 blenders and invited visitors to blend the fish if they wanted to. Somebody did in early 2000 -- and two goldfish were ground up.
[Note: apparently, news of the recent scientific discovery that fish can feel pain hasn't yet reached Scandinavia.]
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The marvels of putrification
Just mentioning a interesting book I picked up the other day..."Stiff" by Mary Roach-- a book about what happens when we die, rather, what happens to our bodies when they die...whether they be cremated, buried, or donated to science...written in a charmingly half facinated, half horrified way. You certainly don't learn THIS kinda stuff watching CSI. Recommended.
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The Popdex Game (Beta)
Your objective : pick links that you believe will increase in popularity the most in the next 48 hours.
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18 Things For A Pissed-Off Music Executive To Say To An Artist
1. "You say I'm a dick like it's a bad thing."
2. "Well, I guess this day was a total waste of make-up for you."
3. "Don't bother me – I'm busy living happily ever after."
4. "Do I look like a goddamn ‘people-person’?"
5. "This isn't a record company. It's hell with fluorescent lighting."
6. "My acts started out with nothing, and still have most of it left."
7. "Therapy is expensive. Popping bubble-wrap is cheap. You choose."
8. "Why don't you try practicing random acts of intelligence and senseless acts of self-control?"
9. "I'm not crazy. I've just been in a very bad mood for 30 years."
10. "Sarcasm is just one more service I offer."
11. "Back off!! You're standing in my aura, dude."
12. "Don't worry. I forgot your name, too."
13. "You must work 80 hours a week to be this ignorant."
14. "Not all artists are annoying. Some are dead."
15. "Chaos, panic and disorder ... your work here is done."
16. "Ambivalent about your music? Well, yes and no."
17. "Are you tense, or just really, really fucking alert?"
18. "A hard-on doesn’t count as personal growth.”
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Escape 'The Matrix,' Go Directly to Jail
Some Defendants in Slaying Cases Make Reference to Hit Movie
The cases in which "The Matrix" has emerged as a central theme span the country. Even last fall's sniper shootings in the Washington region have overtones from the popular science-fiction film, which posits that computers have taken over the world.
It is not uncommon for slaying suspects, especially those who are mentally unstable, to raise whatever is hot in popular culture in their defense or in interviews with police. And experts agree that one film alone is unlikely to spark that kind of violence. But to the vulnerable psyches of those who may be mentally ill, films with suggestions of hidden evil and uncertain reality can reinforce paranoia and fear by helping unhealthy fantasy worlds to flourish, the experts say. |
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Documents From Congress' Joint Inquiry Into 9/11
Includes material the Bush Administration wants to retroactively classify. Download it now, mirror it now. [go]
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 Ong's Hat: The Beginning |
| "I got really into this "time-travel cult" called Ong's Hat when a computer-game programmer I know told me she was contacted by a physics scholar who said that a bunch of her recent games reflected their canon. This dude told my friend that someone from Ong's Hat had befriended her and inspired her to create certain games without her realizing it. Whoa, right?" - Jane Magazine |
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