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March 20, 2006
Remix Redux
Similar to the Garfield remixes that I wrote about earlier, Mike Olenick has created Heston of the Apes, a 15 minute version of Planet of the Apes with only Charleton Heston's lines, reducing the film's narrative to "a single apocalyptic monologue..." Be sure to check out his other videos including a Psycho 2000 in which Hitchcock's Psycho is superimposed with Gus Van Sant's remake.
Thanks to Aaron for the links!
Posted by rsexton at 03:02 AM | Comments (0)
The Language of New Media
I took a university course a couple years ago called Digital Aesthetics. I've never spent so much time in a classroom waiting for the AV guy to come and fix the equipment. Anyway, the only course materials I could stomach were parts of Lev Manovich's book, The Language of New Media. I can't help but cringe at the way writers, even good ones, often fail to get the details right when they talk about "new media" because I live and breathe the details in my work. I'm sure doctors feel the same way when they watch ER.
Anyway, I'll have to re-read Manovich's book before I make up my mind about it but in the meantime, here's an interesting article of his: Remix and Remixability.
I found this article by accident while trying to track down a British film company that I read about in a magazine (Wired?) a while ago that was calling themselves Remix Films or something like that. Their site seems to have disappeared, which is a shame because they looked quite promising (although maybe a bit too ambitious). They were making a sci-fi movie about a young girl who is gifted with computers or something and they had a blog and a flickr strean where you could keep up with the production all leading up to the release of all the raw footage for fans to remix. I was especially interested because it supposedly had a lot of effects shots in it.
Posted by rsexton at 02:37 AM | Comments (0)
Stuff That Matters
As part of my immersion in all things open source, I have started reading Slashdot. I found a great news item today that I would like to repost in full:
CRIAWatch writes "The Canadian Recording Industry Association has quietly issued a new study that contradicts many of its own claims about the impact of P2P usage on the music industry. Michael Geist summarizes the 144 page study by noting that the research 'concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders' computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services.'"
Update: looks like Slashdot has been superceded by digg. It seems I'm arriving pretty late to the digg party but I don't mind being a late-adopter these days.
Posted by rsexton at 02:29 AM | Comments (0)
The Mid-Nineties
I wish had TiVo so I could record re-runs of Almost Live! on King 5. Saturdays at 1AM.
Posted by rsexton at 02:24 AM | Comments (0)
Garfield's Words
Did you know that US libraries have more copies of Garfield than Macbeth even though the latter is in the public domain? According to the Online Computer Library Center's Top 1000, Garfield comes in at #15--ahead of every Shakespeare play except Hamlet, which is at #9.
Like Shakespeare, or certain trademarks (Kleenex, Band-Aid, Xerox etc.), Garfield's words have become so ubiquitous that they are well on their way to becoming public property and therefore ripe for remixing--irrespective of copyright law. Actually, I'm not sure what's become of Garfields words now: they are starting to disappear completely from their very panels!
Some clever remixers have discovered that by removing all of Garfield's "thought bubbles", the strip is transformed from comedy into tragedy. Maybe not Shakespearean tragedy but certainly, "a compelling picture of a lonely, pathetic, delusional man who talks to his pets." The previous quote comes from "tailsteak," the creator of my favourite Garfield remix so far: Arbuckle, a collection of user-submitted comics drawn in the new style. The goal is to re-create as many of the 13,000 original strips as possible. They are even presented in chronological order!
Taking an even more deconstructivist approach, the Garfield Randomizer can generate an almost infinite number of strips based on a randomly generated set of panels.
Posted by rsexton at 01:24 AM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2006
Mac Hacks
Want to burn DVDs created in Apple's DVD Studio Pro but don't have a SuperDrive? Try PatchBurn.
Got an iBook and want to use dual monitors? Try ScreenSpanning Doctor.
Posted by rsexton at 03:27 AM | Comments (0)
35mm
Using an adapter, some folks have figured out how to attach professional lenses designed for 35mm cameras to your camcorder.
Posted by rsexton at 03:22 AM | Comments (0)
16mm
My dad still screens 16mm films in his classroom--I doubt there are many teachers these days who can thread up a projector! Anyway, I remember one time he brought me up to the college to watch Capital a great Film Board adaptation of a W. D. Valgardson short story.
I don't think you can borrow 16mm films from the NFB anymore because they're either too beat up or too hard to replace. It's too bad because there arel hundreds of gems in NFB's catalogue that aren't available on DVD.
Posted by rsexton at 02:15 AM | Comments (0)
Rejected
I saw Rejected by Don Hertzfeldt at Spike and Mikes a few years ago and I still think it's my favorite animated film about animated films. Available on DVD.
Posted by rsexton at 01:29 AM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2006
Prayer
If prayer is the act of "asking the universe" difficult questions, then could blogging be a form of prayer? "You launch the questions out there and sometimes you get a response, sometimes not."
Posted by rsexton at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Everything is Blinking Good For You Freaking Crowds
I've been slowly making my way through a series of trendy books that use new research in economics, psychology, and sociology to challenge some kind of conventional wisdom: Blink shows how less information can lead to better decisions; The Wisdom of Crowds argues that the masses know more than the experts; and Freakonomics purports to explore "the hidden side of everything."
Today, I picked up Everything Bad is Good For You, whose title best advertises itself as part of the new "unconventional wisdom" genre. Here is Malcolm Gladwell's review of Everything for The New Yorker. As the author of Blink, his review kind of reads like an extended introduction to the book and the genre but I took notice because it talked about the increasing narrative density of television shows--something that Walter Murch also talked about in his recent lecture at SFU. He also asked how many people in the audience had read Blink. (I'm still sorting through my Murch notes but will post them here soon.)
These authors are very active in the new media world: many have blogs and can be found keynoting at various tech conferences. Their ideas can be found in the design of many so-called Web 2.0 products. Flickr, for example, relies on aggregating the "collective intelligence" of its users for tagging photos--even in determining their "interestingness."
I agree with Matt Haughey that these books "read" well as audiobooks. And in true "unconventional wisdom" style, I've listened to audiobook before reading them in most cases.
Another title that probably belongs on the (audio)bookshelf next to Blink et al. is Everything You Know is Wrong. Google has ushered in a new era of "everythingness" where everyone is a know-it-all and conventional wisdom is only what makes it into the top ten search results. The prototype for this, as Brewster Kahle has pointed out, was the Library of Alexandria. Funny, I had to see the transcript of that podcast to make the connection between Alexandria and Alexa Internet, the company that Kahle mentions in the show.
Now that "the hidden side of everything" (thanks to Google, Gladwell et al.) is available to us in the blink of an eye, what is left for the next series of bestsellers?
Posted by rsexton at 03:58 AM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2006
My Other Oscar Ballot
This one is for my conscience. I've indicated in brackets the number of nominated films that I actually saw. In the categories where I haven't seen any (and it's most of them), I've disqualified myself.
Actor - Leading: PSH (2)
Actor - Supporting: (0)
Actress - Leading: (0)
Actress - Supporting: Amy Adams (2)
Animated Feature: Howl's Moving Castle (1)
Art Direction: Good Night and Good Luck (2)
Cinematography: (0)
Costume Design: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1)
Directing: Bennett Miller for Capote (1)
Documentary Feature: (0)
Documentary Short: (0)
Film Editing: (0--for shame!)
Foreign Language Film: (0)
Makeup: Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith (2)
Score: (0)
Song: (0--pathetic!)
Best Picture: Capote (2)
Short Film - Animated: (0)
Short Film - Live Action: (0)
Sound Editing: King Kong (1)
Sound Mixing: King Kong (2)
Visual Effects: King Kong (2)
Screenplay - Adapted: Capote (1)
Screenplay - Original: The Squid and the Whale (3)
Posted by rsexton at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)
My Oscar Ballot
Here are my office pool predications for tomorrow night:
Actor - Leading: Phillip Seymour Hoffman (or PSH as Amber calls him)
Actor - Supporting: George Clooney
Actress - Leading: Reese Witherspoon
Actress - Supporting: Rachel Weisz
Animated Feature: Wallace and Grommit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Art Direction: Memoirs of a Geisha
Cinematography: Brokeback Mountain
Costume Design: Memoirs of a Geisha
Directing: Ang Lee
Documentary Feature: March of the Penguins
Documentary Short: God Sleeps in Rwanda
Film Editing: Crash
Foreign Language Film: Tsotsi
Makeup: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
Score: Brokeback Mountain
Song: "Travelin' Thru" - Dolly Parton
Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain
Short Film - Animated: One Man Band
Short Film - Live Action: Six Shooter
Sound Editing: King Kong
Sound Mixing: Walk the Line
Visual Effects: King Kong
Screenplay - Adapted: Brokeback Mountain
Screenplay - Original: Crash
Posted by rsexton at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)