1. "Quotational Writing": The latest post from Girish Shambu. Food for thought and numerous links of note therein.
["I’m fascinated by writing that juxtaposes quotations, allusions, and citations, ceaselessly making connections to other texts. Of course, a postmodernist would say that all texts do precisely this. Roland Barthes’ famous essay, “The Death of the Author” (1968) calls any text “a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.” Similarly, Michel Foucault writes in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) that every book “is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences … The book is not simply the object that one holds in one’s hands … its unity is variable and relative.” Barthes and Foucault, in an early expression of the postmodern sensibility, were pointing out that intentionally or unintentionally, all texts are intertextual: Every text exists not in isolation or autonomy but as part of a vast ‘environment’ of texts. But I’m after something a bit more specific here: I’m wondering about texts that literally collage together quotations and citations from a variety of sources. One example that leaps to mind is Lesley Stern’s amazing book, The Scorsese Connection (BFI, 1995)."]
2. Walter Chaw delves into the four-disc edition of Blade Runner.
["So I don't like the latest version of Blade Runner very much from an aesthetic (and an aesthete's) viewpoint; I don't like that I can see a good fifty percent more detail in Scott's obsessively intricate set design--evidence of his tyrannical vision in every square centimetre of every single frame. I don't like that it feels like showing off now in a way that every previous, dark-as-pitch version felt like modesty true. But it's a masterpiece, still, impossible for me to separate in my mind from one giant omnibus evolving in leaps and bounds with each technological advancement and revealing with each ironic scrub, addition, and subtraction a piece forever growing in terms of intra- and extra-textual complexity."]
3. Go GreenCine for your Kingdom of the Crystal Skull fix. The reviews are out!
[""Best appreciated as a pulp prequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind... no, I can't," sighs Glenn Kenny... "I mean the thing kind of is that, but the fourth Indy installment isn't really an attempt to retroactively create a Spielberg omniverse. But David Koepp's script, from a story by George Lucas and Jeff Nathanson and Hergé and Edgar Rice Burroughs and Erich von Däniken and Carl Stephenson and... well, you get the idea... does tie together a good number of Spielbergian themes into an eventually pretty nifty package. Yeah - this is, by my sights, the most fun and least irritating installment of the series since the first one.""]
4. "Nintendo shows us how Wii can get 'Fit'": The gamer workout.
["If Nintendo has their way your living room could be the new big thing in exercise. With its new game "Wii Fit" hitting stores Monday, Nintendo is looking to bring exercise into the home, making people more aware of their bodies and starting to create a comfortable, fun environment to get healthy."]
5. "Revealing Starbucks logo gets mixed reviews": Some milk with that?
["Starbucks Corp. has a new more revealing logo of its trademark mermaid. The logo — which offers a more revealing look at the coffee chain's mermaid symbol and goes with brown instead of green as its color — is getting mixed reviews from marketing and public relations experts. "It's unusual," said Sally Baker, who runs Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Great Ideas Public Relations. "I'm not sure most people will get it." The logo features a bare-chested mermaid with her tail fin split in half. The previous green logo showed less of the mermaid."]
Quote of the Day: Bette Davis
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): National mourning in China for the earthquake victims.
Clip of the Day: I just know you want to stare down Jessica Alba.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Links for the Day (May 19th, 2008)
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7 comments:
Re #5: I'm hoping religious or parents groups go into an uproar over the appropriateness of the new Starbucks logo. I can just imagine them saying "She's showing too much...fin!"
Re #3: I wish I could work up enthusiasm for "Indiana Jones", but the good reviews feel like the movie's getting a pass for nostalgia's sake by critics who grew up with the series.
I love "Raiders", but felt the sequels were representative of the period where Spielberg's filmmaking descended into self-parody, roughly from 1984-1991. Good moments in each, but completely missing the complexity of the ambitious archeologist out for pride and glory in the first movie to a more generic hero in the sequels. This new one looks more of the same.
Steven: Self-parody? Looking over his directorial efforts from that period, it wasn't his strongest stretch, but it does have "Empire of the Sun," which may be my favorite of Spielberg's films. I realize saying that puts me among a very small minority, but I'm not sure even that film's detractors would label "Empire" as "self parody." A few Spielbergian flourishes? Certainly. But that's not the same thing.
I may be making a mountain out of a molehill here. Your comments don't really rub me the wrong way. I just don't like seeing "Empire" so easily dismissed, even if it was inadvertent.
#5: Uh, that maid's got her fins spread about as much as maidenly possible. You can see her whole mercrotch. Aren't they supposed to have only one tail?
Discman,
"Empire of the Sun" does have many strong moments (pretty much anything with Malkovich), which I felt were undermined by Spielbergian touches. It's actually the movie from that period I enjoy the most. But the last 45 minutes of the movie has the kind of multiple climax ending that I feel he is often wrongly accused of doing in the past 10-15 years. Emotional epiphanies that don't quite seem earned.
I felt during that period was when Spielberg fell victim to that often. It became more noticeable when other lesser directors were imitating this very aspect of his storytelling. Which is why I described it as Spielberg descending into self-parody. Doesn't every director go through this sort of phase at least once in their careers?
I dread the possiblility that this Indy-sode will combine the action panache of Hook with the sentiment of Always. I'm not in the least curious about this newest addition to the series and like first impressions, that instinct is often correct.
RE: Recent mention of "Hook" the latest absurd instance of a)bringing up Spielberg, b) juxtapostions made for the sake of their contrarian strain.
"It’s as if they were made for future media—prophetically designed to extend Godard’s scrutiny of the human condition even into the era when Van Sant, Haynes, P.T. Anderson, David Fincher, the Wachowski Brothers and Cronenberg trivialized cinematic potential. Godard’s first TV production, 1969’s Le Gai Savoir, is ideally viewed on DVD—its TV-look being as sui generis as the Neverland sequences of Spielberg’s Hook."
For real?
Oops, that last post was obviously meant to attribute that quote to the one and only Armond White. "...instance of Armond White..."
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