Archive for May, 2007
May 29, 2007 at 1:25 pm · tag/s : australia, blog, film, travel
a mouthwatering line up at the sydney film festival next month - unfortunately (or fortunately!) i am (only) going to be there for the last weekend. is the glass half empty or half full? well, i am going to miss a swag of goodies including david lynch’s inland empire which i also missed in new york last year; some very interesting looking docos : the killer within, a walk into the sea : danny williams and the warhol factory; and some intriguing music films : anton corbijn’s biopic on ian curtis called control, shut up and sing, a doco on the dixie chicks’ run in with the american media over the iraq war, a doco about a record the grauniad has called one of the dozen greatest albums of all time : born sandy devotional by the triffids.
on the other hand i’ll be there to see adrienne shelly’s film waitress, the feminist thriller red road (a kind of prequel to italian for beginners, which i loved), the bridge, a doco about the many people that suicide by jumping off the golden gate bridge, miss universe 1929 (For over 20 years, award-winning filmmaker Peter Forgács has examined the private histories of European families between 1930 and 1960, primarily using found footage.) and the monastery : mr vig and the nun (Mr Vig is the owner of a rundown Danish castle. His dream is to turn his rambling home into a Russian Orthodox monastery. The Russian Patriarch sends a delegation of nuns to assess the building’s suitability. Despite the leaking roof and dodgy heating, the nuns return the following summer lead by the young and determined Sister Ambrosija. She is alternately frustrated and charmed by Mr Vig’s recalcitrance and make-do approach. He, in turn, is struggling to accept that to realise his dream he must let go, forfeit his home and his vision.)
and then there is a thing called academy : R.Luke DuBois’ algorithmic programming technology enables an entire feature film to be shown in a perceptible way within the span of a single minute. Academy takes each film awarded the Oscar® for best picture over 75 years, compresses them, and shows them back-to-back in a magnificent play with memory and history. This fascinating project is simultaneously a savvy critique and a celebration of accelerated culture and diminishing attention spans. It also renders visible the historical changes in cinematic structure, timing and technologies.
woa … bugger twenty four hour psycho! this is what busy people need!
May 26, 2007 at 6:53 am · tag/s : art, blog, death, doubt
once the furnaces were kindled, the main fuel relied on was human fat so an effective burn depended on intelligent selection as well as artful stacking.
inga clendinnen - reading the holocaust 83
May 21, 2007 at 7:13 am · tag/s : art, blog, computers
apple is 30 and macworld is running a feature on the 30 best mac products ever. i was relieved to find that my old friends hypercard, the powerbook 100 series and system 7 (just) made it on to the list. although the mac plus missed out. (come on guys a mac with a scsi port and a whole megabyte of ram?) these were truly revolutionary tools. i felt like an explorer in a strange and wondrous land, and no one knew what i was talking about. i would wip out my powerbook 100 on the long commute from newcastle to sydney and my fellow passengers would stare, and sometimes one would venture : what’s that? - it’s a computer. really? and they would shake their heads and go back to their newspapers. little did we all know.
later : i had been turned down for a place in the postgraduate programme at the newcastle university art school because they didn’t have any computers, so the next year i showed up for my interview with my powerbook 100, put it on the table, opened one of my hypercard stacks and said : this is some of my work, and i don’t need you to provide me with a computer. they offered me a place and a job. i changed my name to dan zero and the rest is history.
May 17, 2007 at 6:38 am · tag/s : art, blog, money
quite frankly gentle reader i don’t give a rat’s arse how much any painting sells for and $88 million is no more or less ridiculous than the sad little $15 price tag on a painting by the local artist in the gallery where i work - it is the comments from art investors and gallery directors that drive home why the art “world” is rotten to the core and why it is surely impossible for a person with any integrity to participate in it.
how much? for that?? someone finds the wall on which mark rothko’s white centre (yellow pink and lavender on rose) is hung as interesting as the painting, which sold for $88m yesterday.
read more »
May 12, 2007 at 6:41 am · tag/s : blog, computers, doubt, strange, web
for some reason sometimes when i ask google something it thinks i am a virus, and once it is in this loop, it stays there. this precipitates a significant identity crisis. in fact it has an alarming general effect on how i feel about myself and my place in the world - worst of all : there is no box i can tick to indicate that i am not in fact a virus or a spyware application … i am real! dammit and i want to google something. now. please?
also : they don’t know how to spell “receive” and yes i would be available for employment as a proof reader at google in manhattan - but i don’t come cheap.
May 3, 2007 at 6:52 am · tag/s : film
the weirdest thing about seeing spider-man 3 was that we, the rural cousins in wagga wagga, were apparently only the third place in the world to see it. yeah we beat the americans baby. the second weirdest part was having to hand in my mobile phone and seeing it put in a plastic bag with a number and into a box with everyone else’s mobile phones. for some reason this made me uncomfortable, thinking of my phone with all these strange mobiles on top of him. the third weirdest part was being in a cinema with security guards parading up and down the aisles looking for people with mobile phones or video cameras who might be secretly filming the film. i guess the reason for this is that the film is so crap that if bits of it were to appear on youtube no one will go and see it.
because what a tedious waste of time and US$258 million spider-man 3 is. “A complex web of secrets, vengeance, love and forgiveness…”? i don’t think so. a cliché ridden, run of the mill love story, which includes every narrative device used in hollywood for the last forty nine years, except acrophobia. no one seems to have any fear of heights. although the awful kirsten dunst does a lot of screaming, it is more because bits of buildings and cars keep just missing her. and the ones that do hit her, just bounce off without causing any injuries. it can’t be her charisma that’s protecting her, because she ain’t got none. what a tepid character. and as for the insipid toby maquire, all he’s got going for him is a slightly cute mouth, which he pouts continually like a starlet. the chemistry between dunst and macquire is less than zero. and as for the other bimbo bryce dallas howard? do they have a bimbo factory somewhere out in the new mexico desert?
stan lee would be turning in his gr… but wait : he is still alive. he was one of the executive producers! how sad it would be to get to the end of your life and then to have to prostitute yourself and your much loved creation, to make a few bucks to pay for your bypass operation (say). ah, but, i was told, the special effects were great. i wouldn’t know. i don’t care. but why can’t we have great special effect AND a great story? is that too much to ask?
and where oh where were the walkmen? on myspace they claim to have a song on the film’s soundtrack…
