Maximus Clarke talks with William Gibson about his “speculative novels of last Wednesday” by Maud Newton (via B²) (tagged: williamgibson fiction scifi interview writing ) George Lucas Stole Chewbacca, But It’s Okay at Binary Bonsai (via B²) (tagged: starwars Chewbacca creativity design film essay todo ) jQuery Regular Expressions Review (Rev:20100921_1700) via @rmurphey (tagged: regex […]
Death to Humans! Visions of the Apocalypse in Movies and Literature: Scientific American via @johnjosephadams — though I take issue with: [1] how many movies there are (since so many movies are usually so bad); [2] The Andromeda Strain (whose scale is hardly apocalyptic); and [3] that Adams' The Wastelands collection is missing! (tagged: film […]
Documentary! No, wait! It’s an action flick! Vaporized blood? Ick! Still unpacking District 9. I was a little jarred by the fact that they start it out as a faux documentary (which I loved immediately) and then cut to scenes that were more a bit more “traditional action film”; but I can’t say that I […]
With 3D turning into a big draw for box office films now 1, and with Sony claiming they’ll put in our living rooms by the end of the year, I’ve had a few conversations now about the 3D effects and whether/not they “feel right”. Most folks seem to agree that if you let go and […]
Crafting Subtle & Realistic User Interfaces At Flyosity (via JR) – re: “what exactly is button?“ (tagged: ui ux Essay todo ) What storytelling risks could Avatar have taken? at B² – having had about two weeks to unpack it now, I must say that I feel similarly. I hope to put together a more […]
Rashomon at rogerebert.com (via DF) (tagged: film cinema culture Rashomon Kurosawa essay ) Observations: Evolution details revealed through 21-year E. coli experiment via /. — E. coli evolution FTW! (tagged: evolution news ) Wall Street Smarts Another one via DF (at NYTimes.com): “Did you ever hear the word ‘derivatives’?” he said. “Do you think our […]
When you walk away from Robocop, there is a temptation to describe it as a Dickian film. Certainly the elements seem to be there: a man with a subsumed identity and a concealed past, struggling against forces larger than him–perhaps even controlling him–in a bleak dystopian future setting. The looming megacorporation that wipes out his […]
Coming to Deadwood‘s anti-climactic finale last night, I decided to append a few follow-up notes and thought questions to my earlier assertion that the show was David Milch’s attempt at a purely American creation myth: Upon further reflection, Milch is attempting some important inversions on the creation myth paradigm. We’ve already discussed how his women […]
Work with me here: When David Milch hallucinated the opening scene to what would become Deadwood, when he gathered up his personal assistant(s) into a darkened room and reclined on the couch to spill forth from his amygdala exactly what he was seeing beyond his third eye, he was leaking his fever-dream vision of a […]
descend from Andes descend to utter madness wrestle with monkeys Great film. Stunning. Epic. Masterfully shot. Surreal. Insert more superlatives here. However, when your primary film-selection criterion for the evening is “which one is shortest?” – well, this one may leave your jaw unpleasantly unhinged. Bewildering. Will watch again. When I’m more serious about it.