"A SERIES OF TUBES"

By Scott Macaulay

Over at Talking Points Memo Cafe, Art Brodsky has a broad-strokes summary of the situation facing the net neutrality bill currently pending in the Senate. Net neutrality is a complicated issue that I’ve been erratic in blogging about, but Brodsky’s piece does bring the issue back down to its core roots.

Here’s Brodksy on the political situation:

That leads us to the first number today, 60. That’s how many votes Stevens needs to round up before he can bring his bill to the floor. Senate rules require 60 votes to cut off debate on legislation. Otherwise, practically speaking, the bill is dead. So, the Senate leadership has told Stevens he must have the votes in hand to cut off debate before the bill will be brought up for debate.

Goodness knows, the troops are on the march to achieve the 60-vote objective. The telephone companies and their allies are flooding Capitol Hill, all seeking meetings with legislative staffers. Those allies include any industries that have something favorable to them in the bill. It’s telephone companies large and small. It’s cellular companies, and cable companies. It’s the content companies which want government-mandated technology to stop fair use of TV broadcasts (the “broadcast flag” and advanced recording of music (the “audio flag). That’s a lot of firepower.

Stevens and his staff cut deals to help those people and Stevens and his staff want help in forcing the bill through. Every week, there are meetings around Washington in which the telephone companies and their lobbyists are going through check lists and planning as many meetings as they can with the sole goal of making sure a Senator will vote to cut off debate.

And here he is on what’s at stake:

The real debate is over the future of the next Google’s and Yahoo!s. Google and Yahoo! and others are fighting to protect the future of the Internet, so that the economic and regulatory conditions that fostered the original Yahoo! and the original Google will still be around, and so that entrepreneurs won’t have their business plans depend on the kindness, or

… Read the rest

LIFE OF THE ARTIST

By Admin

There is something about an artist that is undeniably intriguing. The public expects their daily lives to be somehow different, filled with the dreamy eccentricities of Dali or the tormented thoughts of Munch. We want their life stories to play out in dramatic form so we see the bridge between the creator and the creation. Because this summer’s Guggenheim exhibit focuses on one of the Greatest American Painters of the 20th Century, The New Yorker has taken a look into the life of Jacson Pollock. He is the lead of his own bildungsroman:

“Tragedy enhanced Pollock’s status as the first American painter, after the corn-belt realist Grant Wood, to acheive general popular renown, as a shining native son. Born in Wyoming, Pollock came to New York, from California, in 1930. He was mentored at the Art Students League by Wood’s American Scene colleague Thomas Hart Benton. He soon found the Expressionist and Surrealist tendencies of the downtown avant-garde more congenial than Benton’s mannered figuration, partly because he was tormented by a belief that he could never draw properly. But a sense of nationalist mandate stayed with him.”

He is a controversial desirable:

“The glowering Westerner who became known as Jack the Dripper seemed to speak not just for the country but as it, in person: the Great American Painter, at a moment that was hot for Great American thises and thats. His helplessly photogenic, clenched features, broadcast by Life in 1949, made him a pinup of seething manhood akin to Marlon Brando… Abstraction may have scandalized most Americans, but suddenly it was a homegrown scandal, with nothing sissified about it. The macho pose, an obligatory overcompensation for aestheticism in the nineteen-fifties, ill suited a man whose ruling emotion was fear… But it sold magazines.”

And finally, he is a groundbreaking artist:

“… You feel the force, however baffled and flailing, of an ambition to recocile boundless pictorial space… with raw, emotionally driven physicality… Pollock at his peak burned his past conditioning and present turmoil, his very identity and character as a man, and he burned them clean. There’s nobody to … Read the rest

COUNTRY LIFE

By Scott Macaulay

Over at his blog, Mark K-Punk riffs on Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley books, their filmed versions, and glam — specifically, Roxy Music:

Significantly, Highsmith wrote the first Ripley novel in 1955 and only returned to the character in 1970. Tom Ripley was not a character that could fit into the rock and roll era, with its emphasis on teen desire, social disruption and Dionysiac excess. But Ripley’s‘hedonic conservatism’, his snobbery and his facility with masks and disguise, mean that he would be perfectly at home in the Marienbad-like country estate of Glam. If Sixties rock was characterized, on the one hand, by appeals made to the big Other (demands for social change and/ or more pleasure) and, on the other hand, by the denial of the existence of the Symbolic order as such (psychedelia), then Glam was defined, initially, by a hyperbolic/ parodic identification with the big Other – by the return of Signs and/ of Status.

K-Punk goes on discuss Ripley’s change in social status between The Talented Mr. Ripley and Ripley Underground and sees a parallel in the progression of the Roxy albums.

Ripley’s trajectory is uncannily in sync with that of Bryan Ferry (pictured). Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure, those exercises in learning and unlearning of accent and manners, are Pop’s equivalent of The Talented Mr Ripley. The clothes, the bearing and the voice are faked, but not yet perfectly. The roots still show, and the painful drama of becoming something you are not still carries an existential charge. Stranded and the subsequent albums, meanwhile, are the equivalent of the later novels; here, success is assumed, and the threats to the tasteful but banal idyll come from ennui, a certain unease with contentment, and – most ominous of all – the danger of the past returning. The vapid bucolia of Roxy’s Avalon – recorded when Ferry was himself married to an heiress and living on a country estate – would be the perfect soundtrack to Ripley puttering around in his Harpers and Queens dream home, Belle Ombre, with his wife, Heloise.

There’s more, including a … Read the rest

THE MAIN PURPOSE OF FICTION

By Scott Macaulay

Okay, it’s not film related, but…

Blog of a Bookslut notes that the new Thomas Pynchon novel, Against the Day, is scheduled to be released by Penguin on December 6.

Pynchon himself has penned the description on the book’s Amazon.com page:

“Spanning the period between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.

With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it’s their lives that pursue them.

Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they’re doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.”

According to The Guardian, “the author will not be going on a promotional tour.”… Read the rest

RED DESERT

By Scott Macaulay

Chuck Tryon’s The Chutry Experiment points to an interesting and, if my own behavior is any indication, accurate article in The Wall Street Journal Online on how Netflix is changing people’s DVD viewing habits. Specifically, the article talks about how the service’s easy access to great movies encourages those movies to stay sealed in their little red envelopes unwatched for weeks and even months at a time.

From the article:

Netflix Inc., which boasts nearly five million members, often trumpets how its all-you-can-eat rental model is changing the way people are watching movies. But Netflix may also be changing the way people don’t watch them. Through its Web site, Netflix makes it easy to comb through a massive catalog of 60,000 films. It offers access to everything from Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 silent tramp movie “The Kid” to recent Academy Award-winners like “Crash.” And some members admit that when browsing the Netflix backlog, they overestimate their appetite for off-the-beaten-track films. The result: Sometimes DVDs languish for months without being watched.

The article goes on to talk about how if someone goes to a video store to rent something for that evening, he or she is more likely to pick an entertaining and more commercial movie. If one is putting together a list of movies for future viewing, he or she will pick the cinematic equivalent of a heaping plate of vegatables — movies that are “good for you.”

“It’s a paradox of abundance,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of culture and communication at New York University. If people aren’t pressured to see a movie in a specific time frame, he said, viewers tend to put it lower on their priority list. “When you have every choice in front of you, you have less urgency about any particular choice,” he added.

The result can be a type of guilt-fueled Netflix bottleneck for users, who may not feel like watching a film but are also loath to return it, said Mike Kaltschnee, who writes a popular blog called HackingNetflix. He’s experienced the sensation himself. He twice rented Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the

… Read the rest

HEY LUKE!

By Scott Macaulay

Screenwriting inspiration can come from anywhere, even, if Donald Fagen and Walter Becker can be believed, from their Steely Dan song “Cousin Dupree.” In a letter on their website they ask Luke Wilson to do them a solid by speaking to his brother Owen about a matter that’s on their minds — the storyline of You, Me and Dupree, which they, with tongue partially in cheek (or at least I hope so, otherwise the bit at the end about the Russian bodyguard becomes not so funny), say seems inspired by their song.

The lyrics in question:

Well I’ve kicked around a lot since high school
I’ve worked a lot of nowhere gigs
From keyboard man in a rock’n ska band
To haulin’ boss crude in the big rigs

Now I’ve come back home to plan my next move
From the comfort of my Aunt Faye’s couch
When I see my little cousin Janine walk in
All I could say was ow ow ouch

CHORUS:
Honey how you’ve grown
Like a rose
Well we used to play
When we were three
How about a kiss for your cousin Dupree

Check out the letter — it’s hilarious.… Read the rest

VIDEO MISCELLANIA

By Scott Macaulay

Some video links for your weekend viewing pleasure.

Here’s a link to a rejected (for being too weird) series of jeans commercials by Jean-Luc Godard commissioned by Marithé + François Girbaud’s Closed Jeans.

From the amazing Ubu Web comes a a new page devoted to the “Cinema of Transgression,” an underground film movement that flourished in New York during the ’80s. Along with Nick Zedd’s Cinema of Transgression Manifesto you’ll find free downloads and streams of films by Richard Kern, Beth B, Kembra Pfahler, Jon Moritsugu, Tessa Hughes-Freeland and others. (The above two links courtesy of Dennis Cooper’s blog.)

A while back we linked to Harmony Korine’s Cat Power video. Here’s her latest, directed by Robert Gordon: “Lived in Bars.”

And finally, well, James Ponsoldt emailed the above link plus another that sounded great… a live Pink Floyd TV appearance in which the band is insulted by the host and the late, great Syd Barrett endures it all with impeccable politeness. But in posting the link I see that Pink Floyd management has threatened it off of YouTube. Oh well, check out the rest that’s here, especially the links on Ubu Web.… Read the rest

CUNNINGHAM/MORTON HORROR SHOW

By Scott Macaulay

It’s great when one of your favorite directors releases something starring one of your favorite actresses… and you had no idea that it was even in the works! James Ponsoldt just emailed me to tell me about this new Chris Cunningham music video, his first in seven years, which features Samantha Morton. The band is The Horrors, the song is “Sheena is a Parasite,” and, according to Director File (linked above):

…the 1.5-minute clip, narrated by lead singer Faris Badwan, stars Samantha Morton as the song’s manic, transmogrifying subject who whips around like a banshee and spews her intestines at you. Sharply edited and shot on a low budget, the video burns on the bass’ running pulse, and provides more fleshy fodder for Cunningham fans. The video’s producer was Jim Wilson; it was posted at Golden Square.

The video will be released on a DualDisc on 31 July 2006 via The Horrors’ homebase, Loog Records.

Shots has more:

Cunningham was not available for comment, but Golden Square’s Inferno artist Rachel Mills, who worked closely with him throughout the process, explained how the promo was done. “‘Sheena Is A Parasite’ took three weeks of flame compositing,” she says. “The whole concept and visual identity of the spot was devised by Chris. The main takes of the promo were filmed in a studio on DV CAM with many other elements shot specifically to fit in with the edit, at a later date, by Chris working at home.

“The post work involved multi-layer composites, seamless transitions between takes and cleaning up backgrounds. One of the challenges of working on the video is the frame accuracy of the visual/audio synchronization. This predetermines the necessity to use multiple takes for shots to sync perfectly,” she added.

Wanna see it? Shots is streaming it here.… Read the rest

BLOGGING LEBANON

By Scott Macaulay

For those wanting to cut through the MSM filters to read first-hand experience about life in Lebanon at the moment, The Huffington Post has linked to this blogger map on Truth Laid Bear that identifies all the blogs being posted from Lebanon right now by location.… Read the rest

HOLLYWOOD AND 2257

By Scott Macaulay

Brooks Boliek in The Hollywood Reporter reports on a bill being voted on by the Senate that extends the reach of the Justice Department’s 2257 regulations, which we’ve blogged about often, to Hollywood films. Bizarrely dubbed “the Adam Walsh Act” — after the murdered son of America’s Most Wanted‘s John Walsh (what does his death have to do with simulated sex scenes in mainstream films?) — the bill seems to have been severely scaled back from its original drafting.

From the piece:

The bill potentially reaching the Senate today has been significantly altered to address the concerns of the motion picture industry, contrary to the language first pushed by Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., equating sexy Hollywood fare with hard-core pornography.

Under Pence’s original amendment, “any book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape or other matter” that contained a simulated sex scene would come under the same government-filing requirements that adult films must meet (HR 3/9).

Currently, any actual filmed sexual activity requires an affidavit that lists the names and ages of the actors who engage in the act. The film is required to have a video label that claims compliance with the law and lists where the custodian of the records can be found. The record-keeping requirement is known as Section 2257, for its citation in federal law. Violators could spend five years in jail.

Pence’s provision expanded the definition of sexual activity to include simulated sex acts like those that appear in many movies and TV shows.

The new bill has scaled back record keeping requirements, but, at the core, it does seem to prohibit a filmmaker from filming a simulated sex scene with an actor under 18.

Again, from the article:

According to a draft of the current legislation obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, the makers of movies and TV programs still would have to keep records that verify the actors involved in simulated sex scenes are over 18, but they wouldn’t have to keep separate records or a different record for every scene. As long as the studios tell the Justice Department that they keep records of performers’

… Read the rest