Columns
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Failure, Brian Eno, the Vanishing Gallery Show and More: Sunday Links
At Vulture, Jerry Saltz bemoans the “Death of the Gallery Show,” particularly the effect new ways of seeing and purchasing art are having on the discourse around art itself: Gallery shows: light of my life, fire of my eyes. I love and long for them. I see maybe 30 a week, every week of the year. Much of what I know about contemporary art I learned from hanging around artists and from going to galleries. Bad shows teach me as much as good ones. A great thing about galleries—especially for someone who spends most of his time alone at a […]
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Kickstarter Tax Implications, Veronica Mars, SFX and a Tragic Dimension: Sunday Morning Links
Bruce Sterling’s closing remarks at SXSW Interactive have been posted at Wired’s Beyond the Beyond blog. It’s a long talk on the aesthetic and moral dimensions of disruption, an emergent Southwest and the tackiness of 3D figurines. An excerpt: And then there’s this empty pretense that these innovations make the world “better.” This is a dangerous word. Like: “If we’re not making the world better, then why are we doing this at all?” Now, I don’t want to claim that this attitude is hypocritical. Because when you say a thing like that at SouthBy: “Oh, we’re here to make the […]
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Wayne Coyne on “Paul is Dead”
Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne appeared as a guest DJ on the All Things Considered radio show and podcast recently, speaking about his band’s own songs and their influences in a great interview that began with a startling track: “Strawberry Fields,” by the Beatles. Okay, it’s a fantastic song, but what startled me was Coyne’s reasons for selecting it. Coyne describes listening to the track as a kid, discovering the so-called “Paul is Dead” conspiracy and having the song’s final words, “I buried Paul” “seared into” his brain: “What a strange, strange way to end any record by any weirdo […]
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Remembering Roger Ebert, 1942 – 2013
“Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet…” — Alain De Botton I hadn’t recalled my dank childhood basement in quite some time, but the room, with its wicker furniture, orange-ish carpet and large, wood-panelled Sony TV, came flooding back last week upon reading of the sad passing of film critic Roger Ebert, just one day after he posted a “leave of presence,” a slowing-down that was still more active than the combined work of two men these days. It was in that basement that I’d faithfully watch […]
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Upstream Color — A Hammer To Nail Review (and Interview)
(Upstream Color premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in January. It opens theatrically in New York on Friday, April 5, and will roll out to other cities in April and May before becoming available on DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD on May 7. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) Here’s the plot of Shane Carruth’s new film Upstream Color, for all the good it will do you: A young woman named Kris (Amy Seimetz) is kidnapped by a man named in the credits only as the Thief (Thiago Martins). The Thief has been conducting secret experiments in mind […]
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Shooting With John: Rodrigo Lopresti
Every project is an opportunity for growth; a new lesson and challenge of its own. It’s difficult to find directors you can trust. But when you do, you never want to let them go. I think one of the things that defines a good director is the ability to know when it’s time to step in, and when it’s time to step aside. Here’s what I want to talk about, though: letting go. To me, the best work is not tightly controlled, forced, or formulaic. I think good filmmakers and good actors understand this. But there’s always a tension — […]
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What’s In My Instapaper: Game of Thrones, Bitcoin, Video Game Death, Chloe Sevigny and More
Here are my weekly Sunday morning links. A sophisticated discussion of videogames and violence is contained in Adi Robertson’s “Death is Dead: How Modern Videogame Designers Killed Danger” at the Verge. The article quotes David Cage, whose Beyond: Two Souls is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival this year, proclaiming, “If the character doesn’t hold a gun, designers don’t even know what to do.” That leads to a discussion about the relationship of death to videogame narrative: But unlike Cage, most of the writers giving talks at GDC don’t come into a game with complete control. They’re brought on to […]
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Kiss of the Damned — A Hammer To Nail Review
(Kiss of the Damned world premiered at the 2012 Venice Film Festival. It becomes available on VOD on March 28, 2013, and opens theatrically on May 3rd. Visit the film’s page at Magnet Releasing to learn more. NOTE: This review was written in conjunction with the film’s North American premiere at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival.) One of the most accomplished and engaging North American premieres I saw at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival was a genre film, the first fiction feature by Xan Cassavetes. Xan is the daughter of cinema legends John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands. Her first film, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, was a documentary about […]
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What’s In My Instapaper: Jason Molina, Google Reader, Female Road Narratives and More
I discover the links for these weekly columns through one source: Google Reader. Well, last week, Google sent the beloved Google Reader to its graveyard. I didn’t initially understand how difficult it will be to replace Google Reader until listening to last week’s Accidental Tech Podcast, even as the show’s Marco Arment believes that Google’s departure from the RSS space will be a good thing in the long run. Still, the shutdown has prompted a lot of press, and not all in the tech field, questioning our dependence on Google given their penchant for launching and shuttering services. For Google […]
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Gimme the Loot — A Hammer To Nail Review
(Gimme the Loot world premiered at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. It was picked up for distribution by Sundance Selects before landing a coveted slot in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard. It opens theatrically in New York City on Friday, March 22, 2013. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) Writer/director Adam Leon’s Gimme the Loot is set firmly in present-day New York City, in the comparatively still rough-and-tumble Bronx. It is filled with curse words. There are drugs. There is thievery. And yet it’s just so gosh darn adorable. How is that […]
