Popular Media
« Older Entries |
Newer Entries »
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on May 10, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Sunday, May 10th, 2009
My ongoing search for quality short film and music videos is sated briefly by some Rob Dougan.
I remember clearly when MTV was new. I was in a trendy band comprised of artists who dabbled in visual art, fashion and film, and we were incredibly excited about the possibilities. We of course were quickly disappointed as the medium turned into an endless string of “hair bands with hot chick videos”. To me, the marriage of music and moving images still remains a vastly under-explored territory; although there are many full length films brilliantly married to their music (Betty Blue
and Paris, Texas
remain a couple of faves), I’ve always been more intrigued with the idea of a shorter format (I’ve mentioned shorts before) that might allow a more abstract exploration of the possibilities. The other day a friend turned me on to the video at left, which is by Rob Dougan. It’s a stunning short film set to his theme Clubbed To Death
, which will be familiar to many from the soundtrack of The Matrix. If you like it, check out the full CD, Furious Angels
. It’s a great CD, but his Tom Waits-like vocal stylings seem to divide opinions. My friends who like Waits found it off-putting, and my friends who don’t like Waits enjoyed it. Go figure. In any case, I wish this were a more clearly defined medium; although there are collections like Pitchfork Media’s 100 Awesome Music Videos, it’s hard to find work like this in one place, and even that collection focuses on the standard pop song promotion format. I’d also be happy if the medium were more popular because I personally have a huge backlog of ambient and instrumental material I would love to market myself! I love this Sick of Dance Music interview with Dougan in The Guardian; it sums up a lot of how I feel about my own work. Especially the “dance music that you could never dance to” reference. I also identify with his indifference to his creation; although my music’s been used in a lot of commercial/industrial video and licensed for one film, I sometimes actually forget it exists (just check the last log in on that ambient link if you think I’m kidding). If you know of any nice clips like the one featured here, please share!
Read the rest of this entry »
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on May 5, 2009 by admin in Clean & Green, Popular Media
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
Aside from the Jolly Green Giant, which celebrities are really living green?
Honourable Mention |
A friend of mine told me the other day about how U2 guitarist The Edge is putting celebrity residents of Malibu, CA in a tizzy by building five mansions on a local mountaintop for an estimated $15 million. Although The Edge claims the building project is taking a completely green approach, locals point out that this is irrelevant, as it will create a “permanently scarred mountainside” (I’m giving the “Best Headline of 2009 Award” to the Irish Tribune News for “Richest nimbys in US row with Edge over plans“). So this got me wondering: aside from the Jolly Green Giant and a few hot Sci-Fi chicks, which celebrities are really living green? Well, PETA has once again picked the sexiest vegetarians alive, Natalie Portman has a line of eco-friendly footwear, and a lot of celebs drive green cars. Let’s face it, it’s kind of a given that a celebity’s publicist will make sure that there a lots of green photo ops, like George Clooney posing with his Tango, but how green can you really be if you have to take jets, limos, and security teams with you everywhere you go? The Chicago Tribune has a slide show of not green celebrities, where we learn that Celine Dion, for instance, uses 18,000 gallons of water a day for a home she doesn’t live in, and Treehugger.com informs us that when Woody Harrelson forgets to pack his favorite vegan belt and shoes, he has them flown by jet to Cannes. Our pick for best green celebrity? Green Day’s partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council. You’ve gotta be a little punk to really be green.
[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 22, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
One of my few heroes passes away…
  |
I read very little fiction, and when I do, I’m drawn to either the thousands of classics I still haven’t read, or the less-conventional in contemporary fiction, like Salman Rushdie
, Will Self
, Martin Amis, or Michael Brodsky
. Which is why I’m rather saddened by the recent passing of J.G. Ballard . Ballard is best known for his novels Crash
and Empire of the Sun because they were both made into films (two of my favorite films, coincidentally). I remember when I first read Crash; I was told of the premise, and started reading it with considerable doubts about whether its premise of “auto crash eroticism” could work. To my surprise, about thirty pages into it, I found myself wanting to go crash a car myself, just for the sexual gratification! His use of words can be so compelling that unthinkable things can become thinkable. Which is for me a big part of the appeal of Ballard’s writing. As Martin Amis once put it: “Ballard is quite unlike anyone else; indeed, he seems to address a different – a disused – part of the reader’s brain.” As an occasional writer myself, the 2004 Times Online piece J.G. Ballard: How I Write was kind of an inspiration to me as a person who often writes longhand, and it also inspired me to write daily, and with a little discipline. Aside from a considerable body of work in the form of novels and short stories, Ballard also unrelentingly expressed clever insights about contemporary culture. One of my favorites is his observation (in the preface of the 1990 edition The Atrocity Exhibition): “…it struck me that Reagan was the first politician to exploit the fact that his TV audience would not be listening too closely, if at all, to what he was saying, and indeed might well assume from his manner and presentation that he was saying the exact opposite of the words actually emerging from his mouth“. Although he was referring to the Ronald Reagan who had eventually become president in 1980, the observation was made in response to a question about his short work Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan which was written in 1967.
[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 18, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Saturday, April 18th, 2009
Will an Oprah endorsement kill Twitter before people know what it is?
I apologize in advance to any Twitter addicts reading this, the piece will almost certainly be longer than 140 characters. The fact that Ashton Kutcher punk’d CNN the other day, combined with Oprah’s first all-caps tweet (see below), spoke volumes about Twitter’s future. First of all, Kutcher really did punk the game, with donated billboard space. That’s not viral marketing, it’s germ warfare. And many would agree that an endorsement from Oprah is more like a command to a zombie army than it is an indication of the validity of something. I predict that unless Twitter either implements some amazing and broadly accessible real-time search (as has been suggested), or builds a more Facebook-like central site that incorporates additional social networking features, the service is destined to max out somewhere around the number of active crackberry users. If Twitter is all about sharing what you’re doing at any given moment, you have to remember you could get the same information about many Americans by just looking at that evening’s TV listings. And those same Americans are probably not texting very much yet. I mean, although a Google exec may be showing a lot of ignorance by calling Twitter just another e-mail service, these Americans we’re talking about are the same people that in a CNN poll responded to the question “Do you use Twitter?” with 6% saying “Yes,” 64% saying “No,” and 30% saying “What’s Twitter?” Read the rest of this entry »
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on April 8, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
The physics are obvious enough. But what is this thing I have for green women?
Green Chicks Are Hot |
The original Star Trek television series
, for better or worse, has influenced my life in two profound ways: 1.) I’ve been disappointed with our primitive technology my entire life, and 2.) I think green chicks are hot. Although I’m not really a sci-fi fan per se (I mean, I don’t write 7,000 word treatises on how transporters work, for instance), some of my favorite pop media (Blade Runner, 2001, Ray Bradbury) are in the genre. And the original Star Trek was one of my favorite shows as a kid. That’s why I’m excited to hear that the responses to an early surprise screening of the upcoming film were mostly very positive. The Star Trek franchise has definitely had a bumpy history. In case you’ve been living in an alternate universe and need a primer, Cracked.com has a humorous and informative overview of the best and worst of the Star Trek oeuvre. If you’re already something of a fan, you might find Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek a little amusing, with observations like: “…we also know what the worst job on the Enterprise would be: having to squeegie the holodeck clean“. Which is something I’ve always thought about. I mean, given basic human nature and the fact that 90% of internet traffic is spam about penis enlargement or porn being downloaded, do we really think the Holodeck would be used any differently? If you’re more of a realist, or perhaps a teacher looking for way to make basic physics more amusing, check out The Physics of Star Trek
, wherein they demonstrate with existing physics how “warp drive” would require more energy than our Sun will produce in its lifetime. Or how, although a holodock is theoretically possible, “Eventually you’ll hit the wall if you walk around“. Which is all fine and well. What I really want to know is why do I think green chicks are so hot?
