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« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Han Hoogerbrugge’s Macabre Multimedia Musings
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on September 17, 2008 by admin in Popular Media
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008Somewhere in the dark recesses of my unconscious is a place where for all eternity I sit with Han Hoogerbrugge, sipping tea beneath a sky of time-lapse clouds, trying to ignore the subtle but relentless humming sound in the background, as he mindlessly, mechanically mimes something over and over. And I’ve never even met the [...]
Somewhere in the dark recesses of my unconscious is a place where for all eternity I sit with Han Hoogerbrugge, sipping tea beneath a sky of time-lapse clouds, trying to ignore the subtle but relentless humming sound in the background, as he mindlessly, mechanically mimes something over and over. And I’ve never even met the guy. Hoogerbrugge does something I’ve always wanted to do; he takes a simple medium (usually Flash animation) and utilizing simple images, unusual atmospheric sounds, and a bizarre vision of worlds that may be, creates mesmerizing multimedia pieces that become an art form unto themselves. If you’ve never seen his work before, I recommend starting with his early interactive animation work like Modern Living or Nails, but he’s done other interesting interactive work as well, specifically, things like The Hotel, a surreal series that takes place in the anonymous space of an extraordinary and strange hotel.
More Fun Than A Clown on Fire
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 10, 2008 by admin in Popular Media
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008Or a KKK rally. Or a political convention. Or Killing Kittens…
It seems video games offer a little something to offend everyone these days. I ran across a link to Muslim Massacre yesterday, and my immediate reaction was “Oh my God, how pointlessly offensive, I wonder when the fatwa will be issued?”. Which more or less remains my response. But in the interest of equal time, let’s make sure everyone has something to get offended about. First of all, I should point out that Muslim Massacre is Windows Only, so since the site goads you with “Don’t be a liberal p*ssy! Download this game now!”, I guess we’ve covered Mac users too. For those who are most offended by that first link, we have Bush Shootout (hell, who couldn’t enjoy that one) or WTC Defender. Just laugh maniacally while you let the planes crash instead of shooting them. Isn’t that what the White House did? For “Best Marketing Plan Award”, there’s Virginia Tech Rampage, whose creator said he’d pull the game if enough donations were made (much more clever than Super Columbine Massacre, where apparently you just shoot kids). And still sporting a fairly high offensiveness quotient, but a little less bloody, we have Operation Pedopriest in which you’re asked by the Vatican to cover up pedophilia among priests, and So You Think You Can Drive, Mel? , in which you help the man who brought us the phrase “sugar tits” avoid state troopers and rabbis while gathering bottles of tequila.
Sometimes Moore Is Less
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on September 6, 2008 by admin in Popular Media
Saturday, September 6th, 2008The Price is Right: Sign up to download Slacker Uprising for free
As a youngster living in the cultural backwater otherwise known as Michigan, I found Michael Moore’s early films
The Story. Of A Man. A Man With A Voice Like No Other.
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 3, 2008 by admin in Popular Media
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008Going to the movies will never be the same…
I’ve always dreamed of being the voiceover guy who does movie trailers. You know, “A story. About a noun. And a noun. Verbing in a noun, verbed adverb by a noun”. So I was sad to hear that Don LaFontaine, “king of the movie trailers”, passed away the other day. I think it would be fantastic if Hal Douglas – “the other” movie trailer guy – did a eulogy, but in lieu of that, I’ll settle for the clip at left in which Hal does the ultimate self-referential parody: an actual trailer for the Seinfeld movie “Comedian”. For a quick and entertaining Don LaFontaine biography, check out this five-minute clip on YouTube, largely narrated by – who else? Don LaFontaine.
MythBusters On Millisecond Mona Lisas And Maoist Media Management
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 31, 2008 by admin in Popular Media
Sunday, August 31st, 2008And…are the MythBusters Milquetoasts?
In the video at left from NVIDIA’s NVISION 2008 (a geekfest promoting video card maker NVIDIA) Jamie & Adam of MythBusters demonstrate how to paint a Mona Lisa in 80 milliseconds. If you plan to try this at home, keep in mind you’ll need an 1100 barrel paintball gun. On a more serious note: in this clip from the convention, Adam Savage explains how the lawyers of American Express and the other major credit cards effectively censored Discovery Channel to prevent them from EVER talking about credit card RFID. This, in spite of the fact that it’s a fairly well known fact that not only are credit cards intrinsically less-than-secure, they’re even less secure when you’re able to hack the new RFID feature. But who cares what these MythBuster guys say anyway. Aren’t these the guys who claim the moon landings actually happened? As an afterthought, I have to wonder (given that these guys live in the Bay Area) just how “green” that Mona Lisa stunt was. Of more interest to others though – also because they live in the Bay Area – appears to be the question Are the MythBusters Gay?