Author: greg

2005-04-11, This Week In The New Yorker

In the magazine header, image: newyorker.com
Issue of 2005-04-11
Posted 2005-04-04
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT/ JOHN PAUL II/ David Remnick on the life of Karol Wojtyla.
INK / BATTLE OF THE TABS/Ben McGrath on the recent flare up between the Post and the Daily News
LOST TREASURES/ DEEP/ Adam Green finds an early diving chamber in storage at Coney Island.
THE FINANCIAL PAGE/ ALL TOGETHER NOW/ James Surowiecki on Sony and the dangers of going it
alone.
ART AND SCIENCE/ Richard Preston/ Capturing the Unicorn/ Two mathematicians tackle a tapestry.
FICTION/ Mohammed Naseehu Ali/ “Mallam Sile”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS/ John Cassidy/ Always With Us?/ Jeffrey Sachs’s plan to eradicate world poverty.
ON TELEVISION/ Nancy Franklin/ Living Large/ Kirstie Alley fills the screen in “Fat Actress.”
POP MUSIC/ Sasha Frere-Jones/ Slow Fade/ The afterlife of an indie band.
THE THEATRE/ Hilton Als/ Shades of Black/ Race relations in “This Is How It Goes” and “Julius Caesar.”
THE CURRENT CINEMA/ Anthony Lane/ Feelings/ “Sin City” and “A Hole in
My Heart.”
FROM THE ARCHIVE
PROFILES/ Richard Preston/ The Mountains of Pi/ Issue of 1992-03-02/ The Chudnovskys, who were then engaged in an exploration of pi, one of the most mysterious numbers in mathematics.
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Blu Dot Films

blu_dot_720.jpgTechnically, The Year of The Dependent Short was 2004, but the people at Blu Dot are usually so far ahead of the curve, I’ll cut them some slack.
In conjunction with Daylight Savings Time, Blu Dot launched the first in a series of sponsored short films. Seven Twenty is directed by Christopher Arcella, and it’s about, well, it’s about the making of a clock.
What, you think you’re gonna hear criticism from a guy who made a short about ironing?
Blu Dot Film(s) [bludot, via mocoloco]
Christopher Arcella

DVD Players: The Making Of The Making Of

I want to say, “Finally!” The NYT reports on the players in the burgeoning medium of DVD extras: directors like Laurent Bouzereau (Spielberg) and producers like Mark Rowen (Shrek 2).
Bouzereau started in the laser disc business and spent time at standard-setting Criterion–which gets short shrift in the article, by the way; The Matrix may have made the DVD business, but Criterion made the DVD extra–before setting up his own shop. He’s the making of documentary and bonus material guy.
Meanwhile, it’s the producer who takes the blame for the pointlessly animated, time-killing interactive menus. And it’s suits like the guy from Lion’s Gate who think no one cares about DVD extras who are to blame for nearly naked DVD’s with little more than a few crappy trailers tacked on.
That said, there are plenty of directors whose fans would surely appreciate some more DVD material who can’t get their distribs to rub more than two dimes together for a 10-min. making of, Gus Van Sant. Now that I think about it, the quintessential DVD extra–director commentaries–get almost no play at all in the article, even though they’re almost a medium in themselves. [Carrot Top’s commentary track on Rules of Attraction is in a category all its own.]
The Powers Behind the Home-Video Throne [nyt]

Rotterdam Swag: New Shopping Bag, by Susan Bijl

I received one of these bags as a thank you gift for one of the panel discussions I did in February at Art Rotterdam. [Inside were a couple of great catalogues and a fine bottle of spirits which I shared away, since I don’t drink. Thanks again to the folks from Het Wilde Weten for the opportunity.]
Anyway, the bag rocks. It’s made out of a super-light, super-strong coated nylon normally used for kites. It’s designed by artist Susan Bijl, and it’s available online and in museum shops and other design-savvy spots. Despite being unable to adequately explain The Preppy Handbook to my hosts, I ended up choosing the pink and green one.
Get your own New Shopping Bag without bloviating in a crowd susanbijl.nl

The Pop Culture of 9/11

The Daily Show; Wag The Dog; Antonia Bird’s film, The Hamburg Cell; William Basinski’s albums, The Disintegration Loops I-IV; Iyer and Ladd’s In What Language?, and more, all mapped against the relevant chapters of The 9/11 Commission Report.
At Pitchfork, Chris Dahlen has assembled a thoughtful, sometimes laughable, sometimes cringe-inducing list of pop cultural works where September 11th has figured prominently.
The Pop Culture of 9/11 [pitchforkmedia.com, via fimoculous]
previously: the 2004 launch of Iyer and Ladd’s song cycle, In What Language?

“Memories are strange creatures…”

…they appear uninvited, grab you by the throat, flood your senses and then shoot away in a microsecond, leaving few traces. Mr. Lelyveld explores some intriguing themes: How much do we really remember? Why do we forget? What would happen if we found documentary records or witnesses who could fill in missing pieces of our imagined family narrative? What hidden catastrophes would fly out?

from William Doyle’s review of Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop, by Joseph Lelyveld

A Journalist Investigates Memory, Family and Race [observer.com]

Finally figured out what Bjork and Matthew Barney have in common

They’re Nos 1 & 2 on my list of “People I never imagined would live in New Jersey, ever.” And yet, they do.
[via Liz Hoggard’s interview with Bjork: “We miss you in London! Do you miss us? Hmm? Cuz we sure miss you.” in the Observer (UK)]
Related: Bjork released a 2-disc DVD version of Medulla, with more acapella than ever and a making of documentary by Spike Jonze. It’s only available in the rest of the world outside the US, the UK and Iceland. Wait, is that a trick question? Where else is there?

Finally figured out what Bjork and Matthew Barney have in common

They’re Nos 1 & 2 on my list of “People I never imagined would live in New Jersey, ever.” And yet, they do.
[via Liz Hoggard’s interview with Bjork: “We miss you in London! Do you miss us? Hmm? Cuz we sure miss you.” in the Observer (UK)]
Related: Bjork released a 2-disc DVD version of Medulla, with more acapella than ever and a making of documentary by Spike Jonze. It’s only available in the rest of the world outside the US, the UK and Iceland. Wait, is that a trick question? Where else is there?

2005-04-04, This Week In The New Yorker

In the magazine header, image: newyorker.com
Issue of 2005-04-04
Posted 2005-03-28
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT/ MATTERS OF LIFE/ Hendrik Hertzberg on the Terri Schiavo dilemma.
DEPT. OF TRANSPORTATION/ THE JOY OF TRAFFIC/ Nick Paumgarten joins a bumper-to-bumper race into town.
DEPT. OF ENTOMOLOGY/ NIGHT VISITORS/Mark Singer on an outbreak of bedbugs.
MOSCOW POSTCARD/ A NIGHT AT THE OPERA/ Masha Lipman on the latest from the notorious librettist Vladimir Sorokin.
MEDICAL DISPATCH/ Atul Gawande/ Piecework/ How doctors make their money.
SHOUTS & MURMURS/ Henry Alford/ My Exes: The Set Lists
FICTION/ Donald Antrim/ “Solace”
THE CRITICS
THE THEATRE/ Hilton Als/ Glass Houses/ A delicate reimagining of Tennessee Williams’s classic.BOOKS/ Adam Gopnik/ Dining Out/ The food critic at table.
BOOKS/ Joyce Carol Oates/ Unforgettable/ A new thriller from an unheralded master of suspense.
DANCING/ Joan Acocella/ Class Act/ Matthew Bourne does Harold Pinter.
THE ART WORLD/ Peter Schjeldahl/ Young Fun/ Basquiat’s best work.
THE CURRENT CINEMA/ David Denby/ Two Women/ “Look at Me” and “The Upside of Anger.”
FROM THE ARCHIVES
A REPORTER AT LARGE/ Jack Alexander/ A Day with LaGuardia/ A profile of New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia/ Issue of 1937-10-16
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Gee, It Worked So Well With The Orchid Thief

Will Ferrell’s last line in the trailer for Bewitched is, “How did this happen??!”
I was wondering the same thing when I found out the movie’s not a remake of the TV series, it’s about making a remake of the TV series.
Halfway through the trailer, you think you’re watching When Harry Met Sam, and you are; Nora Ephron wrote the script. Actually, I think Meryl Streep is to blame somehow; she’s played both Ephron (in Heartburn) AND Susan Orlean.
My nose is itching on this one, even with Steve Carell as Uncle Arthur.
Watch the Bewitched trailer if you dare, or just puzzle over the imdb entry.
[update: Thanks Travis, who pulled out the direct URL for the trailer, since Moviefone screws with Firefox.]

On The Flight 93 Memorial Competition

Whoa. I had a looong post about the designs for the Flight 93 memorial competition for the site in Shanksville, PA, but I think I’ll spare you. For a few reasons:

  • Lowered expectations. Since the WTC site debacles (or, if you’re a Port Authority politico or a hack developer, roaring successes), any idealism or greater hopes that I held out for memorials have dissipated.
  • The designs themselves. Again, the WTC memorial competition shows that 1) 90+% of the entries are artifacts of their designers’ own remembering and reworking process, little mini-memorials-of-one; 2) Land Art, refracted through the emotional/experiential prism of Maya Lin, remains the de facto official language of memorials, and this is even more apparent in the rural setting of the Flight 93 memorial; 3) individualism-uber-alles, as the 40 passengers and crew are remembered with 40 identical somethings [although one design, which recreates the plane’s rows of seats, does divide them into coach and first class]; and 4) in a fit of information design-as-architecture, many designers simply reacted to the competition brief, accepting its arbitrary data as Important–the plane’s angle of impact, the map’s circular boundary around the debris/remains field–and translating them directly into the program.
  • Problematics of the Flight 93 story itself. In a Bizarro universe somewhere, the rapidly canonized “Let’s roll” narrative of American heroes sacrificing themselves and successfully thwarting the terrorists’ plans has already unraveled as a series of investigations and revelations showed that the plane was shot down on Dick Cheney’s chain-of-command-ignoring orders. Of course, that’d never happen in this universe… [Yet there IS one design that unintentionally (?) hints at this of-course-there’s-no-conspiracy. It’s title: “40 Grassy Knolls.”]
  • My own unacceptable idea is better. Sort of. I would build a runway for Flight 93. It would be an authentic and realistic landing strip, not metaphorical, as some competition entrants labeled their memorial paths. Mine would follow the rolling topography, though, so in addition to coming several years too late, it’d be unusable. Still, it’d evoke the thoughts that dance briefly across everyone’s minds, “Could this have been averted? What if we could turn back time?”
    But then I realized that all three of my Sept. 11th memorial ideas–the one I submitted for the WTC site and the ersatz ideas I conjured for the Pentagon and Shanksville–arise from the same sentiment, a self-consciously futile nostalgia. And I don’t know quite what that means.
    See the five finalists and all 1,059 entries at the Flight 93 Memorial Project site.

    • ReadyMade Interviews Brad Bird

    I have to confess [or maybe I don’t; just take a look back over the last couple weeks’ posts], I’ve barely had a film-related thought or activity in far too long.
    It’s to the point where I’m actually afraid to visit greencine.com, where I’ll be forced to acknowledge how much cinema is going on around me that I’m disconnected from.
    Then I read an intervew like Brad Bird’s at ReadyMade, and it really charges my batteries.
    Brad Bird, How did you get that f*&%ing awesome job? [readymademag.com, via scrubbles]
    previously: Mike Mills, How did you get your f*&%ing awesome job?