Through “interviews with US intelligence officials and nuclear experts,” MSNBC has created an info-packed, interactive map of Israel’s WMD programs and locations, only according to Common Dreams, it’s not actually reachable through the MSNBC site. [via robotwisdom]
Author: greg
Movie and Art Roundup
I’m in the last minute throes of editing the AM screenplay before dropping it off for a serious reading. Here are some movie and artsite suggestions to occupy you. A little “Look over there!” handwaving, so you won’t notice a slight drop in posting in front of you.
Some fine art weblogs have come my way:
Bloghdad.com/Brewster_Kahle
Danny O’Brien quotes Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle: “What happens to libraries? they burn,” a pretty nihilistic-sounding comment if it’s taken to be a comment on Iraqi libraries burning.
And Cory Doctorow points to a librarian’s-eye critique of blithe, “oh, just reprint it all” dismissals of burning by people who “should know better.”
But so far, all I can actually find about this “quote” from Brewster Kahle, is this ancient (1996!) Slate article on the looming, Borges-ian threat of a web archive, i.e., never being able to forget anything, ever. According to the oh-so-long-ago peace, love and cyber-utopian understanding paradise that was 1996, this kind of (admittedly traumatic) institutional slate-wiping is necessary “to rid yourself of the past so you can go forward.”
Perhaps the rhetoric’s just a bit, er, overheated. It was 1996, after all. But now that we’ve actually had a good, old-fashioned library-burnin’ or two, are we prepared to entertain the possibility that an ahistoricist, culture-be-damned imperialism may actually be boldly revolutionary and forward-thinking? Just playin’ Rumsfeld’s advocate here…
4/22 Update/Clarification/Retraction: If your main goal is just email *volume*, you probably can’t do better than to unintentionally sound like you’re slamming/questioning netgods Brewster Kahle and Danny O’Brien. If, however, you actually *care* what people think, and you also happen to be a longtime worshipper/groupie of said gods, you should quickly add context when it’s provided.
More later, (gotta drop the car off for service) but start by checking Danny’s original interview with Kahle, and the original quote, which is much better than the abbreviated version (and not just because it calls a spade a spade on the Bush library burning issue).
http://www.oblomovka.com/entries/2002/12/05#1039148760
Bloghdad.com/British_Museum
Sue Ellicott writes in the Washington Post about how the British Museum (known, before last week, for having “the greatest collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq”) mobilized during wartime. They quickly programmed lectures, gallery talks, and panels to meet the sudden surge in visitor interest in Assyrian and Mesopotamian art and culture.
And speaking of the British Museum: In the NYT, John Tierney looks at the Looting Formerly Known As Capitalism, Thank You, specifically, Lord Elgin’s “buying” the Parthenon frieze, which, inconveniently for present-day archeologist ideologues, saved it from destruction by the Turks. Or someone. I’m still waiting for Jeff Jarvis to slam France for not giving the Louvre back to Egypt. Or to the Pope.
Bloghdad.com/Gangsta_Life
The NYTimes‘ man in Baghdad, John F. Burns, talks to Newshour about the shakedowns and threats from his Iraqi Information Ministry handlers in the last days of the regime. Apparently, they were not all as funny as al-Sahhaf.
[4/19 update: In Sunday’s Times, Burns hits for the fence with a looong article on the thuggish nature of Saddam’s whole crew.
Bloghdad.com/Some_Looting
Arts Journal has an extensive round-up of coverage of the Iraqi National Museum and libraries looting/burning (Including LAT‘s Christopher Knight’s view of Bush admin. views of art/culture, which coincides with my own.It doesn’t include Pfaffenblog’s extensive discussion of possible pre-war collector lobbying at the Pentagon.) [via MAN]
Frankly, I’ve been surprised by the rather glib indignation of some peoples’ reactions to this issue (and I don’t mean Rumsfeld’s; his dismissiveness is entirelyto be expected.) If you’d suggested–two years, a year, even two months ago– that cuneiform diaries would become a poisonously partisan issue, you’d have been laughed out of whatever chatroom you’d wandered into. (If you’d said it in any more substantial forum, you’d’ve been hauled off in a padded wagon.)
But here we all are, screaming across the barricades, trying to spin a cultural tragedy (which has a primarily long-term impact on capital C Civilization, but almost no serious direct effect on any individual human alive) into instantaneous political pointscoring (which is designed to serve, above all, the ego and immediate wants of the person spinning). It’s like listening to ImClone derivatives daytraders arguing over the state of basic science research.
Bloghdad.com?/Reel_Bad_Arabs
This is probably a fence-sitter between greg.org and bloghdad.com: A Guardian interview with Jack Shaheen, who’s spent 20+ years studying Hollywood’s depiction of Arabs. His massive survey, Reel Bad Arabs, came out in the US in 2001, but is just reaching the UK. In his analysis of over 900 films, he finds negative stereotyping to a degree that’d now be unthinkable for other groups (unless, of course, they’re making mad bank off their own stereotypes, a la My Big Fat Greek Wedding).
And people criticized Lucas for his crafty Jewish traders? (Or was it his Inscrutable Asians? Or his…)
Ben-Hur‘s Arab Friend was played by Hugh Griffith, left, image: jitterbug.com
But seriously, setting aside David Russell’s Three Kings (which Shaheen adised on, btw), if the best you can hope for from Hollywood’s is the Ben-Hur treatment–where the Arab sheikh is a Brit (named Hugh Griffith) dipped in a tub of bronzer–you know there’s a problem. Of course, the Jews got stuck with Charlton Heston, so it’s lose-lose for everyone…
On Soul Searching
For his article in Wired, “Inside the Soul of the Web,” Michael Malone spent 24 (cumulative) hours watching the randomly selected stream of Google searches that is broadcast in the company’s offices. If it’s not really informative, it’s inevitably interesting–and sometimes moving. (thanks, Jason)
Jennifer 8. Lee did essentially the same story last November, for the NY Times. [who seem to be monetizing their once fee-avoiding deeplinks. But, as Google helpfully points out, the article is here, for free.] We recall that the scroll is called LiveQuery, the map is called GeoDisplay, and Google has eerie, almost predictive power (PredictivePower?).
Almost. “That is a paradox of a Google log: it does not capture social phenomena per se, but merely the shadows they cast across the Internet.
‘The most interesting part is why,’ said Amit Patel, who has been a member of the logs team. ‘You can’t interpret it unless you know what else is going on in the world.'”
So unless you knew it was a question on Millionaire the night before, a quiz show which aired consecutively in five time zones, the meaning of five spikes in the frequency of “carol brady maiden name” searches would be lost on you.
Locating Myself On The Ironing Spectrum
My second short film, Souvenir (January 2003), features a man who carefully irons his shirt before spending the day at a rural dry cleaners.
Here are two ironing-related websites:
Until my film actually screens somewhere, I’m not at all sure where it falls in relation to these points on the online ironing continuum.
On The Cultural Price Of Homeland Security
In an article in the Village Voice, Kate Mattingly gives new details of a disturbing casualty in the US government’s campaign for Homeland Security: the increasing difficulty and expense of securing visas for international artists and performers is keeping more of them out of the US and causing arts organizers to give up scheduling non-US programming.
Here’s the visa application process under the Dept. of Homeland Security:
New background checks >> bigger backlogs >> longer/impossible turnaround times >> fallback to once-optional, prohibitively expensive Premium Processing Fees >> non-profits sunk by $1,000/petition fees originally meant for the tech industry >> artists may not get approved anyway>> dance, music, art, film, theater organizations give up programming international talent.
An example cited in the article: Visa applications for an 11-engagement BAM Next Wave Festival cost $29,304, compared to $600 in peaceable 1988, with the possibility that some artists are still denied visas.
One of the first to pay the cultural price of harshened visa policies was last year’s New York Film Festival. As I posted then, Abbas Kiarostami was prevented from attending his film’s US premier, and the Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki decided to boycott in solidarity. (“If the present government of the United States of America does not want an Iranian, they will hardly have any use for a Finn, either. We do not even have the oil.”)
When the photographer Thomas Struth spoke to a small group of collectors and curators in February, he wondered aloud about the possibility of the highly influential people who participate in the art world–collectors, trustees, sponsors, artists–working in concert to prevent the war in Iraq. Private opinion over the war was probably too divided for such an effort to be made, though.
But creating an effective and affordable way for internationally recognized artists and performers to visit the United States and contribute to our own cultural production seems like a cause worth working the phones for.
Useless Screenwriting Tip #1: Write When Ronin‘s On
According to the little-known Osmosis Theory of Writing, while trying to write a tight, sharp, crime thriller, you should watch a tight, sharp crime thriller, like, say, Ronin (directed by John Frankenheimer, screenplay by David Mamet on JD Zeik‘s story). It helps if it’s got insane chase scenes over roads you used to travel regularly (Paris, Nice, La Turbie). If you do this, the doors will fly open, and your screenwriting muse will spray you with inspiration, like so much shrapnel in a waterfront ambush.
That’s the theory, anyway.
Your screenwriting kit should include: Ronin (with the Frankenheimer’s commentary) and his 1962 classic, The Manchurian Candidate, on DVD, and Frankenheimer interviews at The Onion AV Club and Movie Express.
Bloghdad.com/Shagpad
The AP report on CNN details the contents of Saddam’s “shagadelic” safehouse.
On the day when I’m meeting a producer of Austin Powers for lunch, all my websites are converging.
In a nod to Thomas Struth, AP’s John Moore took this picture of US Army
Lt Eric Hooper checking out the art in Saddam’s shagpad. image: AP, via aftonblade.se
[Update: The Guardian‘s Jonathan Jones looks at what can be learned from “the hysterical aesthetic, the hyperpornography of power and violence” of Saddam’s “art” collection.
The paintings were made in the mid-80’s by “Fantasy Artist Extraordinaire,” The NY-based Rowena, who sold one to a Japanese collector years ago for $20,000. She insisted to the NY Daily News that her newer work “is much better.” Here’s an online gallery. Oh, yeah, apples and oranges. Still, the Daily News wins with their headline, “Shag-dad art is mine!” (Thanks, BoingBoing!)]
He’ll Be Back: A Terminator Weekend
Partly in preparation for the impending release of T3, partly because I’ve been describing my Animated Musical as “Terminator meets West Side Story,” we watched T and T2 back-to-back last night. Pertinent findings: 1) That’s a lot more Linda Hamilton than the average human constitution is prepared for, and 2) my worries about having taken too much inspiration from films I hadn’t seen for 19 and 12 years, respectively, were unfounded.
And besides, at the end of the Terminator DVD, there’s an unusual credit, “acknowledging the works of Harlan Ellison,” which prompted me to IMDb to see what’s up. Turns out Cameron bragged on the set about “stealing the idea for the movie from a couple of episodes of Outer Limits.” As Cory “BoingBoing Doctorow points out in his countdown of the greatest sci-fi lawsuits ever, Ellison figured it out, too, since the similarities are rather glaring. So he sued Cameron. Several times. And he took out big ads in Variety slamming Cameron for the, um, homage. The verdict: don’ t piss off a guy who cooks up indestructible killing machines for a living.
Another unheralded precedent, for SkyNet is the little-seen Colossus: The Forbin Project, a bleak 1970 film by Joseph Sargent about the disasters that ensue from turning global defense over to a supercomputer. It’s probably not worth getting a laserdisc player for, but I’m looking forward to seeing it.
Starbucks: Flame For The Moths of Idiocy
In the spirit of Gawker, two datapoints make a trend. And when both of those datapoints come from Gawker itself, well, it doesn’t get any trendier than that. So what’s the scoop, you ask? Self-Indulgent, Dishonest Idiots and Starbucks.
Nick Denton tells the tale of having the mock-televangelical tax protestor Rev. Billy explode in his face at a friends’ happening. The Rev’s favorite stunt is setting up his pulpit in Starbucks and preaching against some corporate something-or-other. He’s clearly mastered the TV preacher’s self-righteous hubris, but based on his behavior the other night, seems to be reading from some abridged Bible, one without all that pesky “Blessed are the meek, the peacemakers, etc” crap. Well, when someone snaps a picture of him with walking out of an Office Depot with a box of Turbotax, we’ll see if he can crumble as abjectly as Jimmy Swaggart.
What the overly referential Reverend Billy is to televangelism, Fischerspooner is to pop/rock stars. They staged their first guerilla performance in Starbucks in 1998. Carl Swanson reports from their latest concert in the NYT, and now there’s a ga-ga Gawker review.
Like Rev. Billy, though, FS mocks only a few traits of manufactured rock stars (bad performances, lack of talent, diva behavior), while wholeheartedly embracing others. You know how, in Glitter, Billie/Mariah totally disses the guy who gave her her break and she…ahem. You can’t reference Glitter and hope for any credibility, not even in relation to Fischerspooner.
There’s a 2+ year gap in the meteoric rise of FS, at least as it’s told to/by Swanson. Written out of that history faster than Little Richard is Gavin Brown, the art dealer with the “honor” of being the first person to actually let them perform. It was thanks to some ad hoc performances during a 1999 Rikrit Tiravanija exhibit, and a later series of nightly shows in the gallery, that Fischerspooner got any attention at all. Brown helped them put out their first CD and organized some actual (i.e., non-Starbucks) concerts. Just before their UK record deal was announced, Brown got ditched for Deitch; Fischerspooner has been trying to fail upwards ever since.
Of course, if this Launch-a-Pathetic-Media-Grab-In-a-Starbucks movement continues, regular folks’ll learn to avoid the chain in droves, turning it into a niche-y, little Macchiatos for Masochists. Fortunately, like many other best-viewed-at-a-distance trends, you can follow along painlessly at Gawker.
Bloghdad.com/Crimes_Against_Culture
Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure, John F. Burns in the NYT.
Mosul descends into chaos as even museum is looted, Luke Harding in the Guardian.
When I said yesterday that the US administration had no interest or care for art, this isn’t what I meant. Honestly, this is as unconscionable as the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues by the Taliban, which UNESCO’s director general, Koichiro Matsuura called “a cold and calculated ‘crime against culture'”.
Every other March, a country taken over by fundamentalists gets
its priceless cultural heritage destroyed on CNN.
[Update: In the 4/15 Washingon Post, Philip Kennicott discusses the destruction of the museum and the fate of Ali, the 12-year old double amputee survivor of a US rocket attack. Referring to Prospero, he asks us what someone should ask Rumsfeld, et al, “This thing of darkness, do you acknowledge it yours?”]