MachineMachine /stream - tagged with cinema http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net Godzilla shoes http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/16461131244

Godzilla shoes

]]> Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:15:02 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/16461131244 John Frankenheimer's "Seconds" http://www.metafilter.com/111915/John-Frankenheimers-Seconds Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966) is a disturbing film to watch. With its unresolved, horrific ending, it’s possibly one of the most depressing films ever made [SPOILER]. ]]> Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:21:35 -0700 http://www.metafilter.com/111915/John-Frankenheimers-Seconds Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia”: A Discussion http://www.filmquarterly.org/2012/01/lars-von-triers-melancholia-a-discussion/ Lars von Trier’s latest has been overshadowed by the director’s ill-judged comments at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. This is a pity because, as Film Quarterly Writer-at-Large NINA POWER and editor ROB WHITE discuss (resuming a dialogue begun here in regard to von Trier’s Antichrist), Melancholia is a rich, fascinating, and radical work. ]]> Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:07:49 -0700 http://www.filmquarterly.org/2012/01/lars-von-triers-melancholia-a-discussion/ Crusoe film adaptations and *that* footprint http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/197212 Robinson Crusoe film adaptations. Which are the best ones? Also, *that* footprint... For a project I am working on, I want to isolate the moment in Robinson Crusoe where he discovers the savage footprint, imprinted in the sand, for the first time.

In the book this footprint is discovered quite a few years before Friday arrives. It signifies the first time Crusoe realises that there are 'others' visiting his Kingdom.

It has been critically engaged with by the likes of Umberto Eco, Susan Stewart (two times) and Simon O'Sullivan. Do you… ]]> Thu, 29 Sep 2011 05:31:01 -0700 http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/197212 Slavoj Zizek - How to Read Lacan - Troubles with the Real: Lacan as a Viewer of Alien http://www.lacan.com/zizalien.htm/slavoj-zizek-how-to-read-lacan-troubles-with-the-real-lacan-as-a-viewer-of-alien Slavoj Zizek on how to read Lacan (hint: watch #Alien and #TheThing) : http://t.co/m8CjaBV #horror #SciFi #theory #cinema #x ]]> Mon, 12 Sep 2011 11:32:26 -0700 http://www.lacan.com/zizalien.htm/slavoj-zizek-how-to-read-lacan-troubles-with-the-real-lacan-as-a-viewer-of-alien How to Read Lacan - Troubles with the Real: Lacan as a Viewer of Alien http://www.lacan.com/zizalien.htm/slavoj-zizek-how-to-read-lacan-troubles-with-the-real-lacan-as-a-viewer-of-alien Slavoj Zizek on how to read Lacan (hint: watch #Alien and #TheThing) : http://t.co/m8CjaBV #horror #SciFi #theory #cinema #x ]]> Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:41:21 -0700 http://www.lacan.com/zizalien.htm/slavoj-zizek-how-to-read-lacan-troubles-with-the-real-lacan-as-a-viewer-of-alien How to fix horror, Part I: Stop trying to be so respectable http://www.slate.com/id/2297938/entry/0/ My new book Shock Value: How a few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood and Invented Modern Horror, explores how horror went mainstream by revisiting the golden age that began in 1968 with Rosemary's Baby and Night of the Living Dead and reached its zenith in the 1970s with movies like Halloween and Alien. Today the genre is bigger, more diverse, and more lucrative than it was back then, but its films rarely shock or inspire as they once did. There are many good new scary movies, but few great ones. It doesn't have to be this way. That's… ]]> Tue, 05 Jul 2011 09:34:09 -0700 http://www.slate.com/id/2297938/entry/0/ On Location with John Carpenter’s THE THING http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=24553 From the July 1982 issue of Omni. As with all the other commissioned pieces I wrote for the Arts section of that magazine, this originally ran without a title; I’ve also done a light edit on this version. Another version of this article appeared in Cahiers du Cinema, with a different title (if memory serves, this was “Beware of Imitations”).

While I was living in Europe in the 70s, I managed to watch portions of the shooting of films by Robert Bresson (Four Nights of a Dreamer), Alain Resnais (Stavisky…), and Jacques Rivette (Duelle and Noroit), but… ]]> Mon, 20 Jun 2011 05:20:30 -0700 http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=24553 Mad German Auteur, Now in 3-D http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201105/werner-herzog-profile-cave-of-forgotten-dreams The daring German filmmaker Werner Herzog once walked a thousand miles to propose to a woman. He once plotted to firebomb his leading man's house and once ate his own shoe to square a bet. He once got shot in the stomach during a TV interview, then insisted on finishing. And despite it all, his latest adventure—a 3-D documentary about cave paintings—still sounds batshit crazy. Chris Heath goes spelunking deep inside the mind of modern cinema's oddest icon ]]> Mon, 02 May 2011 16:35:29 -0700 http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201105/werner-herzog-profile-cave-of-forgotten-dreams Zooming Out: How Writers Create Our Visual Grammar http://www.themillions.com/2011/03/zooming-out-how-writers-create-our-visual-grammar.html Maybe you’re young enough to remember Blue’s Clues, or old enough to have a little one hanging on the mystery-solving adventures of Steve and Blue as you read this. If, by any chance, Blue’s Clues happens to be on in the background, try this experiment: watch and see how long the camera holds on a single shot. You will, by design, be waiting a long time. The child psychologists who helped create Blue discovered that young viewers don’t know what to do with cuts and edits; they understand them as a new scene, not the same scene shot from a… ]]> Tue, 08 Mar 2011 10:41:43 -0700 http://www.themillions.com/2011/03/zooming-out-how-writers-create-our-visual-grammar.html Christian Marclay : The Clock (BBC News) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8svkK7d7sY&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:38:23 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8svkK7d7sY&feature=youtube_gdata F/X PORN: David Foster Wallace http://www.scribd.com/doc/6447057/David-Foster-Wallace-on-FX-Porn What's the difference between a Hollywood special-effects blockbuster like "Terminator 2" and a hard-core porn film? Very little, claims novelist, essayist and footnote fetishist David Foster Wallace.

1990s moviegoers who have sat clutching their heads in both awe and disappointment at movies like "Twister" and "Volcano" and "The Lost World" can thank James Cameron's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" for inaugurating what's become this decade's special new genre of big-budget film: Special Effects Porn. "Porn" because, if you substitute F/X for intercourse, the parallels between the two genres become so obvious they're eerie. Just like hard-core cheapies, movies… ]]> Tue, 18 Jan 2011 04:57:21 -0700 http://www.scribd.com/doc/6447057/David-Foster-Wallace-on-FX-Porn On (Text and) Exaptation http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/on-text-and-exaptation

(This post was written as a kind of ‘prequel’ to a previous essay, Rancière’s Ignoramus)

‘Text’ originates from the Latin word texere, to weave. A material craft enabled by a human ingenuity for loops, knots and pattern. Whereas a single thread may collapse under its own weight, looped and intertwined threads originate their strength and texture as a network. The textile speaks of repetition and multiplicity, yet it is only once we back away from the tapestry that the larger picture comes into focus.

At an industrial scale textile looms expanded beyond the frame of their human operators. Reducing… ]]> Mon, 06 Dec 2010 14:41:24 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/on-text-and-exaptation The Clock http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/the-clock

Language is not what it is because it has meaning… It is a fragmented nature, divided against itself and deprived of its original transparency by admixture; it is a secret that carries within itself, though near the surface, the decipherable signs of what it is trying to say. It is at the same time a buried revelation and a revelation that is gradually being restored to ever greater clarity.

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things

Every Thing has to end, but not so its fragments. Energy flows amongst systems. It constitutes as it destroys, but never does energy… ]]> Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:11:00 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/the-clock In Defense of the Poor Image http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/94 by Hito Steyerl

The poor image is a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard. As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.

The poor image is a rag or a rip; an AVI or a JPEG, a lumpen proletarian in the class society of appearances, ranked and valued according to its resolution. The… ]]> Thu, 28 Oct 2010 07:27:00 -0700 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/94 Ridley Scott goes back to Philip K. Dick for The Man In The High Castle http://io9.com/5658586/ridley-scott-goes-back-to-philip-k-dick-for-the-man-in-the-high-castle According to the Guardian Ridley Scott is producing a four-part BBC miniseries based on Philip K Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle. Howard Brenton, the playwright and Spooks writer, is presently adapting the book. Its a pretty complicated story with handful of story lines that follow a variety of characters, so it's perfect miniseries fodder. It should be interesting to see if Scott keeps his miniseries set in the same time period as the book, the 1960s — we feel like he may be tempted to update it to the here and now. But either way, we're really… ]]> Fri, 08 Oct 2010 03:45:00 -0700 http://io9.com/5658586/ridley-scott-goes-back-to-philip-k-dick-for-the-man-in-the-high-castle And Another ‘Thing’ : Sci-Fi Truths and Nature's Errors http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/09/and-another-thing-sci-fi-truths-and-natures-errors.html

by Daniel Rourke

In my last 3quarksdaily article I considered the ability of science-fiction – and the impossible objects it contains – to highlight the gap between us and ‘The Thing Itself’ (the fundamental reality underlying all phenomena). In this follow-up I ask whether the way these fictional ‘Things’ determine their continued existence – by copying, cloning or imitation – can teach us about our conception of nature.

Seth Brundle: What's there to take? The disease has just revealed its purpose. We don't have to worry about contagion anymore... I…

]]> Sun, 05 Sep 2010 21:20:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/09/and-another-thing-sci-fi-truths-and-natures-errors.html Analogue Inception http://adactio.com/journal/1680/ The structure of the film is that of a heist movie, but if the film were to be slotted into a genre, that genre would have to be science fiction. Personally, I would say it’s cyberpunk. But it’s a strange kind of cyberpunk where the emphasis is less on technology and more on the film-noir mood and transcendental possibilities of the genre.

In fact, technology in Inception is notable by its absence. There is a piece of hardware to enable the central premise of the film, but it’s of no more importance than the hardware used in… ]]> Sun, 18 Jul 2010 06:07:00 -0700 http://adactio.com/journal/1680/ 15 Great Movies That Were Never Finished http://www.popcrunch.com/15-great-movies-that-were-never-finished/ Thousands of movies are made every year, and have been almost all the way back to when we first figured out how to make them. We love the theater experience of plopping down before the big screen with soda and some snacks, and relish in rehashing our favorite cult classics over and over at home. But what about all the great movies that never saw the light of day? Many of them were pretty far into production when filming ceased, and still deserve a viewing in their incomplete form. Here are 15 great movies that were never finished. ]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:07:00 -0700 http://www.popcrunch.com/15-great-movies-that-were-never-finished/ Avatar and the Flight from Reality http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/avatar-and-the-flight-from-reality In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Artist of the Beautiful” (1844), a prototypical nerd with few social graces and no head for business turns a watchmaker’s shop into an artist’s studio where, ultimately, he creates a clockwork butterfly in every way indistinguishable from a real butterfly except in its being even more beautiful. Although most of the story is about how misunderstood this nerdy clockmaker is, Hawthorne’s deeper concern is the fundamental mistake of supposing that the idea of artistic creation is not just to create something that is like reality but rather something that amounts to a new reality,… ]]> Sun, 21 Mar 2010 12:55:00 -0700 http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/avatar-and-the-flight-from-reality