— This has all the ingredients for a good old-fashioned film noir. A struggling main character, the good guy chasing the bad guy through a series of tunnels, the light always throwing oversized shadows on the walls, and a twist at the film’s end.
When I learned that large parts of Guilty Bystander were shot on location, I hoped for some nice shots of 1950s New York. But I realised when you tell a story in 90 minutes, there’s little room for filler. No time for extensive drone shots with dramatic music or long-winded pan shots. Today’s movies are full of these, that’s why it’s hard to find a contemporary movie that’s shorter than two hours.
(1950) Director: Joseph Lerner. Screenplay: Don Ettlinger. Cast: Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson.
— I did not know there was a 30-minute extended film to Beastie Boys’ Make Some Noise.
— The Neocities browse page features some absolutely wild web design and I’m here for it. Children, this is what the social web looked like before social media.
— Blogging has been slow here in the recent weeks. Turns out a baby really does need a lot of attention. And so, in the foreseeable future, there will be little action on this site. I’m planning to log what movies I watch and the books I read but there will be less internet and culture links and commentary.
— Imagine this for second, considering our day and age: Two journalists with a spine and real conviction, unravel scandal in a government’s highest office, and follow the story for weeks until it is completely and truthfully told and the responsible people are held accountable. All this with their editor’s support, who do not think to that the other side needs to be heard or succumb to the pressure of the twenty-four hour news cycle.
Imagine that. Functioning journalism.
(1976) Director: Alan J. Pakula. Screenplay: William Goldman. Cast: Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards.
— Journalist scholar Jeff Jarvis walks through the history of printing at breakneck speed, its technological foundation, and its impact on society as books, newsletters, and newspapers circulated across the globe. The reactions to this new technology and forms of publication were a litany of all too familiar complaints we’ve been hearing since the Web became popularised: The spread of lies, controversy-bread celebrities, the flood of mundane content.
We find ourselves at the beginning of a new digital parenthesis in which we move from a world where communication is dominated by print to one where communication is primarily digitally mediated. We are in the first stages of this development and therefore unable to understand what a new digitally dominated world will eventually look like once the dust settles. In print, truth and sanity mostly prevailed, eventually leading to the Enlightenment, modern scientific discovery, and democratic movements. And so, Jarvis’ argument goes, we should let the Web evolve, assuming the worthwhile ideas will win eventually despite all reactionary push-back.
But there is a difference between the early days of print and the early days of the web in which we currently find ourselves. In the early days of print, there were a large number of publishing houses in every country and many cities. The resulting diversity provided a shield from censorship of the church and ruling aristocrats so the better, more truthful ideas spread and prevailed.
On the Web, we have three to five websites, which account for the majority of global web traffic. And the leaders of the businesses behind these websites are susceptible to reactionary ideas and are pro-actively cosying up to autocratic regimes. It’s as if in the early days of print there were only five publishing houses, all of them from Germany, all of them led by associates of the king or the local bishop. How do we think the reformation would have played out in that scenario?
— Interview with Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran, founders of Bombay artist group CAMP, about their current show at MOMA. I saw their work Bombay Tilts Down last year at RMIT in Melbourne and I can highly recommend. Go see the show if you’re New York in the next couple of months.
