The Internship - A Vision of a Google World

The Internship is a 2013 comedy directed by Shawn Levy, written by Vince Vaughn and Jared Stern, and produced by Vaughn and Levy. The film stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. It is a lighthearted look at the labor market and generational politics, with a light romance background story. It is not going to be a classic in the future, but it does have a lot to say about the sort of world we would have if Google defined culture. I am thinking about the combined vision of society and production it presents. The title itself is a giveaway I suppose but the deeper I get into the film I see it as an account of the working conditions and social order that organizations such as Google would like to see as standard in the world.

Obviously competing for jobs. But this competition also includes identity. Because to quote the film; "sometimes the most radical move is to be yourself". This self is defined by senseless hard work and no fixed status. The self also has a physical dimension, and the dinner between the Aussie executive and Owen's character defines what a jerk is: with "A moment on the lips forever on the hips" - bodies are people.

The only way to be educated is by paying for tuition (as two strippers tell us) or attending corporate colleges (Google Campus, the scene of most of the story). Its about 'hard work' and not "a fancy education". The often referred to University of Phoenix or as they call it in the film "the Harvard of the Internet" is real and "offers campus and online degree programs, certificate courses, and individual online classes":

"The University of Phoenix (UOPX) is an American for-profit institution of higher learning, headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, United States. The university has an open-enrollment admission policy, requiring a high-school diploma, GED, or its equivalent as its criterion for admissions. The university has 112 campuses worldwide and confers degrees in over 100 degree programs at the associate, bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree levels. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apollo Group Inc., a publicly traded (NASDAQ: APOL) Phoenix-based corporation that owns several for-profit educational institutions." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Phoenix

Failure is described in the sauna scene as a flawed information footprint. Working in a strip club while studying to be a dental hygienist is success, as the money falls from the air in one scene with the pole dancers. But not having a straight story online is a huge problem:

"Google has singlehandedly cut into my ability to bullshit" "
"Cramping your style?"
"Making you a better person?"

"Yes"

The need for a registered and monitored presence online is emphasized in the Google Help sequence. Firstly Google Online help is only available to business customers. There is no direct online support for non-paying customers. But the character who does not log in and therefore his work does not exist is part of the hegemony of sanctioned and controlled information.

The society of The Internship is not about inclusive places, social positions or even people. Its about progress through the artificial creation of needs. It is defined by the line in the film "We've had lots of jobs but we are trying to build a future here".

I associate the surveillance and corporate governance of The Internship with the emerging Trans Pacific Partnership, whereby production is governed by the beliefs that;

"commits the parties not to set or use labor or environmental laws or practices either for trade protectionist purposes nor to weaken such laws or practices to encourage trade and investment" (http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/145583.pdf p13). 

Its a free market for labor and environmental laws. When the competing interns in the film approach a mom and pop pizza place to advertise with Google, the line they take to sell the service is about a form of globalization we are increasingly familiar with today:

"Hasn't the neighborhood gotten a little bit bigger?"

"We're not asking you to abandon the artistry, we are asking you to expand the reach"

"All waiting at the click of a button"

Its a disturbing vision where everything is channeled through the search engine and all alternative forms of organization and regulation are void. Information may be power. But all information is reality.

(BTW - Flashdance, a meme in the film The Internship, came out in 1983. On January 1 1983 the migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP was officially completed  and this is considered to be the beginning of the true Internet).

The Grand Budapest Hotel: Triumph of the Dandy

"Harking back to a time when people really believed that splendour and refinement were states of the soul, not mere acts of display" - Mick LaSalle, The Spectator

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a film that presents a dandy in immaculate proportions. The cologne aficionado extraordinaire and lover of mature women Monsieur Gustave H. is played by Ralph Fiennes. Gustav H. is a study in Libertine Dandyism. Exactly how it is so I would like to explain here.

Firstly, the film The Grand Budapest Hotel is a work of fantasy and escapism, but it has two clear  underlying concepts that are steel-hard in a fluffy glove of old-world class, etiquette and delicate pastries. Firstly is the idea of tolerance. The film is laced with tension points that seem to show the cruel injustice of intolerance. Violence is never far behind when someone judges someone else as being 'wrong' in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Secondly, the film features a Europe that is imagined by people who do not live here (i.e. Americans). In the film Europe is a place where disfigured but beautiful young women make pastries by hand in ancient buildings, it is snowing all the time, fluctuating war is constant between almost indistinguishable ideologies (all based on cruelty), the aristocracy are remote, aloof and dazzling and eccentricity is widespread. Its a bit like if Baron von Münchhausen took over Disneyland during a particularly long and bitter winter in the Bavarian Alps and made it an adults only theme park. This is the cynical version of what is a charming and due to the underlying message of tolerance, brilliant film. But I am most interested in the return in these barren times of the dandy.



M. Gustav H is the concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel and his word is law in the establishment. 

Concierge: 1640s, from French concierge "caretaker, doorkeeper, porter" (12c.), probably from Vulgar Latin *conservius, from Latin conservus "fellow slave," from com- "with" (see com-) + servius "slave" (see serve (v.)). 

M. Gustav H likes the ladies, old/er rich blonde ladies. Gustav H also enjoys tailored clothes, perfumes, food, drink and the society of his peers. He lives alone in modest circumstances within the hotel, eating his meals (often simple affairs of bread and soup, alone. But society is important for Gustav H. Apart from his women, workers and friends he belongs to a secret society, The Society of Crossed Keys, a network across Europe made up of the concierges of the best hotels. The members of The Society of Crossed Keys assist each other regarding their concierge work and get help regarding any difficulties they may find themselves in. Gustav H. is loyal to his values and colleagues (preserving an order of class and occupation). He twice risks his life for "my lobby boy" who is an immigrant is menaced by fascist thugs. Gustav H. also states he "goes to bed with all my friends" and is of the view that "there still are faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity." This civilization is the code of the Dandy.

A gentleman is cultured to the point of refinement, but a dandy is cultured to the point of decadence. To alleviate his boredom, he will often grow overstated, perverse, toying with vulgarity. The dandy is responsible to no one other than himself. Being consistently well-mannered is far too bourgeois for the dandy: he holds to the more aristocratic character, in that he often feels himself above such workaday concerns as manners and accountability. In order to avoid being thought banal or trite, he becomes impossible to predict: tender and kind one moment, cold and cruel the next. He has transcended any dowdy middle-class notions of what 'refinement' is. There are good reasons why the dandy was reviled: he was a self-absorbed, egotistical, useless prick. Nineteenth century books are rife with this dandy vs. gentleman distinction, even having adjoining pictures of each species for clarification. (The Dandy as Libertine)

The inspiration for The Grand Budapest Hotel is the work and reputation of Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist, letter writer, biographer, socialite, commentator and essayist. George Prochnik, the author of the forthcoming book, “The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World” reports that early on, when the writer resided in his first bachelor-pad in Vienna, he enjoyed entertaining guests. Zweig served them “liquors sprinkled with gold leaf in rooms that were buried in books and painted a deep red that one friend described as the color of the blood of 4,000 beheaded Saxons. Rich, handsome, a dreamy sensualist who chain-smoked Virginia cigars and once had an essay he penned about Handel printed entirely on silk, Stefan Zweig was the quintessential dandy cosmopolite.” (From Greg Archer)

The Grand Budapest Hotel’s production notes contain an essay, entitled “The Cosmopolitan Apocalypse of Stefan Zweig,” by George Prochnik, which may help explain—more than the film itself—why Anderson is attracted to Zweig. It argues: “Today, when governmental surveillance and the official documentation of every aspect of existence are once again multiplying so aggressively that many people feel their core individuality to be threatened, Stefan Zweig’s impassioned pursuit of personal freedom seems more relevant than ever. His anguished existence of exile has lessons for us all about the values of civilization that we should be fighting to save in our own time” (From Joanne Laurier).

These values are emphasized and exemplified in the dandy. The dandy personified in contemporary times is Sebastian Horsley, recently deceased. Ladies and gentleman, I give you Horsley;

Sebastian Horsley - Dandy in the Underworld.

Frankenstein for the Now

Neo, the hero of The Matrix is rebuilt following his release from the controlling program

Mary Shelley's  Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus published in 1818 is seen as  a historical and literary divergence between the poetic and the technical, and is today recognized as a significant reaction against this split as part of English Romanticism.

The monster of Frankenstein is an abomination that results from the misguided belief in science. Victor Frankenstein believes that  “The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind. ” But he is wrong with the monster, his creation murdering a child. Victor hunts down his creation and attempts to destroy it.

In contrast we have the contemporary figure of Neo, the young hacker turned savior in the Matrix trilogy. When Neo is rebuilt it is very suggestive of the unnatural birth of the monster in Frankenstein. In this context the reborn man is released from the illusional world of the computer program that holds all humanity in a 'neo'-platonic grip. At the same time Neo has mastered the illusion; he controls technology because he is as one with it. As a telekinetic child says to Neo in the first Matrix film; "There is no spoon." For Neo there is no technology, only extensions of his own self. For this reason he can control the space around him, but at the same time the space around him must be controlled.

The huge difference between Neo and the monstrosity created by Victor Frankenstein is that Neo is here to save humanity; science and poetry have at last joined. Neo is that union. Avital Ronell in conversation with Werner Herzog said, “One text that shows the disaster of the divorce between science and poetry would be the one by Mary Shelley whose name is Frankenstein.” But the digital revolution that has Neo as the Chosen One is the marriage of science and poetry.The monster in Frankenstein is Neo's sibling that was abandoned when science no longer needed poetry and poetry stopped understanding science. This occurred when poetry got obsessed with form. Science lost interest in poetry when it began splitting atoms.

For Neo poetic form and atoms are the same thing. Reality is one great poem, a dance of code that can be read, interpreted and responded to with a Will to Power:

"My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (its will to power) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement ("union") with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on"- Nietzsche, The Will to Power.

The lie of the matrix is not the illusion of material reality, it is the will to power, the desire to master the space. While the power of the matrix could be use to liberate minds, it is being used to control space, in a violent and ongoing war, waged with the same technology that provides the awareness of reality -  which is defined by the struggle to control it and so on ad infinitum.

Keepers of the River

Screenshot, "The Burden of Dreams" (1982) a feature-length documentary and making-of directed by Les Blank, shot during and about the chaotic production of Werner Herzog's 1982 film Fitzcarraldo, filmed in the jungles of South America.

"The question of hearsay had a deeper dimension and required research of an entirely different kind. [Arguing for their title to the land] the Indians could only claim that they’d always been there; this they had learned from their grandparents. When, finally, the case appeared hopeless, I managed to get an audience with the President, [Fernando] Belaúnde. The Machiguengas of Shivankoreni elected two representatives to accompany me. [In the President’s office in Lima] when our conversation threatened to come to a standstill, I presented Belaúnde with the following argument: in Anglo-Saxon law, although hearsay is generally inadmissible as evidence, it is not absolutely inadmissible. As early as 1916, in the case of Angu vs. Atta, a colonial court in the Gold Coast (today Ghana) ruled that hearsay could serve as a valid form of evidence.

That case was completely different. It had to do with the use of a local governor’s palace; then, too, there were no documents, nothing official that would have been relevant. But, the court ruled, the overwhelming consensus in hearsay that countless tribesmen had repeated and repeated, had come to constitute so manifest a truth that the court could accept it without further restrictions. At this, Belaunde, who had lived for many years in the jungle, fell quiet. He asked for a glass of orange juice, then said only Good god, and I knew that we had won him over. Today the Machiguengas have a title to their land; even the consortium of oil firms that discovered one of the largest sources of natural gas [in the world] directly in their vicinity respects it." Werner Herzog, On the Absolute, the Sublime and Ecstatic Truth

KNUTTE WESTER'S FILM "GZIM REWIND" ON SVT AND MODERNA MUSEET // EXHIBITION AT VÄSTERÅS MUSEUM OF ART

 

On Thursday February 23 at 8 pm, Knutte Wester's documentary "Gzim Rewind" will be shown on Swedish public TV, channel 2. I was involved in the pre-production of this film as a consultant for sequences that were to involved machinima film, but became the sketched war scenes.

See a clip from the film and an interview with the artist

Gzim Rewind on SVT:
SVT2 23 feb 2012, 20.00
SVT2 24 feb 2012, 15.50
SVT2 25 feb 2012, 13.15
SVT2 26 feb 2012, 00.05

Additionally, the film will be shown at Moderna museet as part of the documentary film festival Tempo's Balkan program "The Screen of Memory", on March 8 at 3:15 pm. The film had its Swedish premiere at the Gothenburg International Film Festival this year, where it was nominated in the category Best Swedish Documentary.

More about The Screen of Memory

Don't miss Knutte Wester's ongoing exibition at Västerås Museum of Art, until 8 April. The exhibition presents three recent projects.

More about the exhibition

More about Knutte Wester on www.gsa.se

Chungking Express: Paradox Waiting

"beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella," - Isidore Ducasse, known by his pseudonym Comte de Lautréamon (1869)

Chungking Express is a film by Wong Kar-Wai from 1994. It is a beautiful meditation on paradox, absence and the rule of the heart over the mind. The loneliness of crowds peppers the gritty realism of people getting on with life in the famous Chungking Mansions of Hong Kong. In particular He Qiwu, also known as Cop 223 (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro). Qiwu's girlfriend May broke up with him on April 1. His birthday is May 1 and he chooses to wait for May for a month before moving on. Every day he buys a tin of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1. By the end of this time, he feels that he will either be rejoined with his love or that it will have expired forever. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman in a blonde wig (played by Brigitte Lin) tries to survive in the drug underworld after a smuggling operation goes sour. He Qiqu spends time at a snack bar in the crowded Chungking Mansions, using the phone to make hopeless calls to women he does not actually know ("we were in grade four together" or "has it been five years...you have two kids now") and chatting to the owner who attempts to find him a date.

In the second story of the film, the unnamed Cop 663 (played by Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) is similarly dealing with a breakup, this time with a flight attendant (Valerie Chow). He meets Faye, the new girl at the local snack bar (played by Faye Wong). She secretly falls for him. The flight attendant waits for the cop around the snack bar, and finds out he is on his day off. She leaves a letter for the snack bar owner to give to the cop. Everyone in the snack bar reads the letter, which is assumed to be the flight attendant's way of telling the cop that their relationship is over. The envelope also has a spare set of keys to the cop's apartment.

The film revolves around the themes of doubles, replacements or doppelgängers and how or if anyone really knows anyone. The doubles in the first story are not copies but dim reflections, fractured similarities recruited by the protagonists from the pain and loneliness that the original bestows upon them.

The paradox of relationships is fully explored in Chungking Express with a brevity and economy that is at times startling, but always beautiful. "Knowing someone does not mean keeping them" (知道一个人并不意味着保持其) says Brigitte Lin's character as He Qiwu tries desperately to engage her, the mysterious blonde woman who we already know he will fall in love with,  in conversation in a bar. But the pair do not meet, even thought they are sitting next to each other, her in her Lolita sun glasses and blonde wig and him stumbling through his words as he wears his heart on his sleeve. People change. He's a cop and she is a drug dealer. They share a hotel room, although he eats and she sleeps. They are miles apart. Upon leaving at sunrise he cleans her shoes with his tie while she continues to sleep, and the world is turned upside down. Surrealism lives and love is madness.

While He Qiwu contemplates his 25th birthday, the blonde woman murders a western man while he waits for another woman in a blonde wig with whom he is intimate. Like a hallucination two dreams collide, one of death and the other of lust. Shadows move off the stage and blood runs with the rain.

There is little between them but they can barely hear each other. Cop 663 and Faye seem to be in two different pictures, but they are speaking to each other. He is elsewhere and she is stuck. Memories betray us. His flight attendant girlfriend has just gone and he is telling us about it in grainy images with audio from the take-off procedure of the flight upon which they met. "Onboard every flight is a stewardess that you long to seduce.  This time last year, at 25, 000 feet I actually seduced one" (板载每次飞行是一名空姐，你长的勾引。去年这个时候，在25000英尺，其实我的诱惑之一).  Is the truth being told?




Nothing lasts and there is no forever.

Who is leaving who in the sad memories of Cop 663? Soon everyone in the snack bar quarter is reading the letter from the flight attendant to 663, the moment of dissolution is shared  before the cop (n)ever reads it. Or has it?  His keys in the envelope make Faye the double (s)he does not know (s)he has. Noise between people is part of (mis)understanding.

By this stage of the film we seem to be swimming in clouds. A person is burnt upon the mind of another and they remain as a presence no matter the distance. What was presence in absence for He Qiwu has become absence in presence for Faye and Cop 663. He returns home for lunch, talking to the closet in the words he used for his flight attendant, but she is gone. Who is there?

She is. The double that we all carry. She inhabits the living quarters of the lonely cop. Watering his plants, talking to his stuffed animals, left behind by his love, and eating his food. Shouting to him as he passes by. Like a living ghost. A memory that answers back. How many of you can there be?

While he is absent, she cleans and redecorates. Changing the track of reality for the dreaming cop. "Did I leave the tap running or is the apartment getting more tearful?" (我离开的自来水运行或公寓越来越含泪). He is lost and dreams collide around him. Music she chooses becomes his and he remembers it as something it is not. Objects hold memories and as these change so does the man and his world. And then there is love in crowds...or not. One letter can make all the difference. Where do you want to go?

8 Films I (Probably Should Not) Have Seen as a Child

10 movies I should not have seen as a child by Nadine Von Cohen has inspired me to make my own shorter list. I was shocked at first by the mundanity of the films Von Cohan had chosen (Porky's and Cocktail!). I then remembered that my mum and dad did not really restrict me much in what I saw or read. However, I really did not have a lot of film watching when I was a kid. My life was books and British Television (Goodies, Dr Who, Kenny Everett etc). However,  I did manage to collect a list of 8 films that scared me in some way in my tender years. These are not arranged in any order, but here are my 8 movies I should not have seen as a child:

 

Rocky Horror Picture Show (12 Years Old)
I saw Rocky Horror from the back of a station wagon with my mother and her best friend in the front seat. The film must have had an effect on me as I wrote out all the words to Sweet Transvestite on the front of my school ring binder folder. For the following two years I used it for all my classes. Later in high school, when I was about 16, I went to two school socials (dances) dressed as a woman. I am totally amazed I was not beaten up, but I was 189 cms tall when I was 15, so I was a very unconvincing drag queen dressed in a pastel frock and old lady shoes, complete with a bad wig and stockings.

 

Jaws (10 years old)
On Cavill Avenue at Surfers Paradise I went and saw Jaws with my best friend and afterwards we bought shark's tooth necklaces. Jaws was a totally unpleasant experience for a boy who loved the beach.


Bliss (14 Years old)
At a hippy beach house at Byron Bay my mother rented the video of Bliss by Ray Lawrence. Some of the other mothers staying there called my mother 'sick' for showing it in the public lounge area of the house to children. Its a great film and the book (by Peter Carey) and film changed my life.

 

The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus (8 years old)
On TV with Richard Burton as Faustus; I was fascinated and terrified at the same time. I remember the first appearance of Satan to Faustus was as a skeleton covered in maggots. The image is incised upon my mind.


Mad Max (11 years old)
This film made me look at Australia (where I spent the first 30 years of my life), differently.It is a brutal account of petrol head culture and the highway was a lot more frightening for me after seeing it.

German Piss Party (15 years old)
I stumbled into 'The Shed', a corrugated iron box at the back of my friend's house used for drinking, darts and a bit or work, to discover his older brother and friends watching a grainy film with people speaking a language I did not understand. What unfolded during the following 30 minutes horrified me. I did not watch another porno for decades, and even then I have never been a fan of it. I blame the urinating Germans in this bizarre document of 80s fetish culture.



Psycho  (11 years old)
This is a deeply disturbing classic.  I just wish I had not seen it when I was 11 years old.




The Shining (11 years old)
Nothing on the screen scared me as much as The Shining. This film is an exercise in psychological terror.

Inception to be Screened in HUMlab

Please join us for the first screening in the Science Fiction Film Series of 2011-- picking up from the fantastic series begun last year!

INCEPTION

Admission Free!

When: Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Where: HUMlab, located in the basement below Umeå University Library

Time: Introduction at 17:15 and screening at 17:30, followed by discussion

Language: In the original English with Swedish subtitles

Details: Original Release 2010; Christopher Nolan, Director; Screenplay by Christopher Nolan; Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine

About the Film: Inception refers to the difficult task of planting an idea in the mind of a subject by entering his or her dreams. Depicting a world where media technologies can be used to fill one's dreams with surreal architectures, impossible perspectives, and unreal cities, the film takes the viewer on a multi-level journey to the unconscious where memory blurs into desire. A science fiction suspense thriller with a famously elusive ending-- Inception asks questions about the roots of personal identity when it's no longer possible to distinguish between truth and fiction, reality and fantasy, or waking and dreaming.

Dennis Hopper - Andy Warhol screen test

Poetry is alive. It flies in the face and crawls the walls.


(Music by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips)

SF Films in HUMlab

District 9 in HUMlab

The second film of the HUMlab Science Fiction Movie Series 2010 will be
DISTRICT 9!!!

Title: DISTRICT 9 (dir Neill Blomkamp, 2009)

Date: Wednesday (31 March)
Venue: HUMlab (located in basement of Umeå University library)
Time: 17:15 (introduction); 17:30 (screening)
Language: in English with Swedish subtitles
Admission: Free!!!


As before, there will be discussion after the film with light refreshments.

Produced by Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings, King Kong), DISTRICT 9 has
been described as "a thriller-diller that trades in ideas without
forgetting to go whup-ass on your nervous system. … District 9, with a
chump-change budget of $30 million, soars on the imagination of its
creator." (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone) For more information, including
film notes, visit http://sf.humlab.umu.se/.

We hope to see you there! Feel free to forward this to anyone who might be
interested, and please also encourage your students to attend!

2010 HUMlab SF Movie Series team
Lisa Swanstrom
Scott Stavos
Jenna Ng

SOLARIS in HUMlab

HUMlab Science Fiction Movie Series 2010 kicks off next week with a
screening of Andrei Tarkovsky's SOLARIS!

Film: SOLARIS
Date: Thursday (18 March)
Venue: HUMlab
Time: 1700

(HUMlab is under the UB Library at Umeå University)

There will be discussion after the film, accompanied by light refreshments.

Tarkovsky’s films are today considered “seminal components of the Russian
cultural identity”; the seven feature films he made in his lifetime have
been called “a sacred septateuch on a par with the masterpieces of
Russia’s novelists and composers.” Ingmar Bergman has said that "Tarkovsky
for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language,
true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a
dream." At the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, SOLARIS won the Grand Prix
Spécial du Jury, the FIPRESCI prize and was nominated for the Palme d’Or.
The film was re-made by Steven Soderburgh in 2002, starring George Clooney
and Natascha McElhone.

Tarkovsky’s films are characterized by long, slow shots, pensive
contemplation of grandiose themes (life, death, love, technology,
homeland) and extended periods of stillness, often stretched to the point
of breath-hold. In that sense, his films are not easy to watch and
fidgeting is almost inevitable. Yet, given some time and patience, they
can be utterly rewarding, even epiphanic: Tarkovsky writes of “the maze of
possibilities” in cinema, which he searches “to be able to find myself,
fully and independently, within it.” The word “profound” is overused; the
intensities of Tarkovsky’s films are stirred in depths, where the tiniest
ripple takes a while to spread and be discerned. One just has to give it
time.

For more information, including film notes, visit http://sf.humlab.umu.se/.

Alice in Wonderland 1903-2010

Alice In Wonderland (1903)

The first-ever film version of Lewis Carroll's tale has recently been restored by the BFI National Archive from severely damaged materials. Made just 37 years after Lewis Carroll wrote his novel and eight years after the birth of cinema, the adaptation was directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, and was based on Sir John Tenniel's original illustrations. In an act that was to echo more than 100 years later, Hepworth cast his wife as the Red Queen, and he himself appears as the Frog Footman. Even the Cheshire cat is played by a family pet.

With a running time of just 12 minutes (8 of which survive), Alice in Wonderland was the longest film produced in England at that time. Film archivists have been able to restore the film's original colours for the first time in over 100 years.

Music: 'Jill in the Box', composed and performed by Wendy Hiscocks.



Alice in Wonderland (1933)

A scene from the 1933 Paramount film "Alice in Wonderland" with Edward Everett Horton as The Mad Hatter, Charles Ruggles as The March Hare, Jackie Searl as the Dormouse and actress Charlotte Henry as Alice. Elements of "Through the Looking Glass" were also combined with this Lewis Carroll inspired film



Alice in Wonderland (1966)

With music by Ravi Shankar, Alice was flying high in 1966.

"Your hair wants cutting" maaannn!

Alice in Wonderland (1966)
Directed by Jonathan Miller
one of TV Series made by BBC television: "The Wednesday Play"
Weirdest & Greatest Alice Film
"Mad Tea Party"


Alice in Wonderland (1983)
Not a highpoint in the history of Alice as far as I am concerned.
Remarkably similar-looking dancers André De Shields and Alan Weeks play Tweedledum and Tweedledee in the 1983 Great Performances version of "Alice In Wonderland," directed by Kirk Browning and starring Kate Burton as Alice. They recite The Walrus and The Carpenter.


Alice in Wonderland (2010)

CGI. Anything is possible.

The Na'vi Have Arrived

There is a Pandora in Second Life. The blue is engaging. The furries will be out numbered by Easter.

Avatar: Blindness in an Old New Vision

I witnessed the spectacle of Avatar in 3D on the weekend. It was a late night showing and the cinema was totally crowded. The audience applauded at the end, and I understand why. Visually, Cameron's film is an amazing piece of work. Nothing is spared in the optical extravaganza that fills the 162 minutes film. On the other hand, I found the narrative at times inconsistent and unoriginal. In Avatar we are witnessing a recounting of Dances with Wolves, told by J. J. Rousseau with a bible in his hand. The film can be excused for this, as the image of the forests of Pandora are what people have come to see. But it is the imaging of the film that actually drives so much of the narrative.

In a similar sense to a computer game being composed of its own narrative architecture, the visual components of Avatar are primary in how the story is conveyed. The stereoscopic cameras (pictured above) are used to place the viewer in the perspective of a witness, in regards to the narrative action of the film. Action sequences are not shot in panorama (although there are plenty of such shots in the film), but are composed by a series of point of view shots from within the action. What is the result in the reception of the narrative? I gained some idea when I stumbled upon the Avatar fan site www.naviblue.com;

"I've read on this thread and various other sources on the web about Avatar fans feeling heightened sense of mood changes along the lines of despair and depression from the realization that Pandora and all of it's inhabitants are not tangible. I have also read about fleeting thoughts of suicide, self induced coma, and prolonged sleep from members of this website and other websites as possible ways to physically and metaphysically connect with Pandora and its inhabitants".

-----------------------

"I've had problems with depression for years, and the first time I saw Avatar didn't help. My entire reality was shattered, so to speak. there was such a wave of emotions flowing through me that I really didn't know what to feel. I simply had to see it again, which helped a bit. A little less shock and awe, but still some general depression with the reality of how much of a crap-hole this planet is".

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"There's something about the Na'vi that I just love to watch. They must have stuff that we Sky People do not..the connection with their world, animals and each other that I wish was possible to obtain".

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"I also plan to hand out ballot papers during the convention, but I will be giving them to everybody, including non-Avatar fans to ensure a fair referendum. The issue will be as follows:

Option A: The Na'vi remaining part of Avatar based fangroups (An autonomous tribe will not be formed) (the status quo)
Option B: The Na'vi becoming a self governing tribe according to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Option C: The Na'vi becoming a new ethnic group and community in hopes of "self-determination"

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I am astounded by the reactions of these (and many many more) people to the film. Especially when one thinks of the struggle by actual indigenous groups in the world (i.e. planet Earth) to survive in the present moment as distinct cultures. Consider a story such as that of anti-mining activist Dora “Alicia” Sorto Recinos, who was murdered last week in El Salvador, while carrying her two year-old child. Is anyone in the United States or Europe likely to form a tribe dedicated to the Environmental Committee of Cabañas? No, I doubt it. But the giant blue forest-dwellers of Pandora seem to have awoken an almost Noble Savage fantasy in the minds of many. The prospect of a stunning, green, far away world where apparent harmony with natural forces is what governs society is attractive to many people. The visual technologies of Avatar have succeeded in bringing the image of such a place into such a sharp focus that people are willing to believe that it is possible for it to exist.

"First of all I would like to say that everything on Pandora is 100% scientifically possible, yes even the floating mountains. but more to the point I would like to direct everyone's attention to these two articles about more or less the same thing: we may very well discover a planet a like Pandora within the next few years (i'm not sure how many few is supposed to be but lets be reasonable and say 10 years.) For all we know now, there could be a planet out there very similar to Pandora, all we need to do is discover it!

http://www.sidewaysnews.com/science-technology/avatars-pandora-possible-within-years
also
http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/blogs/astronomy/2009/12/28/pandora-made-possible.aspx"

I would suggest that people who are looking for a deeper sense of meaning in their lives check out sites such as Intercontinental Cry, a blog that focuses on "the world's many indigenous struggles, and reading material focused on alternatives, movements, social issues, and related". Or the website Conversations with the Earth:

Conversations with the Earth is a collaboration between an international indigenous-led advocate for the rights of indigenous peoples Land Is Life, an expert in participatory video, InsightShare, and a Paris-based photographer, curator, and specialist in maintaining oral traditions, Nicolas Villaume, founder of Conversations du Monde. CWE also draws on contributions from a range of editorial sources, including Project Word, a media NGO that helps develop journalism articles on indigenous communities and by native writers.

A generally felt need for a more engaged sense of presence in relation to the biological processes of the planet is reflected in both the forums of Naviblue and in the enormous earnings of the film. In Avatar, we are presented with an idealized image of the Other, where any need to question the values of our late Capitalist, post-industrialized, globalized world are relieved by the Hollywood fantasy that it will 'all be right in the end'.

The POV created in Avatar places the experiencing of the narrative of the film in the sight of one sharing the struggle of the Na'vi. A struggle for what their savior, the ex-marine 'gone native' Jake Scully describes as "our land". The contradictions are many and the vision as old as it is new. The power of new forms of cinematography to present these old subjects in new skins is something we shall be seeing more of in the near future. Where they shall lead people is going to be interesting to watch. Where it has come from is not such a mystery:


A detail from Benjamin West's heroic, neoclassical history painting, The Death of General Wolfe (1771), depicting an idealized American Indian.

Home by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate.

The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.

For this purpose, HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. EuropaCorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film.

HOME has been made for you : share it! And act for the planet.

Watch the film here.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand

HOME official website
http://www.home-2009.com

PPR is proud to support HOME
http://www.ppr.com

HOME is a carbon offset movie
http://www.actioncarbone.org

More information about the Planet
http://www.goodplanet.info

sol island media works

This is a beautiful piece of collaged film:

A 16mm and digital video collage composed of found footage, home movies and hand-scratched animations. Originally exhibited as Movement 7 of a seven-movement video-symphony entitled Female Alchemy, this piece addresses the concept of maturity, self-realization and the continuous evolution and elevation of the human spirit. With music by composer Paul Yeon Lee and a brief cameo appearance by beat poet Anne Waldman.

By sol island media works:

Experimental films by artist Dinorah de Jesús Rodriguez, hand-made in 16mm using scratch-on-film and paint-on-film techniques (direct filmmaking), damaged cameras, found footage, and digital video effects. These works are exhibited in various forms, as films and/or as visual art or as part of multimedia performance works.

More from the blog (you owe it to your eyes to look at this stuff, it is georgeous)

Australia on Film

I may actually go and see Baz Luhrmann's Australia as it will be showing here in the far north of Sweden in about a month.
What I am more excited about is the Australian Screen website. It is a treasure trove of Australia cinema going back to its earliest years. There are online streams from hundreds of films and some are in their entirety. Teaching notes and resources such as still images and downloadable segments make the Australian Screen site a valuable potential teaching tool. You can register as a member (there is also a Facebook group) and receive emails and make contacts with others interesting in the amazing world of Australian film.
I was happy to reconnect with a favorite film of mine, The Year My Voice Broke. Not easy to find a copy of these days, but a film that reminds me so much of growing up in rural Queensland.

Ben X: Augmented Reality in Reality Fiction

I will be giving a short presentation at an international workshop that is being held at Umeå university soon. The workshop is on Creative Spaces and I will be talking about augmented reality, that is shared virtual and actual space in projects we have done in HUMlab in the last few years. I began yesterday looking around for materials to present in relation to augmented space, the work of Sheldon Brown and Mary Flanagan comes to mind as well as the ARG scene, I will show some pieces by Jane Mcgonigal. Then this morning on the radio came a review for a Belgian film from 2007 that premiers in Sweden today, Ben X:

Ben X is a 2007 Belgian film about an autistic boy (played by Greg Timmermans) who retreats into the fantasy world of the MMORPG ArchLord to escape bullying. The film's title is a reference to the leet version of the Dutch phrase "(ik) ben niks", meaning "(I) am nothing".

The film won three awards at the 31st Montreal World Film Festival: the Grand Prix des Amériques, the Prix du Public for the most popular film, and the Ecumenical Jury Prize for its exploration of ethical and social values. It is based on the novel "Nothing is all he said" [1] by Nic Balthazar, who also directed the film. The novel was inspired by the true story of an autistic boy who committed suicide because of bullying.

This film is mainly seen through Ben's (Greg Timmermans) point of view, especially with the frequent use of Ben's voiceover for narrating the story. It also uses flashbacks and sequences from Archlord (as an intercut), to parallel his real life with the sequences. Ben is a teenage boy who is being bullied at school very often. To escape his harsh reality of being bullied, he turns to his virtual world by playing a online game called Archlord. In his virtual world, he is more confident and brave. Moreover, he collaborates his adventures with another online user named Scarlite. (Wikipedia)

Watching the trailer I get the impression that the use of scenes from the MMORPG work in a near dream-sequence like technique. However, it is an attempt to capture an augmented sense of reality.

Two films from Slavoj Žižek Online

I saw the documentary Žižek! last night, and enjoyed it. Today I found both Žižek! and The Perverts Guide to Cinema online so they are now cozily embedded on SoulVlog for your ideological viewing pleasure.