Music

The Irony of Copyright Protection

In Copyright Protection That Serves to Destroy, Terry Teachout lays out some of the fundamental issues surrounding the preservation of art, in particular focusing on recorded sound:

Nowadays most people understand the historical significance of recorded sound, and libraries around the world are preserving as much of it as possible. But recording technology has evolved much faster than did printing technology—so fast, in fact, that librarians can’t keep up with it. It’s hard enough to preserve a wax cylinder originally cut in 1900, but how do you preserve an MP3 file? Might it fade over time? And will anybody still know how to play it a quarter-century from now? If you’re old enough to remember floppy disks, you’ll get the point at once: A record, unlike a book, is only as durable as our ability to play it back.

Digital preservation is already a big problem for current librarians, and not just because of the mammoth amounts of digital data being produced. Just from a simple technological perspective, there are many non-trivial challenges. Even if the storage medium/reading mechanisms remain compatible over the next century, there are nontrivial challenges with ensuring these devices will remain usable that far into the future. Take hard drives. A lot of film and audio (and, I suppose books these days too) are being archived on hard drives. But you can’t just take a hard drive and stick it on a shelf somewhere and fire it up in 30 years. Nor should you keep it spinning for 30 years. It requires use, but not constant use. And even then you’ll need to ensure redundancy because hard drives fail.

Just in writing that, you can see the problem. Hard drives clearly aren’t the solution. Too many modes of failure there. We need something more permanent. Which means something completely new… and thus something that will make hard drives (and our ability to read them) obsolete.

And that’s from a purely technological perspective. They’re nontrivial, but I’m confident that technology will rise to the challenge. However, once you start getting into the absolutely bonkers realm of intellectual property law, things get stupid really fast. If technology will rise to the challenge, IP owners and lawmakers seem to be engaged in an ever-escalating race to the bottom of the barrel:

In Europe, sound recordings enter the public domain 50 years after their initial release. Once that happens, anyone can reissue them, which makes it easy for Europeans to purchase classic records of the past. In America, by contrast, sound recordings are “protected” by a prohibitive snarl of federal and state legislation whose effect was summed up in a report issued in 2010 by the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress: “The effective term of copyright protection for even the oldest U.S. recordings, dating from the late 19th century, will not end until the year 2067 at the earliest.… Thus, a published U.S. sound recording created in 1890 will not enter the public domain until 177 years after its creation, constituting a term of rights protection 82 years longer than that of all other forms of audio visual works made for hire.”

Among countless other undesirable things, this means that American record companies that aren’t interested in reissuing old records can stop anyone else from doing so, and can also stop libraries from making those same records readily accessible to scholars who want to use them for noncommercial purposes. Even worse, it means that American libraries cannot legally copy records made before 1972 to digital formats for the purpose of preservation…

Sheer insanity. The Library of Congress appears to be on the right side of the issue, suggesting common-sense recommendations for copyright reform… that will almost certainly never be enacted by IP owners or lawmakers. Still, their “National Recording Preservation Plan” seems like a pretty good idea. Again, it’s a pity that almost none of their recommendations will be enacted, and while the need for Copyright reform is blindingly obvious to anyone with a brain, I don’t see it happening anytime soon. It’s a sad state of affairs when the only victories we can celebrate in this realm is grassroots opposition to absurd laws like SOPA/PIPA/ACTA.

I don’t know the way forward. When you look at the economics of the movie industry, as recently laid out by Steven Soderberg in a speech that’s been making the rounds of late (definitely worth a watch, if you’ve got a half hour), you start to see why media companies are so protective of their IP. As currently set up, your movie needs to make 120 million dollars, minimum, before you start to actually turn a profit (and that’s just the marketing costs – you’d have to add on the budget to get a better idea). That, too, is absurd. I don’t envy the position of media companies, but on the other hand, their response to such problems isn’t to fix the problem but to stomp their feet petulantly, hold on to copyrighted works for far too long, and to antagonize their best customers.

That’s the irony of protecting copyright. If you protect it too much, no one actually benefits from it, not even the copyright holders…

The Streaming Narrative

The NYT laments the sorry state of royalties paid out by music streaming services like Spotify.

A decade after Apple revolutionized the music world with its iTunes store, the music industry is undergoing another, even more radical, digital transformation as listeners begin to move from CDs and downloads to streaming services like Spotify, Pandora and YouTube.

As purveyors of legally licensed music, they have been largely welcomed by an industry still buffeted by piracy. But as the companies behind these digital services swell into multibillion-dollar enterprises, the relative trickle of money that has made its way to artists is causing anxiety at every level of the business.

So I really don’t know enough to comment on whether or not the whole royalty situation for streaming will pan out (or not!) the way some think it will, but the interesting thing here is the narrative.

The NYT credits iTunes with revolutionizing the music world, and in some ways it did, but only by making the revolution legal. The real shift began with file sharing services like Napster. One of the old narratives that the music industry endorsed was that if you liked a song and wanted to own it, you had to also purchase the 10 or so other songs that surrounded it on an album. Napster was free, and while it’s ability to enable widespread music theft was probably the cause of its popularity, it also changed that whole album purchasing paradigm. You like “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, fine, download it and stick it to that annoying Lars guy. No need to go buy the whole album. Apple, to their credit, realized that the narrative had shifted, and when they implemented iTunes, they allowed customers to purchase only the songs they wanted.

Like I said, the free downloads were probably the main cause of Napster’s popularity, but the success of iTunes shows that the whole a la carte idea was also a key component. A decade later, and the narrative is changing again.

The thing that struck me reading the article is that free music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify, while providing truly minimal royalties, also shine a light on another narrative about listening frequency. Namely, once you bought a record, the music industry could care less how often you listened to it. But streaming services aren’t based on sales, they’re based on “listens” – the number of times you streamed a specific song.

I’m probably the last person in the world who should be commenting on listening habits, as I suck at music. I love it, I’m just bad at keeping up with this stuff and constantly go back to the same well (What? I’ve got movies to watch, books to read, and beer to drink over here, leave me alone!) All of which is to say that I have to wonder how the metric of “listens” will impact the industry. I tend to listen to the same thing over and over again, and when I do that, I’ll probably earn someone a few cents of royalties. But I have a large suspicion that a lot of people will give most music a single listen (especially given the low barrier of entry on streaming), maybe revisiting once or twice if they’re really psyched about it.

Music is certainly relistened to more than movies are rewatched, and being more of a movie guy, that might throw off my calibration on this issue, but I really have to wonder about the relationship between sales and listens. Yeah, such and such album or song may have sold a million copies last week… but how long will that song be in heavy rotation in streaming? And when you literally have millions of songs on your fingertips, are you likely to cast your net far and wide, or return to the same music over and over again? Will this notion drive what kinds of music becomes available? More pop music with clear hooks, less experimental stuff? Will those experimental folks be able to survive on the long tail?

I don’t have any answers here and I don’t really know enough about the music industry to say how this will play out, but I’m thinking we’ll see some interesting developments in the next few years. Incidentally, movie streaming doesn’t seem to have caved to streaming in the same way. They don’t charge streaming services like Netflix per watch, but for the general ability to stream a certain catalog. I’ll be curious to see if we ever reach a Spotify-level streaming service for movies. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon… but again, the next few years will be interesting.

Tasting Notes – Part 4

Another edition of Tasting Notes, a series of quick hits on a variety of topics that don’t really warrant a full post. So here’s what I’ve been watching/playing/reading/drinking lately:

Television

  • Game of Thrones – The season finale aired last week, and I have to say, I’m impressed. My usual approach to stuff like this is to let it run for a couple of seasons to make sure it’s both good and that it’s actually heading somewhere. At this point, the book series isn’t even finished, but friends who’ve read it think it’s great and they say the books get better, so I gave the series a shot – and I’m really glad I did. It’s a fantastic series, much more along the lines of swords-and-sandals (a la Spartacus or Gladiator) than outright fantasy (a la Lord of the Rings). People talk about magic and dragons and whatnot, but most of that seems to be in the distant past (though there are hints of a return to that sort of thing throughout the series and especially in the last minutes of the season). Most of the season consists of dialogue, politics, Machiavellian scheming, and action. Oh, and sex. And incest. Yeah, it’s a fun show. The last episode of the season doesn’t do much to resolve the various plotlines, and hints at an even more epic scale. Interestingly, though, I don’t find this sort of open-endedness that frustrating. Unlike a show like Lost, the open threads don’t seem like red-herrings or even mysteries at all. It’s just good, old fashioned storytelling. The worst thing about it is that I’m all caught up and will have to wait for the next season! Prediction: Geoffrey will die horribly, and I will love it. But not too quickly. He’s such a fantastic, sniveling little bastard. I want to keep hating him for a while before someone takes him down.
  • Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week: Doctor Who – Most of the semi-recently rebooted series is available on watch instantly, and I’ve only just begun to pick my way through the series again. I vaguely remember watching a few of Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor episodes, but I never finished that first season. I’m not very far in right now – just saw the first appearance of the Daleks, which should be interesting.

Movies

  • 13 Assassins – Takashi Miike tends to be a hit-or-miss filmmaker for me. Fortunately for him, he is ridiculously prolific. His most recent effort is a pretty straightforward Samurai tale about a suicide mission to assassinate a cruel and ruthless evil lord. Seven Samurai, it is not, but it is still quite engaging and entertaining to watch. It starts a bit slow, but it finishes with an amazing 45 minute setpiece as our 13 heroes spring their trap on 200 enemies. Along the way, we get some insight into Japanese culture as the days of the Samurai and Shogunate faded, though I don’t think I’d call this a rigorously accurate film or anything. Still, there’s more going on here than just bloody action, of which there is a lot. An excellent film, among the top films I’ve seen so far this year.
  • HBO has a pretty great lineup right now. In the past couple weeks, I’ve revisited Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and How to Train Your Dragon. All of these films have improved upon rewatching them, a subject I’ve always found interesting. Scott Pilgrim, in particular, has improved it’s standing in my mind. I still think it’s got some problems in the final act, but I also think it’s a dreadfully underappreciated film.
  • Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week: Transcendent Man – I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but it’s an interesting profile of Ray Kurtzweil, a futurist and singularity proponent. I don’t really buy into his schtick, but he’s an interesting guy and the documentary is worth a watch for that.

Video Games

  • I’m still playing Mass Effect 2, but I have not progressed all that far in the game. I’ve found this is common with RPGs lately – it takes a long time to get anything accomplished in an RPG, so I sometimes find it hard to get started. Still, I have liked what I’ve seen of this game so far. It’s far from perfect, but it’s got some interesting elements.
  • Since I had to hook up my Wii to get Netflix working during the great PSN outage of ’11, I actually did start playing Goldeneye again. I even got a Wii classic controller, and that made the game approximately 10 times more fun (but I have to say, plugging the Wiimote into the classic controller to get it to work? That’s just stupidly obtuse, though I guess it keeps the cost down). Since I could play it in short 30 minute chunks, I actually did manage to finish this one off in pretty short order. It’s a pretty simple FPS game, which I always enjoy, but there’s nothing particularly special about it, except for some muted nostalgia from the original.

Music

Books

  • I’ve been cranking my way through Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga novels, of which there are many (and I’m actually quite glad, as they’re all great fun). I’ve covered the first few novels in SF Book Reviews, and will probably have finished enough other books to do a Bujold-only edition in the near future. I’m currently reading Ethan of Athos, which seems to me to be a kinda spinoff/standalone novel, but an interesting one nonetheless (and we get to catch up with a character from one of the other books).
  • I also started Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, but have found myself quickly bogging down (it doesn’t help that I have, like, 10 Bujold novels sitting around, begging me to read them) almost from the start. It’s not bad, per say, but there’s something about the style and scope of the book that bothers me. There are some interesting ideas, and Diamond admits that his methods are, by necessity, not that rigorous, but it’s still seems extremely speculative to me. I would normally be fine with that sorta approach, but I’m finding something about this grating and I haven’t figured it out just yet…
  • If you count the aforementioned Guns, Germs, and Steel, I’m down to just 4 unread books from my last Book Queue, which is pretty good! And I’ve only really added the Bujold books and Fuzzy Nation since then. I’m actually at a point where I should start seeking out new stuff. Of course, it probably won’t take long to fill the queue back up, but still. Progress!

The Finer Things…

  • I’ve managed to have some pretty exceptional beers of late. First up is Ola Dubh Special Reserve 40, an imperial porter aged in 40 year old Highland Park casks. It’s an amazing beer, though also outrageously priced. Still, if you can get your hands on some and don’t mind paying the premium, it’s great.
  • Another exceptional beer, the legendary Pliny the Elder (currently ranked #3 on Beer Advocates Best Beers on Planet Earth list). It’s a fantastic double IPA. Not sure if it’s really #3 beer in the world fantastic, but fantastic nonetheless.
  • One more great beer, and a total surprise, was Sierra Nevada Boot Camp ExPortation. Basically, Sierra Nevada has this event every year where fans get to go to “Beer Camp” and collaborate on new beers with Sierra Nevada brewers and whatnot. My understanding is that the batches are extremely limited. Indeed, I never expected to see these, but apparently there were a few on tap at a local bar, sorta leftover from Philly Beer Week. The beer is basically a porter with Brettanomyces added and aged in Pinot Noir barrels. This is all beer-nerd-talk for a sour (in a good way) beer. I’m not normally big into the style or Brett, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t a fantastic beer. I loved it and unfortunately, I’ll probably never see it again. If you see it, try it. At the very least, it will be an interesting experience!

And that’s all for now.

Recent Listening

I may have posted about this before, but I’m not a very astute music fan. Don’t get me wrong, I love music, I just don’t understand it the way I do with something like, say, movies or books. I gather I’m very unusual in most respects when it comes to music, especially when it comes to lyrics. In short, I rarely pay attention to them. My focus is generally on the music and the way the sound of the voice plays into that, which I know is a crazy way to listen to music, but it’s what I generally find myself doing. When I really get into an album or a band or something and I spend a lot of time listening to their stuff, I will eventually get around to the lyrics. Sometimes I’m very pleased with the experience and it takes me to the next level. Other times, I find out that I’ve been listening to German anarchists (and I suppose there’s a next level there too).

Part of the issue is that I really have no technical knowledge of music. Tune, chords, notes; I have a general idea of what these things are, but I’m not a musician. I treat music much more subjectively than I treat movies or books. I can recognize when I like the pretty sounds coming out of the speakers though, and that’s good enough most of the time.

Anyway, I’ve lately come to realize that my music catalog is becoming outdated and rather stale. I’m getting sick of listening to the same stuff, so I thought it was time to branch out. Even when it comes to my preferred genres of music (i.e. Rock), I’m not a terribly knowledgeable listener. So in an attempt to broaden my musical horizons, I got a book called 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die by Tom Moon. So far, I’ve made my way through 38 of the albums listed, which is pretty slow going. At the current rate, it would take me a many years to listen to all of these at least once, but it’s still been fun. Here are a few highlights (The book has a website, but not all the albums have the descriptions posted yet):

  • Sufjan Stevens – Illinoise: Moon writes a great into to this album, which has become one of my favorite recent albums:

    At first people thought Sufjan Stevens was joking. After garnering big acclaim for his second solo effort Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lakes State (2003), the singer, songwriter, and nu-folk mystic from Michigan told interviewers he intended to create a series of albums of original songs, one for each state in the union. A grand and quixotic plan a social studies teacher could love, this project seemed likely to exhaust Stevens’s considerable compositional resources—even as it earned him a place in the novelty-music hall of fame.

    Then came the even more inventive Illinoise, and suddenly Stevens’s modest proposal didn’t seem like such a joke.

    One thing I think I’ve come to appreciate is the instrumentation in these songs. There are some that are a tad slow and I haven’t gotten around to really looking at the lyrics (which are seemingly important here), but there are a number of great songs here. Standout tracks include “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” and (my favorite title for a song) “They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!” Alas, I don’t think that Stevens will ever get to all the states, though he has apparently released a number of individual songs that could be associated with various states and is reportedly working on a New Jersey album (apparently some sort of ode to the New Jersey Turnpike, which is funny).

  • The Mars Volta – The Bedlam in Goliath: This music is a bit hard to describe, but it’s very dense, which is something I enjoy in music. I like when it takes a few listenings before I can really parse a song’s structure or make distinctions between various sounds and effects. It’s also very fast paced and they sometimes get into a sorta rock groove (like, for instance, the end of “aberinkula”). The singer’s voice initially got on my nerves a bit, but that eventually went away and I’ve been able to really enjoy the album. Standout songs include the two opening epics, “aberinkula” and “Metatron” as well as the third song “Ilyena” and the perplexing “Askepios”. I suppose this is what progressive rock has morphed into… and it’s something I want to listen to more of.
  • Johnny Adams – The Real Me: Johnny Adams Sings Doc Pomus: I’ve never really listened to a lot of the Blues, but I’ve always appreciated the sound and feel of the genre, even if I wasn’t that familiar with it. These songs tend to be based on lyrics though, so it’s something I probably need to listen to a lot more in order to fully get it, but luckily the music seems pretty great too.
  • The Abyssinian Baptist Gospel Choir – Shakin’ the Rafters: You know that scene in The Blues Brothers when Jake and Elwood go to the church and get their mission from God? And then James Brown leads a Gospel Choir in song? This music reminded me of that. It doesn’t quite have that same feel, but it is good stuff. Not something I see myself revisiting regularly, but I’m glad I was exposed to this, because it’s not something I would pick up on my own.
  • Arcade Fire – Neon Bible: This album is a bit disappointing because I like the music so much, but when I finally got around to thinking about the lyrics, I was surprised at how depressing it was. Moon captures this well in his writeup: “in most rock anthems, the music strides solemnly while the lyrics supply the hope. Neon Bible turns that upside down: The lyrics are borderline despondent, and whatever sunshine there is resides in the cresting, bursting-with-possibility music.” The music really is great, and at this point, I do want to check out their first album, Funeral, but I’m just not into the despondent lyrics. Standouts include “Intervention” and “No Cars Go”.
  • King Sunny Ade – Best of the Classic Years: This is one of those discoveries that makes this process all worthwhile. Here’s this Nigerian guitarist that I never would have heard of in a million years if it weren’t for this book, and I love this music. I won’t pretend to have any familiarity with African music, but this does strike me as a gateway drug to more from that vein. I’ve only listened to this once, but it’s definitely something I want to listen to more.
  • The Beatles: For unclear reasons, I’ve never really been that into The Beatles. This is probably a crime for any rock music fan, but I’m doing my best to rectify that. There were 6 albums listed in the book, so those were the ones I started with. A Hard Day’s Night, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, and Abbey Road.

    I’m still getting to know all the albums, but a few things have crossed my mind. First is that their songs are so short… I’ve noticed this before, but it always surprises me. Most of their songs are like 2-3 minutes long. Maybe it’s just the other types of music I listen to, but most of the time when I see a 2 minute song, I think it’s a filler or transition song between two longer songs. This isn’t a bad thing at all, especially when you’ve got musicians this talented, and I realize that songs generally used to be shorter and that there were physical limitations of records that made it hard to do epic 20 minute long songs and whatnot, but it still struck me as a bit odd.

    The other thing that struck me was just how distinct each album feels. I set up a playlist with all the albums and just started listening in the background one day whilst blogging or otherwise messing around, and every time the music transitioned from one album to another, I could definitely pick it out very easily. It’s not so much that I had ever thought of The Beatles music as all sounding the same, but I wasn’t expecting such distinction between albums. Overall, I’ve been very pleased with The Beatles and am still not sure why it’s taken me so long to listen to them seriously.

  • Danger Mouse – The Grey Album: Notable in light of the aforementioned Beatles album as well as recent posting, this album “uses an a cappella version of rapper Jay-Z’s The Black Album and couples it with instrumentals created from a multitude of unauthorized samples from” The White Album. Sadly, it can’t be bought as EMI was apparently none-too-pleased with the album and sought to suppress it. But you can’t stop the signal, and the album is still easily found on the internets. Interestingly, it’s also been featured in a number of best-of lists, both from 2004 and for the decade. I’ve never been a fan of rap, but this is the type of album I could probably get into. Of course, it’s mostly because Danger Mouse did an exceptional job remixing the Beatles tunes into something new and interesting. I still have no idea what Jay Z is talking about with his lyrics, but this album works really well.

As I write this post, I’m listening to Whipped Cream & Other Delights

by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, which is rather strange. I feel like I’m in the 60s. So yeah, nothing especially earth shattering in this post (which is probably demonstrative of my lack of musical knowledge more than anything else), but I’m enjoying myself. I did some skipping around the book, but have recently started going “in order” and am still plowing my way through the A’s. There are probably a dozen other albums I could list here right now, and I’ll try to revisit the subject from time to time on the blog. Anyway, happy listening.

Remix Culture and Soviet Montage Theory

A video mashup of The Beastie Boys’ popular and amusing Sabotage video with scenes from Battlestar Galactica has been making the rounds recently. It’s well done, but a little on the disposable side of remix culture. The video lead Sunny Bunch to question “remix culture”:

It’s quite good. But, ultimately, what’s the point?

Leaving aside the questions of copyright and the rest: Seriously…what’s the point? Does this add anything to the culture? I won’t dispute that there’s some technical prowess in creating this mashup. But so what? What does it add to our understanding of the world, or our grasp of the problems that surround us? Anything? Nothing? Is it just “there” for us to have a chuckle with and move on? Is this the future of our entertainment?

These are good questions, and I’m not surprised that the BSG Sabotage video prompted them. The implication of Sonny’s post is that he thinks it is an unoriginal waste of talent (he may be playing a bit of devil’s advocate here, but I’m willing to play along because these are interesting questions and because it will give me a chance to pedantically lecture about film history later in this post!) In the comments, Julian Sanchez makes a good point (based on a video he produced earlier that was referenced by someone else in the comment thread), which will be something I’ll expand on later in this post:

First, the argument I’m making in that video is precisely that exclusive focus on the originality of the contribution misses the value in the activity itself. The vast majority of individual and collective cultural creation practiced by ordinary people is minimally “original” and unlikely to yield any final product of wide appeal or enduring value. I’m thinking of, e.g., people singing karaoke, playing in a garage band, drawing, building models, making silly YouTube videos, improvising freestyle poetry, whatever. What I’m positing is that there’s an intrinsic value to having a culture where people don’t simply get together to consume professionally produced songs and movies, but also routinely participate in cultural creation. And the value of that kind of cultural practice doesn’t depend on the stuff they create being particularly awe-inspiring.

To which Sonny responds:

I’m actually entirely with you on the skill that it takes to produce a video like the Brooklyn hipsters did — I have no talent for lighting, camera movements, etc. I know how hard it is to edit together something like that, let alone shoot it in an aesthetically pleasing manner. That’s one of the reasons I find the final product so depressing, however: An impressive amount of skill and talent has gone into creating something that is not just unoriginal but, in a way, anti-original. These are people who are so devoid of originality that they define themselves not only by copying a video that they’ve seen before but by copying the very personalities of characters that they’ve seen before.

Another good point, but I think Sonny is missing something here. The talents of the BSG Sabotage editor or the Brooklyn hipsters are certainly admirable, but while we can speculate, we don’t necessarily know their motivations. About 10 years ago, a friend and amateur filmmaker showed me a video one of his friends had produced. It took scenes from Star Wars and Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan and recut them so it looked like the Millennium Falcon was fighting the Enterprise. It would show Han Solo shooting, then cut to the Enterprise being hit. Shatner would exclaim “Fire!” and then it would cut to a blast hitting the Millennium Falcon. And so on. Another video from the same guy took the musical number George Lucas had added to Return of the Jedi in the Special Edition, laid Wu-Tang Clan in as the soundtrack, then re-edited the video elements so everything matched up.

These videos sound fun, but not particularly original or even special in this day and age. However, these videos were made ten to fifteen years ago. I was watching them on a VHS(!) and the person making the edits was using analog techniques and equipment. It turns out that these videos were how he honed his craft before he officially got a job as an editor in Hollywood. I’m sure there were tons of other videos, probably much less impressive, that he had created before the ones I’m referencing. Now, I’m not saying that the BSG Sabotage editor or the Brooklyn Hipsters are angling for professional filmmaking jobs, but it’s quite possible that they are at least exploring their own possibilities. I would also bet that these people have been making videos like this (though probably much less sophisticated) since they were kids. The only big difference now is that technology has enabled them to make a slicker experience and, more importantly, to distribute it widely.

It’s also worth noting that this sort of thing is not without historical precedent. Indeed, the history of editing and montage is filled with this sort of thing. In the 1910s and 1920s, Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov conducted a series of famous experiments that helped express the role of editing in films. In these experiments, he would show a man with an expressionless face, then cut to various other shots. In one example, he showed the expressionless face, then cut to a bowl of soup. When prompted, audiences would claim that they found that the man was hungry. Kuleshov then took the exact same footage of the expressionless face and cut to a pretty girl. This time, audiences reported that the man was in love. Another experiment alternated between the expressionless face and a coffin, a juxtaposition that lead audiences to believe that the man was stricken with grief. This phenomenon has become known as the Kuleshov Effect.

For the current discussion, one notable aspect of these experiments is that Kuleshov was working entirely from pre-existing material. And this sort of thing was not uncommon, either. At the time, there was a shortage of raw film stock in Russia. Filmmakers had to make due with what they had, and often spent their time re-cutting existing material, which lead to what’s now called Soviet Montage Theory. When D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, which used advanced editing techniques (it featured a series of cross cut narratives which eventually converged in the last reel), opened in Russia in 1919, it quickly became very popular. The Russian film community saw this as a validation and popularization of their theories and also as an opportunity. Russian critics and filmmakers were impressed by the film’s technical qualities, but dismissed the story as “bourgeois”, claiming that it failed to resolve issues of class conflict, and so on. So, not having much raw film stock of their own, they took to playing with Griffith’s film, re-editing certain sections of the film to make it more “agitational” and revolutionary.

The extent to which this happened is a bit unclear, and certainly public exhibitions were not as dramatically altered as I’m making it out to be. However, there are Soviet versions of the movie that contained small edits and a newly filmed prologue. This was done to “sharpen the class conflict” and “anti-exploitation” aspects of the film, while still attempting to respect the author’s original intentions. This was part of a larger trend of adding Soviet propaganda to pre-existing works of art, and given the ideals of socialism, it makes sense. (The preceeding is a simplification of history, of course… see this chapter from Inside the Film Factory for a more detailed discussion of Intolerance and it’s impact on Russian cinema.) In the Russian film world, things really began to take off with Sergei Eisenstein and films like Battleship Potemkin. Watch that film today, and you’ll be struck by how modern-feeling the editing is, especially during the infamous Odessa Steps sequence (which you’ll also recognize if you’ve ever seen Brian De Palma’s “homage” in The Untouchables).

Now, I’m not really suggesting that the woman who produced BSG Sabotage is going to be the next Eisenstein, merely that the act of cutting together pre-existing footage is not necessarily a sad waste of talent. I’ve drastically simplified the history of Soviet Montage Theory above, but there are parallels between Soviet filmmakers then and YouTube videomakers today. Due to limited resources and knowledge, they began experimenting with pre-existing footage. They learned from the experience and went on to grander modifications of larger works of art (Griffith’s Intolerance). This eventually culminated in original works of art, like those produced by Eisenstein.

Now, YouTube videomakers haven’t quite made that expressive leap yet, but it’s only been a few years. It’s going to take time, and obviously editing and montage are already well established features of film, so innovation won’t necessarily come from that direction. But that doesn’t mean that nothing of value can emerge from this sort of thing, nor does messing around with videos on YouTube limit these young artists to film. While Roger Ebert’s valid criticisms are vaid, more and more, I’m seeing interactivity as the unexplored territory of art. Video games like Heavy Rain are an interesting experience and hint at something along these lines, but they are still severely limited in many ways (in other words, Ebert is probably right when it comes to that game). It will take a lot of experimentation to get to a point where maybe Ebert would be wrong (if it’s even possible at all). Learning about the visual medium of film by editing together videos of pre-existing material would be an essential step in the process. Improving the technology with which to do so is also an important step. And so on.

To return back to the BSG Sabotage video for a moment, I think that it’s worth noting the origins of that video. The video is clearly having fun by juxtaposing different genres and mediums (it is by no means the best or even a great example of this sort of thing, but it’s still there. For a better example of something built entirely from pre-existing works, see Shining.). Battlestar Galactica was a popular science fiction series, beloved by many, and this video comments on the series slightly by setting the whole thing to an unconventional music choice (though given the recent Star Trek reboot’s use of the same song, I have to wonder what the deal is with SF and Sabotage). Ironically, even the “original” Beastie Boys video was nothing more than a pastiche of 70s cop television shows. While I’m no expert, the music on Ill Communication, in general, has a very 70s feel to it. I suppose you could say that association only exists because of the Sabotage video itself, but even other songs on that album have that feel – for one example, take Sabrosa. Indeed, the Beastie Boys are themselves known for this sort of appropriation of pre-existing work. Their album Paul’s Boutique infamously contains literally hundreds of samples and remixes of popular music. I’m not sure how they got away with some of that stuff, but I suppose this happened before getting sued for sampling was common. Nowadays, in order to get away with something like Paul’s Boutique, you’ll need to have deep pockets, which sorta defeats the purpose of using a sample in the first place. After all, samples are used in the absence of resources, not just because of a lack of originality (though I guess that’s part of it). In 2004 Nate Harrison put together this exceptional video explaining how a 6 second drum beat (known as the Amen Break) exploded into its own sub-culture:

There is certainly some repetition here, and maybe some lack of originality, but I don’t find this sort of thing “sad”. To be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of hip hop music, but I can’t deny the impact it’s had on our culture and all of our music. As I write this post, I’m listening to Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album:

It uses an a cappella version of rapper Jay-Z’s The Black Album and couples it with instrumentals created from a multitude of unauthorized samples from The Beatles’ LP The Beatles (more commonly known as The White Album). The Grey Album gained notoriety due to the response by EMI in attempting to halt its distribution.

I’m not familiar with Jay-Z’s album and I’m probably less familiar with The White Album than I should be, but I have to admit that this combination and the artistry with which the two seemingly incompatible works are combined into one cohesive whole is impressive. Despite the lack of an official release (that would have made Danger Mouse money), The Grey Album made many best of the year (and best of the decade) lists. I see some parallels between the 1980s and 1990s use of samples, remixes, and mashups, and what was happening in Russian film in the 1910s and 1920s. There is a pattern worth noticing here: New technology enables artists to play with existing art, then apply their learnings to something more original later. Again, I don’t think that the BSG Sabotage video is particularly groundbreaking, but that doesn’t mean that the entire remix culture is worthless. I’m willing to bet that remix culture will eventually contribute towards something much more original than BSG Sabotage

Incidentally, the director of the original Beastie Boys Sabotage video? Spike Jonze, who would go on to direct movies like Being John Malkovich, Adaptation., and Where the Wild Things Are. I think we’ll see some parallels between the oft-maligned music video directors, who started to emerge in the film world in the 1990s, and YouTube videomakers. At some point in the near future, we’re going to see film directors coming from the world of short-form internet videos. Will this be a good thing? I’m sure there are lots of people who hate the music video aesthetic in film, but it’s hard to really be that upset that people like David Fincher and Spike Jonze are making movies these days. I doubt YouTubers will have a more popular style, and I don’t think they’ll be dominant or anything, but I think they will arrive. Or maybe YouTube videomakers will branch out into some other medium or create something entirely new (as I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of room for innovation in the interactive realm). In all honesty, I don’t really know where remix culture is going, but maybe that’s why I like it. I’m looking forward to seeing where it leads.

12DC: Day 7 – Weird Holiday Music

The 12 days of Christmas continues with a couple of strange Holiday songs for your enjoyment. First up is an animated Bob & Doug McKenzie singing The 12 Days of Christmas:

Next is the Carol of the Bells as performed by guitarist Gary Hoey:

Ok, so not that weird so far, but here’s a genuinely odd one from Jonathan Coulton (with Paul & Storm) called Chiron Beta Prime. Just his description of the song, before he even starts singing, is worth watching…

Well that’s weird enough for me. Special thanks to Widgett, who is one-upping me by doing 13 days of Christmas. Anyway, he’s responsible for the Bob & Doug McKenzie and Jonathan Coulton songs and has a few other demented holiday songs too…

Bride of Friday is List Day

It’s been months since I’ve posted one of these, and even Roy isn’t doing this anymore, but I figure, why not?

Random Ten

  • The Secret Machines – “Road Leads Where It’s Led”
  • Yoko Kanno – “Too Good Too Bad”
  • Guster – “Red Oyster Cult”
  • Mike Oldfield – “Tubular Bells Part One”
  • UNKLE – “Bloodstain”
  • Weezer – “Hash Pipe”
  • The New Pornographers – “The Bleeding Heart Show”
  • Modest Mouse – “People as Places”
  • Steroid Maximus – “Aclectasis”
  • Jimi Hendrix – “Machine Gun”

5 Underappreciated or Unknown Horror Movies

  • Mute Witness: Perhaps not strictly a horror film, but it’s a very tense thriller, which is close enough in my book.
  • Bay of Blood: A great openeing sequence, lots of inventive death sequences (most of which were lifted by American films, notably the Friday the 13th series), and an ending so absurd that I’m still not sure it actually happened.
  • Parents: I haven’t seen this in years and it probably doesn’t really count as horror, but I think I’m one of about 6 people who’ve ever seen this. It plays it’s story straight, but it’s almost kinda funny.
  • Bubba Ho-tep: I don’t know if this counts as overrated, but Bruce Campbell as an aging Elvis (who had faked his death) fighting a mummy in a Texas old-folks home (alongside a black JFK). What more can you ask for?
  • Manos: The Hands of Fate: Heh, just kidding.

Referential

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how context matters when consuming art. As sometimes happens when writing an entry, that one got away from me and I never got around to the point I originally started with (that entry was originally entitled “Referential” but I changed it when I realized that I wasn’t going to write anything about references), which was how much of our entertainment these days references its predecessors. This takes many forms, some overt (homages, parody), some a little more subtle.

I originally started thinking about this while watching an episode of Family Guy. The show is infamous for its random cutaway gags – little vignettes that have no connection to the story, but which often make some obscure reference to pop culture. For some reason, I started thinking about what it would be like to watch an episode of Family Guy with someone from, let’s say, the 17th century. Let’s further speculate that this person isn’t a blithering idiot, but perhaps a member of the Royal Society or something (i.e. a bright fellow).

This would naturally be something of a challenge. There are some technical explanations that would be necessary. For example, we’d have to explain electricty, cable networks, signal processing and how the television works (which at least involves discussions on light and color). The concept of an animated show, at least, would probably be easy to explain (but it would involve a discussion of how the human eye works, to a degree).

There’s more to it, of course, but moving past all that, once we start watching the show, we’re going to have to explain why we’re laughing at pretty much all of the jokes. Again, most of the jokes are simply references and parodies of other pieces of pop culture. Watching an episode of Family Guy with Isaac Newton (to pick a prominent Royal Society member) would necessitate a pause just about every minute to explain what each reference was from and why Family Guy’s take on it made me laugh. Then there’s the fact that Family Guy rarely has any sort of redeemable lesson and often deliberately skews towards actively encouraging evil (something along the lines of “I think the important thing to remember is that it’s ok to lie, so long as you don’t get caught.” I don’t think that exact line is in an episode, but it could be.) This works fine for us, as we’re so steeped in popular culture that we get the fact that Family Guy is just lampooning of the notion that we could learn important life lessions via a half-hour sitcom. But I’m sure Isaac Newton would be appalled.

For some reason, I find this fascinating, and try to imagine how I would explain various jokes. For instance, the episode I was watching featured a joke concerning “cool side of the pillow.” They cut to a scene in bed where Peter flips over the pillow and sees Billy Dee Williams’ face, which proceeds to give a speech about how cool this side of the pillow is, ending with “Works every time.” This joke alone would require a whole digression into Star Wars and how most of the stars of that series struggled to overcome their typecasting and couldn’t find a lot of good work, so people like Billy Dee Williams ended up doing commercials for a malt liquor named Colt 45, which had these really cheesy commercials where Billy Dee talked like that. And so on. It could probably take an hour before my guest would even come close to understanding the context of the joke (I’m not even touching the tip of the iceberg with this post).

And the irony of this whole thing is that jokes that are explained simply aren’t funny. To be honest, I’m not even sure why I find these simple gags funny (that, of course, is the joy of humor – you don’t usually have to understand it or think about it, you just laugh). Seriously, why is it funny when Family Guy blatantly references some classic movie or show? Again, I’m not sure, but that sort of humor has been steadily growing over the past 30 years or so.

Not all comedies are that blatant about their referential humor though (indeed, Family Guy itself doesn’t solely rely upon such references). A recent example of a good referential film is Shaun of the Dead, which somewhow manages to be both a parody and an example of a good zombie movie. It pays homage to all the classic zombie films and it also makes fun of other genres (notably the romantic comedy), but in doing so, the filmmakers have also made a good zombie movie in itself. The filmmakers have recently released a new film called Hot Fuzz, which attempts the same trick for action movies and buddy comedies. It is, perhaps, not as successful as Shaun, but the sheer number of references in the film is astounding. There are the obvious and explicit ones like Point Break and Bad Boys II, but there are also tons of subtle homages that I’d wager most people wouldn’t get. For instance, when Simon Pegg yells in the movie, he’s doing a pitch perfect impersonation of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator. And when he chases after a criminal, he imitates the way Robert Patrick’s T-1000 runs from Terminator 2.

References don’t need to be part of a comedy either (though comedies seem to make the easiest examples). Hop on IMDB and go to just about any recent movie, and click on the “Movie Connections” link in the left navigation. For instance, did you know that the aformentioned T2 references The Wizard of Oz and The Killing, amongst dozens of other references? Most of the time, these references are really difficult to pick out, especially when you’re viewing a foreign film or show that’s pulling from a different cultural background. References don’t have to be story or character based – they can be the way a scene is composed or the way the lighting is set (i.e. the Venetian blinds in Noir films).

Now, this doesn’t just apply to art either. A lot of common knowledge in today’s world is referential. Most formal writing includes references and bibliographies, for instance, and a non-fiction book will often assume basic familiarity with a subject. When I was in school, I was always annoyed at the amount of rote memorization they made us do. Why memorize it if I could just look it up? Shouldn’t you be focusing on my critical thinking skills instead of making me memorize arbitrary lists of facts? Sometimes this complaining was probably warranted, but most of it wasn’t. So much of what we do in today’s world requires a well-rounded familiarity with a large number of subjects (including history, science, culture, amongst many other things). There simply isn’t any substitute for actual knowledge. Though it was a pain at the time, I’m glad emphasis was put on memorization during my education. A while back, David Foster noted that schools are actually moving away from this, and makes several important distinctions. He takes an example of a song:

Jakob Dylan has a song that includes the following lines:

Cupid, don’t draw back your bow

Sam Cooke didn’t know what I know

Think of how much you need to know in order to understand these two simple lines:

1)You need to know that, in mythology, Cupid symbolizes love

2)And that Cupid’s chosen instrument is the bow and arrow

3)Also that there was a singer/songwriter named Sam Cooke

4)And that he had a song called which included the lines “Cupid, draw back your bow.”

… “Progressive” educators, loudly and in large numbers, insist that students should be taught “thinking skills” as opposed to memorization. But consider: If it’s not possible to understand a couple of lines from a popular song without knowing by heart the references to which it alludes–without memorizing them–what chance is there for understanding medieval history, or modern physics, without having a ready grasp of the topics which these disciplines reference?

And also consider: in the Dylan case, it’s not just what you need to know to appreciate the song. It’s what Dylan needed to know to create it in the first place. Had he not already had the reference points–Cupid, the bow and arrow, the Sam Cooke song–in his head, there’s no way he would have been able to create his own lines. The idea that he could have just “looked them up,” which educators often suggest is the way to deal with factual knowledge, would be ludicrous in this context. And it would also be ludicrous in the context of creating new ideas about history or physics.

As Foster notes, this doesn’t mean that “thinking skills” are unimportant, just that knowledge is important too. You need to have a quality data set in order to use those “thinking skills” effectively.

Human beings tend to leverage knowledge to create new knowledge. This has a lot of implications, one of which is intellectual property law. Giving limited copyright to intellectual property is important, because the data in that property eventually becomes available for all to built upon. It’s ironic that educators are considering less of a focus on memorization, as this requirement of referential knowledge has been increasing for some time. Students need a base of knowledge to both understand and compose new works. References help you avoid reinventing the wheel everytime you need to create something, which leads to my next point.

I think part of the reason references are becoming more and more common these days is that it makes entertainment a little less passive. Watching TV or a movie is, of course, a passive activity, but if you make lots of references and homages, the viewer is required to think through those references. If the viewer has the appropriate knowledge, such a TV show or movie becomes a little more cognitively engaging. It makes you think, it calls to mind previous work, and it forces you to contextualize what you’re watching based on what you know about other works. References are part of the complexity of modern Television and film, and Steven Johnson spends a significant amout of time talking about this subject in his book Everything Bad is Good for You (from page 85 of my edition):

Nearly every extended sequence in Seinfeld or The Simpsons, however, will contain a joke that makes sense only if the viewer fills in the proper supplementary information — information that is deliberately withheld from the viewer. If you haven’t seen the “Mulva” episode, or if the name “Art Vandelay” means nothing to you, then the subsequent references — many of them arriving years after their original appearance — will pass on by unappreciated.

At first glance, this looks like the soap opera tradition of plotlines extending past the frame of individual episodes, but in practice the device has a different effect. Knowing that George uses the alias Art Vandelay in awkward social situations doesn’t help you understand the plot of the current episode; you don’t draw on past narratives to understand the events in the present one. In the 180 Seinfeld episodes that aired, seven contain references to Art Vandelay: in George’s actually referring to himself with that alias or invoking the name as part of some elaborate lie. He tells a potential employer at a publishing house that he likes to read the fiction of Art Vandelay, author of Venetian Blinds; in another, he tells an unemployment insurance caseworker that he’s applied for a latex salesman job at Vandelay Industries. For storytelling purposes, the only thing that you need to know here is that George is lying in a formal interview; any fictitious author or latex manufacturer would suffice. But the joke arrives through the echo of all those earlier Vandelay references; it’s funny because it’s making a subtle nod to past events held offscreen. It’s what we’d call in a real-world context an “in-joke” — a joke that’s funny only to people who get the reference.

I know some people who hate Family Guy and Seinfeld, but I realized a while ago that they don’t hate those shows because of the contents of the shows or because they were offended (though some people certainly are), but rather becaues they simply don’t get the references. They didn’t grow up watching TV in the 80s and 90s, so many of the references are simply lost on them. Family Guy would be particularly vexing if you didn’t have the pop culture knowledge of the writers of that show. These reference heavy shows are also a lot easier to watch and rewatch, over and over again. Why? Because each episode is not self-contained, you often find yourself noticing something new every time you watch. This also sometimes works in reverse. I remember the first time I saw Bill Shatner’s campy rendition of Rocket Man, I suddenly understoood a bit on Family Guy which I thought was just a bit based on being random (but was really a reference).

Again, I seem to be focusing on comedy, but it’s not necessarily limited to that genre. Eric S. Raymond has written a lot about how science fiction jargon has evolved into a sophisticated code that implicitely references various ideas, conventions and tropes of the genre:

In looking at an SF-jargon term like, say, “groundcar”, or “warp drive” there is a spectrum of increasingly sophisticated possible decodings. The most naive is to see a meaningless, uninterpretable wordlike noise and stop there.

The next level up is to recognize that uttering the word “groundcar” or “warp drive” actually signifies something that’s important for the story, but to lack the experience to know what that is. The motivated beginning reader of SF is in this position; he must, accordingly, consciously puzzle out the meaning of the term from the context provided by the individual work in which it appears.

The third level is to recognize that “ground car” and “warp drive” are signifiers shared, with a consistent and known meaning, by many works of SF — but to treat them as isolated stereotypical signs, devoid of meaning save inasmuch as they permit the writer to ratchet forward the plot without requiring imaginative effort from the reader.

Viewed this way, these signs emphasize those respects in which the work in which they appear is merely derivative from previous works in the genre. Many critics (whether through laziness or malice) stop here. As a result they write off all SF, for all its pretensions to imaginative vigor, as a tired jumble of shopworn cliches.

The fourth level, typical of a moderately experienced SF reader, is to recognize that these signifiers function by permitting the writer to quickly establish shared imaginative territory with the reader, so that both parties can concentrate on what is unique about their communication without having to generate or process huge expository lumps. Thus these “stereotypes” actually operate in an anti-stereotypical way — they permit both writer and reader to focus on novelty.

At this level the reader begins to develop quite analytical habits of reading; to become accustomed to searching the writer’s terminology for what is implied (by reference to previous works using the same signifiers) and what kinds of exceptions and novelties convey information about the world and the likely plot twists.

It is at this level, for example, that the reader learns to rely on “groundcar” as a tip-off that the normal transport mode in the writer’s world is by personal flyer. At this level, also, the reader begins to analytically compare the author’s description of his world with other SFnal worlds featuring personal flyers, and to recognize that different kinds of flyers have very different implications for the rest of the world.

For example, the moderately experienced reader will know that worlds in which the personal fliers use wings or helicopter-like rotors are probably slightly less advanced in other technological ways than worlds in which they use ducted fans — and way behind any world in which the flyers use antigravity! Once he sees “groundcar” he will be watching for these clues.

The very experienced SF reader, at the fifth level, can see entire worlds in a grain of jargon. When he sees “groundcar” he associates to not only technical questions about flyer propulsion but socio-symbolic ones but about why the culture still uses groundcars at all (and he has a reportoire of possible answers ready to check against the author’s reporting). He is automatically aware of a huge range of consequences in areas as apparently far afield as (to name two at random) the architectural style of private buildings, and the ecological consequences of accelerated exploitation of wilderness areas not readily accessible by ground transport.

While comedy makes for convenient examples, I think this better illustrates the cognitive demands of referential art. References require you to be grounded in various subjects, and they’ll often require you to think through the implications of those subjects in a new context. References allow writers to pack incredible amounts of information into even the smallest space. This, of course, requires the consumer to decode that information (using available knowledge and critical thinking skills), making the experience less passive and more engaging. Use references will continue to flourish and accellerate in both art and scholarship, and new forms will emerge. One could even argue that aggregation in various weblogs are simply exercises in referential work. Just look at this post, in which I reference several books and movies, in many cases assuming familiarity. Indeed, the whole structure of the internet is based on the concept of links — essentialy a way to reference other documents. Perhaps this is part of the cause of the rising complexity and information density of modern entertainment. We can cope with it now, because we have such systems to help us out.

Friday is Apparently List Day

After several years of blogging, I’ve finally figured out that Friday is list day. So here are a few lists:

Random Ten:

  • Guster – “Two Points For Honesty”
  • Amon Tobin – “Keepin’ It Steel (The Anvil Track)”
  • Radiohead – “Optimistic”
  • Four Tet – “As Serious As Your Life”
  • The Bad Plus – “Keep the Bugs Off Your Glass and the Bears Off Your Ass”
  • Lynyrd Skynyrd – “Free Bird” (Yee ha!)
  • Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts – “Clutch”
  • Franz Ferdinand – “Michael”
  • Pink Floyd – “Money”
  • Nine Inch Nails – “Awitha Teetha” (Well, it’s really just With Teeth, but I prefer Meathead’s title because it more accurately reflects the way the song sounds. Incidentally, I didn’t remember how Meathead spelled that, so I mistakenly googled for “awith teetha.” Google, ever thoughtful, corrected my spelling. This is mildly amusing.)

The Two Greatest Reviews of NIN’s With Teeth:

  • The Aformentioned Meathead Review: Overall score of [AWITHA_TEETHA]: 9,116 out of 9,652 stars
  • Tiny Mix Tapes Review: Concise but informative, and actually somewhat accurate. Sadly, Trentie Poo doesn’t seem likely to reverse the trend with his new album, Year Zero (which comes out in just a few weeks, only two years after Awitha Teetha and 17 years ahead of my speculation), but we shall see, I guess. If you’re interested, there’s a thread in the Kaedrin Forum where we talk about the new songs that have been “leaked” (link to the songs in the thread) and the lame political overtones to the new album.

Three Documentaries I Watched Recently:

  • This Film Is Not Yet Rated: Or “Mocking the MPAA’s rating process.” And there’s plenty to mock. It’s a little gimmicky and sanctimonious, but it makes some good points and is pretty entertaining to watch (after all, most of the films that are covered are ones that get the dreaded NC-17, and that generally only happens because of sex scenes). Worth a watch if you’re interested in the subject or you want to see a bunch of uncensored… uh… art…
  • Aliens of the Deep: Who wouldn’t love to be James Cameron? The dude makes the biggest movie evar, then decides to take a break from filmmaking for a while and engage in expensive hobbies (and hang out with his brothers) like deep sea diving. He did this before in a movie called Ghosts of the Abyss, where he chronicles an expedition to the Titanic wreck (that film is only so-so, imho). This time around, he brings along a bunch of Nasa scientists who observe the preternaturally weird lifeforms that thrive deep in the ocean where no sunlight reaches and speculate on alien life forms. Take a look at this one:

    What the heck is this thing?

    Zoinks! That thing is amazing. The extended cut of the movie on the DVD is good and worth watching, but it can get a bit slow or meander a bit at times. Still, fascinating stuff.

  • Grizzly Man: Werner Herzog’s portrait of grizzly bear activist Timothy Treadwell, who spent 13 years among the grizzlies before they inevitably killed him (and his girlfriend). This movie is creepy on many levels. Treadwell himself would be creepy enough even if we didn’t know what eventually happened to him, but his death looms over the entire film. The worst part is that Treadwell is constantly proclaiming his love for the bears and nature in general, but you can clearly see (even early in the film, long before his death) how absolutely and completely the bears do not reciprocate in any way. Treadwell was clearly aware of the dangers (at least on an intellectual level), and often loudly trumpets them, but he thinks he is somehow exceptional. He thinks he’s been accepted by the bear community because he loves them. It’s almost like a greek tragedy or something. The grand majority of the footage was provided by Treadwell himself, who had compiled nearly 100 hours of footage on the last 5 of his trips to Alaskan bear country. Herzog sifted through all that footage and intercut it with the requisite interviews with family, friends, and experts. It’s quite a good film, though a little disturbing and not all that pleasant. It was actually a little interesting to watch this after watching Aliens of the Deep, as the contrast between people who treat nature with a degree of awe and respect (i.e. people who don’t invite death) and Treadwell, who clearly loves and cherishes nature, but tragically doesn’t respect it…

I like this list day thing. Expect more in the future (not all of which will be book and music related, I promise).

Travelling Link Dump

I’ll be on vacation this week, so Kaedrin compatriots Samael and DyRE will be posting in my stead, though they may not be able to post tomorrow. In any case, here are some links to chew on while I’m gone.

  • Bruce Schneier Facts: In the style of the infamous Chuck Norris Facts, some enterprising folks have come up with facts for security expert Bruce Schneier. “Bruce Schneier only smiles when he finds an unbreakable cryptosystem. Of course, Bruce Schneier never smiles.” and “There is an otherwise featureless big black computer in Ft. Meade that has a single dial with three settings: Off, Standby, and Schneier.” Heh, Cryptonerd humor.
  • Khaaan! [via the Ministry]
  • Neal Stephenson Q&A (.ram Real Video): I hate Real Player too, but it’s worth it to see the man in action. It’s from a few years ago, but it’s great stuff.
  • I Smell a Mash-Up: James Grimmelmann notes the irony of Weird Al Yankovic’s new song entitled Don’t Download This Song (available for free download, naturally) that parodies the RIAA’s anti-downloading efforts.
  • How to read: Nick Hornby tells us to read what we like:

    It’s set in stone, apparently: books must be hard work, otherwise they’re a waste of time. And so we grind our way through serious, and sometimes seriously dull, novels, or enormous biographies of political figures, and every time we do so, books come to seem a little more like a duty, and Pop Idol starts to look a little more attractive. Please, please, put it down.

    And please, please stop patronising those who are reading a book – The Da Vinci Code, maybe – because they are enjoying it.

    For a start, none of us knows what kind of an effort this represents for the individual reader. It could be his or her first full-length adult novel; it might be the book that finally reveals the purpose and joy of reading to someone who has hitherto been mystified by the attraction that books exert on others. And anyway, reading for enjoyment is what we should all be doing.

    …The regrettable thing about the culture war we still seem to be fighting is that it divides books into two camps, the trashy and the worthwhile. No one who is paid to talk about books for a living seems to be able to convey the message that this isn’t how it works, that ‘good’ books can provide every bit as much pleasure as ‘trashy’ ones.

That’s all from now. I hope everyone has a great week. I now leave you in the capable hands of the guest bloggers, Sam & DyRE….