New State of Play

From this NYT preview, sounds like Kevin McDonald’s two hour movie remake of the BBC series State of Play may have turned out OK. The change from London to Washington and from 2003 to 2008 mean the metaphor of the journalist has also undergone some renovation:
For the newspaper scenes Mr. Macdonald built a newsroom in [...]

Charlie Rose Interview with Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer talks about Christopher McCandless and what drew him to the story of the young man who went “into the wild”. He says he felt a visceral tingle when he first read reports of the hunters who had found the then unidentified body of the young adventurer.

Who’s on the Line?

From a longer Washingtonpost.com article about TV and movie representation of surveillance:
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who back in June reportedly went to great lengths to defend Jack Bauer. …At a legal conference in Ottawa, responding to another participant who warned against asking, “What would Jack Bauer do?”
Scalia mounted a spirited defense, saying, “Jack Bauer [...]

Not New York

I have been thinking a lot about the “apocalytpic cities” section of my thesis. Initial thoughts are to focus on New York, but the whole idea of the multimodal mythic cluster means that New York is every city and every city is New York. Well, that is to say that New York is London, LA, [...]

9/11 in a Movie-Made World

Tom Englehardt poses a fascinating set of “what ifs” in an article that traces the “movie-made” world of September 11.
So here was my what-if thought. What if the two hijacked planes, American Flight 11 and United 175, had plunged into those north and south towers at 8:46 and 9:03, killing all aboard, [...]

Spielbergian meditations

Manohla Dargis’ review of Munich in the New York Times make’s Spielberg’s new film sound much more interesting than other reports that I have read:
“Munich” is as much a meditation on ethics as a political thriller, but it takes nothing away from the film to say that the most adrenaline-spiked part of this genre hybrid [...]

Project Deep Impact

The NASA Deep Impact mission which has exploded a probe into an orbiting comet has released a series of impressive images. The mission named after the 1998 film has again blurred the line between popular science and popular culture. Everyone seems excited and impressed but not that clear what its all [...]

War of the Worlds

With the Australian media preview of War of the Worlds last night SMH film writer Gary Maddox has an intriguing little piece in today’s paper. It’s not really a review, it’s not really a comment piece, it’s a short reflection on post 9/11 culture and the new film:

Panicking crowds fleeing down streets. Buildings collapsing. A [...]

Billy Jack Is Ready to Fight the Good Fight Again – New York Times

In a fascinating interview with the New York Times Tom Laughlin and Delores Taylor, the husband and wife team that brought us Billy Jack – the classic outsider hero of the 60s/70s – says they are going to make a new film. They are looking at combining the film with political activism around the Iraq [...]

Bush and Star Wars

Word from Cannes is that the final installment in the Star Wars saga: Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith is making the links between the Empire and the Empire.

The last episode rounding out the seminal sci-fi saga Star Wars screened at the Cannes film festival today, capping a six-part series that remains [...]

Frank Rich on “The God Racket”

In his farewell column in the arts section, The New York Times’ Frank Rich provides a seething analysis of the “theatrics” of the Schiavo case in which he argues convincingly that the government signed on to a “full-scale jihad” last weekend with their congressional intervention. He quotes constitutional lawyer Lawrence Tribe to the effect that [...]

The plot against leakage

Frank Rich has written another excellent article about the moral values scare.
He notes that a PBS affiliate in NY has rejected an add for the movie Kinsey because of the film’s “controversial” subject matter. This is not unlike the reaction of the NYT in 1948 who refused to carry ads for Kinsey’s breakthrough study, Sexual [...]

NYT Best Books

The NYT has a list of 100 Notable Books of the Year. I’ve book marked these to check out:
FICTION
THE AMATEUR MARRIAGE. By Anne Tyler. (Knopf, $24.95.) An ambitious exploration of domestic dislocation, ranging over 60 years of American experience.
CLOUD ATLAS. By David Mitchell. (Random House, paper, $14.95.) A novel that covers about 1,000 years in [...]

Memories reminders ghosts and myths

I have been reading some stuff on “community of memory” (Paige Baty on Marylin and Barbie Zelizer on Kennedy) and then recently came across these two quotes from quite different sources.
Firstly Derrida’s notion of ghosts from an this essay on the cultural history of the highway:
Jacques Derrida has suggested that ghosts come to talk with [...]

The 4400

They’ve been giving us strange little teasers about a new “mini-series” on channel 10. It looked pretty snazzy had the feel of X-files meets 24 so I did some surfing to find out about The 4400. The NYT arts cover story (Thelma Adams, 11 July – no hyper link cause it’ll be subscriber only) from [...]