January 2011
54 posts
Does science-fiction still have influence?
Science-fiction still has great influence, or at least the potential to influence. While the gadgetry and technology always excites and attracts new readers, I believe it’s the underlying ideas in science-fiction that give it power.
Despite his robots, Asimov’s stories often featured men sitting around discussing notions of technology, choice, human society. Kubrick’s...
Big Swifty
You know that bit in Frank Zappa’s ‘Big Swifty’ where the main theme comes back in at the 13 minute and 19 seconds mark? Yeah.
Fandom: A Letter to Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson
c/o Wingnut Films, Ltd.
P.O. Box 15 - 208
Miramar
Wellington 6243
New Zealand
Dear Mr Jackson,
I just finished watching The Fellowship of the Ring again and I decided that I must write to you to say thank-you: It’s a beautiful movie on every level and I love it to pieces.
I have thoroughly enjoyed all your movies, ever since I watched Bad Taste on video back in the late 1980s. To...
This is the noise three kids were making while...
Three Strange Ways to Use Your Video Camera
Capture your world in a brand new way with a video camera. (A video camera is any device which allows you to shoot video).
1. Put it on a tripod or on a flat surface. Find something interesting to shoot. Press record. Keep it running for ages.
2. Stick your camera on your car’s dashboard. Press record. Drive around for ages.
3. Find a place with an interesting roof, ceiling or...
tpdsaa:
Submitted by Richard Beer.
Anxiousness
2001: Back to the future on the big screen
In the final act of 2001: A Space Odyssey, human technological superiority is shattered and replaced by abstraction. Commander Dave Bowman, the highly trained, highly educated astronaut on his way to Jupiter, is finally forced to open his eyes and see, without the filter of his technology (screens, monitors, beeps, hardcopies and whistles). The white metallic lines and curves of his spacecraft,...
“The achievement of substantial art under capitalism entails running it like a...”
– Ben Watson, The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play. Quartet Books, 1994.
All That Jazz (1979)
What a strange movie is All That Jazz, Bob Fosse’s 1979 semi-autobiographical story of an overworked, over-earnest, chain-smoking, drug-taking, womanising Broadway choreographer and director. It’s a messy and ugly thing which makes the Seventies look bloated and confused, which it may well have been (I wouldn’t really know - I was only seven in 1979).
I’m not all that...
