February 2010
January 2010
WatchMomma Nicks — Spencer Russell
ProvoCreative January 30th, 2010
WatchJoy — Spencer Russell
ProvoCreative January 20th, 2010
WatchWait For Me — Spencer Russell
ProvoCreative January 30th, 2010
The Mystery Texter
Something miraculous just occured in my life. Something I cannot altogether give justice to. For when I feel as though I have encountered the “totally Other,” and then try to articulate that experience effectively to others — at least in my attempts to do so convincingly — I have often found, much to my chagrin, that it is near impossible. Know one understands it. Not even...
How to Suck at Facebook →
(via scm52)
——————————————-
Thank you Shannon for brightening my day:)
(DMS)
Making Avatar →
Nothing short of revolutionary.
(DMS)
Charitable Cinema
I am wholly committed to charitable cinema: one that is courteous, compassionate, generous, and sympathetic. Cinema like this tastes good. It is sweet to the soul, recognizable, lucid, and gives a “haven’t I been here before” type resonance. To generate, stabilize, and secure this form, I believe Dean may have been on to something extraordinary when, through suggestion, prescribed that we adopt a...
Honest Imagination in Cinema
In their search for the sacred, early religious filmmakers of the 1920’s and 1930’s struggled to balance the contradictory cinemas – Sunday school and secular films – which conveyed different themes (conventional morality and open sensuality) and caused much controversy as they aspired towards transcendence in a predominantly secular, materialistic world. The process of synthesizing the mundane...
Dr. Arts (Ayn Rand) vs. Dr. Carter (Immanuel Kant)
In an argument he calls “The Worst Argument in the World,” Dr. Michael Arts outlines the reality/appearance (noumenal/phenomenal) debate as argued by Hume, Berkeley, and Kant. According to Dr. Arts, the reason this debate has spurned so much controversy is because many have confused what we know with how we know it. He accuses Kant of confusing the two, and concludes that Kant has, much to the...
“This life, therefore, is not godliness but the process of becoming godly, not...”
– Martin Luther (via azspot)
WatchPee-Wee on Conan
Frankenstein (1931)
In his essay “The Mummy’s Pool,” Bruce Kawin argues that one of the reasons we go to horror films is “to have a nightmare” – not just a frightening dream, but one that masks certain global anxieties and then represents them emblematically, and of course cinematically, before an audience that unconsciously desires to be punished for their repressed, and no doubt culpable, impulses. One of these...
Radiohead Raise $572,754 at Haiti Benefit Concert
thefilmwatcher:
twentyfourbit:
Ever since Radiohead announced that tickets to their spur-of-the-moment Haiti benefit concert would be auctioned off, I’ve been wondering how much people would be willing to pay for such a great cause, not to mention for the chance to see Radiohead in the relatively small Music Box at the Henry Fonda Theater perform a possible preview of their next album. Well,...
Mr. Dungbeetle
“Life is worth the scary parts” – this hopeful adage is perhaps easier to say than to live for, and is one that lies at the heart of Mr. Dungbeetle; a film that is very much about the mysterious process of healing. As I sat watching the film for the second time, I couldn’t help but reflect upon my first viewing of Dungbeetle three years ago in 102 – a viewing that wasn’t nearly as poignant as...
Spencer Russell — Lemon Tree
“For the window of the Maison des Robes is entirely the despair of all the other...”
– H.L. Mencken (The Window of Horrors)
Freaks (1932)
The least tolerated of humanity is the freak – the anomalous, the weird, the foreign, the Other. These are often derogatory terms used to classify people of difference; for instance, the child who wets his pants in class, the teenager who profusely stutters, or the adult who’s 3 feet tall. Of course, if all people wet their pants in school classrooms, stuttered through every sentence, and were...
Why the future doesn't need us →
In an age where new technologies like genetic engineering and nanotechnology are giving us the power to remake the world, there are certain unseen terrors that might await us.
In his book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil outlines a utopia he foresaw - one in which humans gained near immortality by becoming one with robotic technology.
(for more on this, read my previous post)
Uncanny Paths for Future Technologies
Cyborgs, mind transfers, BCI’s, and conscious machines are often dismissed as science fiction – things that are unreal, things that we will never experience. In recent years, however, remarkable progress has been made by a mix of scholars, scientists, investors, and tech-heads that have created fantastic technologies that are merging the gaps between science and fiction, reality and fantasy. Many...
“There’s a lot of things about me you don’t know anything about, Dottie. Things...”
– Pee-wee Herman, from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (via captaincook)
(via movielove)
Wings of Desire: Transcendence and Immanence
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been in my body, and if I’ve ever been without it (perhaps in some former life), I do not recall what it was like. The same can be said about my future death, for when the “I” referred to above leaves “my body,” it will be an experience that can only now be speculated about. Nothing concrete. Only guesses. While I sometimes wonder what it would be like...
“It’s great to live by the spirit, to testify day by day for eternity, only...”
– Damiel (Wings of Desire)
"Drag Me to Hell" & Some Thoughts on the Horror...
Nothing challenges faith in humanity, let alone God, more severely than the horrific faces of physical and mental diseases, untimely death, rape, murder and child abuse, genocide, natural disasters, abortion, nuclear holocaust, war and so forth. These ugly events are, in some parts of the world, everyday norms, while in other parts occasional precursors that prepare children for the hard facts...
Some thoughts on Truth and Beauty in Art
I think the artistic relationship between “truth” and “beauty” is fascinating. Most artists, I’m sure, create works of art to communicate something truthful or beautiful, or both. A great difficulty, however, is how to reconcile them so that beauty really does become the “way in which the truth is communicated” to people. And this challenge seems to rest upon the semantics of how we define the...
