lunarchy

Cidade de Deus

Finally got to watch City of God. Absolutely beautiful, scary and sad. I was really impressed how a number of stories and characters were conflated from the book and crafted into a really clever story. It was also brilliantly shot & edited with a lot of flourishing that I wasn't expecting. And all this with a group of non-professional actors. And the music. And Brasil. Wow.

Pan's Labyrinth

I had a Guillermo Del Toro movie weekend. I watched Mimic, his mutant cockroaches threaten New York film, then the amazing, brutal and enchanting Pan's Labyrinth. Trailed on YT:

A beautiful film, with a great spirit, setting the forces of fascism and authority against the power of the imagination and mysticism. It triggered many lines of enquiry for me. The figure of Pan reminded me of John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy, though I couldn't find an explicit link to Pan, I did discover that Barth had used Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces as a template for the book. Del Toro also quotes Goya's Saturn Devouring his Son which is a disturbing image in its own right.

Pan's Labyrinth not Dilemma

An apology from Hellodeo

Clearly,  I managed to get in to Typepad in the end. Is it because I is Firefox?

Eastern Standard Tribe

Eastern Standard Tribe Haven't read through all this yet, but the discussion is fascinating. A permissive, copying culture is where I've lived all my life, from taping from the radio to cut n pasting HTML from sites I like. I wish my mouse right click sent micropayments back to all those whose work I've loved and built on, but never received my cheque. The Creative Commons is a neat way into it and I really admire Lawrence Lessig. "Piracy" is not a subculture anymore, it is the culture. It's an inevitable change. I think Cory's approach is backed up by the Cluetrain manifesto. Mega-media behemoths who underwrite the production, marketing and distribution of our cultural artefacts are being routed around and rooted out by the natural behaviour of the network. The readers/listeners/viewers/users are conduits for content. They always have been. It's just that now word-of-mouth travels near instantly across the world and the thing under discussion with it. For artists, musicians, writers, performers, directors, all producers of work, this can only be a good thing. For when people love your output, they really love it. If you let them know that you appreciate that, and if they pay something, that would help you make more, then all stand to benefit. I aver that the producer already engages in a kind of conversation with their public through their work. When the work itself can carry its own marketing, distribution and retail operation around as part of its identity, and there is a simple micro-revenue path back from it and all its copies to the original author, then that conversation will have got somewhere very exciting.

.:TeamcHmAn 3:.

.:TeamcHmAn 3:.

This is a French studio I'm dying to work with. Recommend checking out the Shakedown video they've done in an isometric Sims-style. Remember also that they're French so they aren't ashamed to render the human experience in *all* its rich aspect.