So many things are shot on various kinds of virtual sets that actors and directors less frequently get to fully steep in a sense of place. That doesn’t mean modern creative teams can’t do good work; they clearly can. But over time, I think there’s something eroded in the foundations of culture every time a prop or a throne room gets inserted electronically by work done in a quiet computer lab isolated from the living, breathing crew.
Read MoreTHE INFLUENCING MACHINE
Most of the time we don’t seek out fresh voices because fresh voices take work to take in. Even old fresh voices: most people these days aren’t going to stream an great chestnut from the French New Wave. More to the point, we are all inundated by information and increasingly complicated lives. Be honest: ordinary things are endlessly complex and often exhausting in the modern world.The inertia to shed previous skins and try something new holds the vast majority of us locked in habituated place. There’s a reason so much of the country eats at McDonalds as frequently as they do.
Read MoreCLEAR-EYED MEMORIES OF DARKENING SKIES
It’s always in retrospect when we discover the moments in our lives that matter. Life experienced in real time doesn’t easily enable us to contextualize our feelings or the relevance of experience. Only memory and its academic sibling history grant lasting gravitas to events, or sentimentality, or sadness, or joy to events.
Read MoreCLOSE UP
A close up is the ultimate special effect, the trope that asks our complicity in telling a story so that it matters.
Read MoreMISFIRE? Provocations from Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One”
When something looks like it’s got the formula down, one begins to wonder if there’s a soul inside that formula, or simply a series a cold algorithm built of logical instructions.
Read MoreTEARS IN RAIN -- Blade Runner 2049 and the Culture that Missed Something Special
The philosophical courage for artists to create requires cultures to have enough collective courage to support creators. The creative team of BR2049 helmed by director Denis Villeneuve created a fully realized world, created down to minute detail. They also created a vital, thrilling work of art.
Read MoreBIGGER, BETTER, FASTER, MORE!
More media does not mean better media. The ubiquity of distribution and ease of endless consumption is dulling the cultural palette.
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