Considering how hard ordinary life has become for so many people, it’s probably no coincidence that much of our daily entertainment diet has adopted a vocabulary about survival. Sometimes we’re checking out how a group of weekend vacationers are going to survive the local axe murderer. Sometimes we’re just chillin’ with a team of government assassins rationalizing dirty deeds while struggling to figure out why their home life is so fraught. In other words, hard days have become good times.
Read MoreINFLUENCERS
A culture capable of even casually reading anything — car magazines, gossip magazines, music magazines, newspapers— meant its citizens were capable of simply focusing on something—anything—for more than a fleeting moment, by which I mean minutes not seconds.
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 MoreWHAT HAPPENS IF WE CLICK THINGS EVEN FASTER?
When an idea is only as good as its ability to hold space until the next idea flickers onto our screen, a more fundamental devaluing of life has begun to take hold.
Read MoreHIGHS AND LOWS
A life spent with all things largely known at daybreak is unlikely to yield much in the way of success when the sun goes down. Success usually comes from the discovery of something that was unknown, be that a new business partnership, a piece of art, or smartly executed social media campaign.
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 MoreYOUTH OBSESSION
Fleeting youth is the thing we all want, even if we’re pleased to be finally old enough to feel a little more stable.
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.
Read MoreWATCHING THE CREDITS
Even on smaller productions, I can’t help but wonder about the paths that these diverse names took to find themselves digitally immortalized on screen.
Read MoreWHAT DO 3D MOVIES TEACH US?
The newest techniques, technologies, trends, and styles in any discipline are not necessarily as important as really thinking about the point of what you’re doing in the first place.
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