Odds & Ends
Saturday, June 23, 2007
The Triumph of Hope Over Sense
Sorry for the paucity of posts lately. I've taken on a role as co-editor of a magazine related to my day job, and it's been keeping me occupied a little more than I'd like. Hopefully once I settle into the role it won't take too much away from my time for film related things, but for the moment - as we try to get out our first issue - I'm afraid Cinephobia has had to take a backseat. Hopefully there'll be something substantial up during the week. In the meantime, though, I did just want to post this. Indiana Jones.com has posted our first image of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones from the set of the fourth movie in the series. Every rational part of me knows this movie probably won't be much good, but I have to say, it feels pretty special to see Ford back in the Jones gear:  Labels: indiana jones, rumours, spielberg Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 23.6.07 - 2 comments  
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Celebrating Ten Years of Self Indulgent Obscurity
Yes, it's true - it is ten years to the day since I uploaded the first version of this page. So if you can allow me just a small moment to reflect... When I first started this site it was really just an exercise in designing a web page: I was trying out this whole new-fangled internet thing and the only content I had to hand was stuff I'd written about film in my spare time. And it's continued in that lackadaisical fashion since. Particularly in early years there were some enormous gaps between updates (confirmed by my Update Log to be very close to two years in one instance), and there were many times I nearly declared the page retired and took it down. But every time I was about to do so I'd think that no, I did actually enjoy maintaining it , and vow to write more often. I got a lot more serious about the page after doing my honours year in 2001 and 2002, but to be honest it's really only in the last couple of years that I feel I've gotten into the rhythm of the site. Of course, I'm still not doing the regular, comprehensive coverage that most sites would have, but I enjoy the pattern of instead doing more irregular but slightly more in-depth stuff, and of alternating new release films with retrospectives... and ultimately, this has always been primarily about what I enjoy writing about. I would do this even if nobody was reading it; if a few people wander through and find what I've written interesting, so much the better. There's an awful lot of the earlier content that I'm fairly embarrassed by, and a lot has been quietly removed from the site. But here's a rough list of the things I've written over the last ten years that I look back on and am - for the moment - most happy with: Two Murders in Dallas: My essay on JFK and The Thin Blue Line. Only a Conservative Deals in Absolutes: My piece on the politics of Star Wars; a shorter version of this appeared in The Age. Kael: An essay about Pauline Kael; writing about film criticism, rather than purely about film, is something I hope to do more of. The Enigma of Rosebud: A look at various theoretical approaches to Citizen Kane (and the last essay I wrote for my university studies). Steven Spielberg (offsite): My career profile of Spielberg for Senses of Cinema; also one of my more overt engagements with movie snobbery, a not-so-subtle recurring theme of the page. Dr No: My mega-review of the first Bond film. And a sampling of my better regular length reviews: Network, Fahrenheit 9/11, Cars, The Graduate, and Happy Feet. So a big thanks goes out to all those who've encouraged me along the way. You know who you are. (Ten Year Celebrations End Here) Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 5.6.07 - 4 comments
Sunday, June 03, 2007
RIP HD-DVD; We Hardly Knew You
I'm a long way off making the leap to a high definition DVD format, but I've been watching the format war between the two rival formats (Blu Ray and HD-DVD) with some interest. It has seemed obvious to me for some time that Blu-Ray would be the last format standing; once all but one major studio was releasing disks in the format (while several don't release disks on HD-DVD) it seemed inevitable to me. I'm not the only one who felt this way: JB Hi-Fi, for example, aren't stocking HD-DVD titles at all on the basis that they see the death of the format as pretty much a foregone conclusion. Yet the hub of DVD news on the internet, The Digital Bits, has generally held back from saying this in quite such strong language. Now, though, prompted by some idiotic comments by Harry Knowles over at Ain't It Cool endorsing HD-DVD, they've come out and said what was becoming increasingly obvious, in a clear, well-reasoned piece (here). If you're thinking of trying out this whole high definition DVD thing and are wondering about the two formats, I strongly suggest you read it. Some samples: HD-DVD is not going to win this format war. In fact, one of two things is possible right now: Either Blu-ray will win, or neither format will win. But the best HD-DVD can hope for is to just keep hanging in the game as long as possible. If Harry Knowles' original comments were a paid endorsement by HD-DVD as many of his commenters suggested, then it seems to have backfired. Labels: commentary, dvd, hd-dvd Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 3.6.07 - 2 comments
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