Odds & Ends
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
ObamaramaI occasionally feel like I should just give up on cinephobia.com and just re-register this site under the domain name www.pointingoutgreatstuffDavidBordwellwrites.com. As I said at the start of October, other writing and projects have been taking me away from the website. But I can still find time to point out something good that Bordwell has written. This time, it's his fantastic post looking at the US election campaign, and the attempts by Republicans and Democrats to shape "narratives" around the candidates, from the point of view of one of our foremost theorisers of cinematic narrative. Head on over: it's a great read.
A far less intellectually rigorous link between the election and films was offered by the inimitable Shaun Micallef on Newstopia: Watching it all unfold over the last twelve to eighteen months, it struck me how similar it is to the film Trading Places. An elaborate social experiment with Barak Obama in the Eddie Murphy role, elevated to a position of great power and influence in a normally Anglo-Saxon world. John McCain is the Dan Aykroyd character: moneyed, born to rule, and forced to work with a woman he normally wouldn't be seen dead with. In the end, the combined efforts of Obama / Murphy and McCain / Aykroyd wipe out the share value of all the stocks owned by the people who put them where they are.  But the final word on this election (and this, my most instantly out-of-date post ever) will always go to Jon Stewart. Labels: bordwell, commentary, humour, politics, theory Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Saturday, October 04, 2008
Back Again
When I uploaded my review of WALL-E a couple of days a go, I was surprised to see it was more than a month since I posted something. Surprised, because I'm doing lots of film-related writing at the moment, so it seems like the page should be ticking over. But it's all been for things outside the page, notably my Masters. Over the long term this should generate some interesting content for the page, but there are also going to be times where I disappear for a few weeks to write things. You may also have noticed that the Wall-E has a comments facility; this will be the norm on new reviews from here on. To get consistency across the site, I've switched the Odds and Ends comments over to the same system. I am a little uneasy about handing my comments over to a third party provider, in case they disappear one day, but the positives of improved interaction and consistency across the site were too attractive to ignore. I've copied the old comments across, but had to do it manually (thank goodness my site isn't more popular) due to eccentricities of the integration of the blog into my site, so the dates on all comments have been reset to October this year. Otherwise they should be unchanged. As is often the case after such disappearances, there are a few things I'm interested in sharing. There's the new Bond song, for one, by Alicia Keys and Most people seem to hate it (and particularly, the wailing vocals): I actually like it, in a weird way. Certainly it made a better first impression than Chris Cornell's "You Know My Name," from Casino Royale. I didn't really like that at all, until I saw it in the movie with that awesome opening credit sequence by Daniel Kleinman. (Incidentally, Kleinman has been dumped from Quantum of Solace, replaced by design group MK12, who worked on director Marc Forster's previous films.) I could just be strange though, as I also enjoyed Madonna's "Die Another Day." Incidentally, the new trailer for Quantum of Solace is up over at 007.com and is even better than the teaser. I'm pumped for this, no matter how bad the title is. Speaking of the Quantum of Solace theme song, here's another fake one, I believe from the same radio team that came up with the last one I posted. The YouTube video for this one isn't as much fun, but the "big bags of solace" line in the lyrics kills me. There's also a trailer out for Oliver Stone's W., which suggests Stone is back to his rabble-rousing best. You Tube below, or go here. If this is what he does with George W, imagine what he could achieve if Sarah Palin makes the White House? Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. |
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