Posts by philipmatthews
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I'm reading Giliead by Marilyn Robinson
A fantastic novel. When you're finished -- and if you liked it -- read Home, which is the same events told from another perspective, sort of.
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The full Jackson quote -- from the Slate discussion with James Cameron -- is:
There's no doubt that the industry is in a weird position. It's not just Hollywood—it's international. The loss of the independent distribution companies and the finance companies, and the lack of ability to get medium-budget films these days. The studios have found comfort in these enormous movies. The big-budget blockbuster is becoming one of the most dependable forms of filmmaking. It was only three or four years ago when there was a significant risk with that kind of film. Now, especially last summer, we saw blockbuster after blockbuster be released, and they all had significant budgets and they're all doing fine. It almost doesn't matter if the film is a good film or a bad film, they're all doing OK. They've lost the ability to have that happen with a low-budget movie and with midrange-budget movies.
It's not so much that they can get away with any old shit than that a big-budget CGI movie, probably based on a Marvel character or some existing property and marketed like crazy, is as close as it gets to a sure thing. But he goes on to say:
... One of the things that has happened [is that] people focus on technology. Probably the film industry has been guilty; there's more attention spent on the technical aspects than the story. That's led to a self-fulfilling prophecy. People regard CGI as a gimmick, they almost blame CGI for a bad story or a bad script. They talk about CGI as if it's responsible for a drop in standards. We've gotten to a point now where there isn't nothing else we haven't seen. We've seen dinosaurs, we've seen aliens; with Avatar we've seen realistic creatures. I think we're going to enter a phase where there's less interest in the CGI and there's a demand for story again. I think we've dropped the ball a little bit on stories for the sake of the amazing toys that we've played with.
True dat, as they say.
The discussion at: http://www.slate.com/id/2239171/pagenum/all
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That was a very good Dylan Taite piece by Jose Barbosa. But do you know off hand if there was any footage still around of some legendary stoush with a 70s era Lou Reed, who may or may not have been in search of a friendly pharmacist? It's one of those stories you hear about that era but I've never seen a clip. There was also the fact that he discovered -- well, not quite -- the Sex Pistols.
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On which subject, Philip.
Since writing the above, I came across this Hitchens piece on Larsson, which fills in more of the background:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/12/hitchens-200912
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If you mean gang-like patches, I've been trying to convince Russell to get on to that for months. He's just not exploring the merchandising potential of having all these sycophants lying around.
He needs to have a word with Jonathan Dodd. Learn to get more Russell Crowe, less Russell Brown.
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Craig, if you were to read the Atwood essay on SF that Cecelia referred to above, you would find a more nuanced discussion of her terminology and the potential of the genre. She points out that we don't all have to make the same distinction between science fiction and speculative fiction that she does, eg:
I have written two works of science fiction or, if you prefer, speculative fiction: The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake.
(Three now, with The Year of the Flood)
You might be a little less angry at Atwood after you read it. Link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/jun/17/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.margaretatwood -
Now I'm pretty sure nobody, not even her blood relatives, is ever going to suggest that Atwood is a better writer than Ballard, surely?
Seriously?
Personally, I prefer reading Ballard to Atwood. I think that Ballard was a hugely important 20th century writer and thinker. But to suggest that no one believes that Atwood -- a Booker Prize winner and five times Booker finalist, an Arthur C Clarke Award winner (yes, a SF prize) -- is a better writer than Ballard is just a ludicrous statement.
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Of likely interest to SF fans: Andrew Paul Wood's list of books you would probably enjoy if you liked Avatar ...
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One thing we really need is NYs broken windows law. That will fix up the vacant or dero buildings.
Putting pressure on the owners of those buildings -- eg the eyesore that is the Occidental -- to keep them maintained would be a much better idea.
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Warren hasn't done any good work since the Christchurch Town Hall in the 1970s, but he is 80.
The times they were a-changing: the Christchurch Town Hall pretty much marked the end of that great period of Christchurch modernism. Some really awful post-modernism followed, of which Warren and Mahoney did more than its fair share, although as architectural historian Paul Walker has said, at least Warren owns up to a post-modern period. Walker, wryly: "You wonder how post-modernism ever happened because it seems that no- one was ever a practitioner of it."