After years of threatening, I’ve finally started a podcast: Re-Creative. Actually, that’s not really true. My co-host, Joe Mahoney, is really the one to credit… The post Introducing Re-Creative, a podcast about creativity and the art that inspires it appeared first on mark a. rayner.
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Song of the Watermelon: Top 10 Films of 2022
February, I suppose, is a bit late for a “Best of the Year” list. Getting through every single must-see movie in a timely fashion is no small task. Indeed, there are some I may never get around to (I’m looking at you, Maverick). But with the 95th Academy Awards ceremony
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: World’s top movie not what you might think
It may come as a surprise to Canadian film fans, but the top box office movie in 2021 is not James Bond’s No Time to Die or the legendary sci-fi Dune. It’s the Chinese blockbuster The Battle at Lake Changjin. It has some Hollywood elements, for instance heroic soldiers overcoming
Continue readingThings Are Good: Watch These Documentaries to Better Understand SE Asia
The environmental movement is a global struggle against big corporations and corrupted governments, which means each struggle has commonalities while also being unique to its region. Over at Global Voices they compiled a list of documentaries that cover various environmental movements in south east Asia. Some of the content in
Continue readingPostArctica: News From Home – a film by Chantal Akerman
How long is a long take? That’s the question I was asking myself as I began watching this mesmerizing film which is basically a lot of long takes in New York City while the director reads letters (with English subtitles) her mother had sent her from Belgium when she had
Continue readingPostArctica: I Yam What I Yam
A film by Bryan Konefsky TRT 16.5 minutes, Bryan Konefsky 2005 In 1929 monocular vision was not limited to the gaze of telescopes (Edwin Hubble) or movie cameras (Dziga Vertov). 1929 was also the year that the one-eyed, “strong to the finish” sailor named Popeye was first introduced to the
Continue readingSong of the Watermelon: Top 10 Films of the 2010s
I don’t really write about movies in this blog (lately I haven’t written much of anything), but with the decade coming to a close, I figure why not take a look back at a few cinematic standouts? There may be omissions (Marvel and Star Wars fans need read no further).
Continue readingSong of the Watermelon: Top 10 Films of the 2010s
I don’t really write about movies on this blog (lately I haven’t written much of anything), but with the decade coming to a close, I figure why not take a look back at a few cinematic standouts? There may be omissions (Marvel and Star Wars fans need read no further).
Continue readingThings Are Good: Documentaries can Change the World
If you enjoy documentaries you might be changing the world. Documentaries change conversations around important issues and some are so effective at doing so that they make a real-world impact beyond the audience. By bringing issues to light these films raise awareness to problems that we as a society can
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: A Disappointing Crop of Oscar Nominations
The oddsmakers have Roma winning, and I agree that it should – pure cinema, as Hitchcock would say – but Green Book will win because it has all those comfy, timely liberal sentiments the Academy loves: an American white man and an American black man together learn through helping each other that humanity transcends
Continue readingPostArctica: Ellis D. Kropotechev and Zeus, This marvelous time-sharing system. 1967
Stumbled on to this interesting little 16mm film made by a couple of Standford grad students in 1967. Some computer history and plenty of innuendo. Enjoy!
Continue readingPostArctica: The Searchers
I like discussing influences which may also be a way of simply saying I am not ashamed to admit where it all comes from….anyway, took a shot of a “back […]
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: The Force Awakens: One Big Politically Correct Recycling Machine
The Force Awakens: One Big Politically Correct Recycling Machine Given all-time box office records for The Force Awakens, it’s pretty obvious almost all comic-con and Star Wars fans in particular do not bemoan in the least the lack of innovation in the latest franchise installment. In fact many seem to have enthusiastically
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: The Force Awakens: One Big Politically Correct Recycling Machine
The Force Awakens: One Big Politically Correct Recycling Machine
Given all-time box office records for The Force Awakens, it’s pretty obvious almost all comic-con and Star Wars fans in particular do not bemoan in the least the lack of innovation in the latest franchise installment. In fact many seem to have enthusiastically embraced Abrams & Co’s decision to rework, with some new – but not too new – clothes of course, essentially the same trite story material of earlier films. For these fans, familiarly breeds praise. Still there is a considerable contingent of Star Wars fans who are deeply disappointed by this installment, arguing in fact that the film betrays the legacy of the original trilogy, IV, V, and VI, and is profoundly formulaic and unoriginal. The most analytic of these comes from Nicholas Spargo, whose youtube video, Why Stars Wars The Force Awakens is Worse than the Prequels, has gone viral.
But it’s hard to deny that Stars Wars: The Force Awakens, no matter what the film’s audience reception, is one big mother of a recycling machine. And not just in storylines and innocuous themes culled from the first two movies in particular, which in turn culled from countless other recycling literary and film factories, but in obvious character types who have not – as they could have been – repurposed, including a recycled dark side guy called Kylo Ren, with a redesigned black mask but the same flowing black cape and megaphonic voice (the flip side of the dark side father, a dark side son) but with a politically correct cast: one young black male lead (Finn), one young “strong” woman lead ( Rey, the flip side of Luke), two old people (four if you count the bonus characters, Lor San Tekka and Maz Kanata (named after a suburb of Ottawa [lol] and the the flip side of Yoda), one a woman (Princess Leia) and one a man (Han Solo) – both played by purposely recycled actors – one (two if you count the new flip side of Darth Vader, Kylo) young white dude (Poe, channeling Luke in the Top Gun sequences even as Ray and Finn channel Luke in countless scenes), one unintelligible tall hairy purposely recycled endearing guy (Chewbacca) and of course a cute recycled asexual droid standing in functionally for a plucky, courageous child, BB-8 (the flip side of R2-D2).
So what politically correct categories can we safely check off? Racism, gender balance, feminism, ageism, token young and old white males, big hairy guys, and very short rotund asexual droids.
May I suggest, then, that in addition to the strategy to recycle familiar-to-fans story material, which will inevitably turn out to be a mistake I predict, such adroit character choices might have something to do with marketing the film to every conceivable being – including hairy guys and droids or at least people who dress up like that – in the entire film galaxy?*
*Despite this obvious effort to be politically correct, notice the absence of a gay character – no doubt also a marketing decision for various reasons.
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But it’s hard to deny that Stars Wars: The Force Awakens, no matter what the film’s audience reception, is one big mother of a recycling machine. And not just in storylines and innocuous themes culled from the first two movies in particular, which in turn culled from countless other recycling literary and film factories, but in obvious character types who have not – as they could have been – repurposed, including a recycled dark side guy called Kylo Ren, with a redesigned black mask but the same flowing black cape and megaphonic voice (the flip side of the dark side father, a dark side son) but with a politically correct cast: one young black male lead (Finn), one young “strong” woman lead ( Rey, the flip side of Luke), two old people (four if you count the bonus characters, Lor San Tekka and Maz Kanata (named after a suburb of Ottawa [lol] and the the flip side of Yoda), one a woman (Princess Leia) and one a man (Han Solo) – both played by purposely recycled actors – one (two if you count the new flip side of Darth Vader, Kylo) young white dude (Poe, channeling Luke in the Top Gun sequences even as Ray and Finn channel Luke in countless scenes), one unintelligible tall hairy purposely recycled endearing guy (Chewbacca) and of course a cute recycled asexual droid standing in functionally for a plucky, courageous child, BB-8 (the flip side of R2-D2).
Politics and Entertainment: The Force Awakens: One Big Politically Correct Recycling Machine
The Force Awakens: One Big Politically Correct Recycling MachineGiven all-time box office records for The Force Awakens, it’s pretty obvious almost all comic-con and Star Wars fans in particular do not bemoan in the least the lack of innova…
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Will Ferrell does a mock music video of gangster rap – and it’s a scathingly hilarious critique of the genre
A musical commentary, followed by social and political analysis, followed by hilarious spoof rap videos, and more This is scathingly funny. Will Ferrell does a mock music video of macho gangster rap. Man, how I despise that music. As Rage Against the Machine said, “So-called rap’s a fraud.” Worse, most
Continue readingArt Threat: Filmmakers pull out of Istanbul festival in government censorship protest
Nearly two dozen filmmakers have yanked their films from the 34th Istanbul Film Festival in response to the last-minute cancellation of documentary screening about the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The growing censorship protest, which now involves a majority of the filmmakers participating in the event, has led organizers to cancel
Continue readingPostArctica: The Mystery of the Leaping Fish
Douglas Fairbanks as the greatest drug addict/detective in the history of cinema! Brilliant film from 1915 with a postmodern ending and you can see that being friends with Chaplin really, really rubbed off… And read more here at Dangerous Minds.
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