The Culture Section

PennLady said:

I have three versions of this movie...

Click to expand...

I agree with you; actually - whisper it - I think that Spielberg is over rated as a director, but don't tell anyone. For me the best version of Welles' classic, apart from the book itself, is the musical album version by Jeff Wayne. Okay, so it may sound a little bit dated today, but the opening track, with it's dramatic chords like the opening strains of Beethoven's 5th, are throughly addictive.

PennLady said:

I just got Thief of Time from the library today...

Click to expand...

Some Pratchett books are better than others. The movie version of Unbearable Lightness is as bad as the book is, lol.

PennLady said:

The thing I've noticed about zombie stories/movies...

Click to expand...

Some excellent points. Probably the best example of a great zombie film in recent times has been Shaun Of The Dead, where not only does it focus on the survivors, it also shows us how far they have to prepare themselves to go in order to survive - e.g: Shaun having to kill his own mother is quite a tragic moment in this very funny film.

sr71plt said:

I did have to laugh, because in some of his work he didn't bother to rub out the mistakes and "not quite right" base pencil sketchings in the background.

One whole room was of female nudes that I could only work out as a human figure by focusing on the hairy hole or slit and reforming a body around that.

I think that in later life, he must have had a really good laugh on what galleries would beg to buy from him.

Click to expand...

Can you imagine an entire exhibition of just hairy holes and slits? It's probably been done, anyway, lol.

I guess what he tried to do by not rubbing out certain things was to show us the workings and the techniques needed to be an artist, which is interesting for about five minutes to anyone who doesn't understand art.

MarlowBunny said:

II saw "Rio" with my kids today. It was good, but...

It's set in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Universal tried to use the Disney "five songs" formula. Unfortunately, the music was BAD. They are in Brazil, but all the songs are hip-hop influenced. There were few or zero latin rhythms. The cognitive dissonance was worse than the 3D headache.

Click to expand...

I've heard mixed things about Rio.

Sadly, with Pixar's offering this year being the dreaded Cars 2, there aren't many animated films for me to get excited about.

andy_charles said:

Sounds intriguing - why only one Turner though?

Keep us updated

Click to expand...

They hadn't got any money left after the cost of the building which has been described as "The Shed by the Sea" or "The Giant Public Toilet".

The original design was to have the building partly in the sea and partly on land. The cost was too high and the half-size test pod they built on the sea wall was destroyed in a storm.

The Gallery is called "The Turner Contemporary" and features works by local artist Tracey Emin.

Og

oggbashan said:

They hadn't got any money left after the cost of the building which has been described as "The Shed by the Sea" or "The Giant Public Toilet".

The original design was to have the building partly in the sea and partly on land. The cost was too high and the half-size test pod they built on the sea wall was destroyed in a storm.

The Gallery is called "The Turner Contemporary" and features works by local artist Tracey Emin.

Og

Click to expand...

See, just from the description it sounds likes a bad idea, lol

One permanent exhibition I enjoyed was Espace Dali in Montmartre, Paris.

Apart from a wide range of his work it has comprehensive explanations of his themes.

There was a Dali exhibition in London a couple of years ago, taking up far more floor space than Espace Dali, but less informative. The bit I did like was putting some significant prints of his work in the toilets - and those prints were not on show in the main exhibition. I watched the door while my wife looked at the prints in the Gents. My wife did the same while I looked in the Ladies.

I think Dali would have approved of the idea, and our actions.

Og

oggbashan said:

One permanent exhibition I enjoyed was Espace Dali in Montmartre, Paris.

Apart from a wide range of his work it has comprehensive explanations of his themes.

There was a Dali exhibition in London a couple of years ago, taking up far more floor space than Espace Dali, but less informative. The bit I did like was putting some significant prints of his work in the toilets - and those prints were not on show in the main exhibition. I watched the door while my wife looked at the prints in the Gents. My wife did the same while I looked in the Ladies.

Og

Click to expand...

An intriguing idea - just what every public toilet should have actually.

For anyone who thinks the protest song is dead and buried, I give you PJ Harvey and her latest album.

andy_charles said:

I agree with you; actually - whisper it - I think that Spielberg is over rated as a director, but don't tell anyone. For me the best version of Welles' classic, apart from the book itself, is the musical album version by Jeff Wayne. Okay, so it may sound a little bit dated today, but the opening track, with it's dramatic chords like the opening strains of Beethoven's 5th, are throughly addictive.

Click to expand...

It's okay, you can tell me. I somewhat agree. I'm a bit skeptical anymore when I see a Spielberg film advertised, which is kind of a shame, as he's done some great ones. Jaws, for example -- an excellent movie, really. It tells ONE story, does not get bogged down and all the performances are spot on. Raiders, of course. Schindler's List was very good, I thought, although on the heavy side, but that was likely unavoidable given the subject matter. I think what tipped me "away" from him was A.I. Though parts of this movie are interesting, I didn't care for it.

Some Pratchett books are better than others. The movie version of Unbearable Lightness is as bad as the book is, lol.

Click to expand...

I vaguely recall the UL movie and being bored stiff. The book is different and so far, I can see why it probably shouldn't have been a movie. It's more a character study and not so much a story. Not that you can't do a movie character study, but that wasn't it.

Some excellent points. Probably the best example of a great zombie film in recent times has been Shaun Of The Dead, where not only does it focus on the survivors, it also shows us how far they have to prepare themselves to go in order to survive - e.g: Shaun having to kill his own mother is quite a tragic moment in this very funny film.

Click to expand...

Shaun of the Dead was great (and I can't wait to see all of Hot Fuzz). I'd say 28 Days Later was a good one, too, in terms of atmosphere and all, although they weren't true zombies. Night of the Living Dead holds up pretty well, I think. I watched it not too long ago.

On a non-zombie note -- I have the latest restored version of Lang's Metropolis and sometime, I'll get to watch it!

PennLady said:

On a non-zombie note -- I have the latest restored version of Lang's Metropolis and sometime, I'll get to watch it!

Click to expand...

Some great points

Metropolis is a masterpiece. Did you know they tried to turn it into a musical? It was the most expensive show on in the West End of London at the time. Not that it was any good, of course.

I've been working on a show for the last couple of days - a musical called When Midnight Strikes. It's coming to the West End in October hopefully. The production I'm involved with is a student show, helping out their director with a sudden actor withdrawal problem.

Anyone heard of it?

andy_charles said:

Some great points

Metropolis is a masterpiece. Did you know they tried to turn it into a musical? It was the most expensive show on in the West End of London at the time. Not that it was any good, of course.

Click to expand...

I think I did hear about a Metropolis musical. Actually, I think it could be good, although it's far easier to mess it up. Is/was it worse than the Spiderman musical on Broadway that seems to be in continual previews?

PennLady said:

I think I did hear about a Metropolis musical. Actually, I think it could be good, although it's far easier to mess it up. Is/was it worse than the Spiderman musical on Broadway that seems to be in continual previews?

Click to expand...

Well, in terms of Spiderman: Turn Out The Lights, (or whatever), Metropolis the musical actually opened after previews. It didn't STAY open, obviously, but at least it opened.

A quick note about the news today:

There's no question (in my mind) that 9/11 defined the first decade of the 21st Century in terms of culture. For the longest time, particularly in Americana, its effects could be felt. At first you have a need to forget in a sense - to focus on the good things rather than the bad - but as the decade played out, more and more media and cultural events began to highlight our fears, our anxieties and the events of the horrific day itself.

If I was to be slightly cynical, the news that Bin laden has been killed by forces ultimately under the control of President Obama will only strengthen his chances of being re-elected, which is a good thing. But if this IS the case, then he needs to perhaps strengthen his decisions and try to make more changes than his has in his first term. The few changes he has already made are obviously highly important - eg, health care - and they will determine how history and culture remember him in years to come.

andy_charles said:

Doesn't it feel sometimes that Picasso and others are a bit...over rated?

Click to expand...

That whole idea of "rating" artists is pretty much over rated, and gives some idea of the way we value art and artists.

A painting can have value because of its intrinsic aesthetic value, but that's rarely considered much these days anymore. Now the artist has to have some Brand recognition, like any other commercially available product, and has to have some content message regarding the mores and history of the day; that is, a political significance. Then, it might also have a developmental context ("...the earliest example of Picasso's Blue Period..." that connects it to the evolution of painting; and then there's its simple prestige as a one-pf-a-kind item that's just highly valued.

Picasso was arguably the most important artist of the 20th century and was there for the birth of almost every modern movement. He actually wasn't as much an innovator as he was a perfecter of discoveries other artists had made, which is why he was never all that much admired by his contemporaries as an innovator.

But that says, "most important" artist and not "most beloved" or "most technically advanced" or "most popular" artist, and it's really his importance as a developer of other people's ideas that make him into such a big deal *that, and his enormous outfput).

Picasso worked a lot in anti-esthetics, trying to tear down the fin de siecle ideals of upper-class beauty, and so a lot of his stuff is intentionally ugly and meant to shock. And then, he had his off days just like everyone else, and turned out his share of pure plain crap.

So it depends on what kid of show the curator wants to put together: whether he or she just wants to show a string of Picasso "hits", or the evolution of his style, or a random sample of Picasso's output, good, bad, and ugly, which is often the most educational as far as seeing how an artist's mind worked.

Th Culture's Culture Hero

This might be a good pace to bring up an article I read a couple years ago on the way the dominant means of cultural expression have changes over the last 100 years or so, and where we're headed.

Mainly it said that from about the beginning of the 20th century to about the Great Depression, the engine of cultural aesthetics and the flame that ran that engine were in the hands of the visual artists. Changes in cultural norms and mores most usually came through the world of painting, and the classic image of the Bohemian Artist living outside of society in order to paint what he saw is a cliche that's still with us. The artist--Picasso, Dali, Pollack--were the arbiters of culture, and painting was where the action was.

But painting and art were expensive and elitist, and once photography and photocopying made visual art cheap, the torch of Cultural hero and innovator was passed to the writer. Possibly this inundation of visual imagery (especially the ghastly scenes coming from WWII) made people yearn for someone who could explain to them and tell them what these images meant, and for a brief time there, the writer was King and everyone wanted be a Writer. It's probably hard for younger people to imagine the esteem in which Hemingway and Mailer and Faulkner were held, but they were veritable gods, and did much to establish the archetype for the mid-century American male. Anyone who felt they had something to say started writing, and there were a lot of them.

Authors made millions and were lionized as superstars. Publishing houses became rich. Everyone walked around with a hard-bound book under their arm.

Then the paperback came along, and the price of a book went from something like $12 to $0.25, and like with visual art before, now literature was everywhere. The era of the Author Hero was over.

Shortly after, music became the big thing: pop music, protest stuff,folk, Dylan, Beatles, MoTown, and suddenly the mantle of Cultural Critic and Innovator was passed on to a new art form. Now, if you had something to say, you formed a band and made an album, and we entered the era of Guitar Gods and Rock Idols and supergroups, and this was all hugely profitable for the labels and the publishers and artists.

40 or 50 years later, the internet did to the record album pretty much what the paperback had done to the hardbound novel: destroyed the high end market and sent the business into a tailspin. Now the monolithic Music Industry is gone, and no one's yet sure how this will finally shake out or how professional recording musicians will survive.

But meanwhile, the torch has already been passed to a new media: Movies. (Movies, TV shows, basically visual stories.) There's no doubt that, if someone has something important to say today, they seek to turn it into a movie. Even if they write a great book, we wait for it to be turned into a flick. All the visual artist-types from the 20's, the writers from the 40's and 50's, the musician from the 60's-90's--they're all working for the movies now, or trying to.

I'm not saying this is bad or good. Just that it's interesting.

I just heard the other day that the home video game market now makes more money than the film industry. Actually, game sales surpassed film revenues in the USA back in 2005 and jumped over all music sales in 2007.

========================

Global videogame sales surpass movie industry in 2008!

According to consulting firm Hudson Square Research (HSR), the video game industry’s recent surge has finally allowed it to catch up to the movie business on a global basis. Whereas the games industry surpassed this movie industry back in 2005 in America alone, as well as gaming surpassing the music industry in 2007.

Analyst Daniel Ernst reports that in the past year, from March 2007 to March 2008, global video game (software) revenues grew 38%. Global software sales reached $26.5 billion, only slightly behind the film industry’s $26.7 billion. The rest of the year he anticipates global software revenues to climb another 31% to $34.6 billion. Hardware revenue, on the other hand, will see a 5% decline to $18.9 billion.

To quote: “Gutenberg’s press supplanted the oral story, the television supplanted the radio, the Internet is supplanting the newspaper, and the DVR is supplanting the network schedule. Consumers are increasingly in control of their media experience – narrowing in on what they consume, where they consume it, and when they consume it. We see interactive entertainment (video games) as an extension of that control, where the protagonist, settings, and outcomes are dictated not by the author or screenwriter, but by the players themselves. While the film industry’s set of home movie windows provides another leg of growth equal to or greater than box office sales, we believe the rise of video games to the same revenue stature provides a notable perspective.”

================

Sic transit gloria mundi

Interesting, Dr. M. Where I see the transition points to other means of conveying cultural change is in the breakdown of focus. When the noise level in one media became too high to filter down to a commonly perceived/experienced focus, the "torch" moves on to other, still focused, media.

In the years I lived mainly abroad, I think the dominant means of cultural expression in the United States was TV commercials. Whenever I'd been out of the country for a couple of years and then come back, I was always confused as the key cultural reference points seemed to have come from TV commericals that no longer were running on TV but that had engrained themselves in the culture, giving me no reference points (e.g., "Where's the beef?").

Subsidised Culture

The Arts Council of Great Britain has had its budget cut.

As a result it has changed its priorities and the criteria on which it decides whether to fund a particular item of "culture" or not. In general I have been relaxed about what it used to fund and what it now proposes to fund because the decisions were and are based on the principles of access to culture and encouragement of projects that aim to bring culture to a wider audience.

But I have been unhappy about some of the artistic activity sponsored by various levels of local government.

Do we want more "Street Theatre" which seems to be incompetent actors and comedians performing to indifferent passers-by?

Do we want more "Public Art" by artists who couldn't sell their so-called sculpture to a blind patron?

Do we want more "Experimental Theatre" when 'experimental' seems to mean unwatchable?

Culture and Art should communicate. If it doesn't - why subsidise it?

Og

Are flocking behaviors pertinent to culture?

I think ultimately, the paradigm remains in the hands of individual artists, the particular medium does indeed change with the times, a fascinating observation - wonder what could come after games? I also wonder how a medium affects values - i.e., visual art serves as a primary "conversation piece" as well as an existential experience, i.e., given an en existential experience of art, the fines arts tend to compel discussion: sharing the experience, comparison and contrast, critique etc., and the existential experience of the fine arts tends to be subjective, i.e., one cannot know what was going through the artist head, one can only relate what goes through ones own head when viewing it.

With literature, the artists thought processes are more transparent, one is through a sequence of events, to a particular end - now it's more likely that the artists thought processes will enter the discussion along with the subjective experience to a greater degree than with visual arts, where it's a option - whereas in literature, it's inescapable.

With film, the aesthetic is somewhere in between, it seems one is again capable of both existential experience and debate, but the real phenomena here is accessability: the chances of encountering someone who has seen the same movies you have on the street is much greater than encountering someone who has read the same books or seen the same paintings - so that sort of pop culture sense of inclusion seems to cast a wider and wider net with each medium, but all of the mediums so far all share that need to not only undergo the existential experience of seeing watching or reading, but the need to share the experience with others.

With games, one is back to an almost pure existential experience, like watching sunset - you have to be there, since being an interactive medium, the game changes each time it's played, only certain aspects of a game can be discussed - the predominant social externalities w/respect to games is the cheat book, i.e., advice on how to beat the game, step by step, a sort of Cliffs notes or something and game discussion tends to revolve around these little insider tips, i.e., procedural information rather than subjective aesthetic.

Anyway, I won't go into the fact that most games typically also involve killing lots of two dimensional symbols of organic life, and any effect that might have of social value systems, I don't want to sound like that guy, but it might become a consideration at some point.

So far, doesn't' seem to have had many demonstrable negative behavioral effects, other than carpal tunnel syndrome and this cohort of kids getting even less exercise than the previous cohort - even fewer effects possibly than literature or film are accused of, perhaps due to the interactive aspect of it, lessening any hypothetical compulsion to act it out - so whatever social effect there may be is clearly more complex than monkey see monkey do.

So how about your Second Life Dr., has it, and how has it affected your analog social life - any notable externalities? Do 2L'ers recognize each other on the street?

Is 2L'ers a word?

I mention it because the act of experiencing art itself creates value systems: to view fine, art, unless you're extremely wealthy, you have to leave the house, go to a museum - with books, you can be a hermit, although you still have to go the library of the bookstore - when movies first came out, you had to go to a theater, which was typically a social experience: i.e., dinner and movie, coffee after to discuss the film, it was a natural extension.

Literature among all the other mediums is the least interactive, and compels the least interaction, but nevertheless, there are book clubs and discussion groups which you have to make some effort to join, but they are there.

When VCR's came out, movies become more like books only less time consuming, i.e., you can watch a movie and discuss it in less time than it takes a lot of people to read one chapter in a book, which might take weeks or months to fully digest, and while videos are often still a social experience, there were distinct change in mass culture - the disappearance of the drive in for example, a major cultural phenomena synonymous with car culture itself, and car culture waned with the drive in, though still popular with teens with no other place to go, and here the drive in is replaced by deafening sound systems.

Now, with the streaming stuff, you don't even have to leave the house: book and video stores threaten to go the way of the drive in, and in the way that movies sort of brought people together, forced them to interact socially, the internet isolates you, but in a different way than literature - in some ways it seems to actually drive people to interact more, if only to lord their extensive knowledge of meaningless trivia over others.

...or, as here, pontificate on message boards, subjecting others to ones own cleverness, which previously might have simply died as the neurons in ones own brain decayed.

Exchanging information, communicating, is largely what the cerebral cortex evolved to facilitate, and in spite of some of the more troublesome effects, re: troubles in the publishing industry etc., I think the overall effect on communication in general has been a positive one - it's much harder to be a snob on the internet, though I'm sure there are ways for those willing to persevere.

New Camelot

I think it's safe to say we all adore a good Arthurian legend. I love the new TV show via Starz (me thinks) called Camelot. It's a whole lotta fantasy/pseudo-reality of how the legend became, and I love it for that simple fact. It's dark, it's edgy, it stays with the legend and yet diverges in a most realistic and fascinating manner (I can't give it away). Watch it if you can, it's fantastic.

Lots of amazing, interesting stuff being added here that I need to read when I'm more awake, lol

andy_charles said:

Doesn't it feel sometimes that Picasso and others are a bit...over rated?

Click to expand...

To dredge this one back up again...

Yes. It does--now. But when I was an impressionable art student kidlet, Picasso defined everything wonderful to me. Each period he went through...

My needs in visual art have developed since then, but they did develop from Picasso in the beginning.

You know who still is not over rated, though, is Van Gogh. He really was, is and will be for a long time to come-- that good, that universal, that empathic.

Big up to the memory of Arthur Laurents who's died at the age of 93.

Responsible for, among other things, the books to West Side Story and Gypsy, he was also a first-class director of the highest degree.

Sadly, he also introduced Barbara Streisand to the world...but we can't get everything right, can we?

RIP