Author Archives: Editor

ApSci Makes Music Video from Still Photos

by Editor

Electro-hop husband and wife duo ApSci have made a music video for their upcoming album Best Crisis Ever consisting entirely of still photos with no post-production effects at all.  It’s a great idea and makes for an excellent little film.  I like the music too.  They shot the black and white photos that you see held up by a hand with an iPhone and then printed out all the shots in sequence.  Then they travelled around the world and took more still photos while holding each black and white photo up in the original sequence.  So you get the odd effect of two still photo animation tracks going on at the same time.  It’s very clever and very simple.  Of course, it makes no difference whatsoever that it was all shot with an iPhone.  It could have been any camera.

The Limits of Control: Jim Jarmusch Film and Interview

by Editor

Here’s the trailer for The Limits of Control, a new film by Jim Jarmusch. I’m always very impressed by Jim Jarmusch when he speaks.  Extremely intelligent and serious artist working in film.  In fact, he might be one of the only serious artists working in American film at present.  He’s kind of scary and punkish and seems more like a rock star than a film director.  I’d probably run screaming from the room if he came in to talk to me.  But maybe not.  I always find a person’s weakness and exploit it.  Jarmusch’s weakness is Bill Murray.  Too much focus on stars in Jarmusch films.  He shouldn’t do this.  Great directors in the 21st Century should not cast so many stars.  Stars ruin movies.  Imagine reading a great novel in which every single character is played by a movie star.  Sort of like when you buy a novel that’s been adapted to film and right there on the cover you see a big fat picture of Leonardo DiCaprio.  Ruins the entire book.  Ruins a serious film quite often too.  Why movie stars have become so essential to film is a total mystery.  A great director spends all his energy trying to direct the movie in circles around his star performers.  What a waste.  A movie that becomes a parade of the director’s movie star friends is not worth watching.  He should make new friends.  There’s nothing more time-consuming than watching a movie star pretend to be an artist.  It would serve Mr. Jarmusch better to find people on the street and use them instead.  He needs to get over this Bill Murray fixation and move on.  Murry is a deadly boring actor with a frozen face.  These stars are a major headache and a distraction from what the director has to say with film.  By the way, here’s a fascinating interview with Jim Jarmusch that is casting off sparks of connective ideas all over the place.  They talk about novels, essays, poetry, William Burroughs and the cut-up technique, secret societies, Scientology, Stanley Kubrick, and more.  Fascinating talk.  I really wish he’d stop hiring movie stars.  Jim Jarmusch is not a good director of movie stars.  This guy would be a real artistic threat if he’d just run around with a video camera and work that way.  Why he would want to be eating catered food with the walkie-talkie brigade is simply beyond me.

Life Inc.: A Book About How the World Became a Corporation

by Editor

Life Inc. is a book by Douglas Rushkoff that details the invention and evolution of the corporation as a means of privatizing life and maintaining economic power in the hands of the few. In the film above which promotes the ideas of his book, Rushkoff talks about how our entire lives are spent working for some corporation and searching for mass-produced items that we think we need in order to be happy. He describes how this creates isolation and destroys communities because we are all in competition with each other all the time – even when we are doing something as simple as cooking on a barbecue.

Who’s Hungry: Animation Based on Hansel & Gretel

by Editor

Freshman CalArts animation student, David Ochs made this wonderfully dark and violent take on the Grimms story, Hansel and Gretel.  It is everything a good fairy tale should be – full of evil, danger, self-reliant heroes, terrible and disgusting villains, and threatening environments.  The artwork is gorgeous and the piece is beautifully animated and has a very unsettling soundtrack.

Thanks to Cartoon Brew for posting this.

Word Bullets are Destabilizing Guatemala’s Government

by Editor | 1 Comment

The Guatemalan Twitter user named Jean Anleu Fernández who was arrested for making a Twitter post that suggested people should remove their money from the Banrural in order to help break the backs of corrupt politicians has been released from jail and placed under house arrest.  In the video above, you can watch as he greets his friends and makes a Twitter post while in handcuffs.  In one of the most fascinating recent examples of the battle for free expression we are watching a normal guy get persecuted by a Western nation for simply posting his thoughts on the internet.  He has been charged with inciting financial panic and attempting to cause a run on the bank.  I actually think his idea for pulling money out of the bank is a very good one and I fully support his idea.  Why not?  If Guatemala is so afraid of a run on its bank, then it either needs a new bank or a new government.  Perhaps both.  I think that, on the basis of what we are seeing in Guatemala, both the bank and the country’s government should be eliminated as quickly as possible.  The barrage of worldwide outrage toward Guatemala’s government via the internet is illustrative of the power of ‘word bullets’ to destabilize and destroy governments.  This is a fearsome power in the hands of ordinary internet users all over the globe.  It is this power that is the great weapon in the hands of all free people.  But it is also the power that will cause a dangerous reaction from governments seeking to eliminate this potent popular weapon.  I think that we are on the brink of the greatest assault on freedom of expression in history and that the assault will come primarily from free Western nations.  We are seeing it already in attempts like U.S. congressional representative Linda Sanchez’s bill to criminalize the posting of opinions on the internet that may offend anyone at all or emotionally injure a potential reader.  There is absolutely no difference between her attempt at legislation to eliminate freedom of speech and the behavior of the Guatemalan government in arresting a man for suggesting that people withdraw their own money from a bank.