Gravity’s Patents.

-  With the recent memos NBC news leaked — wow, good on you NBC — I’m getting a little frightened for the future of the USA.  The President has taken the War on Terror ball from the last guy and he is running with it without looking back or stopping for nothing.  When he hands it off to a more than likely more conservative successor in 2016 I fear we will continue down the rabbit hole to oblivion.  Oblivion looking like a mild, subtle, and polite police state.

-  2013 could be one of the best years for science fiction films we’ve seen in some time.  The ones I’m most excited for:

• Neill Blomkamp‘s second feature film behind the brilliant “District 9″, called Elysium.  The overall concept of the film:  2159, overpopulated and most likely trashed Earth, the well-to-do living in a massive glorious orbiting space station society (called “Elysium”), the less than fortunate living on the surface, an ex-Con who has a chance to bring about equality back to the human race.  The fact that Jodie Foster is going to be the pseudo villain, in an anti-immigrant authoritarion role aboard the station, is enough to get me to the theater on this one.  Throw in the fact that this is Blomkamp we’re talking here, who’s use of CG is so subtle, who’s art direction is so grimy, this film could turn out to be eerily plausible.  And I would not be surprised if he throws in some modern day rhetoric to make it feel all the more real.
• The highly anticipated (for me at least) Gravity.  Alfonso Cuaron‘s first movie since 2006′s “Children of Men“, which is a great flick.  The story is quite simple really: two astronauts (Sandra Bullok and George Clooney) get caught-up in the destruction (accidental, most likely) of something similar to our International Space Station, the film depicts their attempts to get back on Earth safely.  Now, I think this was scrapped, but rumor had it the movie was going to be one long take.  Which would be insane.  I have read more recently though — from fairly reputable sources — that it’s looking like the movie will be composed of a select handful of long takes.  That alone has my interest peaked, Cuaron’s shot at the end of “Men” was spectacular.

-  The Truth About American Psycho and Natural Born Killers.

In terms of discussing the influence of film on American society and the alarmingly frequent and horrifically violent acts perpetrated by Americans on other Americans, we have recently heard, AGAIN, two specific films called out and scapegoated, American Psycho and Natural Born Killers; despite the field day that these so-called “film critics” could have had with movies actually from this decade like Killers, from 2010 (oops, that’s an Ashton Kutcher/Katherine Heigl romantic comedy). Taking a closer look at both American Psycho and Natural Born Killers, it becomes clear how weak both movies are when called out as examples of media “aired like propaganda loops on ‘Splatterdays’ and every day.”

-  Considering I received an oh-so subtle death threat on Facebook the other day, it’s no surprise many users are taking hiatuses from the service right now, and will continue to in the year 2013 (it’s looking like).  It was December 2012 when the data of a PEW survey was taken, finding that 61% of users were backing off from the social networking site.  I think election hangover might have something to do with this.  Although study subjects’ top two claims were “gave it up for lent” and “too much drama”.  I actually do not agree with this idea though that on Facebook we can’t talk about deep philosophical issues.  Sure, it gets tedious.  But that’s because of the quality of discussion, not the discussion itself.  People don’t listen to each other and they don’t think critically.  Sure, I generally use Facebook to share music I like with my friends, or keep people updated on the status of my family… but it can be more than that.  It’s not as good as the real thing, but it could be the 21st Century town square.  Where someone presents an idea, then the rest of the public comments on it, likes or dislikes it.  But no one is civil anymore.  In fact, mostly what you get is 20-somethings lashing out against their family about how terrible they’ve been to them publicly.  I know, this happened on my feed (not surprisingly) around December 2012.

-  More proof of patents limiting innovation rather than expanding it.

We’ve written a few times about a patent trolling operation called Personal Audio. Like so many patent trolling companies, whose actually behind it is something of a mystery, but it does have an empty office in East Texas that no one ever goes to. It sued Apple and others claiming that it held patents on the concept of “playlists” and actually scored some victories. Amazingly, it sued Apple multiple times over the same patent, arguing that small changes to its products were new violations.

-Sonny

Jubilee Is Agent 15.

-  I’m super digging the idea of Brian Wood writing an all female X-Men team.  I haven’t been dedicated (“cared” is probably what I really mean) to an on-going X-Men book since Joss Whedon’s Astonishing, so perhaps Brian and amazing artist Olivier Coipel can bring mutants back into my life.  And let’s be real… the females of the X-Verse are in a lot of ways more interesting and rounded than the men.  At least when they’re written well and not drawn as pieces of meat for drooling, way too old fanboys.

-  Also from Wired:  Syria apparently used a powerful hallucinogenic chemical weapon against rebels on December 23rd.  The compound is called “Agent 15″, also known as 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate.  The world is a scary place.

-  Local (to me) rap group Atmosphere recently announced a new “Welcome to MN” tour.  But that’s not what I wanna share.  What I wanna share is the song they’ve created with each of the opening acts on the tour, it’s called “It Ain’t The Prettiest”:

-  ARTIST OF THE DAY:  Aaron Jasinski.

See ya tomorrow!

-SW

Mock iCarly.

-  David Lynch might be revisiting his Twin Peaks universe?  That’d be something.  I still haven’t seen Inland Empire, though I’ve heard bad things about it.  Right now it’s hovering stable at 72% on Rotten Tomatoes.  I’ve heard people argue that it makes no sense, even for a David Lynch film.  I think they might be more forgiving if they knew how he made it: traveling around L.A. with the cast crew looking for aesthetically satisfying locales without a script of any kind.  Think of it as a sort-of free flowing Jazz song, totally improvised, just for the sake of making Jazz.  Now I need to track down a copy.

-  Carly Fiorina looks like a Star Trek villain.  Just sayin.

-  Top Science Long Reads of the Year.  2012… that is.  There are some fascinating articles here (great list, Ed Yong at NatGeo!), including one where a woman “commandeer[s] a robotic limb with her imprisoned mind” and one about bristlecone pine trees (they’re going extinct) being “repositories of time; to destroy them is to destroy an irreplaceable record of the Earth’s past. Over this past century of unprecendented deforestation, a tiny cadre of scientists has roamed the world’s remaining woodlands, searching for trees with long memories…”

-  Very very sad:  some 60,000 people have died in the Syria conflict in 2012.  And what’s worse, as the article states, is that the rate of death is increasing as the violence drags on: it continues to escalate with both sides using heavier and heavier weapons.  And I openly admit that I have no clue what the right thing to do is for the rest of the world, especially the US… but it’s hard to just stand by and watch this happen.  But I guess the Western world does it with Africa all the time too, so it’s absolutely nothing new.

-  Umm… “mock” metal t-shirts including Celine Dion and Barry White??  Awesome:

-Sonny

Decline of War (smiley face emoticon).

-  On Thanksgiving I wrote quite a long piece about the infamous comic strip “Huxley was right; Orwell was wrong”.  It very poorly tied the idea that Huxley was right to Black Friday now spilling over into Thanksgiving now, the day of the year we’re supposed to be thankful for what we have.  The only day of the year in this country where we aren’t supposed to be consumers.  It also compared and contrasted 21st Century living to what Brave New World and 1984 predicted would happen to our societies.  I wrote it, edited it, and published it.  For some reason the published version wiped about 3/4 of the thing clean.  Probably a good thing as it was terribly written.

-  The Atlantic: “With 35MM Film Dead, Will Classic Movies Ever Look The Same Again?“.  It’s a depressing question with probably a more depressing answer.

“In June, director Martin Scorsese tried to show his 1993 film The Age of Innocence at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese’s editor for the past 40 years and a three-time Oscar winner, called Grover Crisp, the senior VP of asset management at Sony, for a 35mm print. But Sony not only didn’t have a print, it couldn’t even make one.

“He told me that they can’t print it anymore because Technicolor in Los Angeles no longer prints film,” Schoonmaker recalled. “Which means a film we made 20 years ago can no longer be printed, unless we move it to another lab—one of the few labs still making prints.”

-  A swath of Nordic countries (all of them?) are telling Facebook to stop unsolicited advertising of users in their countries or face legal action.  Good for them.  Not only did they cite the current EU on “privacy and electronic communication” in their threat, they also are looking into amending the law to uniquely tackle the topic.  “It is prohibited to send electronic advertisements to consumers who haven’t given their consent, either by email or SMS… We think that some of the advertising that Facebook calls ‘sponsored stories’ is beginning to look like unsolicited electronic messages.”

-  The Independent: “The Future of War Is Looking Bleak“.  What a spectacular title for a news article!  Now we’re talking!  Havard Hegre, a professor  at the University of Oslo, developed a model for predicting future events and trends on a global scale this past year, his work has just been published.  In it Hegre discovered that the amount of “wars” (defined as a conflict between countries in which at least 25 people die) has dropped dramatically in recent history, and the extended model shows a continuation of decline in the next 40 years.  “War has become less acceptable,” Hegre said,  “just like duelling, torture and the death penalty.”

-  Sonny

Bohemian Chord Progression.

-  There awaits to excellent features at Guernica for you:

BAT-MYTHOS: Superhero idealogy, Batman, and the Aurora shootings

The decades since the ’30s and ’40s have witnessed considerable broadening of the superhero’s narrative and thematic ambition, an evolution (some would say cynical decline) that accelerated with the mid-’80s arrival of the glibly monikered Dark Age. Inspired by pop-culture touchstones like Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, the new strain of superhero comics attempted to incorporate greater psychological depth, artistic experimentation and gritty atmospherics, launching a bevy of condescending “Biff, Pow: Comics Have Grown Up!” headlines that continue to this day.

These aspirations were regularly confused by over-zealous creators with an open license to escalate violence and sexual content, but often enough, the writers and artists succeeded in taking the genre to new places. These were not happy destinations, rife as they were with anti-heroes and psychopaths feeding off each other’s pathologies. The defining quality of the deconstructive new tales was a readiness to say uncomfortable things about the sort of person who might actually be inclined to put on an outlandish costume and run around attacking sociopaths. In short, it was no longer possible to generalize about the basically hopeful nature of superheroes.

Street Art and the New Bohemian: A conversation w/ Eric Drooker and Molly Crabapple

Art grabs people by their eyeballs, it seduces them. Especially if the picture is very beautiful or very sexy or just really weird, if it has some surreal element in it. It makes people do a double take and then, if they’re looking at the picture, maybe they’ll read the text under it that says, “Come to Union Square, For Anti-War Meeting Friday.” I’ve been operating that way ever since—that art is a means to an end rather than simply an end in itself. In art school we’re always taught that art is an end in itself—art for art’s sake, expressing yourself, and that that’s enough.

Drooker’s work:

And Molly’s:

-  There’s more to the recent scientific finding that music has become less original and louder over the years.  In terms of volume, we’re using significantly better tech to both create and consume music.  It’s hard to drive a V-10 at only 40 MPH when you know that’s only a quarter of its power.  Know what I’m saying?  Then there’s a cultural aspect to everything being louder (literally and figuratively) now: to block out the world with headphones nowadays requires more volume in a city than it probably did in 1952.  And in terms of notation… well that is easily debunked.  Or questioned, at the very least.  Obviously as time goes on and on more and more musicians have to use the same chord progressions and melodies and structures.  There is only so many keys to use.  And within that limited number of keys there’s only so many ways to rearrange chords.  And within those structures there’s only a percentage of them that are consonant (a fancy musical term for “feels good on the ears”).  Clearly scientists, not musicians, did this research.

-Sonny

Urbx Bundle/What Controversy?

-  This is what all the hubbub is about?  This is why Batman Incorporated #3 is getting delayed for multiple months?  Wow… I guess I just don’t see it.

-  Check out this Photostream on Flickr; guy calls himself/herself OM2 Urbx.  Specializes in urban photography for the 21st Century.  This one is called “Clane Crimber” (and no, I believe that is not a typo):

-  These Verve Remixed albums are brilliant.  Damn.  The idea is to take old songs from the history of the label, and have modern Electronic and/or Hip-Hop produces remix them.  So they’re both for fans of the history of the label and the artists associated, AND modern music fans to serve as an introduction to said artists.  Awesome idea, and something more labels with 25+ years of history should do.  And big ups to The Current for playing something I wasn’t familiar with and piqued my interest more than “oh, this is pretty decent indie rock”.

-  DJ Shadow Releases Music Bundle Through BitTorrent

BitTorrent has a new plan for getting money into the hands of content producers — and it’s putting its method to the test with a handful of new tracks from turntable maestro DJ Shadow.

The file-sharing hub released a “bundle” of three tracks on 24 July from Shadow’s upcoming Total Breakdown: Hidden Transmissions From the MPC Era, 1992-1996. The torrent, which also includes photos and archival footage from Shadow’s early years, will come with free software from BitTorrent’s advertising partners — like, for example, RealPlayer. If downloaders install the software, the DJ will get a share of the revenue.

The DJ Shadow bundle is the first of many new content experiments BitTorrent has in the works, the company said. Finding ways for artists to make money from file sharing could be a significant shift in the perception of the practice among artists and music labels. It seems to have brought around Shadow (aka Josh Davis), who in an interview with Wired last year lamented that peer-to-peer file sharing had “removed music sales from the equation.”

-  Paul Pope did a drawing of Luke at the gate’s of Jabba’s Palace for shits and giggles:

-Sonny

Inanimate Escapism.

-  Christ it’s been a while.  That may have been the longest break from here I’ve taken in some time.  Alright, let’s get to it.

-  Last time I posted I mentioned Lichtenstein.  Well, one of his more famous pieces just went for a whopping $45 million.  Not gonna lie though, any Lichtenstein would look remarkable in a modern-stylized home (where as many “classic” paintings would not).

-  Interview with Robert Kirkman at CBR.  In it he discusses the upcoming 100th issue milestone of Walking Dead, why he thinks the series is so popular, and how he legitimately thinks issue #100 features the most gruesome scene of the series’ long history.  If you’ve read even 50% of the book, you know how stirring of a statement that actually is.

-  This FilmBook review of the Avengers gets it (in my opinion):

As the film progresses, action and suspense are chased and harried with mounting moments of levity, monologues, and convenient conflict resolutions. Those convenient conflict resolutions showed themselves again and again in how superhero fights were ended in the film. Most of the fight scenes had no pay off because of the state of the people fighting, a situation completely absent in Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. During the diverse fist-a-cuffs between members of the eventual The Avengers team, nothing is really at stake, except in one of the fights (Hulk vs. Black Widow) and that fight, theoretically, should have had a different conclusion. With everyone’s super powers, no one can be hurt or killed so there is nothing at risk (except property damage) and nothing to lose. The viewer seats and watches colorful crash dummies throw each other through walls or into inanimate objects.

But… it goes on to say:

If The Avengers is an exercise in escapism like most “tentpole”, “popcorn” films and how could it not be deemed as such, these quips and qualms are irrelevant.

Exactly.  My thoughts exactly.  I went into the movie with the expectation of watching a super awesome nerd-gasm inducing action flick (featuring some of the biggest names in comics), and that’s what I got.  However, that does not mean that I still was a little disappointed with aspects of the film.  The world never actually feels that threatened.  Neither the heroes.  It’s something easily forgivable considering this is the first go of it.  But if Joss Whedon is going to do 3 of these things, it would do him (and whoever else scripts) a whole lotta good to up the tension a bit.  I mean, the middle segment on the Hellicarier was more tense than the final scene.  Much more.  That’s the vibe ALL of the 2nd one should have.

-Sonny

Five-Hundred Collabs.

-  At least 50 people are dead in the latest batch of violence in Iraq.  The attacks targeted mostly Shia neighborhoods, particularly police in those towns and cities.  Dictators suck ass.  But the lesson might be: democracy and freedom are not as important as tolerance and liberty (in this case, as they pertain to religion).

-  I’m watching the Simpsons’ 500th episode right now.  It’s pretty awesome so far.  One of the better episodes I’ve seen in some time.  I like the exchange between Lisa and Homer that goes:

Homer: Jeez, Lisa… why don’t you pick up a book once and a while?

Lisa:  I pickup books like you pickup beers!

Homer:  Then you’ve got a serious reading problem.

The opening couch gag was great, a summation of all their couch gags.  I wish Fox allowed that kinda thing on YouTube, I’d post it.  And here’s all of Bart’s blackboard writings.

-  That new Gorillaz song with Andre-3000 and James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem is just okay.  It’s the only way a Gorillaz track could possibly sound with the likes of those two collaborators, and on an LP it would probably have it’s place and serve the album well.  In this case, though, as a stand alone track, it’s just alright.  [Not really digging the Gorillaz Chuck Taylor's either; for which the track is a promotional tool.]  However, I did only recently get into “The Fall” (for whatever reason) which is wonderful.  I can’t believe it was recorded exclusively by Damon during touring.  That’s using your tools (in this case his iPad) to the best of your abilities.

-  WHAT THE FUCK?!?  I just got done talking about how awesome this Simpsons episode has been and what do those bastards do??  They put this at the end of the show (and, it’s super quick so it’s hard to read):

THANKS FOR 500 SHOWS.

[smaller print]  All we ask is that you go out and get some fresh air before logging on the internet and saying how much this sucked.

That’s… I dunno.  It’s off-putting to say the least.  Especially when you’re logging onto the internet to praise it (and you live in MN, where going outside in February isn’t exactly fun).

-  I went and saw Atmosphere at their one and only First Ave. show of this brief tour.  It was great: excellent and varied setlist, cool re-workings of songs, Sean was in a great mood.  I’m waiting for some kind of review so I can see the official setlist.  Atmosphere fans are really, really strange though.  Some of them don’t even pay attention to the music.  At all.  There was two girls and two guys next to me who were more interested in hooking up than anything.  If that’s why you’re going out, maybe just go to a bar?  So that people who LOVE that band (and there are a lot of them), who will actually go and pay attention, can have an opportunity to go?  Also, it saddens me a ton that no one really cares about Kill The Vultures, cause they are boss.  And that was probably one of the more clean-cut concert crowds I’ve been amongst in some time.  Those people last night made me feel like a dirtball. Which I’m fine with!

-  Pretty eye-opening article from The Onion’s “AV Club” on the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture.  The title?  “How All 9 Best Picture Nominees Reassure Us About the Scary Future”.  I thought it was a pretty weak year for movies.  If anything, the Best Pic noms this year just aren’t as varied as they have been for the past 4 or 5 years.

-Sonny

The Apple Cartel.

-  TubeGnosis has almost one hundred, free, mind-expanding documentaries to watch.  I’m warning you, some of them are batshit crazy.  But interesting nonetheless.  I’m a massive William S. Burroughs fan (I think he’s one of the best American writers of all time) — as you may know if you’re reading this — and the doc they have on him is very insightful for fans of his, and probably non-fans alike.  I have not yet watched the Charlie Mingus doc but I’m sure I would dig that too.

Again, the link.

-  Here’s a disgusting statistic: since 2007, almost 50,000 people have died in Mexico via drug-related violence.  It’s a goddamn war zone down there.  According to the BBC, the “Zetas” cartel has now overtaken their bitter rival, the “Sinaloa” cartel.  Here’s an interesting tidit:

“The Zetas control much of eastern Mexico, while the Sinaloa cartel has its stronghold in the west of the country.  The authors also point out their differences in strategy.  They say that the Zetas whose leadership is composed of ex-special operations soldiers, resort to extreme violence.  The Sinaloa cartel, although also ruthless, prefers to bribe and corrupt people, as well as providing intelligence on rivals to the authorities.”

Of course, there’s one way to make cartels completely impotent and insignificant.  I would hope we all know what that is.

-  Apple sued the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (Samsung) in a Dutch court, claiming it infringed on the iPad design.  Apple lost, like it did when it tried the same thing a year ago.  German courts are reviewing the a similar case.

It explains that the Hague-based judges noted that the backs and sides of Samsung’s tablet differed from the iPad’s, and that the two firm’s models differed in thickness – allowing informed users to distinguish between the companies’ devices.  It said Apple had sought a wide definition of its design rights, based in part on the idea that its model looked like a “mirror-smooth lake” onto which an image appeared.

“This ruling again demonstrates that Apple’s products simply do not warrant the intellectual property protections that it believes,” a spokeswoman said.”Samsung will continue to take all appropriate measures, including legal action, to ensure continued consumer access to our innovative products.”

Apple said it had nothing specific to say about the ruling.

Apple posted record quarterly profits in the 2011 holiday season, a massive 13 billion dollars.  During a recession, mind you.  This news coming behind news that when Steve Jobs sat down with Obama, he was grilled about how many non-American jobs Apple has, and how those can come back to the United States.  Jobs’ response: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”  According to UC Irvine, the iPod created around 15,000 US jobs and about 30,000 overseas jobs.  To date, Apple has about 60,000 American workers (10,000 bartending at the genius bar).  In comparison, HP has 350,000 American jobs and Dell has 100,000.

Then there’s this article, explaining how the average cost of an iPad is about $250.  Looking at Best Buy, I’m seeing that they range from about 5 to 8 hundred dollars.  The laptop manufacturing costs vs sales costs are even greater.

Cheap, overseas jobs?  Cheap production costs?  Being able to charge essentially however much you want because your fans will never leave you?  It’s no wonder Apple is competing with Exxon Mobile as the wealthiest company in the world.

[/AppleRant]

-  Experiences Are Better When We Know They’re About To End.

Even if the experience is painful or negative, but concludes on a pleasant note, people will consider the event a more positive experience, says Ed O’Brien, a graduate student in the U-M Department of Psychology.

“Endings are powerful,” he said.

-Sonny

Violent Decline, Punisher Cop?

-  A little hope perhaps?  Steven Pinker — he was the guest on the Colbert Report a few weeks ago I believe — wrote this book called The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined and now PhysOrg is running an article on the book, Pinker, and the theories the book contains.  The major being this:

“The decline of violence may be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species.“

The PhysOrg article mentions several statistics, I’d assume from the book, to support the hypothesis.  It mentions “genocide deaths” (which was 14,000 times higher in 1942 than it was in 2008), “battle deaths” (which has dropped 1000X “over the centuries”), and even the number of democracies (from 20 in 1946 to 100-ish now).  But these statistics don’t come without some obvious rebuttals.

First off, if we’re going to have a benchmark year for “genocidal deaths” I would think anytime between 1936 and 1942 would be a skewed benchmark due to what was happening in the world at the time.  No?  And I would wager that the “technological advancement” argument has or will be applied to Pinkman’s “battle death” statistics.  With wealthier military forces opting for Drone strikes, precision bombing (“precision”…), etc.  And then there’s more advanced techniques for insurgents also.  I think it’s fairly easy and cheap now to create a high-powered IED or bomb than it used to be (not sure?).  So my point is that war is less and less a face to face endeavor, the further our technology pushes.  Sure, the side getting bombed isn’t dropping in number of casualties, but surely the ones on the offensive are putting less and less lives at risk.

Not that I’m trying to totally refute the books claims.  Nor would I like to.  I’d like to believe we’re becoming a more peaceful people.  Maybe we are.  But that might have more to do with circumstance than people themselves.  Still though, it’s nice to see a little hope.

Again, THE ARTICLE.

-  Onto the geeky side of things.  After years of poorly recieved and performing Punisher motion pictures, Marvel has opted for the television route with the character.  Recently they announced that Fox will be producing a TV adaptation in which Frank Castle will be a young NYPD detective who, during his off-duty hours, moonlights as the justice seeking “Punisher”.  This is all, all wrong.  I’m all for revamping characters, I think a ton of them could use it, but this isn’t right.

I’m not sure why NO ONE has thought that updating the character for modern times wouldn’t work.  What I mean is turning Frank back into his twenties, and having him return from multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq (originally it was the Vietnam War) to a family that no longer recognizes him, a job he no longer has, and a city full of desperate people in desperate times.  In Jason Aaron’s PunisherMAX series, he recently had Castle imprisoned for killing a cop.  In his world, the NYPD only barely tolerated Castle’s brutal antics, and once he crossed the line by killing a cop (albiet a corrupt one) that tolerability ceased.  It’s been one of the more interesting twists to the the run.  I suppose one could write in a similar theme to this show; with certain cops knowing about Castle’s vigilantism and turning a blind eye to it.  But there’s an uneasiness between the NYPD and the Punisher in the book that is as key as his war against crime.

But Frank Castle as an NYPD detective?  I dunno…

-Sonny