Links for the weekend

12th May 2013

So you’ve probably seen this already, even though it was only posted six days ago. Since when it has clocked up more than 3.7 million YouTube views. Yes, it’s the video illustrating part of the audio recording of the late David Foster Wallace‘s famous commencement address, ‘This is water’.

The film was created by the Los Angeles production house The Glossary, and the story behind its making is interesting too. In a Q&A with Adweek’s David Griner, the team admit that they did not clear copyright before they went ahead.

We had little to no budget for this project and we knew that the publishing house was going to be really skeptical of our little company’s request to utilize [DFW’s] work. We had faith in our vision for the video and that once it was complete they would see that this was something made with the best intentions in mind. We are in no way making any money directly from this video; it was purely a passion project. While we had high hopes for this, we could have never seen all of this attention coming. Sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

It’s worth reading David L Ulin’s piece for the L.A. Times as well. Below are further links to interesting stuff, with acknowledgements due this week to @jay_rosennyu, @CilentoFabrizio and @AndyKesson.

• William Witney, B-movie action king: R Emmet Sweeney at Moving Image Source on the low-budget movie director admired by Quentin Tarantino and others.

• The polaroids of Andrei Tarkovsky – the mystery of everyday life: still images by the great director highlighted by Michelle Aldredge on gwarlingo.

• Jack and the bean-counters: Kristin Thompson is very good on fandom, failure and a movie called Jack and the Giant Slayer (sic).

• Test Centre launches The Museum of Loneliness: The Literateur’s Scott Morris files a fine report on the latest project – an LP! – from filmmaker Chris Petit, with a little help from writer Iain Sinclair.

• Wheatley’s latest to have same-day platform release: this is really interesting from Chris Patmore at MovieScope on plans for Ben Wheatley’s forthcoming A Field in England to be ‘the first-ever film to be released in UK nationwide cinemas, on free TV, on DVD and on Video-on-Demand on the same day’ (which is 5 July).

• Daily – ‘Chinese Realities / Documentary Visions’: a useful introduction from David Hudson at Fandor to MoMA’s new screening series of recent documentaries from China; the MoMA website has valuable notes on each of the films.

• The 50 greatest matte paintings of all time: a year-old list from Peter Cook at Shadowlocked that I’ve only just come across – and which is packed with riches.

• Meet 500 years of British art: Tate Britain opens its radical re-hang in the coming week, and this Tate Shots video has curator Chris Stephens introducing the galleries and the ideas behind them; there’s more from Tate Britain’s director Penelope Curtis in her ‘Time is right to rethink the chronological rehang’ for The Art Newspaper.

• James Turrell shapes perceptions: Jori Finkel for the L.A. Times on the American artist and his grandiose vision for Roden Crater.

• The day that punk died again: New York’s Metropolitan Museum has opened Punk: Chaos to Couture; Sasha Frere-Jones has written all you need to know about it for The New Yorker:

The biggest sin of this current show is not that it isn’t true to punk. It’s that it doesn’t honor history, ideas, or clothing.

• Made for ‘ugh’, appropriated for ‘ooh’ : … while Roberta Smith at The New York Times is a bit more enthusiastic:

The show is the ultimate confirmation that, despite attempts to be as unpalatable as possible, punk was absorbed by the culture around it, not least by blue-chip fashion designers on the prowl for new ideas.

• Cultural hijack: Regine at we make money not art reviews a richly interesting exhibition at the Architectural Association School of Architecture which also has a good website here.

• Paint bombs: Kalefa Sanneh, also for The New Yorker, on Occupy Wall Street, David Graeber and anarchism today.

• The ecstasy of a modern romantic: Joan Acocella for The New York Review of Books on Isadora Duncan.

• James Salter – the forgotten hero of American literature: Rachel Cooke contributes to the Observer a loving profile of the literary giant – if you’ve never read the achingly gorgeous A Sport and a Pastime, do yourself a favour.

• The disappearing book: for Medium Frank Rose writes about the fascinating project These Pages Fall Like Ash that ‘that starts out as a book but then unfolds as a digital text that people read on their smartphones or tablets’ – the creators are Tom Abba and Duncan Speakman working with novelists Neil Gaiman and Nick Harkaway.

• This is what happens when publishers invest in long stories: a thought-provoking piece about possible new models for online writing by Chris Dannen for Fast Company.

• Future fiction – drama meeting digital: a tremendous collection of resources from the BBC Academy’s Future Fiction day about what’s next for drama production and distribution.

• Virtual Paul’s Cross Project: a truly remarkable digital recreation, with a number of different aspects, of John Donne’s Gunpowder Day sermon given in London in 1622.