Links for the weekend
If you see just one thing in the cinema this week, make sure it’s the RSC’s Live from Stratford-upon-Avon Richard II on Wednesday. But your second cinema visit has to be the astonishing Gravity, with Sandra Bullock (above). (Apologies to readers abroad; your chance to see Richard II will come soon, and in the States at least Gravity is so October.) Among the excellent reading available (but experience the film first, and in 3D) is the following:
• Gravity – a review: a good introduction by Matt Zoller Seitz at RogerEbert.com.
• Why Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón will never make a space movie again: a very good Wired interview by Caitlin Roper.
• Gravity – Alfonso Cuarón talks creating space epic: another useful interview, with Anne Thompson at indiewire.
• Drowning in the digital abyss: J. Hoberman hymns the film for The New York Review of Books.
• Gravity and the power of narrative limits: Jason Mittel at Just TV on just how unconventional a mainstream movie this is.
• Two characters adrift in an experimental film, part one: Kristin Thompson on the film’s links with the avant-garde and its minimal plot (with a second blog post on the way).
• The hero’s journey of Dr Ryan Stone – children, visual storytelling and miraculous rebirth in Gravity: Christopher Dole on just what the film shows us.
• Gravity – vfx that’s anything down to earth: Mike Seymour with an article for fxguide that is full of great details about how it was all done.
• Gravity – a 3D movie about 3D movies: Hsuan Hsu at Avidly offers a rich range of comparisons for the way the film treats 3D.
• Satellite of love – Jonás Cuarón’s Aningaaq: at his Film Lounge Neil Young writes about the semi-unofficial ‘companion-piece’ made by Gravity’s co-writer (Alfonso and Jonás are father and son).
• Managing Gravity’s workflow: … and this one, from Nick Dager at Digital Cinema Report, is for the techies, and is fascinating about file sizes.
Below the fold are further links about film, Shakespeare and more, with thanks to @mia_out, @KeyframeDaily, @lukemckernan, @TheBrowser and @petermarkadams.
• Louis Feuillade – an introduction: Sean Axmaker at Fandor on the great Parisian silent filmmaker (sadly, the clips and film links are geo-blocked, but the piece is still well worth your time).
• The Art of Deception: also from Fandor, an interview by Jonathan Marlow with Molly Bernstein and Alan Edelstein about their documentary Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay – particularly interesting as many years back I oversaw a Tx. film directed Rex Bloomstein that sounds very similar; here is the trailer for the new doc:
• Blockbuster, Netflix and the end of movies as a product: Janko Roetters at gigaom has the figures about a profound change in the way we watch.
• A smaller BBC would be good for audiences: former BBC executive Roger Mosley makes the case for cutting back services – an important piece (that I want to take issue with this week) which first appeared in The Times but is here released from the paywall.
• The fastest show on TV on The Good Wife: Phil Maciak at Dear Television is great on Alicia and sex and slowness…
• There will be peplum – on the television uniform: … and just to prove that Dear Television is offering us some of the very television criticism out there, here is Anne Helen Petersen on the costume choices in The Good Wife…
• The Good Wife – season 5 promo: … and just because, here is 30 seconds from the new series which is playing in the States and comes to More4 in (I think) January:
• Henry and Henry’s amazing adventures in Transylvania: a lovely post by Henry Jenkins about a journey made with his son to the land of Dracula and a conference in Bucharest.
• The local, universal master: a wonderful piece by Ingrid D. Rowland for The New York Review of Books on Titian and Sheila Hale’s new biography.
• 67 tips for art critics: a great and wise Storify compilation from @ZakSmithSabbath.
• Powerful Extreme Measures is in moment with Chris Burden: Christopher Knight for the L.A. Times reviews the Chris Burden retrospective at The New Museum in New York.
• Exploring the Tate collection: Tate has recently released the metadata about the works in its collection on GitHub; here shardcore explores some visualisation ideas and reflects on their possible influences on curating – there’s also the very engaging autoserota.
• 10 rules for being more creative: on Homeland we are just getting to know Sen. Andrew Lockhart, who is played by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracey Letts, here, thanks to @TinaLandau, he shares his ideas to make you a better creative person.
• Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone, the least known masterpiece of European literature: writing about a ‘notebook’ compiled largely between 1821 and 1823, Adam Kirsch for New Republic adds another book to the I-really-must-read-one-day list; an Amazon UK listing is here.
• Street Cop: terrific reporting from Nicholas Lemann for The New Yorker about the S.E.C.’s attempts to control the financial industry.
• theartsdesk Q&A – writer David Storey, part one: a compendious and compelling interview with the novelist and playwright by Jasper Rees; part two is here.
• Twitter Is weird — and other things fatherhood taught me: Alexis Madrigal returns from paternity leave to The Atlantic and writes (very engagingly) about micro-blogging.
• Diary: Rebecca Solnit in the London Review of Books on the invasion of our lives by technology (yes, yet another of those pieces, but this has a quiet focus that I responded to):
The fine art of doing nothing in particular, also known as thinking, or musing, or introspection, or simply moments of being, was part of what happened when you walked from here to there alone, or stared out the train window, or contemplated the road, but the new technologies have flooded those open spaces.
• War memorial – art and conflict: interesting short Financial Times video report by Rachel Spence about Stanley Spencer, Joan Littlewood, Wilfred Owen and John Singer Sargent memorialising the First World War.
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