Last year I wrote an essay on The Show With Ze Frank and the art of the videoblog, and it has just been published in First Monday as "Ze Frank and the Poetics of Web Video". I'm thrilled that this work is appearing online, in an open access, peer-reviewed journal, with hyperlinks and color illustrations and a Creative Commons license. I wish there were more venues like First Monday for publishing on the whole range of topics I might want to write about (First Monday is a journal about the internet).
Abstract:
This article initiates a poetics of Web video by considering the central features of one kind of video on the Web, the amateur videoblog, in terms of its functions, which include various affordances of use, and constraints, which include economics, technology, and viewing conditions. It takes as its central example an American videoblog called The Show With Ze Frank, which ran from 2006-2007, and which drew a passionate community of fans into collaborating in its creation. This article considers amateur Web video as a potentially democratic space for media production, offering an alternative to commercial media that involves ordinary citizens as participants and champions their creativity.
Previously:
Web Videos of 2006, this blog's first post, a nice little time capsule of my enthusiasm for this new art form.
Notes on Web Video Form, the blog rough draft of what became the First Monday article, with a bunch of links to videos of the moment, many of which I had forgotten about.
The Show With Ze Frank, 2006-2007, my reflection on the show's ending.
Showing posts with label web video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label web video. Show all posts
2/26/2008
Playing Vids, quarterlife, In Treatment
In the process of preparing my lecture on videogames, I have been watching lots of videos of people playing games. These would make for an interesting study, I think, as a form of digital folk culture. They combine boastful, look-ma-no-hands virtuosity with the lo-fi authenticity and Vaudevillian exhibitionism of the YouTube aesthetic. They have certainly been enabled by the developments in gaming interfaces that make play more than just a matter of moving a joystick and hitting buttons, the same developments that are turning on the casual gamers who have been so important in driving up the industry's profits.
Gamers would seem to make these videos to satisfy various passions. The player who records his or her mastery of the expert level on Rock Band wants glory and posterity. One can imagine the fierce pride of the parents of the eight year-old sensations who shred out on Guitar Hero 2 and stomp in perfect rhythm playing Dance Dance Revolution. The angry players of Halo and its sequels are all over the tubes, screaming at their screens, validating the rage of anyone who ever got so invested in their own play.
In a related vein, there are the funniest-home-video qualities of flailing Wii Sports players whacking their imaginary tennis balls and rolling their virtual strikes and spares. And then there are the snapshot mementos of friends who gathered to sing along to American Idol Karaoke and to watch Grandma and Grandpa Wii boxing (searching YouTube for old and Wii turns up more than you can handle). We can picture ourselves twenty years on turning wistfully to these documents of the late oughts, laughing at the crummy Wii graphics no less than the overstuffed sectionals and 4X3 televisions and longing to play again.
***
Will we be watching quarterlife on NBC? You betcha. Although we have been "tuning in" online since the start, occasionally satisfied but more often kind of disappointed by the show (the best satisfaction comes in what will be the fourth TV episode, when the Angela Chase character hooks up with the Brian Krakow character--those who understand will understand), the question remains of how the show will look and feel as a weekly, hour-long NBC drama rather than a snack-sized web video series. I think it will play better as a TV show, and that it was supposed to be a TV show all along--that the internet was a gimmick for this show from the start. But the first few episodes are a rough beginning for the series and it might take a few months for it to find a good direction. I don't know that NBC will afford it that kind of patience.
***
In Treatment continues to impress, especially in its ability to shift so quickly from boring me to being captivating entertainment. I'm also impressed that every episode changes the show's look in some very subtle way, by giving us a new hairstyle or camera angle. If I get around to it I will make to framegrabs to illustrate what I mean. Last night's episode with Laura and Paul was intense at the end. The show has set up a fantastic pair of alternatives for these main characters: go for it, which would be wrong, or part ways, which would, in a way, be wronger. That's the kind of soapy plotting I was hoping for. Now HBO has a YouTube channel where they are streaming episodes, but only the first few for now.
Gamers would seem to make these videos to satisfy various passions. The player who records his or her mastery of the expert level on Rock Band wants glory and posterity. One can imagine the fierce pride of the parents of the eight year-old sensations who shred out on Guitar Hero 2 and stomp in perfect rhythm playing Dance Dance Revolution. The angry players of Halo and its sequels are all over the tubes, screaming at their screens, validating the rage of anyone who ever got so invested in their own play.
In a related vein, there are the funniest-home-video qualities of flailing Wii Sports players whacking their imaginary tennis balls and rolling their virtual strikes and spares. And then there are the snapshot mementos of friends who gathered to sing along to American Idol Karaoke and to watch Grandma and Grandpa Wii boxing (searching YouTube for old and Wii turns up more than you can handle). We can picture ourselves twenty years on turning wistfully to these documents of the late oughts, laughing at the crummy Wii graphics no less than the overstuffed sectionals and 4X3 televisions and longing to play again.
***
Will we be watching quarterlife on NBC? You betcha. Although we have been "tuning in" online since the start, occasionally satisfied but more often kind of disappointed by the show (the best satisfaction comes in what will be the fourth TV episode, when the Angela Chase character hooks up with the Brian Krakow character--those who understand will understand), the question remains of how the show will look and feel as a weekly, hour-long NBC drama rather than a snack-sized web video series. I think it will play better as a TV show, and that it was supposed to be a TV show all along--that the internet was a gimmick for this show from the start. But the first few episodes are a rough beginning for the series and it might take a few months for it to find a good direction. I don't know that NBC will afford it that kind of patience.
***
In Treatment continues to impress, especially in its ability to shift so quickly from boring me to being captivating entertainment. I'm also impressed that every episode changes the show's look in some very subtle way, by giving us a new hairstyle or camera angle. If I get around to it I will make to framegrabs to illustrate what I mean. Last night's episode with Laura and Paul was intense at the end. The show has set up a fantastic pair of alternatives for these main characters: go for it, which would be wrong, or part ways, which would, in a way, be wronger. That's the kind of soapy plotting I was hoping for. Now HBO has a YouTube channel where they are streaming episodes, but only the first few for now.
12/14/2007
Faves, 2007
This is a collection, in no particular order, of some favorite movies, TV shows, videos, recordings, websites, books, etc., of 2007.
The hardest thing about writing this is remembering anything at all that happened in January, February, March, April, and May. I sort of remember June and July, which I guess is good. Could it be that most good things first appear in the fall? Film critics certainly don't mind thinking so. Seems dubious to me.
-Fan vids by girls and women who express their sincere affection for movies and television and their performers and characters. I find these so much more resonant with my experience of pop culture these days than the too-cool mashups and home-brewed trailers that were among the big things in 2006. Here's an example by the YouTuber KristenBellfan16 paying tribute to Milly and Johnny in Because I Said So, a cheesy, can't-change-the-channel-when-it's-on-HBO rom-com from last winter. When the dialog is stripped away in favor of pop music, faces become more expressive and details of acting more prominent, like the way Mandy Moore sometimes shyly hides her eyes when she smiles and how adorably she mixes amusement and concern. And if you avoided seeing this movie because Diane Keaton is supposed to play a parody of herself (it didn't bother me), this little songvid gets rid of her entirely.
-Rihanna's totally unsubtle and seductive video to "Shut Up and Drive."
-Rufus Wainwright’s album Release the Stars, especially the schmaltzy Phantom of the Opera quotation at the end of the apocalyptic love song “Between My Legs.”
-Which reminds me of another thing: concert videos shot from the audience. This one is of "Between My Legs" at a concert I saw at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee on August 27.
And another version of the same song, with much better audio and video quality, from a concert in Saratoga.
-Special Topics in Calamity Physics, a page-turning mystery among other things. Of 2006, though.
-Then We Came To The End (click it, really), a novel I'm only half-way through, written audaciously in the first-person plural as a non-individuated "we" (I keep wondering how it could be made into a movie in a way that preserves the strangeness of this device) and another addition in what would seem like a burgeoning genre: satire of the corporate office. (Others would include Clockwatchers, Office Space, Dilbert, The Boss of it All, and two versions of The Office.) A topic for future research.
-The Simpsons movie for that "does whatever a Spider Pig does" goofiness.
-I’m Not There mostly for Cate Blanchett in the Felliniesque sequences and also for the ambition of making a movie that would take on Dylan as he might take himself on, maddeningly and with confident, visionary poetry.
-No Country For Old Men, especially first 3/4 when it’s a masterful guy-chases-guy flick.
-Ratatouille, for the details of the restaurant kitchen. Pixar films succeed in the details. A pox on its head, though, for all that pandering Anton Ego crap to flatter critics.
-Michael Clayton, especially the climactic confrontation between Clooney and Tilda Swinton when he gets her to agree to give him all that money. We had been waiting for Clooney to turn that on.
-Jonathan Lethem’s “Ecstasy of Influence” essay in Harper’s.
-The trailer for Juno. I haven't seen the movie but the trailer's a delight. I especially like the use of the word "shenanigans" and "All the Young Dudes" by Mott the Hoople. (Update 12/22: Just saw the movie; as you might have heard, it makes you smile, laugh, cry, and eagerly await more movies from the folks who made it.)
-I also really connect with the trailer for Hannah Takes the Stairs, another film yet to come to my town. I guess I sort of like her indie hairdo and the bright yellow background for the titles. The bit with the slinky is cutesy.
-Virginia Heffernan’s TV and internet criticism, especially when writing on the uncanny modernism of reality shows.
-Songs About Buildings and Food, a blog I always want to read as soon as I see a new post no matter what else I should be doing.
-Jezebel, a site for the ladies but who cares. It manages snark without the nastiness of its big sis Gawker and has the progressive agenda of being an antidote to the "aspirational" vapidity of women's mags.
-Slate’s slideshows like the ones on houses, snapshots, asses, and parking garages.
-Amy Winehouse before she totally lost it. Yeah, even the intro/verse parts of “You Know I’m No Good” that were used on the soundtrack of every quality drama in prime-time.
-The Hills, every moment but especially the ones where you can see Lauren’s face.
-Friday Night Lights, first season only, for making us care about people we too rarely get to know so well on prime-time television.
-Mad Men. Fave of the year in any medium. Every scene is its own little exquisite artwork, and at the end of every episode I can’t wait to watch a second time. Special honors for ending the season with a beautiful, dramatic surprise. This clip is from the episode "Indian Summer" in which the ad agency is working on a campaign for the "Electrosizer," a bogus weight-loss device for women that is better used for autoerotic pleasure. Meanwhile, Betty the bored housewife gets physical with her washing machine. This is the show I will miss most if the strike spells the end of all scripted television (I'm being dramatic but seriously, things seem pretty bleak right now).
-Tell Me You Love Me for being bold enough to be intimate (and I’m not talking about sex scenes).
-Gilmore Girls, which was never as sharp, deft, or clever after Amy and Dan left but still held onto much of its warmth and charm in its last season.
-The Sopranos for its shocking, terrifying final episodes.
-Hotel Chevalier, for its miniature elegance and “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely),” and the Darjeeling Limited soundtrack with “Les Champs Elysees” by Joe Dassin from the film’s closing scene.
-30 Rock for making us feel like we’re good enough to understand its secret-society, inside baseball jokes.
-Knocked Up, which was very endearing, and Superbad, which was even more hilarious. McLovin' is my favorite movie character of the year.
-Hairspray for John Travolta and Christopher Walken as a loving couple and for doing musical comedy the old-fashioned way.
-Scrabulous, the only Facebook application I would really recommend to someone who hasn’t tried it.
-Yo Gabba Gabba, especially the electronic and hip-hop tunes and old-school videogame graphics.
-The gorgeous, enchanting pilot of Pushing Daisies. (Those of us who predicted it could not sustain its visuals and who thought the whimsy wouldn't work in the repetitious format of weekly television were quickly proven right.)
-My So-Called Life DVDs for the interviews between Winnie Holzman and Claire Danes where they both get all emotional.
-Netvibes, a great RSS reader. When a site offers only a partial feed, Netvibes allows you to see the website within the reader so you don’t need to click through.
-Tumblr, the blogging platform for people who don’t equate blogging with writing.
-Picnik, a brilliant online photo editor that does most of what you want to do in Photoshop, has no learning curve, and is available in a no-frills version for free.
-Lolcats and all their offshoots.
-Threadless t-shirts and more generally the art of the smart, jokey hipster t. The source for tracking these is tcritic.
-Leave Britney Alone!, my choice for web video of the year. But it was a disappointing year for web video, which I thought was supposed to conquer the world.
-And Sanjaya Malekar, a small-screen superstar for a few weeks in the spring. He's an awful singer but an enthusiastic showman. At least this performance of "You Really Got Me" was entertaining. This is the one where the little girl cries. Isn't there a little bit of her in us all?
And in this sultry Latin number, "Besame Mucho," he makes love to the camera in a way that might make you feel dirty if not exactly seduced. In its finest moments, Idol affirms that there's no business like show business.
The hardest thing about writing this is remembering anything at all that happened in January, February, March, April, and May. I sort of remember June and July, which I guess is good. Could it be that most good things first appear in the fall? Film critics certainly don't mind thinking so. Seems dubious to me.
***
-Fan vids by girls and women who express their sincere affection for movies and television and their performers and characters. I find these so much more resonant with my experience of pop culture these days than the too-cool mashups and home-brewed trailers that were among the big things in 2006. Here's an example by the YouTuber KristenBellfan16 paying tribute to Milly and Johnny in Because I Said So, a cheesy, can't-change-the-channel-when-it's-on-HBO rom-com from last winter. When the dialog is stripped away in favor of pop music, faces become more expressive and details of acting more prominent, like the way Mandy Moore sometimes shyly hides her eyes when she smiles and how adorably she mixes amusement and concern. And if you avoided seeing this movie because Diane Keaton is supposed to play a parody of herself (it didn't bother me), this little songvid gets rid of her entirely.
-Rihanna's totally unsubtle and seductive video to "Shut Up and Drive."
-Rufus Wainwright’s album Release the Stars, especially the schmaltzy Phantom of the Opera quotation at the end of the apocalyptic love song “Between My Legs.”
-Which reminds me of another thing: concert videos shot from the audience. This one is of "Between My Legs" at a concert I saw at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee on August 27.
And another version of the same song, with much better audio and video quality, from a concert in Saratoga.
-Special Topics in Calamity Physics, a page-turning mystery among other things. Of 2006, though.
-Then We Came To The End (click it, really), a novel I'm only half-way through, written audaciously in the first-person plural as a non-individuated "we" (I keep wondering how it could be made into a movie in a way that preserves the strangeness of this device) and another addition in what would seem like a burgeoning genre: satire of the corporate office. (Others would include Clockwatchers, Office Space, Dilbert, The Boss of it All, and two versions of The Office.) A topic for future research.
-The Simpsons movie for that "does whatever a Spider Pig does" goofiness.
-I’m Not There mostly for Cate Blanchett in the Felliniesque sequences and also for the ambition of making a movie that would take on Dylan as he might take himself on, maddeningly and with confident, visionary poetry.
-No Country For Old Men, especially first 3/4 when it’s a masterful guy-chases-guy flick.
-Ratatouille, for the details of the restaurant kitchen. Pixar films succeed in the details. A pox on its head, though, for all that pandering Anton Ego crap to flatter critics.
-Michael Clayton, especially the climactic confrontation between Clooney and Tilda Swinton when he gets her to agree to give him all that money. We had been waiting for Clooney to turn that on.
-Jonathan Lethem’s “Ecstasy of Influence” essay in Harper’s.
-The trailer for Juno. I haven't seen the movie but the trailer's a delight. I especially like the use of the word "shenanigans" and "All the Young Dudes" by Mott the Hoople. (Update 12/22: Just saw the movie; as you might have heard, it makes you smile, laugh, cry, and eagerly await more movies from the folks who made it.)
-I also really connect with the trailer for Hannah Takes the Stairs, another film yet to come to my town. I guess I sort of like her indie hairdo and the bright yellow background for the titles. The bit with the slinky is cutesy.
-Virginia Heffernan’s TV and internet criticism, especially when writing on the uncanny modernism of reality shows.
-Songs About Buildings and Food, a blog I always want to read as soon as I see a new post no matter what else I should be doing.
-Jezebel, a site for the ladies but who cares. It manages snark without the nastiness of its big sis Gawker and has the progressive agenda of being an antidote to the "aspirational" vapidity of women's mags.
-Slate’s slideshows like the ones on houses, snapshots, asses, and parking garages.
-Amy Winehouse before she totally lost it. Yeah, even the intro/verse parts of “You Know I’m No Good” that were used on the soundtrack of every quality drama in prime-time.
-The Hills, every moment but especially the ones where you can see Lauren’s face.
-Friday Night Lights, first season only, for making us care about people we too rarely get to know so well on prime-time television.
-Mad Men. Fave of the year in any medium. Every scene is its own little exquisite artwork, and at the end of every episode I can’t wait to watch a second time. Special honors for ending the season with a beautiful, dramatic surprise. This clip is from the episode "Indian Summer" in which the ad agency is working on a campaign for the "Electrosizer," a bogus weight-loss device for women that is better used for autoerotic pleasure. Meanwhile, Betty the bored housewife gets physical with her washing machine. This is the show I will miss most if the strike spells the end of all scripted television (I'm being dramatic but seriously, things seem pretty bleak right now).
-Tell Me You Love Me for being bold enough to be intimate (and I’m not talking about sex scenes).
-Gilmore Girls, which was never as sharp, deft, or clever after Amy and Dan left but still held onto much of its warmth and charm in its last season.
-The Sopranos for its shocking, terrifying final episodes.
-Hotel Chevalier, for its miniature elegance and “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely),” and the Darjeeling Limited soundtrack with “Les Champs Elysees” by Joe Dassin from the film’s closing scene.
-30 Rock for making us feel like we’re good enough to understand its secret-society, inside baseball jokes.
-Knocked Up, which was very endearing, and Superbad, which was even more hilarious. McLovin' is my favorite movie character of the year.
-Hairspray for John Travolta and Christopher Walken as a loving couple and for doing musical comedy the old-fashioned way.
-Scrabulous, the only Facebook application I would really recommend to someone who hasn’t tried it.
-Yo Gabba Gabba, especially the electronic and hip-hop tunes and old-school videogame graphics.
-The gorgeous, enchanting pilot of Pushing Daisies. (Those of us who predicted it could not sustain its visuals and who thought the whimsy wouldn't work in the repetitious format of weekly television were quickly proven right.)
-My So-Called Life DVDs for the interviews between Winnie Holzman and Claire Danes where they both get all emotional.
-Netvibes, a great RSS reader. When a site offers only a partial feed, Netvibes allows you to see the website within the reader so you don’t need to click through.
-Tumblr, the blogging platform for people who don’t equate blogging with writing.
-Picnik, a brilliant online photo editor that does most of what you want to do in Photoshop, has no learning curve, and is available in a no-frills version for free.
-Lolcats and all their offshoots.
-Threadless t-shirts and more generally the art of the smart, jokey hipster t. The source for tracking these is tcritic.
-Leave Britney Alone!, my choice for web video of the year. But it was a disappointing year for web video, which I thought was supposed to conquer the world.
-And Sanjaya Malekar, a small-screen superstar for a few weeks in the spring. He's an awful singer but an enthusiastic showman. At least this performance of "You Really Got Me" was entertaining. This is the one where the little girl cries. Isn't there a little bit of her in us all?
And in this sultry Latin number, "Besame Mucho," he makes love to the camera in a way that might make you feel dirty if not exactly seduced. In its finest moments, Idol affirms that there's no business like show business.
10/01/2007
I have now watched Hotel Chevalier twice, once on a 17 inch computer screen and once on an iPod. Both experiences made me sad not to have seen the movie projected in a theater, and so I really hope that it will eventually be included in screenings of The Darjeeling Limited. Hotel Chevalier is filled with well-observed moments that really work dramatically, like Jason S. frantically cleaning up when he learns that Natalie P. is soon to arrive, and the line Jason S. tells her about never wanting to be her friend, and the substitution of looking out at a view of Paris for lovemaking. I have never had any affection for Anderson's films and their obsessive affectation, but I find this little video is growing on me, and I could see myself changing my mind about his oeuvre. That Peter Starsedt song, "Where Do You Go To My Lovely," is to this film as California Dreamin' is to Chungking Express. It infects your brain even after the film has ended, and you want to play it again just as the character in the film does.
It also occurs to me that HC is very similar in form to a New Yorker short story, and that the format really suits Anderson's approach to visual detail and keen observation. In a short form motifs stand out, and your when your attention isn't strained by a longer narrative you can appreciate little things more. Anderson, like Alice Munro or John Updike, is a storyteller whose smallest details reward attention.
It also occurs to me that HC is very similar in form to a New Yorker short story, and that the format really suits Anderson's approach to visual detail and keen observation. In a short form motifs stand out, and your when your attention isn't strained by a longer narrative you can appreciate little things more. Anderson, like Alice Munro or John Updike, is a storyteller whose smallest details reward attention.
9/25/2007
Philip Roth's new novel is Exit Ghost, the last of his many fictions about Nathan Zuckerman, a character everyone considers to be a version of himself. The Times (UK) has a Philip Roth primer and npr has an interview with the author. GreenCine offers a few links and a video of Roth talking politics. Christopher Hitchens has a scathing review. I think Roth is the only novelist whose books I always want to read as soon as they come out.
David Edelstein glosses the Coen brothers and previews their new movie, No Country For Old Men, in New York.
The Daniel Clowes-teacher resigned story keeps getting weirder. The mother of the child, then thirteen, whose teacher resigned after giving her a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes has been leaving comments (in her family's defense) at comics blogs where debate over the issue has been lively.
Will you be any more likely to see Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited because he is also releasing a short online video called Hotel Chevalier, with an ambiguous paratextual relationship to the new film, that includes Natalie Portman in a nude scene? (Frankly, I might skip both. And I might also feel a little scummy doing my small part to publicize this stunt.)
Michael Haneke in the NYT Mag: "I'm trying to rape the viewer into independence." Here's a challenge: finish a sentence that begins "I'm trying to rape..." in a way that makes the speaker sound like someone you would want to keep having a conversation with. (Late bloomers may take comfort from this: Haneke directed his first feature film at age 47.)
The Simpsons scenes frame-by-frame with the movies they parody (via del.icio.us/film_snob).
David Edelstein glosses the Coen brothers and previews their new movie, No Country For Old Men, in New York.
The Daniel Clowes-teacher resigned story keeps getting weirder. The mother of the child, then thirteen, whose teacher resigned after giving her a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes has been leaving comments (in her family's defense) at comics blogs where debate over the issue has been lively.
Will you be any more likely to see Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited because he is also releasing a short online video called Hotel Chevalier, with an ambiguous paratextual relationship to the new film, that includes Natalie Portman in a nude scene? (Frankly, I might skip both. And I might also feel a little scummy doing my small part to publicize this stunt.)
Michael Haneke in the NYT Mag: "I'm trying to rape the viewer into independence." Here's a challenge: finish a sentence that begins "I'm trying to rape..." in a way that makes the speaker sound like someone you would want to keep having a conversation with. (Late bloomers may take comfort from this: Haneke directed his first feature film at age 47.)
The Simpsons scenes frame-by-frame with the movies they parody (via del.icio.us/film_snob).
9/13/2007
Quarterlife, the new series by Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, isn't going to be on ABC, the network for which it was developed in 2004 (when it was called 1/4 Life; I've been wondering since I read about that show three years ago what ever happened to it). Instead it's going to be a video series on MySpace.
Quarterlife Trailer
Add to My Profile | More Videos
These trailer-promo things are never a good indication of what a television series is like when you watch it regularly, and this one has the typical flaws of the form: speechy dialog out of context that kind of makes you cringe, cuts to bits of music that too baldly are trying to convey hipness and cool. Anyway, I have missed having an Ed and Marshall show in my life since O&A was canceled and this promo bears their authorial mark pretty recognizably. I'm thrilled that brilliant television producers might have a resource in the web for taking back some of the control they deserve from the too-powerful, vertically integrated conglomerates that control network television.
For more, see the Quarterlife official site, 1/4 life official fan site, and stories in Variety, the NYT and on npr.
Quarterlife Trailer
Add to My Profile | More Videos
These trailer-promo things are never a good indication of what a television series is like when you watch it regularly, and this one has the typical flaws of the form: speechy dialog out of context that kind of makes you cringe, cuts to bits of music that too baldly are trying to convey hipness and cool. Anyway, I have missed having an Ed and Marshall show in my life since O&A was canceled and this promo bears their authorial mark pretty recognizably. I'm thrilled that brilliant television producers might have a resource in the web for taking back some of the control they deserve from the too-powerful, vertically integrated conglomerates that control network television.
For more, see the Quarterlife official site, 1/4 life official fan site, and stories in Variety, the NYT and on npr.
9/07/2007
"We're drowning in quirk," whines Michael Hirschorn in The Atlantic. "As an aesthetic principle, quirk is an embrace of the odd against the blandly mainstream." It goes on to dump on Ira Glass, Wes Anderson, Arrested Development, and lots of other things it calls "indie" in a kvetchy tone. Worth a read if only to track the Zeitgeist. I happen to like quirk, for the record, but can see why others wouldn't.
Marié Digby, a YouTube girl-with-guitar sensation, disingenuously presented herself as a nobody hoping to be discovered. Turns out she was already signed to a major label. The WSJ has the story. More background + clips at NewTeeVee.
danah boyd sez get yourself an online identity that you control, that's a face you want to show the world. Related: unless you tell it not to, Facebook is soon going to make your profile available to web searchers. This is bad news for a lot of lazy or naive people. And also related: are Nancy's new FB friends really the guys from REM?
Language Log demolishes that NPR story about how and why women read more fiction than men.
Last night's Mad Men had several incredible scenes, including the little moment when the black janitor sees the shadow of Peggy and Pete having sex, the electric response to "The Twist" coming on the jukebox, and Peggy's excitement at being poured a drink with the men. But my favorite was when Salvator turned away the advances of the man we expected him to sleep with, revealing his own sexual innocence. This was a heartbreaking, intensely revealing bit of storytelling and is the sort of thing that makes the show so special. Several TV blogs are covering Mad Men in more depth than I can. Check out The House Next Door, What's Alan Watching?, and Tuned In (by Time TV critic James Poniewozik). Also worth a look/listen are Anna McCarthy's essay in The Nation and Matthew Weiner's interview last weekend on NPR.
And although it's a month before Friday Night Lights returns, the first season DVD is out. Now here's a new blog about the show, Friday Night Lights Insider.
Marié Digby, a YouTube girl-with-guitar sensation, disingenuously presented herself as a nobody hoping to be discovered. Turns out she was already signed to a major label. The WSJ has the story. More background + clips at NewTeeVee.
danah boyd sez get yourself an online identity that you control, that's a face you want to show the world. Related: unless you tell it not to, Facebook is soon going to make your profile available to web searchers. This is bad news for a lot of lazy or naive people. And also related: are Nancy's new FB friends really the guys from REM?
Language Log demolishes that NPR story about how and why women read more fiction than men.
Last night's Mad Men had several incredible scenes, including the little moment when the black janitor sees the shadow of Peggy and Pete having sex, the electric response to "The Twist" coming on the jukebox, and Peggy's excitement at being poured a drink with the men. But my favorite was when Salvator turned away the advances of the man we expected him to sleep with, revealing his own sexual innocence. This was a heartbreaking, intensely revealing bit of storytelling and is the sort of thing that makes the show so special. Several TV blogs are covering Mad Men in more depth than I can. Check out The House Next Door, What's Alan Watching?, and Tuned In (by Time TV critic James Poniewozik). Also worth a look/listen are Anna McCarthy's essay in The Nation and Matthew Weiner's interview last weekend on NPR.
And although it's a month before Friday Night Lights returns, the first season DVD is out. Now here's a new blog about the show, Friday Night Lights Insider.
9/06/2007
Internet People
A "We Didn't Start the Fire" of viral video, cataloging all those faces and images you remember from, like, last year and the year before that. Nostalgia for the present, pretty much. It really feels like the end of something. (via MeFi) (And yeah, the embedded video is taking up too much space. That's DIY media for ya.)
Update 9/10: Buzzfeed has a cheat sheet.
5/29/2007
Among my summer projects are two book chapters, an article, and a move into a new house (just around the corner, but still). One of the book chapters is about the Coen brothers, so perhaps there will be Coen brothers blogging here in the next couple of months. But my attention has been elsewhere lately and will probably continue to be elsewhere for a little while. In the meantime, here are some links.
TV Squad has a description of the opening scenes of Veronica Mars season 4 that the producers shot for The CW to check out. The description suggests that Veronica would have been the only character on the reboot version of the show, basically an FBI procedural.
Tickle Me Elmo on Fire is disturbing.
Wikipedia on film noir is pretty good.
Jason has been blogging up a storm. Here he is on The Wire, Lost, the TV season's ratings, and Hollywood box office figures.
Henry Jenkins offers a Cultural Theory of YouTube.
TV Squad has a description of the opening scenes of Veronica Mars season 4 that the producers shot for The CW to check out. The description suggests that Veronica would have been the only character on the reboot version of the show, basically an FBI procedural.
Tickle Me Elmo on Fire is disturbing.
Wikipedia on film noir is pretty good.
Jason has been blogging up a storm. Here he is on The Wire, Lost, the TV season's ratings, and Hollywood box office figures.
Henry Jenkins offers a Cultural Theory of YouTube.
5/15/2007
Gilmore Girls says goodbye tonight. The buzz about the final episode is bad. This NPR story is appreciative but pretty superficial and a little patronizing. Todd VanDerWerff at The House Next Door is much more thoughtful; he calls GGs "a vision of what we might like America to be -- a kind, loving place where everyone’s got something funny to say."
WSJ: the media industries are currying favor with bloggers in hopes of positive publicity. A nice description here about the producers of The New Adventures of Old Christine inviting "mommy bloggers" to their set. This would be the flipside to the controversy (prev.) about blogs challenging traditional criticism. Oh, those blogs! (via ehlevine)
CinemaTech: YouTube should share revenue with everyone, not just the A-list.
Top ten Star Wars t-shirts. (I like Chewy as Che.)
And if you're in Williamsburg, NY, in June you might want to look in on the Brick Theater's Pretentious Festival ("the most important theater festival on earth"), which is to include a production described as follows:
WSJ: the media industries are currying favor with bloggers in hopes of positive publicity. A nice description here about the producers of The New Adventures of Old Christine inviting "mommy bloggers" to their set. This would be the flipside to the controversy (prev.) about blogs challenging traditional criticism. Oh, those blogs! (via ehlevine)
CinemaTech: YouTube should share revenue with everyone, not just the A-list.
Top ten Star Wars t-shirts. (I like Chewy as Che.)
And if you're in Williamsburg, NY, in June you might want to look in on the Brick Theater's Pretentious Festival ("the most important theater festival on earth"), which is to include a production described as follows:
The Children of Truffaut thrusts eight characters drawn from 70's Continental cinema into a game of arousal, angst, bluster, pontification, and whimsy. Godard, Fassbinder, Fellini, and Tarkovsky each provide the atmospheric starting point for a male/female unit. Once the pairs are spawned, though, pretty much anything goes, especially transgression, nostalgia, and love. This ain't yer momma's arthouse—unless your momma is the lovechild of Marcello Mastroianni and Hanna Schygulla. In which case, I'd like to meet her. (75 min)
5/11/2007
The OMG of the week is this French YouTube video of people throwing cans in the trash. The "it's fake!" response doesn't diminish the OMG effect very much for me. So what? See also Guy catches glasses with face.
Big Love will air three flashback shorts in anticipation of its new season, first on On Demand and later on the web and on the regular HBO. My question for all such things is, if they are inessential for understanding the narrative of a series itself--and they have to be inessential because HBO is not going to risk the vast majority of viewers' incomprehension--why should I watch? I watched the BSG miniature New Caprica episodes and didn't know what to do with them. This kind of storytelling seems to be so much more driven by the desire to try out new distribution systems and media platforms than by a need to tell certain kinds of stories.
A review and appreciation of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation at PopMatters makes clear just how impressive this work is, a shot-by-shot fanvid remaking Raiders done by kids in the early 80s without the aid of a VCR. They relied on memory and research and found many creative solutions to problems of recreating a blockbuster using the resources available to amateurs.
And two blog threads I meant to link to earlier in the week...better late than never:
1. I haven't read all the comments, but a number of posts at Kristina Busse's blog about fandom, fanfic, gender, and related topics make clear how passionate media scholars are about their objects of study (see especially the one that got it started about a gender divide in fandom studies and a subsequent one about the validity of fanfic that gets pretty bitchy at the end of the comments).
2. Chuck has been tracking a discussion about whether film blogs are a threat to critics/professional writers or even whether they are just changing things for the worse (1, 2). Similar discussions have been going on for several years in various quarters. Foodbloggers have changed the way the public gets info about restaurants, especially in big cities. Litbloggers are killing book review sections. Lawprof bloggers jump on Supreme Court opinions the moment they are issued, bettering the analysis offered by journalists and rendering law reviews, which have slower publication schedules, irrelevant. If this is a fight, my money is on the bloggers. They write for free and with great passion, are networked to each other, engage directly with their readers, and have few of the limits on their creative output that constrain mainstream media. Indeed, the mainstream media may succeed by co-opting many of the bloggers' forms and functions.
Big Love will air three flashback shorts in anticipation of its new season, first on On Demand and later on the web and on the regular HBO. My question for all such things is, if they are inessential for understanding the narrative of a series itself--and they have to be inessential because HBO is not going to risk the vast majority of viewers' incomprehension--why should I watch? I watched the BSG miniature New Caprica episodes and didn't know what to do with them. This kind of storytelling seems to be so much more driven by the desire to try out new distribution systems and media platforms than by a need to tell certain kinds of stories.
A review and appreciation of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation at PopMatters makes clear just how impressive this work is, a shot-by-shot fanvid remaking Raiders done by kids in the early 80s without the aid of a VCR. They relied on memory and research and found many creative solutions to problems of recreating a blockbuster using the resources available to amateurs.
And two blog threads I meant to link to earlier in the week...better late than never:
1. I haven't read all the comments, but a number of posts at Kristina Busse's blog about fandom, fanfic, gender, and related topics make clear how passionate media scholars are about their objects of study (see especially the one that got it started about a gender divide in fandom studies and a subsequent one about the validity of fanfic that gets pretty bitchy at the end of the comments).
2. Chuck has been tracking a discussion about whether film blogs are a threat to critics/professional writers or even whether they are just changing things for the worse (1, 2). Similar discussions have been going on for several years in various quarters. Foodbloggers have changed the way the public gets info about restaurants, especially in big cities. Litbloggers are killing book review sections. Lawprof bloggers jump on Supreme Court opinions the moment they are issued, bettering the analysis offered by journalists and rendering law reviews, which have slower publication schedules, irrelevant. If this is a fight, my money is on the bloggers. They write for free and with great passion, are networked to each other, engage directly with their readers, and have few of the limits on their creative output that constrain mainstream media. Indeed, the mainstream media may succeed by co-opting many of the bloggers' forms and functions.
5/04/2007
At the end of this Techcrunch article about Flickr replacing Yahoo! Photo, it mentions that Flickr users will soon be able to upload videos. Not sure what to make of this at the rumor stage, but it could mean some pretty significant changes for both Flickr and web video. Imagine how different YouTube would be with Flickr's interface, its greater/better social affordances, and its generally more civilized community standards. Stay tuned.
5/01/2007
Pulp Muppets! Ok, so John Travolta is the logical Kermit and Uma Thurman can only be Miss Piggy. But I wasn't expecting Bruce Willis to be Beaker. (via MeFi) Bonus: Beaker sings "Memories."
4/23/2007
"The World Series of Uno" is the only web video I've seen lately that really excited me. Either there's a lull or I'm losing interest. Either way, blogging will continue to be light here for the near future.
I'm going to be at the MiT5 Conference this coming weekend in Cambridge, MA, so hope to see you there if you're planning on attending. (My paper is called "The Community as Artist: The Show with Ze Frank" and it will be posted to the conference website.) In the meantime, you can find me at Fraktastic, Twitter, Flickr, and del.icio.us. And please check out some of the excellent sites in my blogroll. ttyl.
4/17/2007
CNN has the Widest Screens
If this were my face, I'd be pissed. Why is this image (of a Virginia Tech student) being presented in this format? The 16x9 aspect ratio on CNN's online video player is presumably to accommodate widescreen footage in its original ratio. But when showing 4x3 footage, CNN uploads distorted 16x9 stretched to fit? It looks awful. Does the whole world really not notice? Is the impressiveness of filling the frame really so much more important than preserving the dignity of the subject? Here's another:
For comparison's sake, I looked at NBC news online at MSNBC. The player might be 16x9 but it preserves the 4x3 ratio when appropriate. Perhaps it's significant that this is a shot of a highly-paid anchor--they have a disincentive to make his appearance unappealing by stretching it horizontally.
And here's another comparison, to the online version of the NBC drama Heroes. Here the player is 4x3 and the original image is widescreen. The familiar letterboxing preserves the integrity of the subject.
4/12/2007
Things I love about "Ode to Zach Braff": the domestic mise en scene, the lip-synching, the piano playing, the cable-knit sweater, the line about the ATM PIN, the line about MySpace, the surgical scrubs, the "ZB for eva" tattoo, when the guy calls Zach "dog," and the whole casual faux gay panic thing. Pretty much everything. (The same creative folks made the much less tasteful Man's Best Friend With Benefits.)
4/05/2007
Virginia summarizes the Sopranos summary on YouTube (prev.), paying tribute to the art of the found footage video. It's great that the Grey Lady now publishes regular, respectful reviews of amateur videos posted online. Good for them. But the cycle of cool video surfaces → MSM story gives the background is getting a little predictable, and it makes recognition from the established press a kind of endorsement of value. Of course, it's the reverse of how the industrially-produced media generally work, which is for the audience to get the context (reviews, interviews, publicity, ads), then the text. It helps to have context to understand the text. But so much of what makes these online videos exciting is their very lack of context, their lack of standard valuation.
Now perhaps some able reporter can work on this story for next week: who is behind this inspired recreation of Do The Right Thing with Fisher-Price Sesame Street Toys?
Now perhaps some able reporter can work on this story for next week: who is behind this inspired recreation of Do The Right Thing with Fisher-Price Sesame Street Toys?
A few music links:
Ze Frank's songs have been made available from iTunes as an album. (via)
Via Stereogum: new Amy Winehouse-Pharaohe Monche remix of her excellent single "Rehab"; new Rufus Wainright track at Hard to Find a Friend.
If you have used Last.fm, you can find out here How Mainstream Are You? I'm 38% mainstream.
Ze Frank's songs have been made available from iTunes as an album. (via)
Via Stereogum: new Amy Winehouse-Pharaohe Monche remix of her excellent single "Rehab"; new Rufus Wainright track at Hard to Find a Friend.
If you have used Last.fm, you can find out here How Mainstream Are You? I'm 38% mainstream.
4/03/2007
Random:
Hipster indie music snobs skewered (via gf, who links to this video with nothing but the description "word document")
Last nite I saw The Host (scary monster!) and before it the trailer for Year of the Dog, which looks great. Has anyone compared The Host and Pan's Labyrinth? I'm too lazy to Google it, but there's certainly something there with young girls, disgusting creatures, and politically-themed global genre cinema. (See also, NYT profile of Molly Shannon.)
IHT on Helvetica, an appreciation of "a democratic luxury."
Wikipedia: Five-Second Rule.
NYMag on the Viacom-YouTube lawsuit is the best analysis I have read. Google, according to this account, has a kind of corporate Asperger's syndrome that makes it oblivious of other corporations and their psychology. (See also The Economist on Google and the future of books.)
The Chron picks its favorite campus prank web videos. (via a+l)
A sneak-peek at TV Guide's forthcoming web video portal/search. I always want to buy TV Guide at the supermarket, their covers are so appealing. But it always seems like a waste of money.
Sanjaya drops by Weekend Update. I am so glad that the web has made it unnecessary for me to watch the 1:27 of SNL each week that isn't worth my time. I hope Sanjaya sticks around a few more weeks b/c he's more interesting TV than some of these other bland nobodies. I think he will. (See also Jenkins on idolhacking.)
Hipster indie music snobs skewered (via gf, who links to this video with nothing but the description "word document")
Last nite I saw The Host (scary monster!) and before it the trailer for Year of the Dog, which looks great. Has anyone compared The Host and Pan's Labyrinth? I'm too lazy to Google it, but there's certainly something there with young girls, disgusting creatures, and politically-themed global genre cinema. (See also, NYT profile of Molly Shannon.)
IHT on Helvetica, an appreciation of "a democratic luxury."
Wikipedia: Five-Second Rule.
NYMag on the Viacom-YouTube lawsuit is the best analysis I have read. Google, according to this account, has a kind of corporate Asperger's syndrome that makes it oblivious of other corporations and their psychology. (See also The Economist on Google and the future of books.)
The Chron picks its favorite campus prank web videos. (via a+l)
A sneak-peek at TV Guide's forthcoming web video portal/search. I always want to buy TV Guide at the supermarket, their covers are so appealing. But it always seems like a waste of money.
Sanjaya drops by Weekend Update. I am so glad that the web has made it unnecessary for me to watch the 1:27 of SNL each week that isn't worth my time. I hope Sanjaya sticks around a few more weeks b/c he's more interesting TV than some of these other bland nobodies. I think he will. (See also Jenkins on idolhacking.)
3/30/2007
YouTube to become more Flickr-like, sez Beet.tv, by organizing videos in categories. I like the idea of a website being like Flickr, but is the way it's using categories anything more sophisticated than Yahoo! c. 1997?
A user-generated recap of all of The Sopranos eps to date is outstanding work. Also, see bigscreenlittlescreen on the odds of your favorite and least favorite characters surviving the final season.
Laugh through your fear: a daring videographer crosses the street in Hyderabad. (via)
Give it up for MC Rove in the house, oy vey.
Cute attack: kitty makes a movie. See also parts 2, 3, 4, 5. (via)
NewTeeVee has a nice post about web video serials, including Chad Vader and the forthcoming Prom Queen.
I saw Inland Empire the other night and found it ponderous and ugly. More response to come, if I feel like spending more time thinking about a movie I didn't like. But searching for clips online I found this video of guys running into Lynch when he was camped out in L.A. with a cow and a "for your consideration" poster pimping Laura Dern to the Academy. I liked this better than Inland Empire.
And JibJab is back with What We Call The News, the best of the week for sure.
A user-generated recap of all of The Sopranos eps to date is outstanding work. Also, see bigscreenlittlescreen on the odds of your favorite and least favorite characters surviving the final season.
Laugh through your fear: a daring videographer crosses the street in Hyderabad. (via)
Give it up for MC Rove in the house, oy vey.
Cute attack: kitty makes a movie. See also parts 2, 3, 4, 5. (via)
NewTeeVee has a nice post about web video serials, including Chad Vader and the forthcoming Prom Queen.
I saw Inland Empire the other night and found it ponderous and ugly. More response to come, if I feel like spending more time thinking about a movie I didn't like. But searching for clips online I found this video of guys running into Lynch when he was camped out in L.A. with a cow and a "for your consideration" poster pimping Laura Dern to the Academy. I liked this better than Inland Empire.
And JibJab is back with What We Call The News, the best of the week for sure.
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