Peter Howard is Wintermute, mythologist

Recent Media Consumption — February and March

29March2008 [directLink] [weekly]

February and March saw a whole lot of media consumed; first the movies:

• watched Cloverfield; loved it; reminded me of my final uni project, Phi, so I knew exactly what I was getting into — 90 minutes of faux-handheld footage and very little context, but that conceit worked really well and I went along for the ride; loved that the ending was so abrupt — most of the cinema had the exact same reaction (confusion, mostly) to the end that they did to Phi when I screened it at uni
• watched Atonement; it took me a good half an hour to get used to the ridiculously overwrought storytelling, at which point it became obvious that the little sister was the storyteller, so it was her voice coming through (an annoying Austen-wannabe voice) — but once I had that away it was okay to watch, and Keira Knightley and James McAvoy are both easy to watch
• watched Jumper; mindless entertainment, and set up for a sequel something shocking — the movie just ended without any denouement — but it was entertaining, so not disappointed
• watched Rendition; despite the American focus (to the detriment of the other characters) a really good story — and a fable even
• watched Chrysalis at the French Film Festival; kept waiting for it to turn cyberpunk, so was disappointed when it became a very basic detective story, but it looked beautiful — desaturated and softened colours, all concrete, steel and glass
• watched Juno; one of those quirky heart-of-gold stories that has a lot of charm, but I couldn’t help wonder at how easy it made teen pregnancy — it wasn’t even black when dealing with the difficult parts (except the initial decision not to have an abortion), it just glossed right over them
• watched We Own The Night; slightly disappointing, in that I was hoping for so much more than a cop thriller — there’s a set-up in the trailer, and early in the film, where Joaquin Phoenix’s character says “wait until I take over Manhattan”, but I kept waiting and it never happened; he and Wahlberg give really good performances though, and at its core there’s a well-told story about family
• watched Vantage Point; an unusual telling, repeating the same 20 minute period from different points of view — I thought they pulled it off but there were groans in the cinema by the third time the screen went black and rewound; the strength of the thriller was in the telling though — the story itself was very predictable
• watched Sleuth; Michael Caine and Jude Law are both great actors, and they give very intriguing performances for a movie that features no other actors, but there was something missing most of the way through; whenever the film noticed it was lagging it would focus on the scenery (a beautifully designed house full of unnecessary automation), but that distracted from the story rather than supporting it
• watched Michael Clayton; well acted, beautifully shot, a score that supports the telling, and a well told story all round

I’ve also been getting into television — I don’t have a TV at home, so it’s all on DVD or from the internet — and I’m completely sold on watching batches at a time, I can’t wait a week between episodes; it started with Rome last year, when I realised that well-written TV actually had something going for it — you can explore a lot more over the course of a season than you can in a movie, and the episodic storytelling has a certain art to it.

• watched Battlestar Galactica (the remakes); the mini-series, Seasons 1-3, and Razor; I initially started with Season 1 and loved that I was thrown into the middle of the action without any explanation, but realised a couple of episodes in that I needed to watch the mini-series first for the setup; I love that it tells the stories of the people (be they man or machine) involved in this journey, and that it’s all about the society (and with it, politics, religion, war) — the sci-fi is just context
• watching Jericho, on the recommendation of John Rogers; I’m halfway through Season 1 and sold on the telling, but as Rogers points out in a follow-up post, it’s a little slow as it finds its way through Season 1 — I certainly couldn’t have managed this one on TV
• watching Underbelly; currently up to episode 8 of 13; enjoying it, and it’s good to see Australian TV taking some risks; it’s very good for Australian TV, but a little flat all told — the lead actors are good but near everyone else is hopeless, and the editing and music are disappointing at times; but where the production is a little wanting, the storytelling is very good
• watching Arrested Development; have just started in on Season 2; I only caught half of Season 1 when this was on TV, but I enjoyed it, and it doesn’t disappoint — love the humour

And finally, picked up some new music recently, so I’m listening to and loving all of:

• Feist’s Reminder
• Faithless’ To All New Arrivals
• Death In Vegas’ Scorpio Rising
• Beirut’s Gulag Orkestar
• Charlotte Gainsbourg’s 555; this one’s a little weird with lots of pieces spoken rather than sung, and half in broken English and only whispered; it reminds me of her character in Science of Sleep, but sometimes that’s a good thing

On the reading front, I keep picking up extra books (have just started Iain M Banks’ Matter), but have only managed to actually finish The Life of Pi; it’s my fault, not theirs, that I haven’t completed any books in a while.

Chinese New Year 2008

24March2008 [directLink] [photography]

I went out shooting back on 10February2008 (Chinese New Year 2008). The annual Chinese New Year parade winds its way down George St and through Chinatown to Darling Harbour. The parade itself is rather uneventful, but the amount of colour in the streets made for some interesting photo opportunities.

Walking down toward Chinatown I came across numerous groups in the streets off George St — waiting for the parade to start, at which point they’d be fed onto the strip in front of Town Hall. The better photos came from these groups. Once the parade got going I found a spot near the end and snapped everything going past. It was a lot harder than I expected — I deliberately shot with a very narrow depth-of-field, so a large fraction of what I shot just didn’t work. But the ones that worked out look really good, so totally worth it.

(Check the rest in the album — Chinese New Year 2008)

I originally put off processing these pics because I was waiting to get my hands on Aperture 2. I managed that much before tripping to Melbourne, where I’ve just increased the size of the queue of photos waiting to be processed. Working with Aperture 2 is great though — the upgrade is worth it for the speed improvements alone — the initial pass through a shoot used to be difficult, but when I did this set tonight I was able to spend most of my time actually processing the better images, rather than wasting my time weeding out the bad ones. Given that, I’ll be getting Melbourne pics online soon, and after that I want to see about using the metadata features of Aperture — I’d not used the program as a library before because it was just too cumbersome.

Rendition

14March2008 [directLink] [movies]

It’s important to note that Rendition is an American story — the Arabs present are all stereotypes, the actual “North African” location unidentified, and even the subject of the rendition, as an Americanised Egyptian, is a stereotype himself — they all serve as props in this American story.

Given that, it’s a very good American story. It’s about people trying to justify extraordinary means, and everything they have to do to maintain the myth that justifies that — Meryl Streep’s character constructs a bubble around herself, and when Reese Witherspoon threatens to burst that, outright denial is her only option. And it’s about what happens to ordinary people when they’re forced to engage in cruelty — Jake Gyllenhaal’s “It’s my first torture” is a brilliant line, especially when it forces Meryl Streep to trot out the old “America doesn’t torture” line. And with that, it’s about what a country has to go through to maintain the myths about itself — doublespeak at its best.

(An interesting corollary: just today, Bush vetoed a bill (via) that would have outlawed waterboarding, despite the longstanding denials that it’s even used — oh except for those couple of times back before 2003 — and we really did get useful information from it… No you can’t know what it was… Just trust us).

Melbourne, Je t'aime

13March2008 [directLink] [myth]

I love the streets, complete with their quirky (big)/little naming convention, and that you only need to know half a dozen main street names — everything being near a cross street anyway. I love the laneways and the arcades, from the grand old Block Arcade, to the GPO — its shops demarcated as little glass boxes, to the tacky Melbourne Central Arcade that still somehow works, built around an old brick building.

I love the cafés and bars carved out of holes in walls and sides of buildings. I love that even lowly pizza-and-kebab places are licensed to serve alcohol, and that you can decide whether you’re having coffee or wine after you reach a café, rather than before. And I love that bad coffee is the exception, rather than the norm.

I love the cafés where the walls are broken and patched over with posters, where the furniture doesn’t match and the crockery isn’t far behind, where the walls are lined with the owner’s personal collections — of photos, posters or wine bottles, where they’re always looking for staff and they can’t predict how many people will turn up on any given night.

I love that I can get around in long sleeves even in ridiculously hot weather. I love the river, the bridges, the length of the day in summer, and the quickening in the air in winter.