It is certainly no coincidence that books on virtually the same topic by two of the leading contemporary writers on digital media and communications — Robert McChesney and Douglas Rushkoff — are released within a week of each other. People Get Ready, by Robert McChesney and John Nichols, and Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, by Douglas Rushkoff, both address the effects of digital technologies and media on national and world economies and possible consequences for a wide range of issues related to work and human interaction. And how C3PO and R2D2 might not be your best pals after all. At least if you have to work to get by (and are not simply funded by the Jedi interstellar trust fund). You can also check out related earlier posts from mediateacher.net: New Business and Business as Usual, Media Business and Criminology, and VFX and the Art & Business of Moving Images.
Archive for the ‘Chapter 5’ Category
New Business and Business as Usual, Part 2
Posted in Chapter 5, Media Literacy, tagged Business, Douglas Rushkoff, media literacy, People Get Ready, Robert McChesney, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus on March 31, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
Posted in Chapter 5, Media Literacy, tagged Damn Daniel, Ellen De Generes, Paul Gauguin, Snapchat, Surfboards, Vans on February 26, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Damn, Daniel! Discuss.
(See here for comparison / contrast: D’où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous )
Shorting the Controversy
Posted in Animation, Chapter 5, tagged Academy Award Shorts, Sanjay Patel, Sanjay's Super Team, ShortsHD on January 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »
“Sanjay’s Super Team” by Sanjay Patel
Throughout the media, there is lots of heated debate revolving around this year’s Academy Awards. Here’s an invitation to escape the controversies about the lack of skin-hued diversity among the nominees for a moment and check out the short films nominated in the three categories devoted to shorts: animation, live-action fiction, and documentary. Visit ShortsHD for info about where you can find the Oscar shorts and lots of other short film info. And by the way, there’s lots of ethnic diversity represented in many of the shorts nominated for Oscars in these categories. But evidently, these movies don’t count for anything. However, they certainly do for us and for anyone who loves inventive, invigorating moviemaking off the beaten path. So check them out, you will probably find something you like.
Women Pioneers of the Cinema: Agnès Varda
Posted in Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Women Mediamakers, tagged Agnès Varda, Alice Guy Blaché, Black Panthers, Jasmine Thiré, Les 3 Boutons, Moving Images, Pamela Gray, Uncle Yanco on October 31, 2015| Leave a Comment »
In earlier posts, a variety of exemplary female filmmakers have been discussed, from early pioneer Alice Guy Blaché to cinematographer Ellen Kuras to screenwriter Pamela Gray to casting director Marion Dougherty and many more. This year has seen more inspiring landmarks and creations in the exceptional life and career of Agnès Varda, one of the featured directors of Chapters 5 and 6 of Moving Images (and who showed notable generosity towards our project). From the Moving Images text, “director Agnès Varda has maintained a long career in which she has led her own production company and has made films that have established her highly personal integration of community life and a spontaneous method and style in her movies. Varda has created some of the most innovative and free-spirited short and feature films of her time shooting with an impressively wide range of approaches: feature productions in 35mm; documentaries in 16mm or other platforms; commercials and public service announcements; journal type projects in videotape and digital video, among others.”
At the Cannes Festival this past May, Varda received a lifetime achievement award — only the fourth given in the history of the festival — and more recently, she premiered a lively short film starring teenager Jasmine Thiré — Les 3 Boutons — that provides a neat introduction to her original approaches to moviemaking and storytelling. From casting to locations to editing to narrative digressions, it is pure Varda and a treat. She is a master of cinematic language through both image and sound. The Criterion Collection has also released a new box set of some of her less known work, and it includes such important and innovative shorts as Uncle Yanco and Black Panthers.
The Stevens on the State of the Game
Posted in Chapter 5, Directors, tagged Bridge of Spies, Cara Buckley, Matt Zoller Seitz, Steven Soderbergh, Steven Spielberg, The Knick on October 17, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Soderbergh shooting handheld from a dolly
In an earlier post — Soderbergh Raids the Ark — I shared Steven Soderbergh’s very revealing experiment in which he turned Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark into a black & white silent movie. Right now I would like to highlight two recently published articles about these two very different and undoubtedly masterful directors. In Steven Spielberg on the Cold War and Other Hollywood Front Lines, Spielberg discusses his new historically based movie, Bridge of Spies, and many other topics with Cara Buckley of the New York Times. In The Binge Director (in New York magazine), Matt Zoller Seitz visits with Soderbergh on the set of his show The Knick. There are many interesting points for young filmmakers and media literacy educators in both of these superb articles.
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