What is Best in Life

Welcome back to Internet Meme Monday!  What is a meme you say?  Well, as I understand it, a meme is similar to a gene, except instead of passing on genetic information it passes on cultural ideas.  A meme can take many forms, from a catch phrase to a hand gesture, but the type of memes I’ll be looking at every second Monday of the month are “internet memes”.

On the agenda this month?  I phonetically subtitle a Latin song to sound dirty in English! (more…)

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not entirely fair in my reviews of movies with a strong message.  It doesn’t matter how delicately the filmmaker has incorporated their “message” into their film, as soon as I get a whiff of proselytizing I immediately find my opinion of the film is lowered.  It is important to keep in mind that I am making the distinction here between the filmmaker showing their view of the world (something every filmmaker should do) as opposed to attempting to change the audience’s view of the world (something I feel should not be overtly attempted).

While discussing this with a friend, the point was made that while the purpose of art should not necessarily be to inform, “the role of art for the artist is self-expression, so objection to their doing so in a political or otherwise partisan way is disingenuous”.  Which is a good point, one that I will look into in greater depth here today to find out just what it is about everything from I was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang to The Lost Weekend that immediately turns me off. (more…)

Last time I discussed the basic problem of adaptations and the idea that “the book is always better than the movie”.  I came to the conclusion that each must be evaluated by different criteria and making blanket statements about the relative quality of one over the other (assuming, of course, that they were both created with some degree of mastery over their respective mediums) is a futile effort.  But there is still the question of how much importance you should put on fidelity to the source material once you have decided to make an adaptation.  Once the genius of a source work is decided upon should you change as little as possible to avoid destroying the soul of the work?  Or is it ok to plunder the source work, freely using, changing and leaving out whatever parts you want? (more…)

There is a natural urge to create adaptations with film.  Film, after all, is still a relatively new art and audiences have not yet lost their childlike wonder at its ability to convey alternate realities so realistically and convincingly.  Who hasn’t read a thrilling scene from one of their favorite books and thought “man, it would be awesome to see a movie version of this!”  Yet, as everyone says, “the book is always better”.  

While I don’t think that this is always true, it quite often is, and not always through any deficiency on the part of the director.  Is this a problem inherent to filmed adaptations of the other arts?  Are all adaptations doomed to “suffer in comparison”?  (more…)

Today I’d like to talk about a certain young film maker who goes by the name of [good ol'] Jack Dickson.  Now, Jack Dickson is largely unknown amongst the elite film circles I run with, so I’d like to go ahead and take credit for discovering this young talent (well, I suppose the internet video guy deserves a bit of credit to as that was where I first discovered Jack’s magnum opus that I will be discussing today).

Good ol’ Jack Dickson has created a film of shattering honesty infused with a wealth of human insight.  His portrait of rural squalor filtered through the nostalgic lens of childhood innocence has more to say about life, death and what it all means than the complete oeuvre of countless directors many times his age.  But I think this is enough of an introduction, I’ll let the video speak for itself.  So, without further ado, I give you the quaintly titled work of brilliant outsider art: “Let’s dump water on a dead pig with maggots.” (more…)

Is origami art? The question is not completely fair since origami involves the act of creation after all, making its artistry hard to argue against. Still, can origami really be elevated to the level of the great masterworks of film, painting, music, writing, etc.? I also do not mean to put the word art on a pedestal. There is a natural tendency that I will try to avoid that uses the classification “art” as a badge of honor; “oh, my framed puzzles are ART not a hobby”. Mainly I’d like to look at origami along with the process involved in its creation to see if I can justify the amount of time I spend folding it.
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Here it is the end of January and I haven’t posted anything all month. Since I try to get at least one post a month in, I decided to go ahead and cheat (instead of actually writing something new!) and post an essay from a research project I did a few summers ago. I tried to cut most of the boring stuff out, basically you get a fair amount of history on Die Brücke group of German Expressionists and Norwegian Black Metal, along with some conclusions on what an examination of their history has to say about the merit of genre itself. So go ahead and keep reading if any of that sounds interesting. If not, sit back and wait for my upcoming Tolkien Fan Fiction, because this is a long one!
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Plato seems to get a bad rap when it comes to his views on art. Many first time readers are quick to protest, How could someone that so many people revere as the father of Western thought hold such a low estimation of the arts, specifically that they have no place in a perfect society? To think that this is all there is to Platonic aesthetics is to vastly oversimplify the matter. Hopefully a clarification of why Plato seemed to feel this way will help determine if there really is no hope for art in Plato’s world
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