Collected Data

R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy 1931-2015

spock-beauty

Mr Nimoy;

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) February 23, 2015



from the New York Times;

His artistic pursuits — poetry, photography and music in addition to acting — ranged far beyond the United Federation of Planets, but it was as Mr. Spock that Mr. Nimoy became a folk hero, bringing to life one of the most indelible characters of the last half century: a cerebral, unflappable, pointy-eared Vulcan with a signature salute and blessing: “Live long and prosper” (from the Vulcan “Dif-tor heh smusma”).


Leonard Nimoy, Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 83

Watch: "Simply Delicious Shower Thoughts with Cookie Monster"

Watch: "The Science of Anti-Vaccination"



The science of anti-vaccination

Vaccinate your children.

"Get the facts from the medical and scientific community, and if you're not a doctor or scientist yourself, listen to the people who are. It's that simple."

 Laura Payton, CBC News;

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says parents in developed countries have a responsibility to set an example for those in less-educated countries when it comes to using vaccines, and advised people to listen to scientists and doctors.


Stephen Harper tells parents to listen to scientists about vaccines

Too bad Harper can’t take his own advice when it comes to environmental issues. Hypocrite.

"One part of interactive playable content with one part of scripted television style content."



Alex Wawro reporting for Gamasutra;

"For instance, if you play the interactive episode first, certain elements of the scripted episode portion will be tailored to reflect some choices made in your interactive play through," Bruner told EW. "If you watch the show before playing, some elements in the interactive portions may be presented differently than if you played first. The interactive episodes will never release without a scripted episode, they will always come out together."


He went on to add that non-interactive versions of the scripted entertainment would be made available on streaming networks and broadcast TV some time after the release of a given "Super Show" episode.


Lionsgate deal primes Telltale to make episodic TV/game hybrids

I’m not convinced that this is the future. Hybrids are tough. It’s a fine line between combining and compromise.

See also;

LIONSGATE INVESTS IN LEADING GAME DEVELOPER TELLTALE GAMES

Telltale Games CEO Kevin Bruner discusses new venture The Super Show -- exclusive

Listen: "Restarter" by Torche

"Make no mistake: mass media exists because it permits mass marketers to do their job."

Seth Godin;

For fifty years, TV and TV-thinking was the shortcut. Make average stuff for average people (by definition = mass) and promote to every stranger within reach. It worked.


But mass is fading, fading faster than our desire to be mass marketers is fading. The shortcut doesn't work every time now, and the expectation that success is the same as popularity is still with us.


Mass production and mass media

"The company that has made a fortune on searches doesn’t want to be searched."

East Bay Ray;

And as a society, we’re allowing Google to lower the bar on acceptable business standards.  The company argues that holding them to a standard of decency is somehow a threat to “Internet freedom.”  Look, I’ve been sued about lyrics in my music. I’m all for freedom of speech.  Selling drugs to kids is NOT freedom of speech. Showing citizens how to skirt doctors to get pharmaceuticals is not a right guaranteed in the Constitution.  It isn’t some unfortunate consequence of progress that these videos slip past Google. They know what’s there and they know people are watching – and the ads are being seen.


Searching for answers from Google about Google

"Only the driven few can sustain it long enough to claw their way through the mountains of mediocrity."

Charles Hugh Smith;

Keen unapologetically calls the previous arrangement an "industrial meritocracy." He feels this hierarchical meritocracy is being destroyed and there is nothing to replace it.  This will result in a cultural Dark Age where the talented cannot earn a living creating culture. The only avenue left for creators of content that can be copied and distributed digitally (music, digital art, writing) is to find wealthy patrons to support their work.


Is the Web Destroying the Cultural Economy?

Watch: "Damogen Furies"



New Squarepusher. April 20th.

"I’m a guy with a point of view who goes to a place, looks around, comes back and tries to give as honest an account of my experience as I can, but it is my experience."

Anthony Bourdain in interview with Kevin Ritchie for Real Screen;

There are two important things I’ve found in television. One is to understand that most people in television are frightened all the time. They’re frightened of losing their jobs. They’re frightened of making the wrong decision. When they encounter someone who really and truly doesn’t give a f*** about losing their job, that is a relatively immovable object, it’s something they’re not used to encountering. That attitude was always helpful to me.


Another is that television, generally, likes to repeat what works already. My partners understood early on with No Reservations that whatever worked and made people happy last week, it’s the smart thing to do something completely different next week.


Realscreen’s Trailblazers for 2014: Anthony Bourdain

Watch: "Animal vs Rich"



From Season 5 of the Muppet Show. It aired in 1981. Buddy Rich was 64.

"That is a sentiment grounded in deep irrationality, blind nationalism, and primitive tribalism."

Glenn Greenwald;

I have no idea whether this 13-year-old boy was “a member of al-Qaeda,” whatever that might mean for a boy that young. But neither does the New York Times, which is why it’s incredibly irresponsible for media outlets reflexively to claim that those killed by U.S. drone strikes are terrorists.


That’s especially true since the NYT itself previously reported that the Obama administration has re-defined “militant” to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.” In this case, Mohammed did not even qualify for that Orwellian re-definition, yet still got called a terrorist (by both the Obama administration as well as a “member of AQAP,” both of whom are, for different reasons, motivated to make that claim). Whatever else is true, extreme skepticism is required before claiming that the victims of the latest American drone strike are terrorists, but that skepticism is virtually never included.



THE U.S. MEDIA AND THE 13-YEAR-OLD YEMENI BOY BURNED TO DEATH LAST MONTH BY A U.S. DRONE

"Watching everyday American commercials would be no great gain over watching everyday Canadian ones"

 William Watson for the Ottawa Citizen;

But the most serious problem with simultaneous substitution is that it creates a strong incentive for Canadian broadcasters to show U.S. programs. They can double or triple their market share when they’re showing what U.S. channels are showing. Is it any wonder our networks’ primetime schedules are dominated by U.S. shows, or that when U.S. networks move a show’s time slot, Canadian broadcasters jump to do the same?


Watson: Why does the CRTC subsidize U.S. television?

Mr Watson is wrong.

"Remember when you were a kid and you would joke about “opposite day”? Apparently that happened in this video."

Germain Lussier;

If we lived in a world where Frozen was the only movie that had ever been released, the CEO of Concerned Women for America might have a point. But we don’t live in that world. We literally live in the opposite world that’s being described in that above video. Disney itself releases about 15 movies a year where a man is the hero.


Fox News Says Movies Don’t Have Enough Male Heroes; Cites ‘Frozen’ As Main Culprit

Click through and watch the video.

"When the apparent lone wolf isn’t a Muslim or other minority, he rarely finds the fear-inducing terrorist label pinned on him by the government, the media, or security experts."

Matthew Harwood writing for The Nation;

At the moment, the response to the lone-wolf hullabaloo, like so much else in recent years, is inching us further down the path toward an American police state. One government response, now being re-emphasized, comes (of course!) with its own acronym: countering violent extremism, or CVE.


If You’re Afraid of ‘Lone Wolf’ Terrorism, You’re Missing the Point

"The announcement, made Wednesday afternoon, seems particularly odd because the bill includes a measure that would let the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) apply for a warrant to ignore the charter."

Laura Payton for CBC News;

Asked whether the decision was a tactic so the Conservatives can't use security as a wedge issue against the Liberals in this year's election, Trudeau said that view doesn't do justice to the concerns of Canadians.


Which is true. It doesn’t do justice to the concerns of Canadians, but IT DOES do justice to the Liberal position.

Anti-terrorism bill to be supported by Liberals, Justin Trudeau says

Watch: "Sätta Ljus - On the lighting of The Sacrifice/Offret"



via Cinephilia and Beyond.

Sven Nykvist;

A personal motto of mine is “It is never too late.” Many, as they reach the age of sixty start to feel as if they are at the end of themselves, the official retirement age is fast approaching. Thanks and goodbye. But, those of us who are freelance and rather independent often do not think along those lines. Creativity surely doesn’t cease at a certain age. Many artists, composers, authors, and filmmakers are still active will into their eighties—not to mention actors and actresses. The fact is that I received some of my most exciting assignments, and did some of my best movies, at an age usually associated with retirement. It began with Andrej Tarkovski’s The Sacrifice

"We realize that color is violent and for that reason we restrained it."

Adrienne LaFrance;

In the beginning, only brief sequences—sometimes just five minutes long—would be colorized in otherwise black-and-white films. Technicolor was a proprietary process, and it was expensive. "Very often, fashion shows [would be] in color," Layton said. "It was also kind of common to have, if the lovers in the film got married, the wedding would be in color. Really splashy things. If you were paying for color, you wanted to see color. It wasn't always subtle or artistic use."



How Technicolor Changed Storytelling

Watch: "Cool Hunting Video: Mark Mothersbaugh's Synth Collection"

Read: "The Getting of rhythm: Room at the bottom"

David Bordwell;

Filmmakers solve the problem of rhythm in practice, often brilliantly. Those of us who want to understand how films work, and work upon us, want to get specific and explicit. What is this thing called cinematic rhythm? What contributes to it? Can we analyze it and explain its grip? Very few scholars have tackled these questions; they’re hard. In her new book, Film Rhythm after Sound: Technology, Music, and Performance, our friend and colleague Lea Jacobs takes us quite a ways toward some answers.



The Getting of rhythm: Room at the bottom

"He now wants to turn our domestic spy agency into something that looks disturbingly like a secret police force."