It was 20 Years Ago Today..

The Chinese government is clearly terrified by the 20th anniversary of the government crack down on the Tiananmen Square protesters as seen by this weirdly passive-aggressive display of police power. Two decades ago they used tanks. Now they’re using umbrellas.

Decline and Fall #453

A really great, really depressing piece by Doug Rushkoff about the sins and follies of gentrification and how we are increasingly acting like corporations. Link

Park Slope, Brooklyn, is just a microcosm of the slippery slope upon which so many of us are finding ourselves these days. We live in a landscape tilted toward a set of behaviors and a way of making choices that go against our own better judgment, as well as our collective self- interest. Instead of collaborating with each other to ensure the best prospects for us all, we pursue short- term advantages over seemingly fixed resources through which we can compete more effectively against one another. In short, instead of acting like people, we act like corporations. When faced with a local mugging, the community of Park Slope first thought to protect its brand instead of its people.

The financial meltdown may not be punishment for our sins, but it is at least in part the result of our widespread obsession with financial value over values of any other sort. We disconnected ourselves from what matters to us, and grew dependent on a business scheme that was never intended to serve us as people. But by adopting the ethos of this speculative, abstract economic model as our own, we have disabled the mechanisms through which we might address and correct the collapse of the real economy operating alongside it.

Kaiten Sushi Movie

Someone put a camera on the  conveyor-belt in a kaiten sushi joint. It’s simple but fascinating. I wish I thought of it.

CCTV Fire Photoshop Hilarity

On February 10, in what has to be one of the most misguided attempts at boosting company morale in corporate history, CCTV decided to launch an olympic-sized  fireworks display in celebration of Chinese New Year. They got a much more spectacular show than they expected when the fireworks ignited Rem Koolhas’ nearly finished Television Cultural Center like a sparkler. The building was one of the center pieces of Beijing’s modernization push and apparently the zinc-titanium alloy that wraps around the building was not quite as flame resistant as one would hope.

Though CCTV refused to cover the event until 24 hours after the fact. The Chinese net community swung into action — with Photoshop. You can see more on these Chinese message boards: here, here, and here.

A Clip From Los Angeles Plays Itself

Here’s a clip from Thom Andersen’s brilliant Los Angeles Plays Itself. See it at the theater if you can, because I doubt it will ever get to DVD. Here’s a list of all the flicks mentioned in the film. And here’s an article about Los Angeles movies a year or so after his movie was released.

Jan Lenica

Just stumbled onto this Polish animator. He’s brilliant — the missing link between Max Ernst and Terry Gilliam. Read more about him here.

Here’s Labyrinth (1/2)

And Labyrinth (2/2)

Links 12/19/08

I haven’t been posting much because I’ve been shooting a short film. Very tiring. You can see behind the scenes pics here.

Gems from my regular trolling of the internets:

A poll to see just how much of a film geek you are. I polled a 77.6%.

It’s nice seeing your name in print.

The mysterious snow people of Peru.

A fascinating article about how that little war in Georgia this year might just be the beginning of the end of the American Empire.

Proof that romantic comedies will indeed ruin your life.

Oymyakon – the coldest place on earth.

Batman a la Jacques Tati

[h/t Ted]

The Cost of the Bail Out

I ran across this sobering bit of research today:

Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

The bailout including the most recent Citibank is $4.6165 trillion dollars.

Links (11/14/08)

From my regular trolling of the interwebs:

An immensely geeky site based on the scientific suppositions from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Really cool color pics from WWI.

Cracked details the worst places to get caught having sex.

How to turn you iPhone into a pan flute. [h/t Joan]

Spielberg and Will Smith are going to totally fuck up remake Korean cult classic Old Boy.

A member of the 20% of the population who likes Bush. [h/t Ted]

A disturbing video from ’50s hygiene films. You’ll never hear the phrase “blood comes out of my body through a hole between my legs” in quite the same way again.

50 top pop songs reduced to one sentence.

An interesting article from Salon about how America may be entering it’s “Fourth Republic.”

As I see it, to date there have been three American republics, each lasting 72 years (give or take a few years). The First Republic of the United States, assembled following the American Revolution, lasted from 1788 to 1860. The Second Republic, assembled following the Civil War and Reconstruction (that is, the Second American Revolution) lasted from 1860 to 1932. And the Third American Republic, assembled during the New Deal and the civil rights eras (the Third American Revolution), lasted from 1932 until 2004.

I don’t trust with this kind of history because a) it’s a bit glib, b) we don’t know what kind of president Obama is going to be (though I’d guess he’s going to be a pretty good one) and c) it’s really seductive.

Some really, really cool graffiti animation.