ALRIGHT, WE'LL GIVE SOME LAND [...], BUT WE DON'T WANT THE IRISH: I do hate it when AMC edits down classic films for broadcast.
Three trivia notes on Blazing Saddles: Brooks approached Johnny Carson to play the Waco Kid; he declined. Gene Wilder agreed to do the role so long as Brooks would consider his movie idea next ... and his idea was Young Frankenstein. And it is apparently the first Hollywood film to have a fart joke.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
AND YOU GOT THIS FAR WITHOUT A SENSE OF SMELL: The first ten minutes of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story are available this weekend for free, and certainly indicate a much more deadpan and less manic tone than prior Apatow films.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Roger Catlin | TV Eye: Repurposing the Grammys
SHOUT IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL GOOD: So, last week's 25 Greatest Grammy Performances Ever special (sorry I'm late, but the whole childbirth thing) was an interesting telecast, though the list itself was probably in reverse order, thanks to fan voting on the Internet and the general tendency of the Grammys to get things wrong.
Yup, if you told me that the top five ever included Aretha Franklin's "Nessum Dorma", Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand's "You Don't Bring Me Flowers", "No More Drama", Jamie Foxx and Alicia Keys on "Georgia on My Mind" and the incomparable Melissa Etheridge/Joss Stone "Piece of My Heart" (about which I've said plenty) (that link also contains much YouTubage), I'd have believed that far sooner than a top 5 list with Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Christina Aguilera, Shania Twain and Green Day's "American Idiot" bizarrely at number 1.
Still, it's a decent piece of fodder, but no 14 Minutes of Funk!, no Soy Bomb, no ODB?
Yup, if you told me that the top five ever included Aretha Franklin's "Nessum Dorma", Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand's "You Don't Bring Me Flowers", "No More Drama", Jamie Foxx and Alicia Keys on "Georgia on My Mind" and the incomparable Melissa Etheridge/Joss Stone "Piece of My Heart" (about which I've said plenty) (that link also contains much YouTubage), I'd have believed that far sooner than a top 5 list with Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Christina Aguilera, Shania Twain and Green Day's "American Idiot" bizarrely at number 1.
Still, it's a decent piece of fodder, but no 14 Minutes of Funk!, no Soy Bomb, no ODB?
Philly's own 'Bonnie & Clyde' | Philly
"HAPPINESS AT THE MISFORTUNE OF OTHERS"? THAT IS GERMAN! For a week in which I've had very little time to think deeply or about complicated issues, the tale of Philadelphia's '07 Bonnie and Clyde, Rittenhouse grifters Jocelyn Kirsch and Edward Anderton, has just been a heck of a lot of fun.
CAUTIONARY WHALE: Juno has gotten a lot of Oscar buzz, with Dave Poland's Gurus of Gold having it in the top 10 for picture, screenplay, leading actress (Ellen Page), and supporting actress (Jennifer Garner). Yes, the screenplay's great (though at times it reaches the level of being a bit too post-ironic and self-aware), and the ensemble is damn solid (though I wish Michael Cera had more to do). Also, credit to the trailer cutters and promotions people for not giving away a substantial plot turn late in the film at all. It's Garner's performance, though, that really makes the movie work--in the hands of a lesser actress, her character could have easily wound up as a tightly wound caricature, which would throw the movie off-balance. Instead, Garner turns the character into something far more nuanced, which makes Juno's decisions at the end of the film much more plausible and affecting. It's well worth your while, even if you have to put up with the jackasses who sat behind me, apparently passing a bottle of Old English back and forth during the film while shouting at the screen.
NUTHIN' BUT A "G" THANG: In Part One of Everything Bad Is Good For You, Steven Johnson argues that popular culture (particularly video games and television) has become increasingly complicated and intellectually demanding over the past generation or so. In Part Two, Johnson asks whether this cognitively challenging culture is indeed making its consumers "smarter." As you might imagine, his answer is "yes."
Johnson builds his argument around the phenomenon known as the the Flynn Effect, named for the philosopher James Flynn, who discovered that IQ scores have been steadily and significantly rising over the past fifty years (once you remove the periodic recalibrations that help to ensure an "average" IQ is 100). This increase has been particularly striking on tests that measure "general intelligence factor," or g, which governs our problem-solving and pattern-recognition abilities. Although experts have offered a range of possible reasons for the Flynn Effect (broader education, better diet, growing familiarity with standardized testing), Johnson's hypothesis -- summarized in a May 2005 article for Wired -- is that the growing complexity of popular culture may well be contributing to the increases in IQ and g. After all, the features of today's video games, TV shows, and movies that Johnson most celebrates -- probing and telescoping, following narrative threads, tracing networked connections, "filling in" and "leaning forward" -- both shape and reflect precisely the cognitive qualities measured by g. Now, Johnson is careful to frame this claim as a hypothesis, not a causal analysis, and he also admits that the whole enterprise of intelligence testing is fraught with controversy. Still, he comes pretty close to stating that playing Zelda or watching 24 will help you score better on an IQ test.
But why have we been choosing more "complicated" pop culture in the first place? Isn't pop culture all about the race to the bottom, the lowest common denominator, what 1970s TV executives called the Least Objectionable Programming? Johnson argues (in a section excerpted here) that this conventional wisdom is undermined by some fundamental economic, technological, and neurological realities. The "economics of repetition" demonstrates that producers will profit most by creating popular culture that can withstand and even encourage repeat viewings, as consumers uncover and enjoy the complexity of a multi-level video game or a richly layered TV show like The Simpsons in syndication or Lost on DVD. Technology has reinforced this economic trend over the past couple of decades, thanks to devices like VCRs, DVDs, and DVRs, all of which facilitate repeated "close readings"; moreover, the rapid appearance of these and other technologies (video games, PCs, the Web) itself forces our minds to "adapt to adaptation," exploring and mastering complicated new platforms and systems and thereby becoming more receptive to challenging content. And neurologically speaking, Johnson asks, don't we want, even need to be mentally stimulated and exercised? Neuroscientists have found that our brains are hard-wired to seek out challenges, not to wallow and atrophy. For all of these reasons, then, consumers have demanded more complicated popular culture over the past thirty years, and it's that complexity -- rather than any offensive or objectionable content -- that Johnson believes deserves our attention, even our praise.
So, once more, with feeling: How persuasive are Johnson's arguments? Do you believe that today's popular culture actually fosters increased intelligence? Why or why not?
Next week: classes end Monday, so we'll fill out some course evaluations, and then we're done. Hope you're ready for finals!
Johnson builds his argument around the phenomenon known as the the Flynn Effect, named for the philosopher James Flynn, who discovered that IQ scores have been steadily and significantly rising over the past fifty years (once you remove the periodic recalibrations that help to ensure an "average" IQ is 100). This increase has been particularly striking on tests that measure "general intelligence factor," or g, which governs our problem-solving and pattern-recognition abilities. Although experts have offered a range of possible reasons for the Flynn Effect (broader education, better diet, growing familiarity with standardized testing), Johnson's hypothesis -- summarized in a May 2005 article for Wired -- is that the growing complexity of popular culture may well be contributing to the increases in IQ and g. After all, the features of today's video games, TV shows, and movies that Johnson most celebrates -- probing and telescoping, following narrative threads, tracing networked connections, "filling in" and "leaning forward" -- both shape and reflect precisely the cognitive qualities measured by g. Now, Johnson is careful to frame this claim as a hypothesis, not a causal analysis, and he also admits that the whole enterprise of intelligence testing is fraught with controversy. Still, he comes pretty close to stating that playing Zelda or watching 24 will help you score better on an IQ test.
But why have we been choosing more "complicated" pop culture in the first place? Isn't pop culture all about the race to the bottom, the lowest common denominator, what 1970s TV executives called the Least Objectionable Programming? Johnson argues (in a section excerpted here) that this conventional wisdom is undermined by some fundamental economic, technological, and neurological realities. The "economics of repetition" demonstrates that producers will profit most by creating popular culture that can withstand and even encourage repeat viewings, as consumers uncover and enjoy the complexity of a multi-level video game or a richly layered TV show like The Simpsons in syndication or Lost on DVD. Technology has reinforced this economic trend over the past couple of decades, thanks to devices like VCRs, DVDs, and DVRs, all of which facilitate repeated "close readings"; moreover, the rapid appearance of these and other technologies (video games, PCs, the Web) itself forces our minds to "adapt to adaptation," exploring and mastering complicated new platforms and systems and thereby becoming more receptive to challenging content. And neurologically speaking, Johnson asks, don't we want, even need to be mentally stimulated and exercised? Neuroscientists have found that our brains are hard-wired to seek out challenges, not to wallow and atrophy. For all of these reasons, then, consumers have demanded more complicated popular culture over the past thirty years, and it's that complexity -- rather than any offensive or objectionable content -- that Johnson believes deserves our attention, even our praise.
So, once more, with feeling: How persuasive are Johnson's arguments? Do you believe that today's popular culture actually fosters increased intelligence? Why or why not?
Next week: classes end Monday, so we'll fill out some course evaluations, and then we're done. Hope you're ready for finals!
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