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What it is like to bomb...

June 21, 2011

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Allan Havey, from Marc Maron's essential podcast...(only 1.5 minutes)

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Fredrick Wiseman at Docyard: Luck, Judgement and Patience.

I got some insight into what kind of temperament one needs to sustain a 60 year career in documentary when I asked Fredrick Wiseman what I imagined to be a fair question: What recent trends in documentary film do you find heartening or perhaps disheartening? "I don't go to films. I mostly read." I pressed him: "You don't watch films? When you go to film festivals or these kinds of events?" "I still read. There are hundred of years of literature to choose from. I prefer that." I plopped down. Was that a dumb question? Was that an arrogant answer? Should I take this personally and title this blog article "Wiseman to Aspiring Documentary Filmmakers: Drop Dead"? I wasn't the only questioner at The Doc Yard's screening of "Hospital" (1969) who didn't get far with documentary director Fredrick Wiseman . The host, an academic in film studies, had his first question brushed aside as well, and he was forced to regr

Does your language shape how you think?

A fascinating article in the NYTIMES magazine by Guy Deutscher on language and how it can influence your ability to understand certain concepts. It is particularly interesting in discussing languages that use egocentric coordinates (left, right, straight, behind) vs. languages that use cardinal directions - north, south east west. Anyone who has lived in Bali and has tried to ask directions has experienced this - the Balinese never say "take a left at the light and then take your 2nd right." - they would say "Go north, and at the light, east, and then after two blocks, go north again." But Deutscher errs when he leaves the impression that the Balinese have a purely cardinal approach to orientation. For us, it might seem the height of absurdity for a dance teacher to say, “Now raise your north hand and move your south leg eastward.” But the joke would be lost on some: the Canadian-American musicologist Colin McPhee, who spent several years on Bali in the 19

King Corn, Continued

MediaJock appears to have at least one reader. Curt Ellis, maker of "King Corn", liked my analysis .... ___________ Hey Daniel, Thanks for the nice note and the thoughtful review! Sorry to take so long getting back to you. We didn't know about the Corn King myth in the edit room, but I'm glad you pointed it out (you're the first!) and I'm sure we were influenced by its derivatives at least. Aaron (my cousin and the director behind the camera) talked about the Butz scene as being a moment where we see the man behind the curtain and realize that he isn't a wizard after all; just some guy's grandfather. That wasn't something we thought about before it happened, though -- Ian and I are who we are (reasonably meek guys not capable of pulling off a Moore-Heston confrontation if we wanted to), and the revelation we had in that moment was genuine: our system for food production sucks, but it's not the fault of evil -- it's just a function of an

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What it is like to bomb...

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