Suck.
Richard Dunn and Satoshi Kon are dead.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/rip-paprika-and-perfect-blue-director-satoshi-kon,44534/
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Plagiarist Gregory
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Plagiarist Gregory
The Original Original But Also Fake Ghostbusters
As a lifelong Ghostbusters fan, I found this delightful. The dedication, time, and quality of this video is a tribute to obsessive fans everywhere. That is all.
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Plagiarist Gregory
A Copy of a Copy of a Copy is Freakin’ Scary.
A simple video becomes a unnerving experience by simply being uploaded and downloaded repeatedly. The experiement is old, but the result is still disturbing. It just made me think about the number of ways there are to create art, and the number of ways we utillize that depend on pure chance, from the Exquisite Corpse and cut-up poetry of the Dadaists, to Jackson Pollock, to the thousands of ways digital technology has opened up. Call it co-authoring with chaos.
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Plagiarist Gregory
Question
Does anyone else think Betty White may have been draining the life from the other Golden Girls?
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Plagiarist Gregory
Pride in Ignorance
Once again, Mr.Ta-Nehisi Coates says it better than I can.
One of his central topics, throughout his blog, is the pride people seem to take in being/acting ignorant, whether down on the corner or at a podium in the Senate. It is difficult to admit being wrong or confess you don’t know, especially in our culture, where saaviness and confidence are so prized, but I admire those who approach a problem with a doubtful instinct rather than believeing they have the answer. I am always much more moved an affected by writing that tries to tease out the underlying questions rather than advance a predetermined outcome. It can be a rabbit hole, seeking out the central questions rather than paving it all over with certainty – just look at David Foster Wallace – and it’s hard on the ego walking around admitting you have no idea. But admitting you have a problem is the first step. It is only by poking and prodding and questioning our assumptions that we can insure we’re not making fools of ourselves and perhaps, slowly, incrementally, we can take baby step to the truth. Coates calls himself stupid a lot in his writing, but, you know, so did Socates. Not saying that he is Socrates (that would be sort of a reverse Godwin’s law or something) just that it’s not bad company to be in.
PS – Calling yourself a “regular guy” or words to that effect, is not the same as being open-minded and questioning and such statements usually precede an ignorant statement.
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Plagiarist Gregory
Dept. of NOOOO!!! (A Rant)
“You see Mitch, I used to be you. And lately I’ve been missing me so I asked Dr. Hathaway if I could room with me again and he said sure.”
For some reason, I normally don’t get all up in arms about remakes of beloved films, the same way I don’t have fanboy fits about film & TV adaptations of favorite books or comics. I like to view them as riffs on the original idea, making it into a sort of canonical document that can be interpreted and reconfigured for further generations. And, let’s be honest, the remake of The Texas Chainsaw massacre isn’t for a moment going to eclipse the original.
Kent: You’re all a bunch of degenerates.
Chris Knight: *We* are? What about that time I found you naked with that bowl of Jell-O?
Kent: You did not.
Chris Knight: This is true.
Kent: Look, it was hot and I was hungry, okay?It’s possible that reading comics, especially at the time I started, with all the ret-conning and reimaginings and updated origin stories, planted an early seed in my brain about the possibilities inherent in updating a great idea/character/story for successive generations. And doing theatre, with its impermanence and need for immediacy and new interpretations probably fed into this. It’s probably the same attitude that led in part to me being part of a group called The Plagiarists, that make adaptation and reconfiguration part of our mission.
“Moles and trolls, moles and trolls, work, work, work, work, work. We never see the light of day. We plan this thing for weeks and all they want to do is study. I’m disgusted. I’m sorry but it’s not like me, I’m depressed. There was what, no one at the mutant hamster races, we only had one entry into the Madame Curie look-alike contest and he was disqualified later. Why do I bother?”
Anyway, all this is meant to defuse any perception of me as a raving purist or nostalgic old fuddy-duddy when I stand athwart history and scream “STOP!” at the group of maniacs who have decided they want to remake Real Genius. Not only is this one of the defining 80′s comedies (an era that was rife with great comedy, as I have argued many times before) it is a film of great personal value to me and many others. For an enormous nerd with social awkwardness issues, Real Genius provides a relatable protagonist (awkward Mitch), hope for the future (handsome genius-prankster Chris, Mitch’s relationship with Jordan), and roadmap for mentally healthy living (fight the man – non-violently, pick a field that fascinates & challenges you, don’t be a dick, and preserve your sense of humor at all costs). Plus, it’s funny in an offhand, not-even-trying way that recent films seem to have lost track of.
Mitch: You know, um, something strange happened to me this morning…
Chris Knight: Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?
Mitch: No…
Chris Knight: Why am I the only one who has that dream?I have heard the complaints about George Lucas and Transformers and GI Joe and all the talk about “raping my childhood” and not taken it particularly seriously until now. Now, they’ve finally come for my childhood, I guess. Seriously, remake The Breakfast Club or House Party or whatever, even make a stupid sequel but leave Real Genius alone. Bastards.
Lucy Robinson
12:15 pm on April 28, 2010
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i love watching GI Joe, both the cartoon series and the movie. I am hoping that they would make a sequel. :