Netflix has been calling, unconsciously, for some time now as the DVD rental company represents itself as having nearly very film title that you’d ever want to see. There are so many films I’d like to have the opportunity to see and re-see, including many from the American Avant Garde, who I used to dote over. In a search of works by Maya Deren on Netflix, they do have one title that would satisfy my urges. But if you look up someone like Kenneth Anger, probably my most favorite film auteur of the genre, you get zilch.
A search for him on Amazon shows why — Anger’s work, though prime candidates for the supposed lushness of DVD, are still on VHS. Which brings up the question: Are film aesthetes a dying breed? Or do they prefer tape the way some audiophiles still prefer vinyl over CD?
All posts by Andrew Boardman
MoMA
When I worked at OVEN, we proudly talked about having been the company that launched the Museum of Modern Art on the Web.
I just learned that, with the museums’ moving and shaking lately, they’ve hired Matthew Carter (who designed the Web typefaces Verdana and Georgia) to redesign and redigitize the classic Franklin Gothic No.2 typeface. Carter is going to literally rescan the original Morris Fuller Benton type and recraft it in Fontographer. MoMA has used this typeface since 1964 and it’s very cool that it has chosen to continue using this face under the sign and blessing of the original.
Blood Art
It’s gotten little coverage, but a few days ago the Israeli ambassador to Sweden literally pulled the plug on a piece of artwork called “Snow White and The Madness of Truth.” The piece was shown in Stockholm and featured an oddly rendered image of a female suicide-bomber floating on a white boat in a sea of blood.
The work almost sounds kind of powerful but the context of the work, as provided by the artist, mockingly glorifies innocent death. It was wrong of the ambassador to deface the artwork, despite its pretenses. But it’s also a sad commentary of contemporary art that this is all we get anymore. Needless to say, I’m pretty down on art this year.
(In writing this, I realize critics may point out that my last post makes comparisons between films and the Holocaust. But in “The Women,” or in “The Wizard of Oz,” the texts of the films were not subject-specific and each devised its own language to speak about the world’s complexities, including issues of race and violence. In the “Snow White” piece, artist Dror Feller does the opposite.)
The Women
The 1939 comedy, The Women, whose tagline is “It’s all about men!” was on last night on PBS. I watched almost all of it with a feeling of morosity throughout. Before knowing the date of the film, I recognized that the black and white film, with its stylish color footage of a fashion show, was much like The Wizard of Oz, in that it also showed a fictional world utterly at peace while the world was preparing for self-immolation.
The film was achingly well-acted by Joan Crawford and Norman Shearer, who played women in the world of supreme wealth and huge class and race transitions. But what I felt while watching the film was not the American social politics behind it but the weight of Europe, a few thousand miles away, preparing for the deaths of millions. The fine clothes, the light switches, the telephones, the sense of privilege throughout, were not unlike what much of Europe had experienced before they were wrenched under war’s grip and when some were thrown in gas chambers. Some of the folks who watched that movie in 1939 died only a few years later despite its charms, or perhaps, because of them.
Tomorrow, on MLK day, The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (TARA) at Keele University, England, will be releasing hundreds of aerial photos on the Web that were taken during World War II, including those of Auschwitz, in which smoke can be seen flying up from the chimneys.
The Good and The Bad
Listening to the stunning voice of Beth Gibbons, lead singer of phenom-band Portishead, on her new album called Out of Season, I’m also reading Arianna Huffington’s piece in Salon called America’s Final Wakeup Call.
First, the good. Gibbons, while no longer straining to sound more passionate than she already is, has put together with former Talk Talk (you read that correctly) bassist Paul Webb, aka Rustin Mann. Their album together is alternative rock put to blues with a huge and haunting dose of 1920s-era musical nostalgia and references to a more choral moment. Most impressive are the backing vocals which make a soft heart ache.
Next, the bad. Huffington reviews former CEO of Alcoa’s incredible revelations about the Bush administration in the new book The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind. It turns out that you don’t need a progressive voice to note how fanatical Bush, who is again revealed to truly be a Cheney puppet, and his friends are. I actually think I could stomach the book itself.
Is there a relationship between the new album and book? No.
Pant
I’ve solved a lot of my problems with Panther, and I’m now quite thrilled with the results. Althought I went from A to D by going by W and X first, the system is pretty stunning. I realize that one unforeseen benefit of creating an entirely new login for myself is that I started afresh – all old caches, files, and preferences that I no longer treasured are gone. For the record (and this will be the last time I talk about it for a while):
– All my apps launch and work more quickly under Panther.
– The updated printer and scanner drivers (from Epson) are much more professional and clearly designed for lots of use. Same goes with the print dialog boxes one finds throughout every app now.
– The overall visual framework of the system is much smoother, more elegant, and importantly, clearer. Text renders better everywhere though I question the much higher contrast that was seemingly ordained by Apple in order to achieve this effect.
– I’m impressed that every app, except for Suitcase (Extensis are you listening?), had zero problems with the new system. Apple did its homework in this regard. Even Microsoft Office runs better on Panther.
– Logging a user in and out (and watching the respective desktop spin in and out of place) is not as cool as people think. Nor is the highlighted aura that goes around desktop files when you select them. Nor is the new Finder window, though I appreciate the fact that you can actually Find files in this window now.
– Safari is still awesome. But I am definitely going to play with Camino, thanks to many readers’ recommendations. That is, once I feel confident again behind the ol’ keyboard again.
More Safari Fun
This from an email to my technically smarter friend. Warning: not interesting at all unless you’re using Apple’s new Panther and Extensis Suitcase X1.
I updated to 10.3.2 first. No problems with Safari. (I checked Safari all along the way as it’s kind of the canary in the coalmine.) Because I’ve been cautious about Suitcase and Panther for the past three months, I’ve also taken care to make sure my files and fonts are in order.
Then, I opened and reregistered Suitcase X1. NO problems. Then, I moved the com.extensis.Suitcase.plist Preference from the old archived user to the new one. Again no problems with Safari.
I somehow intuited that the next thing might be problematic. I moved the folder Suitcase Preferences from the old to the new user Preferences folder and voila, Safari hung, hung, hung. It was fascinating and horrifying at the same time – as I saw my two day old problems come back.
This is what I did next, for what it’s worth. I noticed that all the fonts in Suitcase were pointing to my old user — there’s a great “Reveal in Finder” function in X1. So, I deleted all of the fonts from X1 completely. Quit and relaunched X1 — and then added all fonts to X1 from a new copied folder in the new directory. These are the same exact fonts, same order, but importantly, this time the index of fonts in X1 point directly to the actual fonts in the new directory, not the old.
I quit and relaunched Suitcase and it was fine. I opened Safari — fine. System — fine. Me — fine.
Now, I just have to move all those old files and preferences one by one to the new login, which sucks a lot.
Still
Thanks for all the help I’ve received over the past 1.5 days re: Safari and Panther and other Apple apps. You can see my tepid reply to posters today.
Got to get some work done and pretend my system isn’t wacked.
Safari's Panther
I bit the proverbial bullet, installed the new Panther on my G4 machine, and everything works well except:
1. Safari. I get nada. That sucks because I love Safari and I can’t find, for the life of me, a fix. The application opens but it’s as if there is no Web to connect with it’s little, beating heart.
2. Help Viewer. This sucks because when I need help from the desktop, there is none.
3. Internet Preferences. Can’t find it. Doesn’t exist. Where’d it go?
I guess I should be happy that things print, scan, and fonts work, thanks to Extensis. And the whole system works more speedily, apps loading quicker, and programs like Dreamweaver stalling very little now. But cheese and crackers, why is it so hard to solve these little app issues?
Apple's Garage
Although Apple is advertising its new iLife media package as “Microsoft Office for the rest of your life,” thus both giving the nod to the importance of Microsoft and marketing its own non-office-like products, I’m very excited about the new iLife package called GarageBand.
For years, SoundEdit 16, named after its 16-bit audio, was a great and inexpensive application for creating complex audio. It allowed for multiple tracks and effects and it had a great interface but Macromedia dropped support of it years ago. I wrote about 12 songs on it about 5 years ago and, sadly, I can no longer find them.
GarageBand looks even better as Apple figured out a way to allow Joe Schmoes like me to make original music from sampled tracks, microphone input, and other audio recordings. I have both the app and a new microphone on order. Apple’s mind-reading capabilities have become very sharp.
P.S. I like the metaphor of the Garage, where music and software are mythically developed, though a garage is mostly where its alliterative cousin garbage sits.