DS: “Is the small screen a good format for discussing meditation?”
DL: “Any format is a good format for meditation. Every single person has within an ocean of pure vibrant consciousness.” […]
DS: “As a devotee of cultivated bliss, how do you explain the proclivity for twisted eroticism and dismembered body parts in your films?”
DL: “A filmmaker doesn’t have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand it. You don’t have to die to shoot a death scene.”
Tag: 11.23.08
The Holocaust, Coming To A Theater/Bookstore/TV Near You This Christmas
“The number of Holocaust-related memoirs, novels, documentaries and feature films in the past decade or so seems to defy quantification, and their proliferation raises some uncomfortable questions. Why are there so many? Why now? And more queasily, could there be too many?” (Hint: It’s not just that Holocaust books and movies win awards.)
How We’re All Becoming ‘People Of The Screen’
Wired‘s Kevin Kelly: “The rich databases [Flickr, YouTube, 3D Warehouse] of component images form a new grammar for moving images. After all, this is how authors work. We dip into a finite set of established words, called a dictionary, and reassemble these found words into articles, novels and poems that no one has ever seen before. The joy is recombining them… What we do now with words, we’ll soon do with images.”
As Baltimore Orgs Face Cuts, Opera Co. Is On The Brink
“Due to stock market turmoil, endowments at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra have dropped by millions of dollars, limiting the money that can be withdrawn for operating expenses. State grants have been cut significantly.” But it’s the Baltimore Opera Company that’s suffered most in the economic crisis: It may not even finish the season.
Layoffs At Damien Hirst Inc.
“Even Damien Hirst may not be immune to the economic climate – many of the workers who produce his works found themselves out of a job this week, the Guardian has learned. On Thursday, up to 17 of the 22 people who make the pills for Hirst’s drug cabinet series were told their contracts were not being renewed.”
The Joyce Carol Oates Factory
“Since 1964, when her first novel debuted, she has published 54. Then there are the 31 collections of short stories, as well as the volumes of essays, plays and poetry. By the most conservative estimate, that’s two-plus books a year. Just how does she do it? To Oates, her level of production isn’t all that mysterious.”
Will Economy Slow Our Video Purchase Habits?
“Does an economy in tatters slow down or speed up the shift to watching TV shows and movies on the Web and mobile devices? The entertainment industry doesn’t like the answer that is rapidly becoming clear: A global economic crisis almost certainly means a sharp acceleration in the move to new ways of consuming content, setting the stage for a new clash between consumers and studios.”
We Are “People Of The Screen”
“Once, long ago, culture revolved around the spoken word. The oral skills of memorization, recitation and rhetoric instilled in societies a reverence for the past, the ambiguous, the ornate and the subjective. Now invention is again overthrowing the dominant media. A new distribution-and-display technology is nudging the book aside and catapulting images, and especially moving images, to the center of the culture. We are becoming people of the screen.”
Poetry As Medicine?
Some therapists, it turns out, find poetry to be highly effective in helping patients to cope with and overcome mental illness. There are a few basic, accepted methods of poetry therapy.
Artists Rally To Save LA’s MoCA
About 450 concerned Angelinos turned out to an event to support Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art.