John Menick Blog

Scott Kirsner — columnist, blogger and author of Inventing the Movies — speaking to the folks at Google. I’ve been meaning to read Inventing the Movies for a couple of weeks now. It’s one of the few books I know of tracing the technological advancements in the movie industry. More accurately, it looks at Hollywood’s frequent inability to understand those advancements. Kirsner, in both the talk and the book, gleefully points out that most technological advancements were resisted by the industry: first sound, then color, VCRs, digital editing, and now digital projection and online video. It’s worth a look.

I’m not exactly sure why Peacemaker was on NPR this morning, since they covered the gamemaker almost exactly one year ago. Like political art that doesn’t take into account its role as a market luxury item, one has to wonder if politics should really be understood as a video game…

Not interested in posting much lately, so… and intermission…

Found on Strangeharvest.

I got to see the Fischli and Weiss retro at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris yesterday. Of course, it included their amazing The Way Things Go:

The implosion of the Stardust in Vegas is an occasion for a mini-museum of hotel demolitions.

The Stardust

The Aladdin

Desert Inn/Wynn Parking Garage Implosion