The Reality of Total Cinema
So, I have a Philosophy of Film class. I thought it would be looking at philosophical aspects of film. Like analyzing "The Matrix" for philosophical relevence or something.
Boy was I wrong. Not that this is a bad thing. What we are doing, in fact, is looking at film and analyzing film philosophically. What are we looking at? Is it art or something else? What should its purpose be? And we look at how film affects our worldview, as well as how are worldview affects film. Anyway, this is my first paper due for the class. This is the unedited, lengthy draft. Enjoy!
Foobar 2000 spotlight
I'm getting sick of iTunes. Part of it, though this sounds really lame, is that I hate the way it looks. That, and I barely use any of the features (search and browse are the only ones, really). So I get 4 different programs that keep clogging things up, only 1 of which I use (why do I need iPod helper with no iPod?). So I hunted for more mp3 solutions.
Nuklear Age Review
I just now finished Nuklear Age by Brian Clevinger (8-Bit Theater). The soul-destruction of finals has heralded the end of a semester, and I took the chance to finally pick up Clevinger's first work for summer reading material (still have three other books to read by fall and family life doesn't always lend itself to the voracious devouring of literature). This review is not entirely spoiler-free.
PlayStation 3
Browsing on Penny Arcade, Tycho links GameSpot with a news item about the PlayStation 3 (read).
Just wanted to share some thoughts:
- I hate the way that new controller looks. I don't know how it will feel, but if I were to judge a book by its cover, I'd have to title it "fragile." Or "techno-lame."
- The hardware specs are top notch. Granted, in about 4 years, everybody's laptops could outperform this, but still. It's good to know that the PS3 is an actual jump forward, instead of a predcited projection
- It supports seven wireless controllers, that last 24 hours before needing a recharge. I'm assuming it's a recharge like a portable device, and not a recharge like buying more Duracell. Either way, 24 hours is more than I get out of my current wireless controller.
- Demos (teasers or rough screenshots probably) of new games: Metal Gear Solid 4 (woo-hoo!), Devil May Cry 4 (yeah!), Tekken 6 (awesome), and Gran Turismo 5 (never been the biggest fan, but it's still my favorite racing game).
- I'm sorry, I mentioned Metal Gear Solid 4 and Devil May Cry 4, right?
- Sony claims backwards compatability with PSX and PS2, but my question is memory. When PS2 came out, the games were backwards compatible, but not the memory cards. Will this change with PS3? A USB stick with all my saves from every incarnation of PlayStation would be a lot easier to manage than a bunch of memory cards that I'd have to swap out.
I'm hoping trusted accounts from the likes of Tycho (or others involved with the game industry press) will have more info. Regardless, I'm gonna start saving now for spring 2006.
George Lucas == Michael Moore?
Probably not. But over at Cannes (why does this stuff always happen over there?), Lucas had some things to say:
Lucas, at a Cannes film festival press conference yesterday, said he first wrote the framework of Star Wars in 1971 when reacting to then-U.S. president Richard Nixon and the events of the Vietnam War. But the story still has relevance today, he said, and is part of a pattern he has noticed in history.
Contrast this to his interviews when the very first Anniversary special set came out (only on VHS, no DVD yet), where he says that "Kids didn't have a fairy tale of their own...I wanted to write a modern fairy tale." This was also his motivation in trying to keep everything PG - he wanted it to be kid-friendly.
And then:
"Because this is the back story (of the Star Wars saga), one of the main features of the back story was to tell how the Republic became the Empire,” Lucas said.
...
"The issue was: How does a democracy turn itself over to a dictator? Not how does a dictator take over, but how does a democracy and Senate give it away?"
In real life (and Lucas cites Ceasar and Hitler as examples), people get reactionary and want somebody who will be decisive and take control. Further historical digging (which I'm sure Lucas hasn't done) reveals that these dictators had plans in the works that would make Machievelli himself swell with pride. Quite frankly, I think most politicians (people in general) are too short-sighted these days to pull something like that off. And that's the only similarity between real democratic turnovers and Star Wars. Except that the Sith plot was done over a much longer period of time than anything that happened in reality. His comparisons to Nixon, Bush, Vietnam, and Iraq/Terrorism are just not valid.
Personally, I think that Lucas is just trying to make himself sound relevant. Remember, it's en vogue that celebrities (real or pretended) have some kind of political voice. And really, TV series or not, Star Wars is pretty much over after Episode III. The books (novel or comic) will continue, but as a media enterprise, it's over. And Lucas just wants his last minutes to be "relevant" instead of "quality." But, to quote Dennis Miller, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Hat tip: Monday Miscellany from Michelle Malkin