Sofia Coppola – Baz Luhrmann

To me, turning a historical figure or classic literature texts into modern day film
with upbeat soundtracks, good looking cast, although it would be an insult to those “stick in the muds” i say GO FOR IT! Sometimes the words in musty old books, no matter how brilliant the language, and narrative… still can’t beat AUDIO AND VISUAL PLEASURE!!
  
I mean people, will watch [...]

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Ethics-Morals-Playing GOD

 http://www.jodipicoult.com.au/mysisterskeeper.html
after watching Children of Men i was reminded of the book My Sister Keeper.
With the test tube babies, cloning, biomedical advancements, creating plastic goodness knows what organs to replace failing ones, in a way its great that science can now help save lives but it is also scary to think what if it falls into [...]

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Judgements-Sublime-Kant

In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness with which nothing else can be compared to and which is beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation. This greatness is often used when referring to nature and [...]

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Dogville-4

I can honestly say watching Dogville was tough, very tough, but as written by Walter Benjamin, the camera assumes a  “Messianic-prophetic power” thus making the cinema a “technical apparatus which permits one to forget anthropological lack”. I guess the power of Dogville was the articulation of space which helped to create a basic but dramatic and [...]

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Abbas Kiarostami – Jack Neo

Jack Neo is one Singapore’s Directors and like Abbas Kiarostami he tackles issues of the country we live in and children!
Like, TEN which explores Iranian mother and son relationships and provides and insight to the lives of the people in Iran through a series of conversations held in the taxi, with various other characters,
Jack Neo (to [...]

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Intertwine?

Yes i promise this is the last reference to massumi (i cant help it, i just think the article is WOW)
“Dispossessed people like the Palestinians or the people in Irian Jaya just can’t argue their cases effectively through the mass media, which is why they’re driven to violent guerilla tactics or terrorism, out of desperation. [...]

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Affect – Body – Aesthetics

Also from the Massumi Interview…
“No one emotional state can encompass all the depth and breadth of our experiencing of experiencing — all the ways our experience redoubles itself. That vague sense of potential, we call it our ‘freedom’, and defend it fiercely. No body can escape gravity. Laws are part of what we are, they’re [...]

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Hope – Politics

http://www.21cmagazine.com/issue2/massumi.html
This article was brought to my attention in another course, a tat bit long but i felt it was really very insightful.
 I extracted bits and pieces from it…:
“the way that a concept like hope can be made useful is when it is not connected to an expected success — when it starts to be something [...]

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Philosophers…

Psychologist deal with the brain, nerves, chemicals, hormones etc, in a way they are more medical… Philosophers like a few critics have always mystified me. Having done the first reading, I went to the library to look up on Martin Heidegger, and found a book called “Beginners Guide To Heidegger” It began by giving brief histories of the other great [...]

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Film

It was only in melbourne uni (last sem) that i had my first encounter with cinema-film theory studies, in Love Stories Film and Narrative Theory. Stuck in my mind till now is Hiroshima Mon Amour. The amazing way that the film was directed, black and white yet it was million times better then some hollywood [...]

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