Kevin Spacey & Alec Baldwin Go to Bat for the Arts

in Art, Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | April 22nd, 2011

Both Alec Bald­win and Kevin Spacey are long­time advo­cates for gov­ern­ment fund­ing of  the Arts. If you missed their tes­ti­mo­ny before the House Appro­pri­a­tions Subcom­mi­tee on the Inte­ri­or ear­li­er this month, you aren’t alone. They were kicked off the sched­ule because of prepa­ra­tions for a con­gres­sion­al shut­down. These speech­es were deliv­ered not to the sub­com­mit­tee but to a crowd of advo­cates and fans.

Both are well worth watch­ing. Spacey, who is also the artis­tic direc­tor of Lon­don’s Old Vic The­atre, has long been one of the most respect­ed and artic­u­late actors in Hol­ly­wood. (See his inspir­ing pep talk to a young actor on Inside the Actor’s Stu­dio here.) He packs more wis­dom in these 12 and a half min­utes than some per­form­ers do in a life­time.

As for Alec Bald­win, his speech is short­er, but equal­ly com­pelling. If you’re in a rush, head straight to minute  4:00, which begins with this teas­er: “I come from a busi­ness where we all know a great secret …”

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Diary: The Last Short Film by Tim Hetherington

in Current Affairs, Film, Life | April 20th, 2011

Ear­li­er today, Tim Het­her­ing­ton, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er who pro­duced and direct­ed the award-win­ning film Restre­po, was killed in the Libyan city of Mis­ura­ta. Although inter­est­ed in diverse art forms, Het­her­ing­ton spent more than a decade work­ing in war zones. He was a cam­era­man on Liberia: An Unciv­il War (2004) and The Dev­il Came on Horse­back (2007), then direct­ed Restre­po, a film about a pla­toon of sol­diers in Afghanistan. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val. And, that same year, Het­her­ing­ton also shot a short film, Diary, which he sum­ma­rized in this fash­ion:

‘Diary’ is a high­ly per­son­al and exper­i­men­tal film that express­es the sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of my work, and was made as an attempt to locate myself after ten years of report­ing. It’s a kalei­do­scope of images that link our west­ern real­i­ty to the seem­ing­ly dis­tant worlds we see in the media.”

You can watch Diary above and also vis­it a slideshow of Het­her­ing­ton’s pho­to­graph­ic work here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Bubble Watch: Is China Next?

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | April 8th, 2011


Last month, Chi­na hit anoth­er major mile­stone. It passed Japan and became the sec­ond largest econ­o­my in the world, leav­ing only the US in its way. Give Chi­na a decade, maybe a lit­tle more, and it will inevitably surge into the lead. That’s the accept­ed nar­ra­tive.

But then we come across this: the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a mount­ing real estate bub­ble might derail Chi­na’s plans. This report from Aus­tralian pub­lic tele­vi­sion gives you a dis­turb­ing look at how the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has pumped vast amounts of cap­i­tal into fixed assets, like com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial real estate, to keep the coun­try’s econ­o­my grow­ing. And what they’re left with is what James Chanos (a hedge fund man­ag­er) has famous­ly described as “Dubai times one thou­sand.” Right now, there are an esti­mat­ed 64 mil­lion emp­ty apart­ments in Chi­na, and approx­i­mate­ly 30 bil­lion square feet of com­mer­cial real estate under con­struc­tion — equiv­a­lent to a five-by-five foot office cubi­cle for every man, woman and child in Chi­na. It’s one thing to read these facts, anoth­er thing to see what it all looks like. And that’s the oppor­tu­ni­ty you get above.

For a more pre­cise roadmap of what a Chi­nese crash might look like, you should spend some time with this piece in Cana­di­an Busi­ness mag­a­zine.

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How Venice Works: 124 Islands, 183 Canals & 438 Bridges

in Current Affairs, History | April 5th, 2011

3,000,000 tourists move through Venice each year. But when the tourists leave the city, 60,000 year-round res­i­dents stay behind, con­tin­u­ing their dai­ly lives, which requires nav­i­gat­ing an arch­i­pel­ago made up of 124 islands, 183 canals and 438 bridges. How this com­pli­cat­ed city works – how the build­ings are defend­ed from water, how the build­ings stand on unsteady ground, how the Vene­tians nav­i­gate this maze of a city – is a pret­ty fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry. These tech­niques have been worked out over Venice’s 1500 year his­to­ry, and now they’re explored in a cap­ti­vat­ing 17 minute video pro­duced by a Venet­ian gov­ern­ment agency. You can learn more about the inner life of this great city at Venice Back­stage.

via Metafil­ter

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Inside Job, Oscar-Winning Documentary, Now Online (Free)

in Current Affairs, Economics, Film | April 1st, 2011

In late Feb­ru­ary, Charles Fer­gu­son’s film – Inside Job – won the Acad­e­my Award for Best Doc­u­men­tary. And now the film doc­u­ment­ing the caus­es of the 2008 glob­al finan­cial melt­down has made its way online. A cor­rupt finan­cial indus­try, its cor­ro­sive rela­tion­ship with politi­cians, aca­d­e­mics and reg­u­la­tors, and the tril­lions of dam­age done, it all gets doc­u­ment­ed in this film that runs a lit­tle shy of 2 hours.

Inside Job can be pur­chased on DVD at Ama­zon. We all love free, but let’s remem­ber that good projects cost real mon­ey to devel­op, and they could use real finan­cial sup­port. So please con­sid­er buy­ing a copy.

Hope­ful­ly watch­ing or buy­ing this film won’t be a point­less act, even though it can right­ly feel that way. As Charles Fer­gu­son remind­ed us dur­ing his Oscar accep­tance speech, we are three years beyond the Wall Street cri­sis and tax­pay­ers (you) got fleeced for bil­lions. But still not one Wall Street exec is fac­ing crim­i­nal charges. Wel­come to your plu­toc­ra­cy…

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Evgeny Morozov Animated: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom

in Current Affairs, Politics, Technology | March 24th, 2011

RSA has released its lat­est ani­mat­ed video, and this time it fea­tures Evge­ny Moro­zov, the Belarus-born researcher, who takes the con­trar­i­an posi­tion that the inter­net can often inhib­it (rather than pro­mote) democ­ra­cy, espe­cial­ly with­in author­i­tar­i­an con­texts like Chi­na and Iran. And what fol­lows (above) is a more sober­ing talk about how author­i­tar­i­an regimes use the web to sup­press civic engage­ment and fledg­ling democ­ra­cy move­ments. This clip is part of a longer 27 minute lec­ture (see full ver­sion here) that peers into “the dark side of inter­net free­dom,” a phrase that hap­pens to be the sub­ti­tle of Moro­zov’s new book.

Moro­zov is cur­rent­ly a vis­it­ing schol­ar in the Lib­er­a­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Pro­gram at Stan­ford, and if you’re won­der­ing how he looks at tech­nol­o­gy and the role it played in Egyp­t’s rev­o­lu­tion, you can watch a quick clip here.

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Aftermath of the Tsunami in Japan

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | March 18th, 2011

It was one week ago that a pow­er­ful 9.0 mag­ni­tude earth­quake struck off the coast of north­ern Japan. The tsuna­mi that fol­lowed, with waves reach­ing as high as ten meters, swept as far as ten miles inward. In this video shot for The Guardian, we see the haunt­ing dev­as­ta­tion in Shin­tona, a small town in the Miya­gi pre­fec­ture (one of the areas worst affect­ed by the tsuna­mi). Amidst the wreck­age on the streets, it is quite stir­ring to peer inside some of the washed-out hous­es, where we observe bro­ken chi­na and dam­aged pho­tographs, remind­ing us how life can be so pro­found­ly and per­son­al­ly inter­rupt­ed by nature’s fury.

The Guardian arti­cle accom­pa­ny­ing this video can be read here. For more videos and resources relat­ed to the earth­quake in Japan, includ­ing ways you can help, see this post.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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A is for Atom: Vintage PR Film for Nuclear Energy

in Current Affairs, Film, Video - Science | March 18th, 2011

As a dev­as­tat­ed Japan con­tin­ues to strug­gle with the dam­age to its nuclear facil­i­ties, sev­er­al oth­er nations have begun recon­sid­er­ing their nuclear poli­cies. Ger­many, for exam­ple, has tem­porar­i­ly closed down sev­en aging nuclear reac­tors, and oth­er coun­tries (includ­ing Rus­sia, Chi­na, and the US) have announced checks of their own safe­ty stan­dards.

Cyn­ics might sug­gest that these announce­ments are cal­cu­lat­ed less to make sub­stan­tive changes than to calm a fright­ened pub­lic, and attempts to man­age per­cep­tions of the atom­’s volatile pow­ers are noth­ing new. They began imme­di­ate­ly after the bomb­ings of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. The video above, pro­duced by Gen­er­al Elec­tric in 1952, was one of many Atom­ic Ener­gy “PR films” designed to sway pub­lic opin­ion in favor of this prof­itable and pow­er­ful new ener­gy resource. (Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, GE built the Fukushi­ma reac­tor that’s now in deep trou­ble.)

A is for Atom was a huge hit — it won sev­er­al hon­ors, includ­ing a spe­cial prize at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val and a Mer­it Award from Scholas­tic Teacher. In some ways those hon­ors were deserved. The movie is a spright­ly car­toon with cheer­ful nar­ra­tion and expla­na­tions of some dif­fi­cult physics, even as it avoids any engage­ment with the dark sides of nuclear ener­gy. In fact, the whole mes­sage boils down to a reas­sur­ance that the atom­’s mas­sive poten­tial is all “with­in man’s com­mand.”

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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